Louise Browner Blanchard
St. Stephen’s, Richmond
March 24, 2013
Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday
Luke 23:1-49
The English poet W. H. Auden discovered poetry as a teenager, roughly about the same
time that he stopped believing in God. By the 1930’s, while still in his twenties and
thirties, Auden was the most famous poet in his native England and renowned
worldwide.
Restless with his fame, he came to the United States in 1939. In December of that year,
he went to a movie theater in what was then a German-speaking part of New York City
to see a newsreel of Germany’s invasion of Poland. Whenever the Poles who had been
taken prisoner appeared onscreen, the people in the theater would shout in German,
“Kill them! Kill them!” They were unabashedly unashamed of their feelings; Auden
was stunned at the ferocity and sincerity of their reaction.
Although he had not believed in God since he was a teenager, the movie theater
experience made Auden wonder why he was so horrified. On what grounds had he
expected anything different? After much soul-searching, Auden realized then what
today’s gospel reminds us now: that, alone or as part of a group, figuratively and
literally, each one of us might well act similarly, clamoring to destroy another, and far
more effectively destroying ourselves in the process. If we are honest with ourselves,
“Kill them! Kill them!” or “Crucify him! Crucify him!” is a refrain in all of our lives.
The quandary led Auden back to the church, as he came to realize that the peace of
Christ was both his conviction and salvation.
And so it is for us. Try as we might, with the best of intentions, we, like Judas and Peter
and every other disciple, deny the Christ in our midst and in each other. We demonize
those who disagree with us. We rationalize in the name of righteousness, and our fear
trumps our faith. Indeed, for most of us, the quickest way to identify where we are
farthest from God is to admit to what we fear and to acknowledge how we have
addressed it. We, also, betray with a kiss. We also proclaim, in one guise or another, “I
do not know him”...”I am not [one of them]”...”I do not know what you are talking
about!” All too often, our fear trumps our faith.
We are as convicted by our denials and rationalizations as Judas and Peter and Pilate
and Herod were by theirs. Surely, the heavens would rejoice if we and they were more
steadfast. That such betrayals are not inevitable only convicts us more.
What is inevitable rests with Jesus. “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what
they are doing.” What is inevitable is that forgiveness, that compassion, that love.
Nothing that happened to Jesus on this earth could prevent it. Nothing that we do can
defeat it or triumph over it. Not even crucifixion. Not even our part in it. The peace of
Christ is our conviction and salvation.