William H. Willimon - "Palm/Passion Peculiarity" (March 24, 2002)
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| - | Though he was God, he humbled Himself, | 0:05 |
| even unto death, even unto death on a cross. | 0:10 | |
| I've got a friend who, a friend of many years, | 0:16 | |
| who is a mortician, and he says | 0:20 | |
| that I've got about three sermons in me | 0:23 | |
| which I deliver with endless repetition. | 0:29 | |
| Three sermons. | 0:34 | |
| One of these sermons, my friend says, | 0:36 | |
| is God is large and mysterious | 0:39 | |
| and transcendent | 0:45 | |
| and peculiar, and there's no way | 0:46 | |
| that I can explain it to someone like you. | 0:50 | |
| Uh, the second sermon is life is messy, | 0:53 | |
| and it is complex and confusing and thick | 0:58 | |
| and hard to understand, and there is no way | 1:02 | |
| that I can explain it to somebody like you. | 1:06 | |
| (congregation laughs) | 1:08 | |
| The third sermon is, he says, | 1:10 | |
| Christianity is very strange. | 1:15 | |
| It is odd, and it is peculiar, and I can't believe | 1:18 | |
| that people like you actually want to be Christians. | 1:23 | |
| Well now, I don't know about that, | 1:28 | |
| but if my friend is right, then today | 1:30 | |
| you get sermon number three: | 1:32 | |
| the peculiarity of being Christian. | 1:37 | |
| I don't know about you, but for me, | 1:43 | |
| since the events of September the 11th, | 1:45 | |
| I have had numerous opportunity to be impressed | 1:48 | |
| by how very strange is the way of Jesus. | 1:54 | |
| This strange movement that is described in this | 1:59 | |
| letter to the Philippians, this movement downward, | 2:05 | |
| though He was God Almighty, He emptied himself | 2:09 | |
| even to death upon a cross, | 2:13 | |
| and somehow since September the 11th, | 2:18 | |
| I've been impressed by how very strange that is. | 2:22 | |
| As many of you know, I was not here | 2:26 | |
| on September the 11th, I was trapped in North Dakota | 2:28 | |
| with a group of Lutheran pastors, | 2:31 | |
| began a three day drive back to Durham. | 2:33 | |
| Now when September the 11th hit, | 2:37 | |
| Mr. Moseley gathered the campus ministers, | 2:43 | |
| and they decided that we would have a prayer service | 2:45 | |
| every day here in the chapel for the campus community. | 2:48 | |
| So they divvied up among the various campus ministers | 2:53 | |
| these services, and they had prayer here every day at noon. | 2:57 | |
| Well unknown to Mr. Moseley, the President, | 3:02 | |
| that's Bush, not Cohan, declared | 3:06 | |
| Friday a National Day of Prayer. | 3:09 | |
| Somehow, Mr. Moseley did not get that word, | 3:13 | |
| the campus ministers didn't get that word, | 3:15 | |
| and so they strolled into the chapel | 3:18 | |
| on that Friday after September the 11th, | 3:21 | |
| expecting to find 30, 50 people here, | 3:23 | |
| and there were 1500 of you here! | 3:25 | |
| And they'd made no, they had to scurry around, | 3:28 | |
| get the microphones in place, and get the music going, | 3:30 | |
| and, well, as providence would have it, | 3:34 | |
| Mr. Moseley had asked one of the campus ministers, | 3:37 | |
| a conservative, evangelical type | 3:40 | |
| to lead the service that day, and this | 3:44 | |
| conservative, evangelical stood up | 3:49 | |
| and led the congregation in 30 minutes | 3:52 | |
| of confession, confession of sin. | 3:55 | |
| Lord, we have strayed from your ways. | 3:58 | |
| Lord, we have not been obedient to your will. | 3:59 | |
| We have sinned, we have sinned! | 4:02 | |
| Well, as I was to find out on Saturday, | 4:07 | |
| that was not really what you were looking for | 4:10 | |
| on that Friday service, as I opened up my emails. | 4:13 | |
| (congregation laughs) | 4:18 | |
| And I emailed people back saying | 4:19 | |
| well, Mr. Moseley was in charge of that service, | 4:22 | |
| (congregation laughs) | 4:25 | |
| I don't, you ask these conservative evangelical | 4:26 | |
| Christians, this is what you got, | 4:32 | |
| I thought the timing of that guy's, | 4:33 | |
| it was just wrong, people came here, | 4:37 | |
| they were, people felt like victims, | 4:40 | |
| they were in pain, the pastoral insensitivity of that, | 4:43 | |
| or if they didn't feel like victims, | 4:46 | |
| they felt more like crusaders going out to set evil right, | 4:48 | |
| and they didn't come to confess sin. | 4:52 | |
