Palm Sunday B
28 Mar 2021
I have been wrestling all week with God and my sermon. Things kept sounding like on of those old school essays about what patriotism means to me. What does Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday mean to me? What should it mean to each one of us, especially after a year that seemed like a Good Friday that just refused to end?
There is just too much to say, and yet so little that can be said.
I realized that the theme is simple: preach the Gospel. It is the execution that gets tricky. When the world seems to be in chaos; when there are all too constant stories of mass killings, when you read over a hundred protestors were killed in Myanmar in one day; when the legislature passes bills to restrict voting and eliminate gun permits; when you read we now have 25 million hogs in this state and that much of the corn grown is for the hogs which are going to China; when you see people complaining the government can’t infringe on their bodily integrity by requiring a mask, let alone a vaccination yet at the same think a woman has no right to control her own body, you get cranky and depressed.
Then I think to myself: folks have often, if not always, had it rough. Human evil and greed and the vicissitudes of nature always put us at someone’s else’s mercy. We are not in control of much of anything in life.
So we gather and re-enact in our own symbolic way both the triumph of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and his death on a cross. All within a space of half an hour. Too much in too short a time.
Yet today we hear, like a movie sped up to 5x the normal speed, the whole story of God’s salvation plan for humanity. Triumph and purported tragedy.
Just a little bit ago we were in the crowds escorting Jesus into Jerusalem in triumph. If you had been there you would have been excited and puzzled at the same time. Only a king would be allowed to ride and unbroken horse or donkey, yet a king would have ridden into Jerusalem on a chariot, with the spoils of war in full view. Alexander the Great rode into Jerusalem, I read, and then made sacrifice at the Temple. Jesus rode into Jerusalem and became the sacrifice. What would you have expected of Jesus that day? I bet you were expecting him to overthrow the Romans and reclaim the Davidic kingship. What you wouldn’t have expected was how it would happen, for he did overthrow the Romans. He has subverted and outlasted every human government since.
Triumph into tragedy into triumph; all in a matter of a few days. He knew exactly what he was doing; we are not spared witnessing his human agony, which is really the agony of God as one of us, as well as his triumph. “Look” he says today; “Look how I am not a god like Cesar, but a god who understands the human condition; who knows what it is to suffer, and who brings to you a Way of Life like no other.”
The readings today are like the two geographic poles: one for triumph and one for tragedy. Today is not a day where we here messages of how to be a God Fearer or how to be a follower of Jesus. Today we are reminded starkly of the life and death of Jesus.
That is as it should be. We need to put aside all of our assumptions about what it means to be a follower of Jesus, for we encumber ourselves with creeds and belief statements and even a loyalty oath when we say the Nicene Creed. For today that is as important as worrying about what we ate for breakfast. There will be much time to wrestle with the meaning of being a Christian, but for today we wrestle with the triumph and death of Jesus, the son of God, and what that means.
I can only tell you how I see the events of Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday. You may see it differently. The ride into Jerusalem speaks to me as a stark vision of the very nature of God, both almighty and yet infinitely not concerned with power, profit, or pleasure. Follow me on this path, Jesus says to me. The way mean suffering and death, for Jesus and for countless others who understood where he was leading, but death will lead to eternal triumph. I believe that triumph is not met to be some type of life in heaven when you die, but rather triumph over death and triumph in the here and now when the Way of Love becomes the way of the world.
Palm Sunday is the day of the possible in the time of the impossible. It is a glimpse into what it would be if we really did follow the way of love. Passion Sunday is the reality check of the cost.
We have lived, are living, and will live with that tension all our lives.
Hosanna; save us, for the Kingdom of God is at hand. You only need to follow your king.
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