Rev Bill

I have posted this morning’s sermon on my sermon blog. It’s the last in my Lenten series on “Who do you say Jesus is?” — and a Palm Sunday emphasis to begin Holy Week. Based on Philippians 2:5-11 and John 12:12-19, it’s entitled “Jesus Is The One We Can Follow”.

Here’s a portion of it:

I read not long ago about a girl named Susan. Susan had high aspirations of being an actress – and wanted to be a serious actress in Broadway or – at the very least – in serious movies. She went to college and even got a graduate degree in theater. Well, she never thought that the only job she could land after graduation was in an outdoor drama — a Passion Play at that. No, she had visions of going to New York, at least in an off-Broadway role. Or maybe she would wind up in Hollywood. Instead, she was in what she considered to be some frontier outpost of the arts performing on a concrete stage of a half-completed outdoor theater with a strange assortment of misfits who, like herself, could find no other work for the summer.
Every evening at 5:30 she would show up for makeup. When they had started production, there hadn’t even been dressing rooms finished for costume changes. Costume changes had to be done in a scenery shed “right out in front of God and everybody.” Such phrases were as close as most of the cast got to even pretending to be religious. Not many in the cast – if any — found anything spiritual about what they were doing. It was just a way to pay the rent and put food on the table – just a check. In fact, every night the actors played some sort of trick on one another to break the boredom that had set in about this play. The disciples would come backstage after the Last Supper scene to tell what gross or otherwise objectionable object had been place in the wine cup that evening. Sometimes there would be cigarette butts – other times much more objectionable objects – and they would choke as they pretended to drink from the cup.
Behind the stage was a hill that was crossed by a fairly steep path. This hill served various purposes during the show, one of which was the entryway for Jesus as He made His triumphal entry into Jerusalem. The donkey Jesus rode was, of course, named Jack — and was probably the most reliable and arguably the most religious of the cast. He certainly was the most sensible. One night after a terrible rainstorm Jack refused to maneuver the path down the hill. This caused a real problem in the casts telling the story of the Triumphal Entry. It was of vital importance that Jesus make His entry riding on a donkey. But Jack absolutely refused to maneuver the steep path after it had become covered with slippery mud.
Finally the actor playing Jesus walked the muddy, slippery, path without Jack. About one-third of the way down he slipped and fell. One of the actors near Susan quoted, under his breath, the line about Jesus entering Jerusalem on His — — well, you can imagine what was said. Susan didn’t laugh, though. Instead she felt embarrassed for how the actor playing Jesus must have felt. She got an immediate, painful sense of his vulnerability — and her own.
At that moment the story came together for her as never before — and her faith meant more to her than ever before. She felt Jesus’ vulnerability as He moved toward His cruel death. She began to realize how so many could have loved Jesus. It was not His strength — but His weakness that attracted her now. The God who could incorporate such helplessness into some divine yearning might even use a ragtag band of irreverent actors rewriting the story of Jesus on a muddy hillside as well.
The actor made it down the hill, after two more falls, and, finally, to the cross. As Susan stood at the cross for the umpteenth time watching this pretended crucifixion, she could not help the tears that welled up in her eyes. It was then and there that she decided that — if Jesus could give of Himself for her — even die for her — she could follow Him.
Like the Pharisees said of the crowd on that first Palm Sunday, she could “go after” Him.
She could follow Him.

You can read the sermon here.

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