Palm Sunday Year C Luke 19:28-40

Palm Sunday Yr C Luke 19:28-40

I have chosen to say a few words at this spot today because it makes more sense to me to talk about Jesus' grand entry into Jerusalem, and then to receive the story of Jesus' passion in silence. Liturgically, we do something very odd here. We begin our worship together with waving palms, with the parade, and with Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, and we end our worship in quiet, as we prepare for the unfolding of this passionate story through out the week. Please know that it takes all week to hear this story, to participate in this story, to be able to approach Easter and resurrection. This week carve out time to participate, you all have full lives, but this week, of all the weeks of our lives, is the week to be here.

In this culture of go, go, go, the only time we ever seem to slow down, or even stop, is when a loved one dies. So many of you have been there. We gather, we tell stories, about who they are, about the last time we were together, about the last things they were doing. We grieve and are sad, we cry, we wait, we celebrate their life, we eat, and we do all these things together. This is that week, this death is that death, and we need do it together.  

But for this moment, I need to reflect on the Palm of Palm Sunday. Jesus and the disciples and thousands of other pilgrims have made their way to Jerusalem for the Passover. Jesus hailed as a king. Not Caesar, not the appointed Roman governor. But a new king –  one for the poor, for those without voices, for those left behind. Jesus is hailed as King, riding on a colt. The disciples welcome him into their city, Jerusalem, and shout "blessed is the one who comes in the name of The Lord – the king of Israel" for now. They lay down their cloaks, holey as they are. And for the time being, we are all willing to follow. But are we also willing to follow into trouble, controversy, trial and death?

When we look closely we see the people gathered for this parade, this march, this entrance into Jerusalem. They are not the important and powerful, but the poor and marginalized, maybe even the young, many of them Jesus' disciples. This very important but very brief story shows us that Love does not win by the world's standards. Jesus comes as the fulfillment of the nation's hopes, answering our longings for a king who would bring peace to earth from heaven itself. Jesus brings the peace that surpasses understanding, and much of what is about to unfold in the next few days will be the price he pays to bring it. Jesus’ disciples, of course, have seen things that have changed their lives forever and have raised their hopes. Indeed, our lives our changed.

This is not about the powerful Pharisees, grumbling about what will happen if the authorities in Jerusalem think that there's a messianic demonstration going on. From now on we see them no more. It is about Mary, who sang at the beginning of this story, “He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts, he has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly, he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty” and cries at the foot of the cross in just a short time. It is not about the powerful or wealthy people of the day, it is about the Kingdom of God in which the last will be first and the first will be last. It is about the woman who anoints Jesus with a very costly ointment of nard. It is about Judas, one of the twelve, one of Jesus’ friends, who makes a choice of power and greed over love. It is about bread and blessing, it is about prayer and emptying, it is about betrayal and it is about love.

Love wins by God's defeat of evil, and our participation in the new life made possible by the work of Jesus. God gives up Godself for us, those God loves, thus empowering and emboldening us to do the same. 

This is the holiest of weeks. We have prepared ourselves throughout Lent for this journey with Jesus. We come to this Passover festival with Jesus' disciples, we come lean and fit, free of all the stuff that has held us hostage, as that is what our Lenten discipline has done for us. We have carried our own cross with us, by the cross traced on our foreheads, we have remembered who and whose we are. We have left behind that which keeps us prisoner to the world's wants and wills, we have disassembled brick by brick the walls that we had build to shield us from God's love, we have learned about forgiveness, we have been forgiven. We make this journey with Jesus, and revel in the pre-Passover party. 

Rejoice in this moment. This moment of welcome, when the shouts of "Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!” is heard throughout the cosmos. This moment is fleeting. It turns quickly to the terrifying shouts of the crowd, "crucify him." 

After the story this morning, we will sit in the silence for a time. As we leave this space today, we enter into a Holy Week. Please don't wait to come back until Easter, come back to walk these steps to the cross with Jesus, and your Easter joy may be complete. Amen.

Palm Sunday Yr B

This is one of the hardest stories to hear. Jesus, friend of the sinner, friend of the outcast, friend of the marginalized, put to death in the most horrific way possible, on a cross. Maybe some of you even squirm listening to me say it. It's hard to look in the face of death, especially when that death is violent and innocent. Remember when we all went to see The Passion of Christ? One of the criticisms was that it was so graphic. Who needs to see all that blood and gore? And yet, we'll go to the movies to see body parts and blood and guts flying across the screen when it's an action adventure, or a horror movie.

But when we go to church we really don't want to be confronted with life and death, do we. We really just want to feel good, sing some good songs, say hi to our friends, and then go out to breakfast. And then we are confronted with this story. Jesus was tortured and killed by the government of his day, for turning the tables, for raising the dead, for freeing the imprisoned.

It's not much different than what we do most of the time. We shy away from death and grief. Our language even reflects our discomfort with death. People say that someone has passed away, what does that mean? Or we lost our mother last week. What did she do, get stuck behind the sofa? Death is real and grief hurts. We know this, we are in the midst of it. A world without sadness is a world without importance. If we are not sad, if we are not inconsolable at the death of our loved ones, or at the death of so many we don't even know, we have lost the importance of human life, and we have lost humanity's relationship to our Creator God.

