Sermon
of March 20, 2005
Presented by Rev. Julia Williamson
Scripture lesson: Matthew 21:1-11
“Jesus
Came to Bridge the Gap Between... Sorrow and Joy”
Jesus came to earth to do many things– to heal people, to teach, to love, to experience what it is to be human. But most of all Jesus came to bridge a gap between people and God. This is the story of holy week, which begins today with Jesus riding into Jerusalem, continues with him sharing his last meal with his disciples, giving them a way to remember him in the bread and the cup, being arrested and put on trial, dying on the cross and finally the triumph of Easter morning. All of these stories figure into what it means to be human, what it means to be a people of faith and what it means to truly believe that Jesus can bridge the gaps in our lives and lead us into that peace and joy we all crave so much.
At our women’s morning away yesterday, we were talking about this common feeling that is part of being human. It’s kind of like a yearning or a craving. Deep within we know that what we crave are the basics like love, joy and peace. But sometimes we’re not really sure how to get there. We need God, we need Jesus, to find that peace, love and joy. But instead we substitute other stuff– it might be food, or alcohol, or shopping, or gambling, or work, or for some people even exercise. Whatever it is, for a little while it gives us a hint of that joy and that peace, so we want more and more of it. But those substitutes ultimately fail us and can even put us into a vicious cycle of addiction. If only we could learn to go for the real thing– for that peace and joy that only Jesus can give us, then we can bridge those gaps in our lives– today the gap between sorrow and joy.
We all know what it means to feel sorrow. We don’t need examples of sorrow. We have enough of them already. But I will share with you one person’s attempt to find God in the midst of his own sorrow. I recently read a sermon written by William Sloan Coffin, a well-known minister and writer who was the chaplain at Yale University and then pastor of Riverside Church in NYC for a long time. He wrote this sermon just a few days after his 24-year-old son Alex was killed driving his car in a storm, late at night in Boston. He talks about all the people who came to see him in the days after, and how for the most part their words provided comfort and healing. Then there was the one woman who “came in carrying about 18 quiches,” saw him, shook her head, headed for the kitchen and said sadly over her shoulder, “I just don’t understand the will of God.” He writes: “Instantly I was up in hot pursuit, swarming all over her. ‘I’ll say you don’t lady!... Do you think it was the will of God that Alex never fixed that lousy windshield wiper, that he was probably driving too late in such a storm, that he probably had had a couple of ‘frosties’ too many? Do you think it is God’s will that there are no streetlights along that stretch of road, and no guard rail separating the road and Boston harbor?’” No, it is not God’s will in any of these things. And, he writes, “God’s heart was the first of all our hearts to break.”
In
order to truly experience how Jesus bridges the gap between sorrow and joy, we
first have to be able to find God in our sorrow, and to feel how God’s heart
is breaking, along with our own. There’s a beautiful sculpture hanging in a
chapel at the National Cathedral in Washington, where I spent a week of my
sabbatical last year. The sculpture is called Welcome Home. It shows Jesus on
the cross embracing another person, perhaps the criminal crucified next to him.
In Luke’s Gospel this man says to Jesus, “remember me when you come
into your kingdom” and Jesus replies, “today you will be with me in
During February vacation, my family and I spent a few days in NYC. We stayed in a hotel down by the wharf, not far from Wall Street and the World Trade Center site. On a cold but sunny morning we walked down to the site. It’s surrounded by an iron fence and it’s mostly an empty pit with a few scraps of rubble and not much else. But there still left standing are those two steel beams that fell right down in the shape of a cross. Jesus is there with us at this place of great sorrow. He is there. The question is, can we find him in a way that will help us through and give us strength? I’ve come to believe that much of this process of finding Jesus in our sorrow is of course about faith, but perhaps even more so, it’s about discipline. It’s about training our minds to see God in unlikely places and at unlikely times. One of the most helpful suggestions anyone has given me in a while came from a wise friend who knows I sometimes tend to dwell in the negative. I look for negative things and then I let them weigh me down. She said, how about, instead of giving something up for Lent, you take something on, and how about if that something were joy? Make a conscious decision every morning to be joyful. And now a lot of the time, I catch myself,. I catch myself slipping into sorrow and I say, “stop.” Embrace joy instead! And most of the time it works.
Here we are on Palm Sunday, a week before Easter. It’s about as early in the season as it can be. Have you heard how Easter is set? In the 4th century, the church decided to celebrate Easter on the first Sunday that falls after the full moon that appears on or after the vernal equinox. The vernal equinox ( had to look that one up – it’s the moment when the sun’s path crosses the celestial equator, day and night is equal) is tomorrow. So there must be a full moon coming up. It’s hard to celebrate Easter when it’s still cold and there’s snow on the ground. But here I go dwelling in the negative... We may have to wear our winter jackets next Sunday, but it’s time, at least in the traditional sense of the church calendar, to begin to move from the sorrow and somberness of Lent to the joy of Easter. To help us do that, I’ve got a jeopardy quiz question, which the confirmation class hears every year.
Here it is: “This is the word that we traditionally say on Palm Sunday.” And the answer is... “What is Hosanna! Hosanna in the highest!” The word hosanna originally was a cry for help. If you read Psalm 12:1 it says, “Help, O Lord, for there is no longer anyone who is godly; the faithful have disappeared from humankind.” You could just as well say, “Hosanna, O Lord, for there is no longer anyone who is godly...” Now if that’s not dwelling in the negative, I don’t know what is. And then of course there is Psalm 118, our traditional Palm Sunday psalm, at the end, “Save us (hosanna), we beseech (or we beg) you, O Lord! O Lord, we [beg] you, give us success!” And now here comes the joy. In Christianity, the word hosanna changes from a cry for help to a celebration that God has answered our prayers. When Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey (or 2 as Matthew claims, you can ask me about that later) and the people shout “hosanna” and wave those branches, they are claiming Jesus as their king. He is the source of their joy! They have found God in their sorrow and now also in their joy.
We too can find our joy in Jesus because he is the ultimate source of all of our joys. Again yesterday we remembered the gifts God has given us which make life possible; the things we take for granted like a nice deep breath, or the beat of our heart. We have little control over these things, most of the time they are simply there, sustaining us, keeping us alive so that we may experience all of the joys God has to offer us. I’ve been getting up earlier and earlier lately, not only because David leaves the house earlier, but because our dog has decided that it’s time to get up when Daddy gets up. And she’ll jump off the bed, go down the stairs and stand there and bark until I get up and take her out. But this is really a blessing, one of those “embrace joy!” moments as it gets me outside to greet the morning. And lately the birds are coming back. And the other morning I saw a bright red cardinal against the snow, and I could hear a woodpecker somewhere high up, and it was true joy!
Jesus is with us in our sorrow and in our joy. We can begin to close the gap when we realize that sorrow never has the final word. The final word comes on Easter morning, even if there is still snow on the ground. May this joy be yours and mine, today and into all of our tomorrows. Amen.