Scripture: Luke 19:28-40
04/14/2019
Undoubtably, for a great many of us, some of our best memories of church have to be centered around this day in the Christian year, each year. In the midst of an otherwise dreary time of darkness and mourning, of giving things up and maybe taking a few extra minutes a day to consider the path that Jesus had walked, was walking, towards his own death, Palm Sunday was a marked respite from all of that—a brief period of unbridled jubilance in an otherwise bleak period of the Christian calendar. Perhaps if you looked back upon the story of your own faith you can remember years past when children, adults, young and old proudly marched into the sanctuary, bearing palms and declaring their allegiance to Christ with shouts of “Hosanna!” Perhaps you can remember you yourself doing the same thing. This day resides in my memory of growing up as the only time I was actually encouraged to yell in the sanctuary, my commitment to the cause of Jesus being evidenced by my hearty crying out of, “Hosanna!” Of all the choirs (back in the day when there were multiple choirs) processing in together, from the youngest to the oldest waving branches and singing, “All Glory, Laud, and Honor!” And each year, I would try to as I did this year envision what it must have been like in Jerusalem on that day. Would it have been like the president coming to my little hometown? Would it be like a celebrity marching in the Christmas parade? Would it be as much a celebration as a holy event? Because, for us in this place, this day needs to have an air of joy, of respite from the journey we have taken and before the solemn pilgrimage that we are about to commence again and anew. A coming together of the faithful to lift each other as we sit on the precipice of the darkest part of the season that we will each struggle through over the next week and maybe it was for such a time as this that Palm Sunday comes—come each year to give us a chance to smile, laugh, and celebrate for just a bit before the task of dying is more firmly set before us. And maybe we all need this, maybe we all need an hour of rest from the onslaught that is to come and if that is what it is for you on this morning let me say that is ok. We all need a rest every now and then. But even in the midst of the sabbath of this day, let us not confuse ourselves into believing that this was a day of rest on that day. Let us not think for a second that in the jubilation of the moment of entry that there was not both inner struggle and external turmoil. Because even in the triumphant nature of the entry, the final elements of Jesus’s physical demise are coming into focus.
Because, to get a true vision for the moment of entry into Jerusalem, you have to imagine that the road was long and dusty, the kind of dusty that gets on your sandals and your feet and gives you blisters and that you especially notice after a long day of traveling. Because even though these guys had, for the previous three years, walked so many steps like this together, it would have been these final steps that seemed so much more laborious, so taxing. When they were giving sight to the blind or raising folks from the dead those times had been easy as the glory of God bursting forth before their eyes, sometimes even from their own hands and mouths, but now came the other side of that coin. Because all their healing on the Sabbath, all their words of proclamation of a new realm, a new order, that would soon overtake the old order of the world, the pronouncements against the religious leadership of the day, the questioning of the righteousness of Sadducees and Pharisees, all that came at a cost, as it so often does, and they knew that at some point payment was going to be demanded. At the same time, Jesus often said things that challenged the imperial powers of the day. He spoke of a kingdom, a holy realm that was not of this world and certainly the Romans would have taken note of someone gathering a following like he had and telling them to look beyond the physical world and towards a coming heaven and a coming earth. And so it’s hard to know who was angered to a greater degree by this royal celebration the disciples had offered Jesus as his journey to Jerusalem comes to an end. In our mind we can see both a group of worried Pharisees coming to Jesus and saying, “please, you have to stop these people, they will listen to you, they will do what you say. Can’t you see the spectacle that you and they are making in this occupied space,” and the soldiers that protected the city against any unwanted sedition and rebellion. And because Jerusalem is still an occupied space with two competing factions—the religious and the imperial—there is clearly a struggle for the hearts and minds of the people that is coming together around Jesus of Nazareth and the message he has spent the last three years bringing the people. And, y’all, religion is strong, we know that, and it can capture people’s hearts and lead them to do both wonderful and terrible things. But so is the sword of an occupying force. And you have to wonder if in coming to Jesus and demanding that he put an end to all this raucous celebration that part of what they are saying is, “do you want the Romans to come here and bring this celebration to a brutal end? You are a Jew in an occupied land and you know how it has been for us for some time. You know what they are capable of. Please, Jesus, you have to stop it.” But Jesus had spoken of the realm of God bursting forth in their sights, and his words did often had a supernatural quality about them, perhaps they were even magical to a growing number of Hebrew peoples desperate to hear some kind of word of comfort in this time of struggle, they had become a religious experience for a great number of folks desperate to hear that someone cared. So it was that with each step towards Jerusalem, he knew that he was walking towards his own death. And maybe it was in that way that Jesus sought to use this celebration with palms and cloaks, with large gatherings and shouts of, “Hosanna, blessed is the one who comes in the name of the most high!” Perhaps he needed to experience some element of celebration and joy as he increasingly stared down the road to the gathering dusk, the gathering darkness. And when he sent his disciples to collect the necessary ingredients for this concoction of celebration did he realize that he was also perhaps setting fire to a fuse that would soon engulf the whole of the city? Because he must have known, he must have known that creating such a commotion, entering into the city in a manner that had theretofore been reserved for the conquering war hero or the Caesar, was only going to cement his place as a radical leader of a sect of rebels challenging at the same time the authority of the Roman occupation and the religious structures of the day. These made up the twin pillars of any society in that day. They gave meaning and purpose. They inspired religious devotion and created civic systems of governance and justice. They gave the people knowledge of the temporal and the eternal and for three years Jesus had done all he could to tear both of them down that something new and beautiful might emerge from the wreckage. But we all know that you can’t do that. You can’t be the guy that seeks to disrupt everything that gives people’s lives form and function. That questions every source of authority in the lives of the masses. No society, no culture worth its weight in salt would stand for that. So it is that as the crowds swelled both before him and after him, as many lined the streets pledging their allegiance to this chosen one of the Jews, there seemed little doubt where this would end up. Even as the people were crying out, “Hosanna!” it seems more appropriate that they cry “‘havoc’ as they ‘let slip the dogs of war.’”
