A Sermon for Palm Sunday: The Sunday of the Passion,
Year C
Jesus,
remember me when you come in your kingdom.
Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingdom. We've been singing these words throughout Lent
& will sing them again today at Communion. By now, these words of the thief on the cross
echo in our hearts – and for good reason. For isn't that what – gropingly, haltingly,
maybe passionately – we want: that Jesus
will remember us; that in Jesus, God will remember us?
We ask to be remembered in mercy when we come face to face with the sin
in our lives. We cry out to be
remembered with help in the crises of
our lives. We long to be remembered with
love in the loneliness of our lives. With the thief we pray: “Jesus remember me when you come in your
kingdom.”
We try ourselves – if also rather haltingly – to remember Jesus. We hope that if we remember him, he will
remember us. And so we come here to
church, regularly, our perhaps a few times a year, because Jesus catches at our
memory. We break bread and share wine,
as he told us, for the remembrance of him. We keep the palms from today in our homes for
the rest of the year to us from forgetting. Maybe we make a stab at praying each day and
to remember Jesus by reading the Bible.
All of those efforts to remember Jesus are good. But if we're honest about how well we remember
Jesus in our daily lives, it may be no wonder if we question whether he
remembers us. Truth to be told, we often
don’t remember Jesus. And if his remembering of us depends on how
well we remember him, we are in trouble. We are so much like Peter in his denial of his
Lord– we mean well, we want to remember our Lord, but when the
chips are down, so often, so often, we forget Jesus.
How, then, are we to be assured that Jesus remembers us? Sometimes, certainly, it feels like we have
been forgotten. With the Psalmist, we
cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” We accuse God of abandoning us in our hour of
need – and wonder perhaps, what we may
have done to provoke that abandonment. We hear Jesus' words to the thief, “Today, you
will be with me in paradise” – but we're not quite sure if they are meant for
us.
How then are we to be assured that Jesus remembers us? The story of Jesus' Passion which we have just
rehearsed together is our hope in the midst of our questions, if only we hear
its promise.
There is a text in the 49th
chapter of the prophet Isaiah which can help us in hearing and trusting. “Zion says, 'The Lord has forsaken me, my Lord
has forgotten me.” [1]
The
people of Israel, in exile in Babylon, speak our fear and give voice to
our accusation of abandonment.
But in God's response, spoken through the prophet, we hear Jesus'
voice: “Can a woman forget her baby at
the breast, or have no compassion on the child of her womb? Even if these forget, I will never forget you.
Look, I have engraved you on the
palms of my hands.' “ [2]
\
Jesus' crucified hands are our assurance, our promise, our utter certainty that we will never be forgotten.
These hands bear the marks of a motherly
compassion beyond that of human parents, a compassion that will never forget a
single child. Jesus looks at those
hands, feels those hands, stretches out those hands in love – and remembers us. For on those hands we have each been engraved
by the blows of hammer and nail. And
though we forget him, though we accuse him of forgetting us, though we even
drive the in the nails ourselves, we are not abandoned nor forgotten.
“Look
at me, look at my hands,” says Jesus, “and know that I remember you.
I
bear your sin – and remember you in forgiveness.
I
suffer – and remember you in your pain.
Alone
on the cross, I remember you in your loneliness.
Dying,
I remember you in your death.
Look,
my people;
look
you who fear that I have forgotten you;
look
at me and know that I will never forget you.
I
have engraved you on the palms of my hands.”
The Rev. Jack Zamboni
March 28, 2010