Thy heart is set upon me
Sermon on Palm Sunday at the Church of the Holy Trinity, Llandudno in the Ministry Area of Bro Tudno
The Ministry Area’s order of service with the lections, including a poem in addition to the First Reading and the Holy Gospel, can be found here.
Words by Christian Rossetti: “Thy heart is set upon me day and night”
How do we know that God loves us?
Saints and theologians have given two distinct answers to that question.
One kind of answer acknowledges our human limitations, and searches for the faith, the revelation, the knowledge that takes us beyond them. Our nature constrains us, our sin constrains us, and the realms of grace are beyond. God is vast, almighty and eternal, and we need to get — we need to be taken — beyond ourselves to understand those ways, to be embraced by that love.
Another kind of answer sees our human nature itself as being graced, and so expects to see the love of God within us and between us. Our nature is marked by the image of God within each one of us. God shows us — reveals to us — ourselves, all that we are and can be, participants in the love of the divinity.
Do you look out into the heavens over Penrhyn Bay, and feel so small in this vastness, but know the beyond of God’s being and love? Or do you hear your friend laugh, or does your grand-daughter hold your hand, and you sense in your soul God’s being and love so terribly near?
“Thy heart is set upon me day and night”
I wonder whether life’s pathways mean that we know God’s love differently at one time compared to another.
I remember being a student, kneeling to pray in my college chapel, and being sustained by the knowledge that the stained glass in the windows had looked down, impassively, on centuries of ones like me, seeking in that place the same thing. I was happy to be lost in the vastness of time, to be taken beyond the moment, beyond my insecurities and inadequacies, into the realms of underserved grace.
This past year, I’ve been different. The highlight of my Lent has been the bunch of daffodils that the Junior Church children left for me in the vestry on Mothering Sunday (…I actually think it was Judith). I took those daffodils home, and they stood in a vase on my desk, and opened, and shed their golden joy all week. And they made something real — or, rather, in their very realness they made God’s love real. They were a manifestation, an almost sacramental sign, of blessing and communion and grace.
“Thy heart is set upon me day and night”
The story of Palm Sunday is filled with sensuous, immanent action.
Can’t you just see the dusty village square, the colt tied to the gate, the querying bystander, the disciples ready with their kind, practical answer, “The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.”
Can’t you just sense the anticipation — the colt brought to Jesus, the disciples throwing their cloaks on its back, a makeshift saddle, the best they can do, but done willingly, jubilantly.
Can’t you feel the crowd, pushing past you, their palm leaves in hand, wanting to mark this sacred way, to make holy the here-and-now for the one who has come to this place, so near that you can touch him, in the name of Lord.
“Thy heart is set upon me day and night”
How do we know that God loves us?
Perhaps this year, of all years, having been deprived of so much around us, we know God’s love in what we have and hold, in the sensuous and the immanent — in simple, sacramental signs of blessing and communion and grace.
So clutch you palm cross tight this year, as something that brings God near. Look at it and know its brittleness, the promise of ashes within it, but know also the power of its shape, this sacramental sign; hold it and think of the leaf from which it came and the other crosses from the same leaf, in the hands of others, speaking to them, too, of blessing and communion and grace.
Clutch you palm cross tight this year, as one way of making holy the here-and-now for the one who comes at Easter to you, so near that you can touch his wounds, so alive that he brings life to you, so full of love that “I may give thee love;” “Launch out my heart to Heaven to look on Thee.”