| But as Mr. Moseley pointed out to me, | 4:57 | |
| on that next Sunday, look in the bulletin that next Sunday, | 5:00 | |
| we all gathered here, and after a hymn, | 5:06 | |
| what was the very first thing we had people do? | 5:10 | |
| All right everybody, stand up, repeat after me, | 5:13 | |
| I am sinful, I am a sinner, I have messed up, | 5:16 | |
| I am wrong, I need saving, I need forgiving. | 5:21 | |
| And then it really hit me how odd that is, | 5:27 | |
| for we want to think of ourselves as victims, | 5:33 | |
| not as sinners, | 5:36 | |
| and yet look at the scripture we will read this week. | 5:43 | |
| Those words, those terrible words, | 5:47 | |
| Matthew has the courage to record, | 5:49 | |
| Matthew 25:56, when the soldiers came | 5:51 | |
| to lead Jesus away to death, Matthew says, | 5:57 | |
| "And they all forsook him and fled." | 6:02 | |
| Jesus was not betrayed just by Judas, | 6:07 | |
| they all forsook him and fled into the darkness. | 6:11 | |
| We are sinners. | 6:17 | |
| Today in this service, this service | 6:20 | |
| which begins with such jubilation. | 6:22 | |
| Hosanna king! Welcome king! | 6:25 | |
| And yet, before the end of this service, | 6:29 | |
| those same voices which cry, "Hosanna, welcome king" | 6:31 | |
| will be the very same voices who will shout, | 6:37 | |
| "Crucify him!" | 6:40 | |
| And to come to Church and to be made to say | 6:45 | |
| those words, that's odd, | 6:47 | |
| that's peculiar. | 6:53 | |
| Some of you know I've collected sermons | 6:55 | |
| from campus ministers after September the 11th, | 6:58 | |
| and one of the ministers sent in a sermon, | 7:01 | |
| in which he began his sermon by noting | 7:04 | |
| he was watching TV after September the 11th, | 7:07 | |
| this couple was being interviewed, | 7:10 | |
| their daughter had been apparently killed | 7:11 | |
| in the collapse of the World Trade Center. | 7:17 | |
| They were in great grief, and the reporter | 7:19 | |
| after interviewing this grieving couple | 7:22 | |
| seemed nervously want to say something, | 7:24 | |
| and so he ended by saying, "Well, I'm sure | 7:26 | |
| you'll go to your place of worship this week, | 7:31 | |
| and you will probably find there some consolation." | 7:32 | |
| The mother spoke up and said, "No, we're not going | 7:37 | |
| to our place of worship this weekend | 7:41 | |
| because we are members of a religion | 7:43 | |
| that's big on forgiveness, forgiveness of enemies, | 7:47 | |
| and we're just not ready for that right now." | 7:52 | |
| And this preacher said, "There was a woman | 7:58 | |
| who really appreciated | 8:02 | |
| how strange the Christian faith is." | 8:06 | |
| Jesus, when they came to carry Jesus away, | 8:11 | |
| he refused to use self defense. | 8:17 | |
| Furthermore, he even refused to let us | 8:20 | |
| take up the sword and defend him. | 8:23 | |
| If you can't believe in self defense, | 8:25 | |
| what can you believe in? | 8:29 | |
| It's very odd. | 8:32 | |
| A couple of months ago we had Islamic Awareness Week, | 8:36 | |
| and I was on a panel, we had a Islamic Imam, | 8:39 | |
| we had a Rabbi, and then they had me | 8:47 | |
| representing all Christians everywhere on the panel. | 8:50 | |
| And during the evening's discussion | 8:54 | |
| we started talking about religions, | 8:58 | |
| about conflict between religions, | 9:00 | |
| and the Imam said, "Islam believes | 9:03 | |
| in the tolerance of all faiths." | 9:06 | |
| He said, "We have a tradition of defense of other faiths." | 9:09 | |
| In fact, he said, "In holy Koran, if your religion | 9:13 | |
| is attacked by some infidel, I have | 9:17 | |
| a sacred obligation to defend you. | 9:20 | |
| I am under obligation through the holy Koran | 9:22 | |
| to defend you, to punish those who would punish you. | 9:25 | |
| Someone, a Jew, is attacked, I am to defend that person." | 9:30 | |
| And I sat there thinking, as the one | 9:36 | |
| representing Christianity, "I wish | 9:39 | |
| Jesus had said something like that." | 9:43 | |
| I got people that need punishing. | 9:46 | |
| I just wish at some point Jesus had said, | 9:51 | |
| "All right, now's a time for swords. | 9:54 | |
| Prayer is fine as far as it goes, | 9:57 | |
| but sometimes you just gotta be realistic, | 9:58 | |
| and let's go for it!" | 10:00 | |
| (congregation laughs) | 10:01 | |
| Unfortunately, there's nothing | 10:03 | |
| in the story I can point to like that. | 10:07 | |