And it seems that perhaps at least three of the gospel writers want to make sure that we never lose the tension between Jesus the revolutionary radical and Jesus the religious radical. Because in each case, immediately following this entrance into the city that in all likelihood sealed the deal for him with the imperial authorities, he goes straight to the Temple. And maybe it was the case that he was going to have some quiet time, to find a good place to pray. Maybe he was going because he could hide out there for a little while and collect his thoughts before beginning to take on the backlash that was sure to come from the imperial authorities, no one knows. But when he does enter into the Temple, he becomes so overwhelmed with the mockery that they have made of the religion of his childhood and his ancestors, so enraged by the manner in which there are those whose chief living is swindling poor people by pinning them to religious requirements met with their overpriced doves that he simply cannot take it anymore and drives the whole lot of them out of the Temple. And as the crowds watched her and heard him they were enraptured by him. Some saw, maybe for the first time the spirit of God appearing all around them. And we have to imagine that this enraged the powerful and stoic ruling class of the Temple. We have to imagine the they longed for their followers to have this kind of devotion, passion, faith in them. And with that, the die is cast. Imperial authorities see one claiming the place of the Caesar and growing a movement around him and his disciples. Religious authorities see one challenging the notion that the faithful even needed high priests and scribes to get close to God. So it was that in this period of palms and cleansing of the Temple was also the moment in which all that had been sweltering and swelling under the surface, all the frustration with Roman occupation, all the lamentations regarding religious leadership that had long ago sought to become wealthy and powerful at the cost of their devotion to God, all the longings and the frustrations of a nation held down, the hopes and the doubts of those who had prayed prayers to God for a messiah to appear in their midst, the deepest yearnings and desires of the people who were dwelling in darkness desperate to see even the spark of a light, all came bursting forth in a single moment—a moment from which the world has never recovered. Each one putting their lives on the line in devotion to Jesus, each one destroying the relationship with the past and their elders that had sustained them for the living of this life, each one leaping out in faith in God and in faith in Jesus that whatever was out in the unseen darkness was going to catch them. Not seeing and yet believing. Not hearing and yet trusting. Not knowing but having faith in a vision of things unseen. And for this, they gave their all, no matter what the cost.
Sisters and brothers, I am convinced more than ever that as this moment we, in Christendom, sit at a point in history in which the Church must redouble its commitment to the gospel of Jesus Christ and the message of hope that he offered those who gatherer around him that day, that the church must rededicate its efforts to reach out into the streets and lift people out of darkness and into the light in a much more concerted manner than it has previously. As the number of the faithful dwindle, we must, as a faith, as a people, band together and join hand-in-hand to undertake the work of God in the world. To be the hands and feet of Jesus. Because as much as this day might feel like a day of happiness, of celebration of our faith and commitment to Jesus before the final week of his life, we cannot, on this morning, pretend that this world is how God would have it to be. And we cannot pretend that the challenges that plague our world happen halfway around the world from where we are, no matter where each of us finds ourselves, a struggle is always nearby. And we cannot pretend that the work that sits before each of us was or is completed by the death and resurrection of Jesus. For the movement that was started in a small country shore of the Mediterranean Sea in a postage stamp sized corner of the great Roman Empire, commenced a new order int he world and one that will not reach its conclusion until all of God’s children are safe, sound, secure, dignified, honored, and called to come home. And so as we ponder what to do with this passage from this morning, it seems that the best way that honor those who stood up and were counted on that day is to figure out what it is for which we are called to stand up and be counted and then place ourselves there. That we cast our eyes across the expanse of our town and our world and see those places where our greatest joys might meet the world’s greatest needs and that we join with all those who came before us and together dance a dance of justice and love. Those who gathered on the original Palm Sunday gave their lives, some physically, all wholly to a cause greater than themselves in which they could not see what lay ahead of them. They did it solely on faith. They stood as a reminder of the radical nature of the movement at its inceptions, calling people to be their best selves, calling people to give of themselves, calling people to see light where others see only darkness, calling people to leap believing that they will be caught, calling people to be as they have always been, the beloved children of God. On this day, their memory, the faith that we all claim, deserves a radical recommitment to change the world, a “permanent revolution of love” from which no one will ever recover.
We have each traveled a great distance together this Lenten season. We have each seen pieces of ourselves thought to be essential, thought to be unchanging, thought to be crucial to who we are as people fall away in a new devotion to God through the path of Jesus. And we have each walked, at least part of the way, alone. Much like Jesus, surrounded by those closest to us and yet in our minds completely adrift by ourselves. And yet. And yet, here we stand today with palms in hand and singing or screaming at the top of our lungs, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of God!” Here we stand, saying we are followers of Jesus. Here we stand declaring light in the dark, hope out of despair, good news to the poor, sight to the blind, release to the captives, freedom to the oppressed, and the year of God’s favor for all people. Here. We. Stand. Let us never be silent. Amen.
Image: Entry into Jerusalem, Fra Angelico (1450)