A sermon for Palm Sunday: The Sunday of the Passion, April 13, 2025. The scriptures are Isaiah 50:4-9a, Philippians 2:5-11, Luke 23:1-49, and Psalm 31:9-16.
Every time we pray The Lord’s Prayer, we ask God to “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” The Ecumenical version, that we use at 6PM puts it a little more bluntly by asking, “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”
There’s an implication that we are forgiving our enemies, or that we are at least trying to forgive those who sin against us. But are we? Do we?
At my most honest, I would confess that I don’t always try to forgive those who might be my enemies, and I sometimes don’t even consider trying to forgive some of those who sin against me. Like St. Augustine who, in the 4th century, prayed “O Lord, make me chaste—but not yet,” I tend to think, “Help be forgive—but not yet.”
But for me, that’s where Jesus becomes most real for me. Especially when I can’t bring myself to forgive as God asks me to, I just have to pray in honesty, “Jesus, you know I can’t bring myself to fully forgive so-and-so, or such-and-such, but work on me, and work on them.” Basically, what I’m doing is taking Jesus up on his generous, loving offer, when he says, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens.”
And so, even when I can’t forgive, especially when I can’t forgive as I should, I know someone who can.
In today’s long Gospel Reading, as we hear St. Luke’s version of the Passion, the events that lead to Jesus being crucified on a cross. We hear that even from the cross, Jesus forgives. As he is nailed to a cross between two thieves, Jesus prays for the soldiers who are committing crimes against him, against the others, against many other innocent or poor, or weak people. “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” In our current culture of anger, outrage, whether it’s righteous anger, or justified outrage, and independent of whether another person “deserves” our forgiveness, the unwillingness to forgive, or the refusal to forgive, can take it toll on us. It can wear us down. It can make us bitter. Worse, it can turn us into the people we can’t bring ourselves to forgive.
Pope Francis put it beautifully in one of his sermons:
When we resort to violence, we show that we no longer know anything about God, who is our Father, or even about others, who are our brothers and sisters…. We see this in the folly of war, where Christ is crucified yet another time. Christ is once more nailed to the Cross in mothers who mourn the unjust death of husbands and sons. He is crucified in refugees who flee from bombs with children in their arms. He is crucified in the elderly left alone to die; in young people deprived of a future; in soldiers sent to kill their brothers and sisters. ‘Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.’ Many people heard these extraordinary words [as Jesus prayed them from the cross], but only one person responded to them. He was a criminal, crucified next to Jesus. (Pope Francis, April 10, 2022)
This week, we are invited to follow Jesus even more closely.
The Daily Prayers take us with him through Jerusalem.
On Wednesday night, we pray through the Office of Tenebrae, and notice the ways in which some of the Hebrew scripture prophecies play out in the life of Jesus. We practice praying even as candles are extinguished, and light seems to fade. But then, in the deep darkness, we’re reminded again that “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”
On Maundy Thursday, we see and imitate again, how Jesus serves, how he lives out a kind of simply humility by being present and serving others.
On Good Friday, from Noon to Three, we reflect more deeply on the Stations of the Cross and at Seven, we pray through the whole Good Friday Liturgy, as we hear again the Passion according to St. John.
Saturday is the day in which things were quiet. Jesus was in the tomb. But Saturday night, we count time with our Jewish brothers and sisters, and observe the Eve of Easter, at 7PM in the Church Garden, we celebrate the first Holy Eucharist of Easter.
On Easter Day, some of us will be up early. We’ll meet at Carl Schurz Park for a 6AM Sunrise service on the Promenade. Then, at Holy Trinity, we’ll celebrate Easter all day—at 8AM, at 11AM and at 6PM.
I invite you to make your way to the Cross this week. Take whatever weighs you down, whatever burdens you, whatever worries you, and put it into the hands of the Wounded One who always forgives, moves us into forgiveness, and leads us in the way of love.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.