Sermon

Palm Sunday

April 1, 2007

Anger and the Soft Heart

Every year, when the Orthodox Church celebrates Holy Week, it attempts to re-enact the events of the first Holy Week almost two thousand years ago. The services, with their hymns and scripture readings attempt to put us in Jerusalem for these Holy days and events we are remembering. On Thursday, we will carry the cross of the Crucified Christ. On Friday, we will be there for the un-nailing from the cross. And on Saturday night, we will venture to the empty tomb.

Yesterday we commemorated the raising of Lazarus from the dead, an event we are told happened six days before the Passover, placing it yesterday. And the next day, we read in the Scriptures, Christ entered Jerusalem on a donkey, an event we commemorate today. Throngs of people went out to see Him, to meet Him, even to cheer for Him: “Hosanna, Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.” (John 12:13) I imagine the streets of Jerusalem packed full of people, much like our church today. I imagine people coming out of the woodwork so to speak, in preparation for the Passover, much the same way as our church is more full than usual, with people who come out of the woodwork because it is Palm Sunday. I imagine that children were waving palm branches as the Lord rode by, much the same way as our children held palms in the procession a few minutes ago. And I imagine that there were probably pretty good feelings in Jerusalem that day, two thousand years ago, much as there are, hopefully, by and large, good feelings in church this morning. A beautiful day, nice weather, lots of people, who couldn’t get caught up in the good feelings of the day?

Five days later, something changed. The good feelings were gone. People put down the palms they had been waving and started waving their fists. The cry changed from “Hosanna” to “Crucify Him!” And “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord, the king of Israel” became “His blood be on us and on our children.” How did that happen?

Do you know what the primary emotion in society is today? It’s anger, but even more than anger, it is rage. We find rage on our roads, in our music, on television, in violent movies, in people’s impatience, in competition, in families and in the workplace. We even find some rage in churches, believe it or not. No, most people don’t go around with an obvious chip on their shoulders. Some do, but most don’t. But just beneath the surface of many people, maybe most people, simmers an anger just waiting to come to the surface.

Why did people go to see Christ as He entered Jerusalem? For many it was curiosity. The Bible tells us, “Because Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, for this reason the people also met Him, because they heard that He had done this sign.” (John 12:18) For others it was hope—if they were calling Jesus the king of Israel, maybe He would be the one to overthrow the Romans who were terrorizing the Jews of Palestine at the time of Christ, with unfair taxation and oppressive rule.

And five days later, when Jesus had not overthrown the Romans and led the people to freedom, their attitude changed. They didn’t give Jesus the silent treatment. They didn’t gossip about Him. They didn’t ask for Him to leave their town. Even seeing Him beaten and tortured didn’t satisfy them. They demanded that He be killed in the most heinous manner possible. Does that mean that the greeting on Palm Sunday was disingenuous? Quite possibly it was. Because how could people be so joyful one day, and be so bloodthirsty only a few days later. The answer is perhaps that these people were angry, bitter people who were full of rage and were looking for a way to let it out. They were full of rage over their political oppression, and when they couldn’t let it out on the Romans, they let it out on the Lord.

The primary emotion in society is rage. If I push you, the proper response is to walk away. The expected response is to push back, maybe even push back a little harder. The proper response to a push is not to take out a gun and kill someone. And yet, we see many examples every day of displaced anger, and extreme instances of reacting in ways that are totally inappropriate.

In the Gospel of Mark 10:15, Jesus tells His followers: “Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will by no means enter it.” Children and adults deal with anger differently. The little child who gets into a fight on the playground is quickly best friends with the person who pushed him. By the end of the day, the incident is forgotten. Little children are resilient. And forgiving. Their hearts are pure and soft—their lives are simple. Adults are different—push an adult, go to jail, or get sued. When wronged, how often is the first thought to file a lawsuit, and see how much money can I get?

By and large we live as angry people. It’s all about our rights. And we teach our children to live like this. Hearts become hard. And so when someone cuts you off in traffic, we respond with road rage. And when things don’t go our way, we don’t lose graciously, but appeal. Winning and losing becomes more important than what is right and wrong. And when confronted with crisis—be it the typical stress of a marriage, or something serious like a life-threatening illness, we find we are totally unequipped to deal with it. There are lots of people in our community with unhappy family lives, because you’ve come and told me about them, so much so that I will be speaking and writing more about this after Easter.

