Blogging Towards Palm/Passion Sunday

April 5, 2009
Matthew 21:1-17
Mark 14:1 - 15:40
Philippians 2:1-13
John 15:12-17

Today we enter into the holiest of weeks in terms of the Christian understanding of time. Jewish existentialist Martin Buber said that all of life is a dialogue with the living God of the Bible. Every aspect, event and encounter in life is sacred and holy. We respond to God’s initiative with our actions & participation. That’s what Passion Sunday is all about.

How do you know who and how God is? Is it through miracles in history? Through personal experience? Through scripture? Through sermons? Through prayer? Through dreams and visions? The Christian tradition affirms that it’s through all of those avenues of spiritual experience and that we most glimpse the heart of God through the person, passion and purpose of Jesus of Nazareth, the one we call Christ, the visible image of the invisible God.

Jesus invited those that followed him to not simply listen and obey his teachings, nor to simply imitate them. We are invited to become like him: to grow, evolve, and become. We are invited to live as Jesus, meaning that we are challenged to love as him. We have symbols (and the meaning-making stories behind them) to teach and remind us of what that means:

COMMUNION BREAD & WINE: God feeding us with both physical and spiritual food to sustain and nurture us, to move us towards living as Jesus lived.

FOOT-WASHING: we are called to new lives as servants. Jesus calls us to new ways of being together that move beyond dominance, power trips, fear, mistrust and vengeance.

THE CROSS: true power comes from giving away power. God suffers with and for us, so that we might understand the heart of God and enter into relationship with God.