PALM SUNDAY

The Sunday of the Passion

April 1, 2007

Luke 19:29-40

Isaiah 45:21-25

Philippians 2: 5-11

Luke 22:39-23:56

Year C

As soon as we take our places on Palm Sunday we have to figure out what to do with our palm branches. Shall we stick them under our pew or in the book rack? Shall we continue to hold them and just hope we don’t poke our neighbor in the eye or what? It’s an awkward moment this. These palm branches just will not fit into any place easily. It was the same with Jesus. Israel had a very clear mold into which God and religion were supposed to ‘fit’ and because Jesus did not fit this was what finally upended him. He would not conform and refused to ‘fit’ into the mold expected of him.

Palm Sunday begins in almost celebratory tones. It ends in disaster. After the hoopla of the grand procession a heavy silence descends upon the beginning of Holy Week. It is a silence, however, that begs to be heard. This year we hear it from Luke’s perspective. Luke’s Passion narrative is loaded with emotions. He invites us to own Peter’s weakness, to suffer the trial of Jesus and the complicity of the religious establishment; to own the odd way that Herod and Pilate make strange bedfellows. He points out the release of a guilty man over and against the condemnation of Jesus, whom Luke declares “innocent”. He takes us through that painful journey to the crucifixion; the darkness and the death.

Today, during the Feast of Tabernacles, palms are taken, no longer to the Temple, but to the only remaining wall of it that still stands. But on the day we recall as Palm Sunday, the Temple still stood in all its glory. From the village of Bethany to the city of Jerusalem was scarcely half an hour’s walk. Jesus came at first on foot. The road he walked upon still exists, winding round the shoulder of Olivet, amid the fig groves and palm trees, until suddenly across a wide abyss Jerusalem can be seen rising like a city painted upon the clouds.

It was here that Jesus met his disciples, who brought an ass he now mounted. As more people joined this parade cries of “Hosanna” began to fill the air. People carried branches in their hands and laid their clothing on the ground before him and shouted or sang “Hosanna”. Its full form was “Save us now, O Lord. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” The palm branch however, was the key. It was THE emblem of Palestine in national heraldry; the equivalent to our national flag.

If Jesus were to make a claim to kingship, now was his time to act. Now was the time to make a move. Yet, the gospel makes it clear that this political demonstration was a terrible misunderstanding; in which even the twelve disciples had a part.

It was precisely because so many of the Jewish people were drawn to Jesus that the elders of the temple decided he had to be eliminated – or else – as the high priest said, “He will lead people astray.” But many of the people in Palestine who had noticed Jesus at all were disappointed. In their hope that he might be the messiah they had prayed for, Jesus should have come into Jerusalem blazing, should have gathered forces, earthly and heavenly, to strike down the Roman occupiers and proclaim a new world rule. That was, at least, part of the hope in the crowds that welcomed him into Jerusalem that day we call Palm Sunday. The fact that he did not do any such thing was a sign of failure. Add to that the fact that he wound up crucified was proof of failure; not to mention horrendous shame. It was so shameful that after that awful Friday the disciples did not want anyone to know they had been associated with him at all. And Peter, whom the church would call the “rock”, scripture names as the one who denied him first.

These facts are important for us to face, because I think there is a piece in every one of us, never mind the disciples, that wishes Jesus had escaped this awfulness, because if he had it would give us more hope of escaping our own lesser passions. That did not happen. If Jesus is who we say he is, the unique Holy One of God, and he was not spared, then where is there hope for us? That is the great question. If our hope is only based on colored eggs and chocolate rabbits then no one needs point out to us that fantasy falls very short when it comes to bloody crosses and passion filled situations in our own lives.

The earth is good and all that is in it says the Lord in scripture. Yet, we know all too well of so much that is not just ‘not good’ in the world, but also evil. In a way we are like the dying thieves, hanging somewhere in between life and death. What sustains you when all hope, in your life or the life of the world, seems to hang as dead as Jesus did at the end of this week we call Holy?

When Diane Sawyer interviewed Mel Gibson about his film “The Passion of the Christ” she asked him who was responsible for Jesus’ death. He replied, “I am. We all are”. But he answered an historical question with a theological answer. Whose will put Jesus on the cross? Was it God’s or was it our own?

Given the circumstances it was inevitable. His death was as easily predicted as watching a child walk into heavy traffic; as predictable as seeing a lamb walk into a den of wolves, except that he could have stopped it all. He could have stopped teaching, stopped healing. He could have moved when things got hot. He could have opened a carpentry franchise and done spiritual direction in the cool of the evenings. He could have blended in – but he would not.

If Jesus was connected with God anymore than anyone else why was he hung up like a slaughtered animal? Because he refused to be anything other than who he was. And who he was and what he did both offended and threatened the powers that be. The one most responsible for Jesus’ crucifixion was Jesus himself. His actions are viewed by many as foolish or irrelevant, while they are seen by Christians as the unfolding of divine love. So it is well to remember that Good Friday made sense only to early Christians when they could see God’s presence in it. God had chosen the way of weakness. The cross redefines God as One who willingly relinquishes power – for the sake of love. Jesus became, as Dorothy Solle once said, “God’s unilateral disarmament”.

Luke reminds us that as Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday he was in tears. And what that means, I think, is that if God was involved in this, it cannot help but show us that God does not gaze impassively upon broken creation, but enters it fully, completely; enters it knowing full well what the world will do to unabashed self-offering love.

If this is just fantasy then I hope you enjoy this liturgy; the drama, the music, the history, because that’s about as much as I can promise you today. If, on the other hand, God HAS entered the sufferings of the world, the sufferings of each one of us, in Jesus, then everything changed from that moment on.

When Jesus rose form his knees in that moon-lit garden of Gethsemane he proceeded to relinquish every form of power known to the world. What we see in that moment is not a vengeful God, drawing him into some kind of divine trap. What we see is Jesus aligning his will with the Father’s in purposes beyond suffering and death. And because God WAS in him, reconciling the world to God’s Self, waiting in the blackness of it all was a light set to pierce the darkness of it all.

That is why at the end of the first Holy Week, many knew that in Jesus they had seen the face of God. That’s why we’re here. We’re here because we too need to peer through the veil of mystery and glimpse the face of God. It is, of course, a mystery we shall never exhaust, but honor, by our worship, in our silence, on our bended knees, by our lips praying, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord”.

AMEN

The Rev.Virginia L. Bennett, D.Min.

St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church

Edwardsville, Illinois