March 24, 2013 (Palm / Passion Sunday) – Luke 22:14-23:56
Luke 22:14-23:56
Love Must Win Out
Palm Sunday/Sunday of the Passion – March 24, 2013
(Commemoration of Oscar Romero)
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
Luke’s account of Jesus’ passion or suffering begins with worship around a holy meal and
ends with the religious observance of resting on the Sabbath.
God’s meal begins the account of Jesus’ suffering, and God’s day of rest concludes it.
All that takes place in between takes place within a space and a time that belongs to God.
Everything in the story is bracketed and held between God’s gracious meal and
God’s gracious command to rest.
Luke’s account is unique in affirming that
the worst we human beings unleash against one another,
the worst we can work in sin, evil, and death,
the worst we can imagine and the worst we can experience is held within
something greater and something more gracious.
The alpha and omega of this harrowing story of injustice, denial, abandonment,
violence, torture, and death is prayerful worship and trust-filled rest.
The beginning and end of this story is love.
Everything in this story is held within God’s grace.
And that grace peeks through the story throughout,
and will not let harshness and evil and indignity have the last words.
The benediction that begins and the blessing that ends are present throughout the whole story.
In an upper room, betrayal is about to occur, and yet, and yet,
God’s meal is shared, and shared even with the betrayer.
In the garden, violence is unleashed, a disciple strikes with a sword, blood is shed and yet,
and yet, Jesus heals with tremendous grace.
An innocent is murdered and hung on a cross, and yet from that cross come words not of
vengeance, rebuke, or even disappointment but words full of grace:
Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing.
This story is not a story about the triumph of human injustice and cruelty.
This story is about the triumph of divine forgiveness and mercy and love.
There is a better way. And the better way begins and ends the story. The better way cannot fail.
For divine love encompasses the whole – beginning, end, and middle in Luke’s account – and
it cannot fail, for nothing is outside it, and nothing is too evil that it cannot be redeemed.
That is the good news, the very good news, the great news, on this Sunday of the Passion.
Today we commemorate the Roman Catholic Archbishop of El Salvador, Oscar Romero.
In the late 70s, Archbishop Romero spoke out against a violent and unjust government
on behalf of the people whom it was harming rather than helping.
Like Jesus, who spoke out against and acted against an unjust government,
Archbishop Romero suffered the consequences of following that call.
On this day, March 24th, 1980, he was gunned down while presiding at Holy Communion.
And we remember him as a reminder of what a Christian ought to be; in his own words,
a person who is converted to Christ is the new human being that society needs to
organize a world according to God’s heart. (103)
His own life in Christ began in his baptism and ended at God’s meal of grace.
His life was bracketed by baptism and communion.
His life was held within God’s gracious embrace outside of which
nothing is greater: the murder of his own priests who spoke out was not greater,
the disappearance of members of his flock was not greater,
the violence of those who sought to use violence against the government was not greater.
His life and his work are a testimony to us, and a testimony to something much greater.
The testimony is that your life, too, is held between the brackets of your baptism and
the final meal of grace to which all our Sunday meals of grace point.
And the testimony is that cruelty is not greater than the forgiveness that absolves it.
death is not greater than the life that emerges from it.
hatred is not greater than the love that encompasses it.
About the preaching of love, he had this to say:
Let us not tire of preaching love; it is the force that will overcome the world.
Let us not tire of preaching love.
Though we see that waves of violence succeed in drowning the fire of Christian love,
love must win out; it is the only thing that can. (7)
In the meal of grace that begins this day, love wins out.
In the healing after a violent act, love wins out.
In the words of forgiveness from a cruel cross, love wins out.
In the gift of Sabbath rest, trusting that everything is in God’s gracious hands, love wins out.
And in Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, breathing forgiveness, love wins out.
Archbishop Romero’s affirmation to us is that love wins out.
His challenge to us is to ask: how will that love,
that love that is at the beginning and ending of all things,
how will that love become incarnate and take on flesh in our community,
a community that resides in a neighbourhood that so needs that love?
As he looks down upon us from the cross, Jesus asks us: how, among us, will love win out?
As he presides from the table where he was shot, Oscar Romero asks us:
How, among us, will love win out?
As a community, we are answering that question, and as we continue to
ask it and answer it and struggle with it, let us remember that
the love God has for us in Christ – the creating, feeding, healing,
forgiving love God has for us in Christ – this love brackets all that we say,
all that we do, and all that we suffer.
This love, this divine love, must win out.
So together let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
(Page number references are to Oscar Romero, The Violence of Love [Farmington, PA: Plough Publishing House, 1998])
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