This Sunday is traditionally known as Palm Sunday, the day on which we remember Jesus’ triumphal entry into the city of Jerusalem, as if it were his capitol. People gathered along the road waving palm branches and shouting their greetings, “Hosannah, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” Some had also placed garments on the road creating a carpet for Jesus seated on a donkey to travel on. In our worship this morning we have raised palm branches in remembrance of that occasion.

This is also Passion Sunday, the day in the Christian calendar when we recall the Passion of our Lord. A few days after Palm Sunday Jesus emerged from a gate on the other side of the city. This time he is definitely not hailed as a king. He is now carrying a cross, a beaten and defeated man.

We have heard the reading of the account of the Passion of Jesus. The story begins as Jesus celebrated the Passover Supper with his friends. This is the meal that we celebrate each Sunday in the Eucharist when we raise the bread and the chalice and proclaim the words of Jesus,”This is my body, this is my blood”.

After the supper Jesus went to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray. He was betrayed by one of his friends and arrested by the troops come out to get him. He was taken to be interrogated, tried and condemned. The crowds no longer cheered “Hosannah” but shouted “crucify him, crucify him!’” We recall Jesus, crowned with a crown of thorns, carrying a heavy wooden cross along what came to be called the Via Dolorosa, the road of sorrow, and out of the city gate to a hill called Golgotha, the place of the skull. There he was crucified and where he died.

I am no fan of Mel Gibson’s epic film “The Passion of the Christ”. It has certainly been a cinematic success and recently has been reissued, six minutes of Jesus agony have been removed, and the audience spared some of the scenes of violence that is so graphically depicted in the film.

The film has, however, reminded people of the agony suffered by Jesus. We can no longer presume that people know the story. We now live in what some call a “post-Christian era”. I am reminded of the boy who upon coming out of the theater said that “it was cool” but admitted that he didn’t know much about this Christ whose name he used frequently.

The people of our time are far more cognizant of the atrocities of the present , the killing fields of Rwanda that Romeo D’Allaire tells about , the things happening in the prisons of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, the bloody streets of Baghdad, the terrorist attack on the train in Madrid and , of course, 9 -11, the disaster at the World Trade Tower in New York city. This is after all the fare of our media. We are well informed or the passions of our time.

Thus, when today we hear the story of Jesus it is of an event that took place a long time ago. In the film we see the Roman soldiers and the leaders of the jews in their distinctive garments. We remember it from pictures that we received in Sunday School . We recall the story , familiar but as ancient history. We can no longer presume that the people of our time are familiar with those events. Perhaps the film has been informative.

We were also told that God had something to do with what happened in Jerusalem. That by this horrible event God brought about the atonement for our sins. “By his stripes we are healed” we have heard. Jesus the blameless one is the Agnus Dei, the lamb of God offered as a sacrifice for our sins. Gibson’s film makes that point. It’s depiction of the violence bears witness to the cost of our fallen nature.

Am I a heretic when I admit to you that I have some difficulty with that theology : God offering up his own son for such maltreatment and death?

There is another way that I prefer to think about the Passion. It doesn't not necessarily contradict traditional Christian theology. It takes some effort on our part. It calls on us to take the historic Jesus out of the setting of long ago and brings him to our time. He comes but not as a some disembodied spirit but embodied in the victims of our time. He is no longer garbed in the clothes of the Nazarene preacher but in the rags of the victims, the homeless left by the Tsunami on the shores of the Indian ocean. We see him in the starving children in Africa, those who have lost home, possession and loved ones in war and the victims of economic injustice in the so-called Third or Developing world. We are invited to recognize the Imago Dei, the image of God in the sick, those dying of AIDs, those who mourn, the relatives and friends of the police men killed in Alberta. But we are also called to see the image of God , dare I say it, in John Rozko and in Brian Nicholls who shot a judge and several other in the United States last week. The image of God is often badly tarnished and disfigured, yet in the latter case there was one person, a woman, who herself had experienceced sorrow who recognized the image of God, disarmed him by her kindness and caused him to surrender.

We are invited to look upon ourselves and see that God has also invested in us. God is also in us as well.

Would that the torturers, the soldiers, the faceless bureaucrats, politicians and political leaders of our time capture a glimpse of this divine presence. God is invictor and victim, all life is sacred.

My friends, if our worship and our preaching is to have any meaning, and I suppose that is up for debate, if it is of value then we must bring the past alive in the present. We must transfer the Jesus of history to the Christ of the passion of our time. We must hear again Jesus’ last words:

“Remember, I am with you, always,
to the end of the age.”