Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord A
On September 17, 1787, the U.S. Constitution was signed in
Independence Hall in Philadelphia.
Winning the Revolutionary War had gained them independence, but forming
the 13 colonies into a single nation was a battle all it’s own. As the last members of the
Constitutional Convention signed the document, Benjamin Franklin—speaking to
James Madison and a few others nearby—pointed to the chair on which President
Washington had been seated during the proceedings. At the top of the chair’s high back was painted a golden sun
peaking over the horizon. Franklin
noted that it has always been a particular challenge to artists to depict the
difference between a rising and a setting sun. Throughout the Convention, he had many times looked behind
the President and, due to the back and forth of the debate and his own hopes
and fears for how things might end, was unable to tell whether this sun was
rising or setting on the young country.
“But now at length,” said Franklin, “I have the happiness to know, that
it is a rising, not a setting sun.”
Sunrise, or sunset?
That question has endured—and the answer has
varied—throughout our nation’s history.
We’ve seen times of war, and times of peace. We’ve witnessed the rise and fall of both our material
fortunes and our moral integrity.
That question can also be asked on a global scale—in times like our own,
for example, which are marked by such impressive technological progress, but
also by gas attacks and missiles in Syria, a terrorist truck driver in
Stockholm, and (just this morning) by the bombing of churches in Egypt. Likewise, it can be asked in our
individual lives, as we find ourselves shifting between joy and sorrow, trials
and triumphs, sickness and health.
Sunrise, or sunset?
The question can also be asked here in the Church. We rightly look to the Church to be a
sure and steady anchor in an often turbulent world. But changing times, apparent right here in our own parish,
can leave us uncertain: clinging to the past, and a bit fearful about the
future; wondering if we’re standing on the threshold of something exciting and
new, or if we can only expect gradual, continuing decline.
Sunrise, or sunset?
That question is not unique to Christians today, for it
surely must have been asked by the disciples who witnessed firsthand the events
we commemorate during this Holy Week.
What elation, what expectancy there must have been for the future when
they walked alongside Jesus, who was riding like royalty into the holy city as
the exuberant crowds waved palms of victory and shouted, “Hosanna to the Son of
David!” But what dejection, what
desolation, only days later, to behold him dragged as a criminal through now
jeering crowds to be nailed to a Roman cross outside Jerusalem’s walls, hanging
beneath the taunting, ironic charge laid against him: “This is Jesus, the King
of the Jews.”
Sunrise, or sunset?
My friends, we Christians are without a doubt people of the
sunrise. From ancient times, it’s
been Catholic tradition to build churches with their altars toward the
East. (Such is the case with all
four of our churches here in St. André’s Parish.) Our buildings are literally “oriented”—turned toward the
Orient, the East, the land of the rising sun. And that’s because we have something so much greater than
Benjamin Franklin possessed.
Franklin had optimism: a positive regard for the future based on what
human beings had been able to accomplish in the past. But we Christians have hope, which is founded not on any
mere human achievement, but on the eternal faithfulness of God. No matter the surrounding darkness, no
matter the threatening gloom, we are sure the sun is rising—believing that
humility is a path leading to exultation; that life is far, far stronger than
death; that even should we feel abandoned, in Jesus we have truly encountered
God-with-us.
Benjamin Franklin was inspired by a painted sun on a wooden
chair—one you can still see in Philadelphia. But we draw our hope from the world’s true Light, once
nailed to the wood of the Cross…but there no more.
During these days of Holy Week, and through every
circumstance of life, let us keep our faces turned toward the East. Even when within the dim shadow of
death, we know the Sun is rising!
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