Try to Remember: This IS Good News, Mr. Jones!

Text:  Mark 11:1-11 & Mark 15:1-47

Theme:  “Try to Remember”

PALM/PASSION SUNDAY

March 29, 2015

FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

Denton, Texas

Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

Acts chapter 17, not in today’s hefty collection of readings, finds the Apostle Paul, my namesake, in Athens, Greece.  There he stands in the Areopagus where all the great ideas, philosophies, beliefs, paradigms, constructs, and so on and so forth were presented and debated.  And he quotes a poet to them, a poet whose writings are not in the Bible.  How dare he do such a thing!  “(In God) we live and move and have our being.  As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’”

Following the tradition of my namesake, allow me to quote from a non-Biblical poet – or, in this instance, the lyricist, Tom Jones, who gave us Try to Remember from the play, “The Fantasticks”:

Try to remember the kind of September

When life was slow and oh, so mellow.

Try to remember the kind of September

When grass was green and grain was yellow.

Try to remember the kind of September

When you were a tender and callow fellow.

Try to remember, and if you remember,

Then follow.

Try to remember when life was so tender

That no one wept except the willow.

Try to remember when life was so tender

That dreams were kept beside your pillow.

Try to remember when life was so tender

That love was an ember about to billow.

Deep in December, it's nice to remember,

Although you know the snow will follow.

Deep in December, it's nice to remember,

Without a hurt the heart is hollow.

Deep in December, it's nice to remember,

The fire of September that made us mellow.

Deep in December, our hearts should remember

And follow.

Before we get too mellowed out by the soothing, literary tones of Tom Jones’ poetry, perhaps it’s time to quote another poet who happens to be a singer and songwriter as well.  You may want to hold on to your pew for this:

Please allow me to introduce myself

I'm a man of wealth and taste

I've been around for a long, long year

Stole many a man's soul and faith

And I was 'round when Jesus Christ

Had his moment of doubt and pain

Made damn sure that pilate

Washed his hands and sealed his fate

Pleased to meet you

Hope you guess my name

But what's puzzling you

Is the nature of my game

I stuck around St. Petersburg

When I saw it was a time for a change

Killed the czar and his ministers

Anastasia screamed in vain

I rode a tank

Held a general's rank

When the blitzkrieg raged

And the bodies stank

Pleased to meet you

Hope you guess my name

What's puzzling you

Is the nature of my game

Just as every cop is a criminal

And all the sinners, saints

As heads is tails

Just call me Lucifer

'Cause I'm in need of some restraint

So if you meet me

Have some courtesy

Have some sympathy, and some taste

Use all your well-learned politesse

Or I'll lay your soul to waste

Pleased to meet you

Hope you guessed my name

But what's puzzling you

Is the nature of my game

Those fictional lyrics, linguistically and poetically “placed” in the mouth of the devil, were written before 9/11 and, obviously, before the black box was found at the crash site of the Germanwings jet. The cockpit voice recorder showed that this was not an accident; it was mass murder.  How would the poets who wrote “Sympathy for the Devil” have included those events?  Maybe The Rolling Stones will add new stanzas, but I doubt it.  The point is made.

In a First Things magazine article, Martyn Wendell Jones of Wheaton College wrote this last week:

Thousands of words pile up in dozens of news sources to make up for Lubitz’s silence in the cockpit. The pounding on the door behind him and the screaming of the passengers just before impact are recognizably human; under such conditions, his steady breathing is anything but. How much more intelligible would this act seem if there were even a sigh, the sound of weeping, or a muttered imprecation. Instead, Lubitz is a blank, and we are left to struggle for an account of the contents of his mind in the moments leading up to the tragedy.

There is a word that articulates Lubitz’s unintelligible act, one that leaves us without any recourse to planning and preemption. That word, of course, is “evil.”

If we could assign a motive to Lubitz, the gears of liberal social planning would engage to reduce the risk of such an event in the future: Pilots could be screened, safety features could be improved, computer technology could be developed to allow for remote control in the case of hijacking.

Without one, we are left with emptiness. There is a good chance that we will never arrive at a satisfactory account of what led Andreas Lubitz to throw a 150 lives into oblivion. We can say all that we want about measures to reduce the likelihood of catastrophes like this in the future, but ultimately, the presence of evil in this world is a given, and no amount of planning or instrumental reasoning can rid us of its threat.

Is there any good news, Mr. Jones?  I certainly cannot find any at the end of your essay!

Mr. Jones of Wheaton College, try to remember with me and with us.  Mr. Jones of Wheaton College, there is ultimately another presence in this world that is a given, and no amount of planning or instrumental reasoning can rid us of His blessing!  And I speak today of Jesus Christ whose glorious entrance into Jerusalem, amid cries of “Hosanna!”, we celebrate with festive worship and joy!

And we also celebrate, Mr. Jones of Wheaton College, that no amount of planning or instrumental reasoning can rid us of the passion of Jesus Christ for all of us, for this is Passion Sunday!  And we try to remember this day, as ages have before us, how He died for our sins according to the Scriptures.  How the passion of His will, and His grace, and His love have given us a new beginning and a second chance, and a third chance, and fourth chance, and  – more than that, made of us a new creation!  If anyone be in Christ, he/she is a new creation!

Let evil rage for all the hell it wants to deliver.  The message of Holy Week, for all its palms and passion, is the grace of God is a given – and no amount of planning or instrumental reasoning can rid us of its blessing!

And the message of this Holy Week and the tremendous Easter Sunday to follow is that this grace is for EVERYONE!  It’s even for those who threatened violence and destruction, as reports have it, on four of our sister PCUSA congregations in and around Cape Girardeau, Missouri. The threats came as the PCUSA allowed her ministers to exercise conscience in the marriage of a gay or lesbian couple.

Do you want a highly concentrated statement of the grace of God?  It’s my OWN lectionary selection:  Romans 3:23-24:  “All have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God, but they are justified as a gift of His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”

The “all have sinned” and “they are justified” leave NO ONE OUT.  That is why, as long as I am pastor of this PCUSA congregation, this sanctuary, this church, this ministry is for everyone:  for men, for women, for children, for Republicans, for Democrats, for Libertarians, for veterans, for draft dodgers, for the rich, for the poor, for the middle class, the sick, homeless, hungry, naked, for those full of joy and for those who have contemplated suicide too many times, for the gay, for the lesbian, for the bisexual, for the transgendered, for the heterosexual, for the alcoholic, for the addict, for the abused, the neglected, for those who try so desperately (and pray so fervently) to end the dysfunction and emotional pain they have lived with for so very long, and, yes, even for those too busy picking specks out of their neighbors’ eye while neglecting the logs in their own.  You are all welcome here!

Try to remember, Mr. Jones of Wheaton College!  Try to remember, Paul Dunklau for First Presbyterian Church (I rarely speak of myself in the third person, but I will today to make the point!)!  Try to remember, dear congregation gathered on this Palm/Passion Sunday:  the grace of God is a given, and no amount of planning or instrumental reasoning can rid us of its blessing!  Try to remember!  That IS good news, Mr. Jones. It is for everyone! 

Amen.