Passion Sunday: March 23/24, 2024

On Ash Wednesday, we started this season of Lent with a question and then a statement.
    In case you have forgotten, the question was:  do you want to change.
    And then the statement was:  then be disturbed.
    Do you want to change?  To properly answer this question we need to know that we do, indeed, need to change.  That we have all strayed from the ways of God in some way.  We need to remember who we are and who we are called to be.  We have to have the courage and the grace to then ‘fess up to the fact that we have fallen short of who God calls us to be.
    OR - in our smugness and self-assurance - we can just stay the way we are. . .
    This question was followed by the statement:  then be disturbed.
    As we considered in last week’s Gospel:  when faced with his own death, Jesus was troubled – and the Greek meaning for the word troubled is:  to experience inward turmoil, to be stirred up, disturbed, unsettled, thrown into confusion.
    To want to change.  To want to want to turn from our sins.  To want to be more like Jesus – then we have to be troubled or disturbed enough to admit that we NEED to change.  That we need to shed some old ways in order to take up some new ways.  To turn our hearts over to God –
 so that as we have sung many times during Lent: 
  Come O God and  take us – move and shake us.  Come now, and make us anew, that we might live justly like you.

    Why bother?  Why should we put in the effort to change?  
Because as the disciples answered those who questioned them about untying and leading the colt away in our first Gospel reading:    the master has need of us.

    Jesus needs us - to be compassionate and forgiving.  Jesus needs us - to be generous and giving.  Jesus needs us - to be kind and gracious.
Jesus needs us - to be merciful and accepting.

Jesus needs us:  so he can continue to build the Kingdom of God on this earth - through us.

    So if we haven’t dealt with the question or the statement yet:  now is the time - it’s never too late.
    Do you want to change?  Then be disturbed.

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