“What have we done?” Sermon for Palm Sunday: The Sunday of the Passion (April 13, 2025)
Sermon for Palm Sunday: The Sunday of the Passion (April 13, 2025) at St. James’ Episcopal Church in Hyde Park, NY. View the scripture readings and the Collect of the Day.
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Transcript
May only truth be spoken here and only truth be heard. In the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Please be seated.
When we celebrate the Eucharist and the priest breaks the bread, we are silent. There is a moment after Jesus breathes his last when we all fall silent. Did you hear it? This is a familiar feeling. You might have heard the same silence when you picked up the phone and the person on the other end of the line told you that that loved one for whom you had been keeping watch for whom you had been praying has gone on to greater glory, has died.
Or maybe you have heard this silence after you watched something on the news, some new horror, some news of war, some crime. Maybe that silence has fallen on you when you received a diagnosis. We know that silence when it feels like the whole world should stop. But for most of us in that moment, one of the hardest things about facing the kind of loss that calls us to lose our words and to fall silent is that the world doesn't stop. The world keeps on going and outside your door, even while you fall to your knees in grief, there are people running around doing their business even while the war rages. We carry on with our lives. We do the best we can.
But when Jesus dies and when he breathes his last, the world comes to a halt. There is darkness over the whole land. The curtain of the temple is torn into two and all the people and all the noise that all the people have been making, we can imagine it stopping. And here is the tableau, the broken body on the cross. The women who had been wailing and weeping, silent, the crowd that had been shouting and accusing and saying, “Crucify him”! Silent somewhere. Pilot and Herod, they feel it too. And they're silent. And Peter and Judas, the betrayers, we all fall silent.
And the question in that silence is, what have we done? What have we done? Jesus said, whatsoever you did to the least of these, my brothers and my sisters, you have done it to me. I was in prison and you did not visit me. I was hungry and you did not feed me. I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink. I had no clothing or shelter. What have we done? This is the moment where we see most clearly what we collectively are capable of. People, unjustly imprisoned, people unjustly deported, food being taken out of the mouths of families, funding being withdrawn from schools, war and injustice everywhere. All to the least of these. Things done and left undone and in our name.
And we fall silent for whatever has been done to the littlest ones, to the vulnerable. We can see it on the cross. We see what we have done and left undone in the face of Christ. What have we done and what have we allowed to have done in our name? Someone wrote me an email last night and they said to me, this year, I need the promise of Holy Week more than ever. And ever since I read that, I thought, what is the promise of Holy Week, which begins here, begins today? What is the promise of Holy Week?
Which begins with us asking this question, what have we done? What promise is that whatever we have done, God will not abandon us. And that even in those silence and darkness, when the full weight of what is happening to the least of these: our brothers, our sisters, our neighbors. Even when the full weight of the seriousness of that falls upon us and we gaze upon it in all that darkness, God is preparing a miracle. On Thursday, we will reenact Jesus' last meal with his friends. We watch with him all through the night. On Friday, we stand with him again at the foot of the cross. And on Saturday morning, we gather in silence to weep at the grave of our beloved. And in all that dark time, God is placing in our own broken hearts, the seed of a miracle. God's promise to us is that whatever we have done or left undone, we will be lifted up again. That God is with us even when we don't know, and even when we in our contrition and our sorrow have lost our hope. God walks with us this week. God walks with you together. We stick together. We wait in the silence and in the darkness, and we prepare our broken hearts for the miracle. Amen.