Palm sunday/Passion Sunday sermon with Simon's baptism at 11

Palm Sunday 2012
Last year, we worked with Palm Sunday alone , so I included some readings for this Holy Week. Mark’s gospel goes at a good clip, especially with his favorite word, immediately, but now the narrative slows way down, for us to bathe in the details.

This day is made all the more holy as we will have a baptism of Mr. Simon Harper. This provides us an opportunity to look deeper in the meaning of baptism. Paul sees it as a ritual identification with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.We are surrounded by palms today. All living things require water, and simon receives the living water of the Spirit this morning to keep him as Ps. 1 say, rooted as a tree planted near a stream. Just as Jesus utterly identifies with the human condition, Simon is joined to the Christian community. We are, if you will, water sisters and brothers with Simon through the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

Jesus could not bear the actual instrument of torture, the cross by himself. Jesus needed physical help, and he gets it from someone from eastern Libya. It was a seaport, and its major export was an herb for abortion. Simon may have travelled over 750 miles to get to Jerusalem for Passover, or he was a resident alien,and his name is Jewish of course,(it means listening/hearing, or one heard of, so reputation, or perhaps street cred) and Cyrene did have a Jewish population. When Jesus spoke of going the extra mile, he was speaking of people such as Simon who was forced to help the Roman army do their work by carrying a pack. Mark speaks of his two sons as if they are known to his audience. We are told that Simon came from the fields, maybe a country bumpkin or he lived in a rural area, as did many of the crowds who hailed Jesus just a few days before. It is an irony that the first Simon, renamed Peter, who was called by Jesus has deserted and denied him. Now a foreign Simon is called into the service of a deacon.Part of the reason. He who had helped so many, now needed a helping hand. At Christmas I read the children a story about Joseph struggling with the enormity of this child being born to him. So he decides that he will give him a helping hand as he grows up. With Joseph gone, a stranger lends a hand, but it is ironic aid, as he is guiding him on the road to execution. Jesus could not bear the cross alone due to the torture he received. Even more significantly, Jesus was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, not like Atlas of course, but the moral weight of a world.

The Friday morning Wiseman bible class has done several sessions on the letter to the Galatians. It calls on us to bear one another’s burdens. In baptism we are all called to be Simons.At the same time, this week and this sacrament reminds us to lay our burdens down. We pile too many grudges in our backpacks. Some burdens will have us fall, as tradition holds that Jesus fell three times carrying the cross. Like Simon of Cyrene, like simon Peter, we are called as church to lend a hand. “He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother graced Boys Town for years. Some of the burden of guilt and wrong Jesus carried to the cross for their destruction. My burden is light Jesus said. Save us, hurray, hosanna, the crowd shouted on Palm sunday. In the blink of an eye, it turned to crucify him, crucify him. In our time, in this place, the cry of hosanna, save us has been answered. through the life, and death, and resurrection of Jesus, through Holy Week simon and we find salvation.