"Witnessing Suffering" | Liz Harlan-Ferlo | March 24, 2024

Morning by morning, he wakens my ear to listen. The Lord God has opened my ea,r and I was not rebellious. I did not turn backward. Friends, I have a confession to make. I do not like Palm Sunday. I dislike it so much that I believe this is the first Palm Sunday service I have actually attended in 20 years. I will say I think y'all might have converted me with the llamas. I've always felt like Palm Sunday is a little cringe. The procession around the block never quite feels like the triumphal parade that I imagine in the gospel. I feel more like I'm in a sheepish clump of people who still in this day and age not only have the hubris to go to church, but to do so in public. As a child, I disliked Palm Sunday because it was sneakily scary. One minute, you're tickling your friend with a palm branch, and the next minute, you're hearing the story of a murder, down to the details, and you're supposed to participate by shouting angrily in church, just as you all did. And all the adults acted like this was totally normal. What we were proclaiming, though, seemed like that story about your family that you should be ashamed to tell, because stories have power. Stories record histories and give direct instructions. They tease and memorialize. This week, Indigenous chaplain Melissa Bennett spoke to our Lent Reads class about sacred stories. To tell an important story is an honor, she said. It's an honor to your ancestors that you can't hold lightly. You have to sit with it for a long time, and the story has to sit with you. It's helpful to me to think of this passion story as a sacred story of my ancestors. And I'm not talking about piety, because I don't think my ancestors were saints or even particularly good Christians– but my people have been a part of the infrastructure built up around this ugly story, for better or for worse. Melissa calls herself a storyteller, but also a story listener. I often think about telling stories– I am a writer, after all– but not as much about how I listen to them. I suspect that's true for many of us, especially those of us who are so easily literate. But there is a kind of stillness, a kind of focus when you're listening that reading silently doesn't require. As a child, Palm Sunday confused me. If Jesus was this important person– really important person, clearly– why would we commemorate being a part of putting him to death? The gospel stories say that some in the crowd throw things at him or insult him, but others simply watch and do nothing. This was the terror that I felt. The doing nothing, the helplessness as the story unfolded again and again, as the people around me yelled angrily. I tried to remind myself that we were pretending that it wasn't real, but wasn't the point that it was real? And that is the heart of why we do this ritual. Ritual is the enactment of story. Doing the ritual situates the story both as timeless and as deeply embedded in the current moment. The story we act out is not real, and it is very real, and we are both storytellers and the audience. There is always an audience for a story like this one. But today, it's not just a mob below Pilate's balcony. Today, you watch death through your phone, alone. We see versions of crucifixion videos from from Gaza, from the streets of American cities after a traffic stop. Golgatha is everywhere, and we watch, just as many of our ancestors gathered, on purpose, at the lynching tree– that sacred wood– we

watch. No wonder I was afraid. I am still afraid. I want to run away from it, from this story and what it says about my cowardice. And I would take any excuse to do so. Watching the suffering of others can be exploitation, but witnessing suffering can dignify it. Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh created the Order of Interbeing, a blend of traditional Buddhist morality and contemporary social concerns. The fourth of his 14 precepts is: "Do not avoid contact with suffering or close your eyes before suffering. Do not lose awareness of the existence of suffering in the life of the world. Find ways to be with those who are suffering, including personal contact, visits, images, sounds. By such means, awaken yourself and others to the reality of suffering in the world." When we witness as a way of dignifying suffering, when we acknowledge it and our presence in it, we actively love. Jesus knew this. Time and time again, he guided people to witness the suffering of the sick, the abused, the poor, those abandoned by the state. The government had stockpiles of weapons, but he did not. He had his wit and his knowledge of scripture, his deep faith in God's power and love and yes, a sense of the theatrical. The man walked on water. He knew how to get people's attention. And even so, state power is very strong. His followers did not, could not save him from a terrible death. This heart of the Christian story, our ancestral story, defines us. The parts that are hard to listen to, the parts that echo our own lives, the parts that echo lives of people we'd rather not think of. The parts that have been used to oppress, and the parts that have been used to liberate– it is all our story. And this Holy Week, we offer it to each other once again. We practice listening to this story by doing our cringey embodied rituals, by heckling God, by washing each other's feet, by keeping vigil, and by sitting still in the silence of grief. We tell the story, even knowing the spoilers– that resurrection is imminent and that love overcomes death. So listen, storytellers. This year, how will this story resurrect you? Will you regain the strength to fight Injustice? To care for the sick and the dying? To forgive those who harm you? Will you live out God's rage at state power? To amplify the voices of the crucified peoples? Will you seek and serve God in each person, loving your neighbor as yourself? Will you respect the Dignity of every human being? Holy One, again we pray: open our ears to listen. Amen.