Kate Amoss
April 13, 2025
Palm/Passion Sunday
Good morning. Thank you, Jeanne, for inviting me. There is something special about having the opportunity to occasionally marinate myself in scripture. I am especially honored and humbled to be here on Palm Sunday, the beginning of Passion Week, at a moment when what is going on in our world is more confusing than anything I have so far experienced in my lifetime. I have entitled my sermon “Abandon all hope,” a phrase taken from Dante’s Divine Comedy. In Dante’s medieval masterpiece, the narrator must pass through the gates of Hell to ultimately find his way to Heaven. The command engraved on the entrance to Hell is “Abandon all hope ye who enter here.” I came across this reference recently when I was working with Martha Beck’s book, The Way of Integrity. At first the phrase jolted me. But slowly, over time, I have been feeling my way into its wisdom.
Today Jesus passes through the Eastern Gate into Jerusalem. This entrance is also known in Christian tradition as the Golden Gate, the gate of hope and mercy. Jesus is welcomed by crowds of believers who call out “Hosannas” – save me, save me — and wave fronds of palms as he slowly rides his young donkey up towards the Temple Mount. Today he is the long-awaited Messiah, the savior of the people. Zachariah’s prophecy from 500 years earlier is about to be fulfilled. But we all know the story. What was anticipated to be a triumphant victory instead became — in a few short days — what appeared to be a terrible defeat — one that Jesus foresaw and knew to be part of a bigger story but we, his followers, did not.
The gospel stories leading up to the crucifixion give us a frightening insight into ourselves as humans. Who are we? Are we the crowds welcoming Jesus — innocently believing that we will be rescued? Are we Peter, falling asleep, overwhelmed by our busy lives, unaware of the troubles of our friends and neighbors? Are we Judas, betraying our deepest values to provide ourselves with the material goods that we think we need? Are we Pontius Pilate — believing that maintaining the status quo is a good enough outcome? Are we the crowd that condemns without compassion? Are we Barabbas —just happy to be spared? Or are we Veronica who offers her veil to Jesus for comfort? Are we the mother Mary or the beloved disciple Mary Magdalen who stand close by and offer witness? Or perhaps we are Jesus cruelly nailed to the cross. I know that I am all of these. I offer you the possibility that you are as well. The chaos, the darkness, and the light of Holy Week are alive inside of us. And never has this seemed truer than right now as we are experiencing the daily blows to our deepest held values of freedom, compassion, generosity, and service.
When I was a freshman in college, I spent an entire semester with one poem — T. S. Eliot’s “Wasteland.” I fell in love with a string of words that made no sense to me at the time. He wrote, ‘April is the cruelest month, breeding/ Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing/ Memory and desire, stirring/ Dull roots with spring rain.’ Growing up in Connecticut, April was the month when balmy warmth finally defeated the dirty hardened snowbanks at the edge of the playground. It was when we could finally leave our heavy snow jackets and boots at home and begin our plans for summer vacation. It was the month of brightly colored eggs and chocolate bunnies.
Many decades later, I can no longer see April as I did as a child. Now Eliot’s words ring out clearly to me. April is the cruelest month. New life — birth — comes at a terrible cost. The beauty that I now see in the world is tangled up with suffering. What is most precious and true is hidden in the jumble of cold – almost frozen — roots underground. Do you remember a time when your fingers and toes where so cold that they were numb and the pain of returning warmth seemed unbearable? When we begin to feel again whether physically in our body or emotionally, it is pain that we must first feel before the sensitivity to pleasure returns.
This pain of reawakening is never closer to the surface than during the liturgical week preceding Easter. When I read the lectionary for today, it is filled with anguish. “My God! My God, why have you left me all alone?” from Psalm 22. “Take this cup of suffering away from me.” begs Jesus of his Abba, Father while praying in the olive grove of Gethsemane from the Mark passage for today. And then the most heart-breaking lament of all: “Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani.” My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” I can barely tolerate the full onslaught of these cries. Nothing is more terrifying than being abandoned. “Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani” are the words in Aramaic. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” In this moment, Jesus has been suffering on the cross for six hours and he — in his fully human aspect — surrenders to the full force of despair. For that moment, his trust in what he had trusted is gone. His hope has evaporated.
And yet we must know that things may not be as they seem. In our lives day-to-day, we are reading and listening to the horror of the betrayals. I know that I want to escape and fly over the rainbow or stay busy and distracted. But Christ always invites us to slow down. To let ourselves feel the overwhelm and the confusion. Christ is an important connection to the unseen world. What looks to be up may be down and what looks to be down may be up. Just as roots are hidden underground or tapestry threads meticulously tied on the reverse side, so too is the fullness of creation mostly hidden from our awareness.
The first time in my life when I was aware of feeling this desperation was when I was twenty-two and lost a close friend, Bruce Bishop. We had both been tutors In an Upward Bound program. Our summer job was over, I had just graduated from college, and I was staying with my parents deciding what I would do next in life. One evening, my parents and I were watching the 11 o’clock news and we heard that a local man had been found stabbed to death. They reported his name. I felt as if a bomb had exploded inside me. I attended Bruce’s funeral, but there was no comfort. I had not known his family or his community.
Nothing in me knew how to reach out to anyone. Instead of sleeping, I wrapped myself in a blanket and sat in a chair in the corner of our deck. One of my closest friends at the time came to visit for the weekend but I was unable to tell her what had happened. Night after night, I remember rocking and looking up at the stars. I remember shivering. I was so tired. My whole being was crying out in misery. Finally, something in me gave up and the bottom dropped out of reality as I knew it. I fell into a vast well of sorrow and I knew myself to be connected to every grieving soul in the universe. It was as if my roots had finally pushed through the hard dirt and found water.
That was the beginning of a long journey that eventually led me to Seekers. I grew up in a family that valued the rational world above all else. Without having experienced some big shifts in awareness, I would not have found my way to a faith community. I am so grateful for the richness of the time that I spent with you when I was able to sink into the mystery of life, connection, call, and the chaos of creativity. And the last, the chaos of creativity was and is not now just a lovely, alliterative phrase. It is scary, lonely, and devoid of hope. Without fully experiencing the darkness, we keep on doing what we already know how to do. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” That cry has an energy that rips through thousands of years. It is as visceral now as it was when it was first uttered by Jesus. It shreds whatever it was that we thought we knew.
A couple of weekends ago, I found myself in an Uber riding to the airport in Tucson, Arizona. The driver and I were chatting as we started off. I told him that I was flying home to Washington DC. He paused. “DC?” he asked, “I should tell you that I voted for Trump. We gotta change,” he said, ‘We gotta change. I am sorry that it is hurting so many people but we gotta change.” I mumbled something about how we all want change, but did it really have to look like this? There is something about that interaction that has left me deeply unsettled. For one thing, I wish that I had had the presence of mind to bring more curiosity to the moment. For another, I could feel his humanity. I do not know what I think I know.
There is no birth without death. The tomb. The womb. They are not so different. The cry of death. The cry of birth. They sound the same. The beauty of lilacs and the dead barren land are both part of the truth of this amazing planet. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. There is no heaven without hell. Let your whole being surrender into the emptiness of despair.
Our Real Work by Wendell Berry
It may be that when we no longer know what to do,
we have come to our real work
and when we no longer know which way to go,
we have begun our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.