We start in a certain place when we are children—we are resilient, pure, innocent and honest. And then as we get older, we get farther and farther away from that place—many lose sight of it altogether. We walk around like angry zombies, we feed off of negativity. And then when we get sick and we get ready to pass away from this life, we wonder, what did it all mean, and where am I really going?

Yesterday, I buried a man who died at the age of 44. He was a friend, and it was harder doing that funeral than most funerals I am called upon to do. And as I ministered to him these past 8 months, we spent a lot of time talking about “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” (Matthew 5:8) We spent a lot of time talking about making the heart soft, of getting back to the innocence of childhood, and how that was necessary in order the enter into God’s kingdom. And so this is one of the messages I want to offer to you as we start another Holy Week together. Anger and rage are right beneath the surface of most people most of the time. And this is totally the opposite of how we need to be in order to go to God’s kingdom. We sang in the hymn of Palm Sunday, “Let us carry the symbols of victory, the Palms, as did the children.” Interestingly, it doesn’t say let us carry them like the adults. For the greeting of the adults in Jerusalem that Palm Sunday was insincere because shouts for joy became shouts for murder in only five days, and how could that be, unless the people were filled with a murderous rage much of the time—after all, you don’t go from a totally peaceful person to a raging murderer in only five days—to build up that kind of anger and hatred takes time. To have it so close to the surface takes time to get it there. And it takes even more time to get rid of it.

Anger and rage are the polar opposite of the soft heart needed to go to heaven. I am amazed when people are in their 60s and 70s and are so filled with anger. Because they are in the last decades of life—there aren’t 50 or 60 years left to change. There may be 10 or 5 or 1 or even less. We are all mortals, and some of us will die without warning, or have a debilitating illness that takes a healthy person and kills him in a short span of time, as happened to my friend who we buried yesterday. When we are young, we think we are invincible. We make plans for this summer and next year when there is no guarantee we’ll even be here next week. So even harboring anger in your 20s or 30s is no good—there is no guarantee you’ll have 40 or 50 years to get back to the innocence of childhood.

Before every Divine Liturgy, the choir or the chanter sings a beautiful hymn called the Great Doxology. One of the lines of the Doxology says in Greek, “Ego eipa, Kyrie Eleison me, Iase tin psihin mou, oti imarton si.” That means, “I said, ‘Lord have mercy on me, heal my soul for I have sinned against you.’” We then pray the Liturgy in which we sing the words, Kyrie Eleison, or Lord have mercy at least 30 times—what exactly does “Lord have mercy” mean? It means Lord take pity on me in the sinful state that I am in. It means “Lord I know that I can never be worthy of Your heavenly kingdom—I can’t buy my way in, I can even work my way in. Because when I sin, and I do it a lot, I put myself away from You and Your Kingdom. Because I have sinned so many times, I can’t possibly be worthy of Your heavenly Kingdom, but have pity on me and let me come in anyway.” Lord have mercy means “Lord have compassion for me, have patience with me.” It is hard to believe that we will receive God’s mercies if we are praying for them in the morning, but angry at our neighbor all afternoon. It is hard to believe that we will receive God’s mercies if we never ask for them, if we never pray, or if we only rarely worship. As I wrote in this month’s issue of the Messenger, we receive God’s grace through the sacraments—so how can you expect God’s grace and mercy if you never partake of the sacraments—if you rarely go to Communion, if you’ve never bent your knee in confession to God and said, “I am truly sorry for what I’ve done—heal my soul, take away my anger.”

Holy Week is a long and intense experience in the Orthodox Church. It provides us many hours of prayerful self-examination. Holy Week, when celebrated properly, will greatly impact the use of your time this week—there won’t be as much time for television or sleep or leisure, and hopefully not for gossip or anger either. The theme for my personal Holy Week journey is blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God, and I hope and pray that one week from today, my heart will be a little softer than it is today, that I’ll take a few steps back towards the innocence of childhood and stop moving forward into the rage of adulthood. I encourage you to come to as many services as you can, and to come with a heart that is open and ready to be filled with God’s love and mercies, with a mind that is open to the things of God, even if it means giving up on some of the things of man. Come with a soul that is ready to be purified, with eyes that are ready to take a good long look inside yourself. Each service has a different theme and strikes a different emotion. Come to all of them and you’ll experience all the emotions.

