"Christian Guideposts for Joy on the Journey to the Cross"

Sermon by The Rev. Ranie Neislar

March 24, 2024  



Human brokenness stood out to me clearly this Passion Sunday. Reading our sacred texts for this Sunday, I noticed, as I usually do, the sins of Judas, his blatant disloyalty, his corruption, the chief priests and their jealousy and fear, and as a result their plan to turn Jesus over as a threat to the government, the sinful system in which Pilate is also compliant. All these sinful individuals, these communities, and systems can seem so distant to us, yet they are closer than we would like to admit. This year the sinful reality of the people throughout these texts was sharply clear in a new way because they remind me of us, marked with brokenness, and are aptly described: as broken humanity. Before we explore those breaks and all that lays on the other side of them, it is very important to get clear on what I mean by humanity.

God created everything with an intention; that intention was for all creation, including the human to be in right relationship with itself and with God. We failed to live as God intended. We failed to live into God’s intention, to be right with God, and the rest of creation, like our neighbors, people from different cultures, skin colors, religions, we failed to do right by the water, the air, and other aspects of God’s world. After some time, God sent God’s son to live as a creature, just like us: fully susceptible to the same failings we are susceptible to, better known as sin. Yet, this time, this creature, just like us in most ways, lived fully as God intended: Jesus didn’t fail to live as God intended and instead lived as, what we might call, the most humane creature to live. He was only able to be fully humane, fully as God intended, because, though he was fully like us, he was also fully God. And so, in the sense that Jesus lived perfectly into the intention that all persons are called into by God, he was fully human—he was able to live the most faithful, rich, full life that God has offered human creatures, because he was God in person form, and because he was the person, who lived entirely as God so intended,

because he was God we have only to look towards Christ Jesus to understand what being fully human looks like. Anything that is less than that, any of what takes us away from God’s intention is our lacking humanity, or BREAKS in our humanity. Only Jesus is the true, full human. The rest of us have some lack, some brokenness that is less than human. All of that being said, I often look at other creatures, especially my dogs, and ponder the real possibility that they are more human than I am.

There is so much here: to consider the divine becoming like us, “though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross.” If we take that text that Paul writes to the Philippians and use it as a prism through which we read the Passion narrative… at first glance it doesn’t make sense. Or rather, it doesn’t make sense to me. It doesn’t make sense that God, who created all things good, and right to begin with, is stuck fixing what we, creatures, got wrong in our freedom. It doesn’t make sense that a God propelled by an energy of pure love is willing and continues to be subject to everything in our lives that is not love, or good, or just. It doesn’t make sense that God, knowing full well how to live the most extravagant, lavish life, as a creature, chooses to allow his life to be cut short in an emotionally and physically painful way… an end punctuated by rejection. But that is what we are invited to do as we begin this Holy Week, to read and reflect on this sacred story as simple creatures. And through that reflection, through the week, can we most fully see the fullness of what we are called into as Christ-followers, it is only through that reflection can we most clearly see our own path forward as disciples—

which is no path at all if it were not for divine intervention in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. On the other side of all the breaks of this world, this most human person is God that came to be with us, live like us, and invite us into a different way of being: a way through the gut-wrenching, soul-crushing breaks that all of us experience in our lives.

Before Paul describes so succinctly Jesus’s life, death, and divinity, he says this “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus”… he is saying to the Philippians, and to us today, take on this mindset, set yourself on this path, follow the person Jesus along this way and be prepared to endure, to persevere through hard moments, and in some of the same moments experience a closeness with God and others like never before... and in the final season of reality as we know it, experience a glory unlike any you’ve ever known because you have lived a faithful life, pursuing love, accepting grace, and offering reconciliation. The reality of what lies on the other side of the tomb is most fully appreciated if we take the time now, to walk through this most holy week, and focus on the breaks—because we still live in a world marked by breaks in humanity.

Last Tuesday night I was reminded of Holy Week and the hard story we are called to participate in and reflect on over and over again. I was called back, invited to see our human weakness, our inability to grasp God’s intention for us and our great need for reconciliation to God and one another. I was sitting in on a formation offering that has been ongoing Tuesday nights during Lent. It was a book study focused on racial healing. Racial justice and healing is something I am deeply passionate about so I was very excited that All Saints was participating. And though Tuesday night was the end of that particular book study, it was far from the end of All Saint’s participation in this work. On that night I was surrounded by All Saints parishioners of all ages, backgrounds, and stages of life, and each one of those individuals was deeply moved by the breaks in humanity and participating in the ongoing work of reconciliation, specifically racial reconciliation, but what is most outstanding is that each person realized that the work of reconciliation was not just their unique calling, but as disciples of Christ, as people who strive to “be of the same mind that was in Christ Jesus” they realized that each person, every disciple is called to participate in making a broken people more human.

On the other side of Christ Jesus’s work as a creature in the world: a fully human and fully divine creature, is that which only the divine can work: reconciliation, healing, and justice on a cosmic level. I invite you into the most holy story this week, I invite you to reflect on the breaks in humanity then, and now, and to prepare yourselves to participate in what is on the other side of an open tomb.