| I wish Jesus had said, | 10:09 | |
| it's very strange that he didn't. | 10:13 | |
| In the days after September the 11th, | 10:19 | |
| millions were collected for the victims of this tragedy. | 10:21 | |
| There was an unprecedented outpouring | 10:27 | |
| of national beneficence and care, | 10:30 | |
| and it was wonderful. | 10:33 | |
| Here at Duke Chapel, something like over $50,000 | 10:35 | |
| was collected for the victims in the services | 10:38 | |
| and events after September the 11th. | 10:41 | |
| That is an amazing show of graciousness. | 10:44 | |
| Well, a couple of weeks after September the 11th, | 10:51 | |
| I had the unenviable task of going down to a | 10:53 | |
| big Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, | 10:57 | |
| and speaking at their stewardship dinner. | 10:59 | |
| And it was tough, because people weren't in a mood | 11:02 | |
| to be giving to anything except | 11:05 | |
| the tragedy of September the 11th. | 11:06 | |
| I had to go down there, those of you, you know, | 11:08 | |
| know that Churches a lot of times | 11:10 | |
| for stewardship purposes to raise money | 11:12 | |
| that you bring in somebody, a hired gun | 11:15 | |
| from the outside to come in and shake people down, | 11:17 | |
| and that was what I was supposed to do. | 11:20 | |
| (congregation laughs) | 11:21 | |
| Well when we got to Charlotte, we noted | 11:23 | |
| at three different traffic lights, | 11:26 | |
| we were approached by people collecting money | 11:28 | |
| for the victims of September the 11th. | 11:31 | |
| Some of them were firemen collecting with a boot, | 11:35 | |
| and you filled the boot up with money, | 11:37 | |
| and collecting, and that's wonderful. | 11:39 | |
| But I noted to those Presbyterians when I got there, | 11:43 | |
| that as impressive as all that is, | 11:47 | |
| that in light of the Church, it's not all that impressive, | 11:50 | |
| because what for most Americans | 11:54 | |
| was a kinda one time outpouring of generosity, | 11:57 | |
| is called "another day at the office" | 12:02 | |
| at 1st Presbyterian Church. | 12:04 | |
| What do we do when Christians gather? | 12:06 | |
| We all gather, and we get settled, | 12:08 | |
| and then the minister says, all right, | 12:10 | |
| now we want your money, and a lot of this money | 12:12 | |
| is going to go for people who don't look like you. | 12:16 | |
| People that don't have your same allegiances, | 12:20 | |
| because Jesus commands us. | 12:24 | |
| And I'm proud of all the money that was collected | 12:29 | |
| for the victims of September the 11th. | 12:32 | |
| We should have. | 12:34 | |
| But forgive me for being even more proud | 12:36 | |
| that a few years ago, something like | 12:38 | |
| three or four thousand dollars was sent | 12:42 | |
| to Afghanistan through Church World Service | 12:44 | |
| after a devastating earthquake there, | 12:47 | |
| and that was before Afghanistan was one of our friends. | 12:49 | |
| That's odd. | 12:55 | |
| I can think of a lot of reasons | 12:57 | |
| to give to people that look like me, | 12:59 | |
| people that are basically in my family configuration. | 13:02 | |
| But Jesus peculiarly has us give to people | 13:08 | |
| we don't even know, saying that He knows them. | 13:11 | |
| He makes these people brothers and sisters | 13:16 | |
| that we've never met. | 13:19 | |
| And that's very strange. | 13:21 | |
| I've checked this out with fellow pastors, | 13:26 | |
| and they've noted that right after | 13:28 | |
| September the 11th there was this huge influx | 13:30 | |
| of people into Churches across the country. | 13:32 | |
| People came to Church. | 13:35 | |
| It lasted about three weeks, as best we could tell. | 13:37 | |
| Well I noticed during those Sundays afterwards | 13:42 | |
| it, this is an unscientific observation, | 13:44 | |
| and therefor probably correct, but | 13:47 | |
| (congregation laughs) | 13:49 | |
| those weeks after September the 11th, | 13:51 | |
| it seemed like we got a lot of letters of complaint. | 13:55 | |
| Complaining about the sermons, | 13:58 | |
| none of which I had preached, | 14:00 | |
| (congregation laughs) | 14:02 | |
| complaining about the service, people said, | 14:03 | |
| "I am waiting for one strong word in support | 14:06 | |
| of our President," and not Cohan but Bush. | 14:10 | |
| I am waiting, someone suggested, | 14:14 | |
| couldn't we saw the Pledge of Allegiance | 14:17 | |
