Springwood Presbyterian Church: Whitsett, NC

March Madness is the perfect name for the season of basketball that started with the ACC tournament and goes through the Final Four, with excitement heightening week by week.  I get a kick out of watching the fans as much as I do the games themselves.  Students who look pretty normal most of the year dress in bizarre outfits or paint themselves with their school colors.  Middle-aged adults—serious about their work, children, and church—drive to games flying team flags on their cars, wearing clothes in their team colors, and honking (or worse) at people in cars with another team’s colors.  Fans at home scream and jump up and down when their team comes from behind, and throw things at the TV screen when a referee calls a foul on their team.  I am telling you the obvious when I say that basketball fans in North Carolina are intense!

Are sports the only thing that excites such passion in you?  We Presbyterians have a reputation for lacking emotion.  We’ve been called “the frozen chosen” and “people who like the front of the bus, the back of the church, and the middle of the road.”  Say it ain’t so!

Well, it’s not.  Actually, Presbyterians are often quite passionate about things other than sports, as many of you are about mission concerns, worship, theology, the way music touches your souls.  Passion doesn’t require an outward show of emotion to be real.  We may be passionate and intense in our hearts, and still look reserved on the outside.  Even among Jesus’ first disciples, there was a spectrum of ways of showing passion: from Peter, whose feelings were always on the surface, to quiet John.  The stereotype of the reserved Scots Presbyterian may be good fodder for jokes, but it doesn’t indicate lack of fervor for Christ.

Passion is any intense emotion—intense enough to move us to action.  That may be why we often define it negatively, thinking we must either control it or avoid it.  There is good reason for that.  It’s scary when our feelings seem to run away with us— be they love or hate or desire or anger.  It’s scary, too, when other people’s emotions run over us as we’ve seen in Congress and among other citizens over the health care legislation.  Passion about such an important issue is good—until it threatens violence against those who take the opposite position.

That’s what happened a few days after Jesus’ triumphal entrance into Jerusalem, when the elders, chief priests and scribes brought him to Pilate.  The governor was ready to release him, saying I find no basis for an accusation against this man.  Jesus’ enemies persisted, saying, he stirs up the people.  They were afraid—rightly so--for a group of passionate people can become a mob, wrecking a town, as sports fans have been known to do.  And even when passion doesn’t lead to violence, it can upset people by bringing about changes in the status quo, as Jesus did throughout his ministry.

But if we believe that passions—all passions—must be controlled and that we must be “cool” about it all, then we won’t be fully alive.  Nor will we be fully “in Christ”, for Jesus was a passionate man.

Here on Palm Sunday, we remember the crowd’s joyous, emotional response to Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem, praising God, saying blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!  sure that he came to kick out the hated Roman occupiers.  The crowds cheered so loudly that the Pharisees demanded Jesus make them be quiet.  He told them if the people were silent, the very stones in the road would shout, for joy over the coming of the Messiah should not—must not--cannot be suppressed.  May we never try to suppress joy—ours or someone else’s—in praise of our Lord! 

Palm Sunday is also the beginning of Holy Week—the time of Jesus’ passion: the name the Church uses to describe his suffering during his arrest and trial and crucifixion.

This week, spend part of your prayer time reading the entire Passion narrative as Luke tells it in chapters 19-23.  Notice Jesus’ intensity

-         as he weeps over Jerusalem’s faithlessness

-         as he drives merchants out of the Temple

-         as he joins his disciples for the Passover meal: eager to eat this meal with you,  he says

-         as he prays in the garden after the meal, praying so hard he sweats blood

-         as he suffers betrayal, arrests, beatings, and finally, the cruel torture of the cross

-         as he, almost dead himself, offers comfort and welcome to a dying thief.

Jesus was passionate, living as if everything he did mattered.

It did matter.

His passion for God’s people moved him to action:

-         the passion of his anger moved him to drive the merchants from the Temple and to return it to its purpose as a place of worship

-         the passion of his righteous indignation moved him to defy the Romans and the religious authorities who oppressed and misled the people

-         the passion of his fear and mental anguish moved him to beg God to relieve him of the pain that was ahead

-         the passion—and compassion—of his heart moved him to forgive Peter’s betrayal

-         the passion of his love moved him to serve and teach and heal—and die—to show us God’s love and faithfulness.

For us to be “in Christ” is to act like Jesus.  May we never try to suppress passion for Christ’s work.  Be “uncool.”  Be passionate and stirred up for God and God’s work and God’s people—and not ashamed of it.  Live as if everything we do matters to God.  It does.

“Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness.”  Martin Luther King said, “We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love; we must meet physical force with soul force.”  (“Stride Toward Freedom”)  It was the passion of Jesus’ love for the world that allowed him to meet the physical force of the Roman Army and the religious establishment without defenses—with only love and forgiveness.

Psychologist Robert Coles has a particular interest in the moral and spiritual development of individuals and our society.  He tells about being hired by an Episcopal diocese to evaluate the mental stability and fitness of 8 people who volunteered to serve a year in an overseas mission field.  After putting them through numerous aptitude and psychological tests as well as individual interviews, Coles sent his report to the bishop.

     A few days later, the bishop called him and asked, “You’ve said the same thing about each of these volunteers: they’re dedicated, committed, skilled in areas that would be useful in the mission field, emotionally sound.  Just how thoroughly have you examined them?”

     Coles gave him the rundown on all the tests and the extensive personal interviews, assuring him that the volunteers were, indeed, well-suited for the work.  The bishop retorted, “Well, there must be something wrong with them—no sane person would want to do this!”

     Coles reflects, “What if someone had evaluated the early saints and martyrs who followed that traveling preacher named Jesus, and told them that they were way too intense?  What if their sensitivity and passion had been subdued?  Would Christianity have survived?”

A question to ponder in this week of Jesus’ passion.