St. Paul’s Episcopal Church Wesley Chapel, FL
Preacher: The Rev. Adrienne R. Hymes
Palm Sunday (Year C)—April 10, 2022
In a conversation between a young boy and a wounded stranger, the young boy says, “I wonder if God were to come to Earth, would [people] find him so strange that they would be afraid, and would they shoot him?” The stranger replies, “Did not his son come once?” The boy, nodding his head, replies: “And they nailed him to a cross.”
This conversation is a snapshot of the dialogue between two primary characters in the 1962 “Twilight Zone” episode entitled, “The Gift.”1 The episode is a profound commentary on humankind’s predictable relationship with, and reaction to, the unknown. It will come as no surprise to you that humankind fears the unknown and has historically responded to this fear with judgment and violence rather than compassion and curiosity.
In this episode, a UFO crashes in a small Mexican village and there are reports of the mysterious passenger, wounded in the struggle with the police, lurking about the village. Suddenly, a stranger, clearly wounded stumbles into a bar. In the bar is an orphan boy, Pedro, who befriends the man. In caring for the stranger, Pedro tends to his wounds and gives him water, and did so without fear. In fact, Pedro was drawn to the stranger and was curious about who he was and why he was there. It is in this intimate space where the theological dialogue takes place.
As the episode climaxes, the stranger finds himself hunted, and inevitably, surrounded by the villagers—villagers who would shoot first and ask questions later. When the stranger reaches out to give a small black book to Pedro, the book is set on fire by a man in the mob. As fearful shouts of, “He’s going after the boy!” increases, the stranger is shot multiple times and is killed.
So, why is this episode called, “The Gift?” Well, after the stranger is killed, the book is pulled from the fire. The doctor in the crowd reads from a salvaged page which reveals that the strange man came in peace with a gift for the people of Earth—the chemical compound for a vaccine to cure all forms of cancer, but the pages with the cure for cancer had been destroyed by the fire. The villagers’ murder of the strange outsider, fueled by their fear of the unknown, meant that humankind would never benefit from the alien’s generosity. The gift had been brought and offered, but was violently refused to the detriment of those intended to receive it.
We just listened to the dramatic reading of the Passion Gospel based on the text according to Luke. I wonder if, in hearing that brief synopsis of “The Gift,” you recognized, as I did, some similarities. First, both narratives have angry mobs who had already decided to erase the disrupter of their lives as they knew it. Second, both Jesus, and the wounded stranger, came in peace to the people. Third, Jesus’ gift to humankind, in this passion text, is a secret to most, but not all—the criminal hanging on the cross next to him, indicated that he knew what Jesus’ gift was, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
And in the episode, Pedro, the child, was the only person with whom the stranger entrusted knowledge of the mysterious gift. I am drawn to Jesus’ admonition to his disciples in Luke 18 when he said, “Let the little children come to me…for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs…Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” Pedro, the little child, befriended the village outsider with a heart of compassionate curiosity, not fear and judgement.
The violent mob in the Mexican village not only killed the bearer of the gift, but also destroyed the gift itself. In so doing, the mob doomed humankind to the threat of a life-threatening deadly bodily disease. The fictional narrative concludes with the heaviness of the absence of hope.
But the absence of hope is not what we, as believers in Christ, are to take away from the betrayal and denial of Jesus; the brutality and suffering he endured; and the extinguishing of his last breath as he suffered on the cross. We glimpse the hope, that is in a crucified Jesus, when his accusers taunted him saying, “…Let him save himself…,” “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself,” “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” The crucifixion of Jesus, was not about self-preservation; it was about obedience to God’s will, to God’s plan for human salvation.
And what this mob, which pushed to crucify first and ask questions later, did not know was that had Jesus “saved” himself from his scandalous death on a cross, none of their souls would have been given the opportunity to receive the gift of God’s salvation through Jesus’ sacrifice of his body and blood.
When Jesus died, on the cross, once for all, hope was neither absent, nor lost, but gifted. That is what the life-saving gospel message—this good news of God in Christ—teaches us. That though Jesus’ body was destroyed on the cross, the bearer of God’s salvation—and the gift of God’s salvation—can never be destroyed.
For many, Jesus is either unknown or is a stranger to be feared. Perhaps your testimony, shared with those who fear the mysterious stranger, Jesus, might turn hearts of violence into hearts of peace; hearts of exclusion into hearts of inclusion; hearts of apathy into hearts of empathy; and hearts of indifference to hearts of compassion.
As people of faith, we are to show up in this world as little black books filled with pages of our own witness of God’s presence in our lives—testimonies that have the power to lead people to the source of healing from the death-dealing cancer of the soul that is sin. Perhaps your powerful testimony will affirm for someone, hopelessly suffering on their own cross, that they—that we—need Jesus because we are powerless to save ourselves.
We come in peace, bringing Christ’s light, and bearing Christ’s hope. As we reflect this light and hope, let us befriend the strangers we encounter with the compassionate curiosity of a little child, and not with the fears born of prejudice and judgment. When we gather at the holy table this Passion Sunday, receive the gifts of God for the people of God. And take them in remembrance that Christ died for you.
Amen.
1 “The Gift.” The Twilight Zone (Season 3, Episode 32), 1962.