| right after we have the Apostle's Creed, | 14:19 | |
| couldn't we do that? | 14:21 | |
| Well, I wrote back letters to people, | 14:23 | |
| in love, I said, "How long has it been | 14:27 | |
| since you've been in a Church?" | 14:29 | |
| We have our hands full on a Sunday morning | 14:32 | |
| just for an hour with a whole different configuration | 14:35 | |
| of allegiances, and we're trying | 14:39 | |
| to align our lives to a very peculiar account | 14:42 | |
| of what's what in the world. | 14:47 | |
| Tom Long, from Emory, who preached in this pulpit | 14:51 | |
| right after September the 11th, | 14:55 | |
| was telling us that in the days afterwards | 14:57 | |
| he was in one of these radio interview shows, | 15:00 | |
| and they said we're gonna have someone | 15:03 | |
| from Christianity, and Judaism, and Islam, | 15:06 | |
| and Hinduism, and we're gonna ask you to respond | 15:09 | |
| from your religious point of view, | 15:11 | |
| and the first question was, | 15:14 | |
| "What does your religion | 15:19 | |
| teach you about the people who committed this act? | 15:20 | |
| Dr. Long, what does the Christian faith say about this?" | 15:24 | |
| And Tom said he said, "Well uh, I think first of all, | 15:28 | |
| it's self-evident, they did wrong. | 15:33 | |
| What they did was a horrible, heinous crime. | 15:35 | |
| But, as a Christian you see, my Church teaches me | 15:40 | |
| that I'm guilty of horrible, heinous crimes. | 15:44 | |
| After the crucifixion of Jesus, | 15:47 | |
| my faith teaches us that we're all sinners. | 15:50 | |
| So as I'm busy condemning someone else's sin, | 15:53 | |
| my faith makes me also look at my sin. | 15:56 | |
| And I have to ask questions like, | 16:00 | |
| how am I involved in all this, | 16:01 | |
| and how has my sin contributed to any of this, | 16:03 | |
| and that's sort of what one of the things my faith says." | 16:08 | |
| The interviewer said, "Thank you, Rabbi, | 16:14 | |
| what does your faith say about this?" | 16:17 | |
| And the person spoke up and said, "Well, first of all, | 16:21 | |
| let me say that that statement that just was made | 16:25 | |
| was about the worst thing I have ever heard of. | 16:28 | |
| That's the dumbest thing I have ever heard. | 16:31 | |
| Hey, these people are not sinners, they're victims, | 16:33 | |
| and that we don't need to be understanding | 16:38 | |
| the people that committed this act. | 16:40 | |
| We need to be punishing these people." | 16:42 | |
| Tom Long was back in Atlanta saying, | 16:44 | |
| "Hello, uh, my faith says some other stuff, too, | 16:46 | |
| ah, hello, hello...." | 16:49 | |
| He said I went home, I stormed around, | 16:51 | |
| I told my wife, "Never again am I going to get into | 16:52 | |
| one of those radio interview things where you | 16:54 | |
| can't unpack stuff, you can't explain stuff, you can't...." | 16:56 | |
| His wife said, "I think you did a good job. | 17:01 | |
| I mean, when you think about it, | 17:06 | |
| the Christian faith is just one of the strangest | 17:08 | |
| ways of thinking one could imagine." | 17:13 | |
| Since September the 11th, how many times | 17:19 | |
| have we been told by Larry King and others, | 17:22 | |
| you know, "The world is changed forever." | 17:24 | |
| "This is the most important event that | 17:28 | |
| ever happened in the history of this country." | 17:30 | |
| Christians are people who are odd enough | 17:34 | |
| to believe this: the worst thing that was ever done | 17:37 | |
| in human history, in the long record of human | 17:42 | |
| injustice and evil | 17:46 | |
| was not what happened to us on a Tuesday. | 17:50 | |
| It was what happened to Jesus on a Friday. | 17:54 | |
| Christians are people who are trying to believe, | 17:59 | |
| and align our lives on the basis of this belief, | 18:03 | |
| that the world really has changed forever, | 18:08 | |
| but not on a Tuesday in early morning Manhattan, | 18:12 | |
| but on a Friday at noon at a place called Calvary. | 18:16 | |
| Now why would anybody hold such peculiar views? | 18:23 | |
| To answer that, to answer that you're going to have | 18:28 | |
| to listen to a story, a strange story | 18:31 | |
| about how God came to us in the flesh | 18:36 | |
| and brought out the worst in us. | 18:40 | |
| A strange story that we are odd enough | 18:43 | |
| to name as our salvation. | 18:48 | |
| Amen. | 18:54 |
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