|
Home | About Christ Church | Schedule of Services | Newcomers | Sermons | Clergy & Staff | Vestry | Contact Us |
| Palm Sunday
Christ Church Covington March 24, 2002 Most of us who are from around here are in some way familiar with the Jazz Funeral. Since many in our congregation aren’t from around here, please indulge a brief description. The Jazz Funeral has been a somewhat common way that African-Americans in and around New Orleans bury their dead. It culminates in a procession on foot to the graveyard led by a Dixieland jazz band. It might start out as one would expect, with mourners mourning while the band plays a melancholy march in slow time. At some point, however (I’m not sure what the cue is) the tone of the procession changes dramatically. The band begins to wail raucous festival Jazz, and the mourners begin to dance and sing and wave handkerchiefs and umbrellas as the procession continues to the grave. As I said, most of us are familiar with the existence and character of the Jazz Funeral, but its origins are somewhat murky in the popular mind. My guess is that there is plenty of folklore about why and how this tradition emerged among this specific group of people in this specific place. I’d like to share an explanation that I heard that I think is both plausible and satisfactory. The Jazz funeral, like Jazz itself, is the offspring of oppression, that is the enslavement of Africans and African-Americans that was the law of the land for centuries in North America. Few Americans these days can fathom the evil of being the possession of another person, not just for a time, not for crimes committed, but for as long as memory can recall and simply by virtue of one’s ethnic background. The proprietary claim on the slave’s very person was so complete that the only certain means of escape was death, and that brings us back to the Jazz funeral. The riotous (some might say scandalous) celebration at a Jazz Funeral is the remnant of the joy of slaves over the deceased’s having achieved his freedom, having escaped to that place where there is no forced labor or corporal punishment, where the master and the bounty hunter have no power, where their Lord provides for them rather than the other way around. Now that’s something worth singing and dancing about, if you stop and think about it. In the Passion Gospel of Matthew that you just heard read, Pilate asks the crowd, “Whom do you want me to release for you, Jesus Barabbas or Jesus the who is called the Messiah?” Of course, the crowd calls for the release of Barabbas and the death of Jesus of Nazareth. Now, in connection with that, consider the words of St. Paul, “Christ Jesus…emptied himself taking the from of a slave, being born in human likeness. Paul and Matthew rather agree that humans, all humans are enslaved to the powers of this world, possessed by sin and the devil. So if we think like slaves for a moment, think about Pilate’s decision in those terms, who was actually released that tragic and wonderful day in Jerusalem? Who achieved freedom and escaped the power of those who thought they ran things? On the Cross, Jesus was the one who was released. What’s more, on the Cross, Jesus obtained perfect freedom for all who follow him. Despite the best efforts of humankind to destroy him, Jesus by those very same efforts made salvation available to that very same humankind. How are we supposed to respond to that? How are we supposed to respond to that kind, that magnitude of love. Perhaps with the odd mixture of melancholy and exuberance of a Jazz Funeral. Maybe we are supposed to be deeply troubled and deeply joyful: troubled by our unworthiness, and joyful of our beloved-ness. I’d like for us to spend a few moments in silence pondering the passion of Christ. I invite you to contemplate how we can live into the freedom he wrought by his passion and what sacrifices we can make this Holy Week so as to experience in its fullness the joy of next Sunday. Amen. The Rev’d Robert M. Odom M.Div., Curate |
|
|