I read, like many of you, the Hunger Games. You may know the story because it's in the movie theaters now. It is an awful story, incredibly well written and awful. It's the story of a culture that has lost the ability to be sad at death. And like the gladiators of old in the coliseum, these killings are televised for the country to watch. But what makes these killings even more horrible, it is children killing children. Human life, life, becomes unimportant. Relationship, has become unimportant. Someone must point humanity toward toward the dignity and importance of life, in the Hunger Games, the main characters do that. In the story before us today, Jesus points humanity toward the importance of life. Jesus collects all of our pain and suffering and embraces it, Jesus takes it with him, and leaves us with love. Joy and pain, are part of love.

The week that lays before us, Holy Week, encourages us to live fully and completely in the sadness of death, and the joy of life. Both things are happening simultaneously. One cannot happen without the other. I encourage you to participate fully in the events of this week, the darkness and hope of the Service of Darkness on Wednesday night. The servant ministry of foot washing and holy communion on Thursday night. The story of Jesus passion told again in a new way on Friday night. And the Great Vigil on Saturday night, when we light the new fire of Easter, when we tell the epic stories that form us as a people, when we baptize and renew our own baptism, when we rejoice in the acclamation of Jesus resurrection, and the new life that affects for each of us.

I invite you to a Holy Week.

Palm Sunday Yr C

The King has come, but not quite as expected. He has gone to find a young donkey to ride rather than the proud war horse any coming king ought to ride. Jesus is all too aware of the dangers of being recognized as king when the city is under the control of the Roman emperor. The most difficult and painful part of our journey still lies ahead as we journey together through the dark and fearful places. Yet Jesus’ curious choice of riding on a lowly donkey warns us that this story may not follow quite the usual pattern of the conquering hero. We must stay close and walk with Jesus, listen and watch, for ‘something wonderful’ is about to happen this week.

Something wonderful is about to happen this week, but something wonderful happens only after the pain, sorrow, suffering, alienation and isolation that is being human. That something wonderful can’t be gotten to too quickly, and that something wonderful is a promise. The paradox here for us is that we know the end of the story. You and I know about the resurrection, and often we wish to jump over all of the pain and alienation that is represented by Holy Week to get there. But we just can’t. We need to live in this Holy Week. We need to be on this road with Jesus, who at one moment seems the conquering hero, and the next seems the lowly outcast, we need to stay with Holy Week to really understand and experience Easter Joy.

We cannot jump to the quick fix, we cannot jump over the passion, the torture, the death to get to the resurrection. We must journey with Jesus through it, it is in fact the journey together that brings us to the Easter joy. I don’t think we really can begin to live as Easter people until we have made this journey with Jesus is Holy Week. Without this Holy Week, without the journey with Jesus to the cross, Easter is much more like the plastic eggs that can be crushed underfoot, than it is new life, and Kingdom come.

You all have some at experience at this. I only remind you of the reality of your lives. Many of you have lived this same story. Your story is part of the story of God’s activity in Jesus.

You have experienced the pain and sorrow of losing someone you love. You have accompanied your loved ones through the ravages of chemo and of radiation. You have spent hours at your parent’s bedside, watching and praying while they die, the only thing you are able to do is hold their hand. You have watched loved ones drink themselves to death, or smoke themselves to death, all you could do was pray that they’d quit. You have lost children to estrangement, accident, or suicide.

Some of you have experienced the alienation and isolation of being different; of being the only one whose parents expect you to keep them informed of where you are and who you’re with. Some of you have had the embarrassment of your parents insisting on meeting the parents of the kid whose house the party is at, or the embarrassment of your parents insisting on meeting the parents of the boy or girl you’re going out with. Some of you have been the brunt of jokes and teasing. Some of you may even have been the bully at times, because you just couldn’t figure out how to be with people who are different than you.

Pain, and suffering, isolation and alienation, loneliness.... This is what Jesus experienced during that time from the triumphal entry into Jerusalem to the time he was nailed on that cross. His friends abandoned him, betrayed him, and denied that they knew him, they also raised swords to protect him. Soldiers beat him, officials mocked him, and none understood him.

He was nailed to a cross and left to die.

The power of Jesus’ story is that it is our story as well. And the Good News is that in the midst of this Mess, a mess sometimes of our making, often not of our making, is that God is with us, and God will create new life out of it.

You know this because you are able to look back on the pain and suffering of the death of a loved one and are able to talk about God being with you, in the people that cared for you, maybe in the reconciliation of a relationship. You know this because as you look on the alienation and isolation of your middle school or high school years, you are able to talk about the teacher, or the coach, or the friend, who reached out to you to pull you out of that isolation. You know this because as you look back on your own recovery from addiction you are able to talk about the people who helped you through it.

This is God in our midst, Jesus Christ in the face of the other. The resurrection that comes after pain, suffering and death.

Oh, we’re not there yet, but we keep getting glimpses.

Our lives are neither neat nor easy. The path is never straight nor evident. In the midst of the struggle, in the midst of the pain, the suffering, the alienation, the isolation, we can hardly see our way clear, we can hardly see our own belly button. But that’s the point. When we stop gazing at our own belly button, and lift our head up to look the other in the eye, we begin to be the person in whom another may see Jesus. We begin to live as Easter people.

But I get ahead of myself again. I have a habit of doing that. Because in the midst of the Mess, comes something wonderful, and I can hardly wait.

The Lord is full of compassion and mercy: Come let us adore him.