I can’t help but to keep coming back to what Saint Paul said to the Corinthians, what he wrote to them.
Thinking about Palm Sunday, about Holy Week, what I’d like to say to you, to persuade you, to convince you to pay attention this week—this week we call “holy”—what to say to you to get you to attend to Jesus this week, present in the liturgies and the mysteries most of the world will ignore this week: I have been wondering what to say to get you to notice, to follow, to show up. And that’s why I keep thinking about what Paul said, because he said it just right; and really, I’d rather he preach this morning and not me. If you would listen to an apostle if not some random priest, invited by him to share in the most important week of your life—whether you recognize that it’s the most important week of your life or not.
It’s what Paul said that matters, what I can’t get out of my head, what I want to share with you. Here’s what he said: “For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.”[1] To know nothing except Jesus, and him crucified. That’s all I want to say, all I want to beg you: that this week, of all weeks, that should be our purpose, our task, the ideal, the standard, the hope—to arrange our lives in such a way that we know nothing but Jesus Christ, and him crucified. To focus upon him is the task of Holy Week; to not just say it but to do it. “For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified,” Paul said. Maybe make that your resolution this week. Maybe change your schedule, pray a little more, worship a little more for the sake of that resolution—to know only Christ. For, of course, that’s the only knowledge—out of everything you know—that will save you in the end, when the bridegroom says he knows who you are, knowing him as fully as we are known.[2]
It is also the only chance you have to make sense of the chaos of the world. Paul was trying to find some focal point, some stable thing, some rock to gain some footing in a divided community, a community full of the arrogant and entitled, the humble and the holy, the rich and the poor, in a city, as he put it, full of many “so-called gods.”[3] He was trying to show the Christians there, by example, what to do: to not get distracted but to focus on Jesus Christ, the crucified Jesus. And it is that, I submit to you, which is the only sensible thing for us to do—in this bitter and divided world, this election year, this holy Catholic Church, her glory so often covered and mired in the sins and stupidities of clerics like me, clerics high and low, and also people like you, people like us—sinners so full of ourselves and bent in mind that we hardly know what to make of our crucified God—this is what we can do: we can stop, we can look, we can focus, we can see Jesus. Or at least we can begin to do so, which would be like dawn putting an end to a very dark night.
But only if we allow Jesus Christ to be the light, and no one else. Which is why you need to be here this week; here is where you will see him—truly see him in that mystical way only Holy Mother Church can reveal. Only here can you see him betrayed and crucified and killed; only here you will see him rise from death like light in the darkness; and only this will teach you what you need to know about everything; only this will enlighten you, save you from the unimportant noises of the world we mistakenly think important. As the ancient theologian, Maximus the Confessor, put it, and he was absolutely correct: “The one who knows the mystery of the cross and the tomb knows the reasons of things.”[4] Only here will you learn the only truth that will endure.
This is why every Palm Sunday I always in some way beg you to treat Holy Week differently, to do things differently at least this week. Because we Christians desperately need to see Jesus Christ again, to know him again; and because this is probably the best chance you’ll ever have to do so in this noisy world of tricksters and grifters and vote-beggars and all those who’ll smile to suggest that none of this really matters—because, you know, they’re busy; we’re all busy; we just can’t make it. As Christ dies alone without your heart, this Friday, paying him any mind.
Friends, what I am saying is that Jesus Christ has given me a peace which passes all understanding.[5] He has given me a happiness and a joy nothing on this earth can give. And it helps me live like a lover in this very dark world. And I have only found it here within the silences and sacraments and mysteries of Holy Mother Church; I found it in Holy Week when I simply gave God a little bit of time. And I want you all to know this peace, this joy, this Jesus. Because of the little I know, I know he loves you—every single one of you. And he’s here this week waiting for you, dying and rising for you, in this week we call holy. Amen.
[1] 1 Corinthians 2:2
[2] Matthew 25:12; 1 Corinthians 13:12
[3] 1 Corinthians 8:5
[4] Maximus the Confessor, Centuries 1108A-B
[5] Philippians 4:7
© 2024 Rev. Joshua J. Whitfield