Priests have a theory about church attendance during Holy Week. We joke that people come to the services where they get a free gift—Palm Sunday for a Palm, Holy Wednesday for oil, Good Friday for a Flower, Easter for an egg. In many churches people don’t come for Sunday night, or Monday night, Tuesday night or Thursday night. After all, when do you get from the 3.5 hour service of Thursday night, except for some sore feet? And the answer is, on Holy Thursday, you get hope. And hope is not something that can be put on paper or in your wallet, or on your kitchen table. I want to encourage each of you to come Holy Thursday evening, even if it is only from 8-9 to witness the procession of the crucified Christ. This is the most powerful and moving service of the church year. I make a deal with you this one time a year—come on Holy Thursday late and leave early, but please come. This service will move you like none other in the Orthodox Church.

To those whose lives are full of anger, you need to reverse course. Anger and peace are opposites. It is the peaceful and soft heart that sees God. The angry heart just becomes blind and hard. To those who cannot do the exercise of self-examination, you need to learn this exercise. Because prayerful self-evaluation is how we discover our shortcomings, and in discovering and correcting these short-comings, this is how we grow closer to God. For those in church who say, “He’s not talking to me,” you are wrong. I’m talking to everyone—everyone needs less anger and more peace. Whether you’re angry at another person, or angry with yourself, or your life, or your lack of success, we all need to recreate ourselves into people with soft hearts and pure souls. On Easter night, we will sing, let everything begin anew in the Resurrection, which is not possible to do, when you are always holding on to the old—whether it is a sin you are embarrassed to confess, or whether you know you need to reconcile with someone in church but just can’t bring yourself to make it right. And if you are in church and are already planning to be angry this afternoon, or if you leave church and allow yourself to become angry and irate today, it makes one wonder if your joy this morning is as disingenuous as the joy of the people that first Palm Sunday. For those who don’t attend church often, I ask you Why? We’re all going to die someday, and will be prepared like the five maidens who had enough oil, or will you be like the foolish maidens and go away.

The oil is faith—faith cannot be shared or borrowed, it has to be learned. I can tell you about my faith, but I can’t cut my faith in half and give it to you. Faith is something you must acquire for yourself. I encourage you to spend this week learning more about our faith, so you can finish with more knowledge and direction. Patch up differences with your spouse, with your parents, with your friends and co-workers, hug your kids more this week and bring them to church often this Holy Week. For God tells us Seek first the kingdom of God and His Righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you, and we can take God in His word—seek peace and pursuit it. See peace and God will provide it, I know He will.

Save as much time this week to pray and to worship, soften your heart. This evening, we will again open the Holy Week Book, which by the way, I encourage you to buy if you don’t own one. It is 500 long pages in length. And as we make our way through that book, page by page, over the next 7 days, I hope that its hymns and prayers will lead to a spiritual re-awakening, a better understanding of not only what we believe, but how to live out that belief with joy. In the next seven days, I hope you’ll each have an opportunity to think and to pray. I hope each of us will feel pain in the next 7 days—the pain and sadness over our sins, the pain the moves us to cry with genuine contrition and repentance, “Lord have mercy on me, heal my soul for I have sinned against you.” I hope all of us will cry at least once in these next 7 days. Some hearts are so hardened the tears dried up a long time ago, and I hope they will soften enough so that the tears can flow once again. I hope in the next 7 days, we’ll each feel joy, not that each day brings us closer to Easter and the opportunity to feast, but that each day will bring us closer to God, and to one another. And I hope in the next 7 days, we’ll each feel a sense of healing. That our hearts will be softer, that we will be ready to continue our lives with more focus and resolve, and less anger, with a greater sense of purpose, and a greater sense of God. In sampling only a small percentage of our congregation, I am amazed how many describe their family life as sad, or their marriages as dysfunctional. Perhaps this week, you can spend some quality family time praying together both in this church as well as praying together in your homes.

I’m excited that Holy Week is here. I will give you my best effort for a moving and renewing week. For those who find themselves ready for spiritual renewal, I will be ready to listen. I ask that you give Holy Week your best effort, so that you can take away as much good as you can from this experience, which begins tonight at 7:00 p.m., when we celebrate the service of the Bridegroom. Have a blessed Holy Week and a Kali Anastasi!