Palm Sunday and the Way of Despair

Scripture: John 19:16-22

Disclaimer: This is a sermon for a particular situation, though I hope it speaks broader than this one case. Names have been removed.

          When we think of what the cross means to us I imagine there are many answers: it means salvation, it means hope, it means peace, it means love—all the things that we want so badly for our lives. What we don’t want to admit, but what is most true of all, is that the cross means despair. The way of the cross is the way of despair, because the way of the cross is death. And death is physical death but it is also emotional death and all the losses we experience in our lives: jobs, relationships, and dreams. Even in the church we tend to gloss over death in order to get to resurrection and it handicaps us when it smacks us in the face, leaving us unnerved, timid, and hoping to move on quickly to something more cheery. Meanwhile, those most affected by it are left to cope, knowing that death is not so easily satiated. The way of the cross is long and arduous, and it leads straight through despair.

            This has been a terrible week—a week that feels heavier than any physical death I’ve experienced here. It’s hard and painful, and it stirs up feelings of regret, remorse and despair. This week has been about death as much as any week full of funerals could be, and we simply don’t know what to do with death. Culturally, we treat death as a spectacle; we fear and revere it and it becomes the breeding ground of rumors and banal platitudes. Despair makes us so terribly uncomfortable, and so we create rumors, trying to craft a story we can control, often turning to conspiracies to create meaning that just isn’t there. We do this about international stories of missing planes, just as surely as we do it about local stories that we know little about. All of this is very human, but it is an affront to the cross. The way of the cross is despair because the way of the cross is brutally honest about loss; it looks the monster of death in the eyes and embraces its emptiness. It admits that death is terrible and senseless, resisting the urge to give meaning to tragedy. It’s easy to say “It will be OK,” but much harder to sit with someone, knowing it’s not.

            Every year we wave branches on Palm Sunday along with all the people in Jerusalem who were oblivious to what Jesus’ entry meant, and every year we make Jesus into the Lord we want him to be—the king we want him to be—and we do our absolute best to ignore the way of despair, because we are scared to death about death. We avoid it and we don’t know how to address those who are experiencing it. Sisters and brothers, we are all experiencing death today—some more than others, but it is lain bare for all of us to see and there’s no sense to it. You might try to make sense of it, laying blame, trying to put order to disorder, and embellishing to suit your point or to make it more interesting, but all of these will be an affront to the truth, which is that death is real and alive and scary as hell.

            In different ways, we are all feeling that death today. Together we are walking that road to the cross, trying our best to craft a story that makes it all make sense but ultimately finding that the monster of death is inside of us all and, no matter how highly we think of ourselves, given certain circumstances in our lives we will all fail as surely as the sun rises. Not only are none of us perfect but all of us are capable of more terrible things than we would ever admit aloud—thoughts that are fleeting but in a different situation would lead us to actions we would never think possible. “There but for the grace of God go I,” said John Bradford, watching over criminals walking toward their execution only a short while before Bradford himself was burned at the stake. That’s the way of the cross: it’s not pretty.

            So, the question before us is what we do when confronted with death?  Or, more directly for those of us so deeply affected by this week’s events, what do we do when we are confronted with shame and embarrassment--face-to-face? Well, the normal way is to avoid it—that’s the way of gossip; of averted eyes; it’s how we maintain our self-importance, and it shows how afraid we are to experience shame ourselves. We are so stinking afraid of shame that we ignore people in need, as if we truly want people to get what’s coming to them. Well, I have news for you: if we’re getting what’s coming to us we’re all in a helluva lot of trouble.

We can also be angry about it. That’s understandable. When death comes, anger is one stage, but as with Peter, cutting off the ear of the slave in the garden of Gethsemane, anger cannot be the end of the story; it has to be a step on the way to something better. That something better is catharsis, which is long and tough, resisting any attempt at a simple fix, but you can’t forgive and you can’t be forgiven without walking that path. The way of the cross bids us to enter into death—in fact, it compels us that way. It forces us to seek out the one who is dying—physically, emotionally, spiritually—and to say to his or her face, “I am here with you; it’s uncomfortable as hell and it scares me to death; but I am here with you.” The way of the cross is as countercultural as you can get, because the way of the cross is admitting we don’t know jack; it is simply sitting with the person who is dying on the inside or the outside, calling sin what it is, but proclaiming that our mistakes are not what defines us. The way of the cross is the only sane way in the end, because death—though scarier than we will ever admit—is where Jesus Christ promises to be.

            That’s the best comfort we have because it means that our relationship with God is not dependent on having a good week. Many of us have had a terrible week. But you can have the worst week of your life and discover to your surprise that that’s just where God happened to be. We continue to forget that God shows up not on podiums but on crosses. God shows up not in comfort but in despair. God shows up not when we are at our best but when we are at our most desperate. And God shows up when we are absolutely in our greatest need of forgiveness. That’s the promise of the cross; a promise of despair. None of us want to be there. None of us want to walk that road. But what we want is completely beside the point. At some time or another, we’re all there, carrying our crosses toward Golgotha, laid bare for all the world to see—sinners in need of grace. It’s so ugly. We can be so ugly.

            That’s the way of the cross—ugly and despairing. And thank God. Thank God because if Jesus were all about roses and duckies and bunnies I wouldn’t know where to turn in days like this. I wouldn’t know where to look when I’m honest about the deepest, darkest places in my soul. If the way of the cross were pretty it would mean everything that’s not is God-forsaken—that God is only into us when we’re at our best. But he’s not. Mercifully, he’s not. God is into us at our worst. Thank God, because I’ve been there and I will be there again. You’ve been there and you will be there again. The clock is ticking toward another death: emotional, physical, or spiritual. We need to be honest about that. More loss is coming. More death will follow; it’s one of the few things certain in life. And the only thing that stands in the way of that death, and the only thing that offers us forgiveness, is the cross where we find Jesus in the muck of our despair. That’s where he is, where he’ll be, and where we can always find him. Right where we need him on days like this.