(Preached on Sunday, March 28, 2010)
As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.” -Luke 19:41-42
This is a really strange day. There is a profound tension in Palm Sunday. It is a strange mixture of emotions and forces and expectations. In the scripture reading there is a brief but haunting burst of sunshine as Jesus is surrounded by adoring disciples singing and shouting and paving his entry into Jerusalem with their coats and cloaks. Yet the storm clouds are quickly gathering. There’s a brooding sense of impending tragedy as Jesus stops his descent from the Mount of Olives to Jerusalem and weeps like a broken hearted lover as he gazes across the Kidron Valley at the Holy City.
The wider church is not even sure what to do with this day. We see that confusion right there in the title for the day: Palm/Passion Sunday. Is this a day to focus on the joyous, triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem; or is a day to read the longer gospel reading, all 114 verses in Luke’s account, detailing the passion and crucifixion of Jesus? Once upon a time the church designated last Sunday, the fifth Sunday of Lent, as Passion Sunday. That was the day to remember and reflect on the passion, the suffering of Jesus, which left this Sunday as Palm Sunday, the day to remember and celebrate Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. Then we have Maundy Thursday and Good Friday for deeper reflection on his suffering and betrayal, before we join in the glorious celebration of the resurrection on Easter. But somehow Passion Sunday seemed too far removed from Passion Week itself. Plus as society grew more secular, less supportive of religious holy days, people became less likely to join in the observances of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. This left people moving from the joyful celebration of Palm Sunday to the even grander, joyful celebration of Easter Sunday, without ever visiting the agony and suffering of the cross on Good Friday.
As uncomfortable as this tension may be, there is something basically correct about the impulse to combine the two celebrations. In many respects Palm Sunday actually captures more of the full force and completeness of the gospel than does Easter. After all, Easter is totally, overwhelmingly, a joyful celebration of the resurrection and the bright hope which the resurrection holds for us. But the pain of Good Friday is past. The horror and agony of suffering and death are past. Easter is beyond all that.
But not Palm Sunday! Palm Sunday carries a great note of joy and celebration. A large crowd of disciples and followers are celebrating all the amazing, glorious actions and events which they have witnessed with Jesus. They are caught up in the glorious hope that finally, finally someone, perhaps Jesus, is going to do something about the hated occupying force from Rome.
At the same time Palm Sunday carries for us the anticipation of the pain and suffering of Good Friday. We already know the rest of the story: how this week, which begins with such promise as Jesus peacefully, and triumphantly, enters the city, will end with such horror and agony as Jesus is betrayed, abandoned, sentenced, tortured, and executed . And Luke’s gospel (alone of the four) offers a foreshadowing of the coming agony as Jesus pauses in his descent from the Mount of Olives to gaze at Jerusalem and weep for it. It is not a portion of the Palm Sunday gospel that is often read or remembered, but Luke includes it as a part of the story of the day and if one is not going to read the entire Passion account in worship, it does clearly bring in that note of sorrow that clearly should not be overlooked on this day.
After all, life is exactly like this strange mixture. Life is a combination of pain and glory, of love and sorrow. You cannot have one without the other. You cannot have life, without both. Anyone who tells you differently is either a liar or a fool. All through life there are little pains, small moments of suffering. If you truly experience the glory of life, the truth of loving another, then eventually that love will bring you pain. Eventually someone you love will die, or you, yourself, will face death. And if you never experience the pain – if you try to shelter yourself and turn away from the pain – then you will never truly experience life. You will live your life as a dead person.
Far too many people in our world today choose this approach. Frightened of the glory, because of fear of the pain; fearful of the possible roller coast ride, they give up the highs in order to escape the lows. Such a life is boring, but it is safe. That is exactly where the Pharisees were. They had worked for years and years to smooth off the rough edges so that life became safe and predictable. Then along came Jesus, living life out there on the edge, fully experiencing the highs and the lows, and proclaiming: this is where true life is lived. This is where life is found, not in the safe middle ground, but out amongst the pain and the glory of loving.
Palm Sunday is truly all about the choice Jesus made. It is actually well summarized by those famous lines of poetry by Robert Frost: (The Road Not Taken)
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
His “less traveled road” was the Way traveled by those marked with the cross, those already living in the New Reign of the Age of God. Faithful to that cross, Jesus lived centuries – if not millennia – ahead of his time, and so his life set him apart from others. Because Jesus was a living lesson, people called him Rabbi (Teacher) and to all who found his lesson intriguing he said, “Come, follow me” and invited them to become students of the Way.
That Way, that path, was the way of love. Jesus chooses to die rather than to deny what he knew to be the ultimate truth: that love is the image in which we are created, the path on which we walk, and the goal toward which we journey. Love, not fear. Love, not violence. Love, not success. Love, not wealth. Love, not power. Love. Jesus told us to don one thing. One. Jesus told us to love: to love God, to love one another, to love the stranger in our midst, and to love our enemies. Jesus did not ask us to judge one another, to punish one another, to exploit one another, to indoctrinate one another, to ignore, oppress, harass, or kill one another – even in God’s name. Jesus told us to do one thing. One: love.
The worldly structures of power (political, social, and economic) have a strong investment in stopping us from loving one another because love leads to all kinds of crazy choices like not participating in the accumulation of material things that exploit vulnerable workers, leave huge carbon footprints and toxic waste, and use resources (like clean water and open land) for non-essentials rather than for essentials. Love leads us to speak up for those who cannot speak on their own behalf. Love causes us to care for the most vulnerable among us first rather than shoving them to the edges of our lives so that we can build bigger and bigger houses and give larger and larger tax breaks to the wealthiest one percent of the population. In other words, loving changes the world as we know it.
The earliest depictions of the cross show four nails, one at each corner of the cross. By the Middle Ages, however, paintings of the crucifixion showed only three nails – one for each hand and one nailing together the two feet. The Gypsies have a story to explain the missing nail. They say that on that first Good Friday, a Gypsy passing Calvary stole one of the nails to spare Jesus at least a little pain. In gratitude for this effort to alleviate some of his suffering, Jesus granted all Gypsies the right to steal from non-Gypsies when necessary!
Self-serving though this tale is for Gypsies, it still offers us a way to envision our own effort to live out the way of love. In a very real way, Jesus is persecuted again when we persecute others; he is nailed again and again as we inflict pain upon others. The next time you are tempted to inflict pain on another, whether physically, verbally, or emotionally, see that desire as a large nail that you can either drive into the hand of Christ or one that you can steal away, as did that Gypsy. Become a compassionate thief and steal as many nails as possible by refusing to use them to inflict pain. When, for example, you’re in a group that is busy crucifying someone with the sharp nails of painful gossip or prejudicial remarks, become a crafty thief and steal their nails by changing the subject. Or you can become an audacious thief by blatantly challenging the spitefulness of prejudice. Each time you steal a nail, you share in Christ’s passion by participating in his healing, redemptive work.
Today is more than a chance to remember an historical event. Today is the opportunity to begin the confrontation in our own hearts between our attachment to the world and our claim to be disciples of the one who called us – us, you and me – to be love in the flesh. Today is the day on which we choose which path to take: the safer path more widely traveled, or the path to the cross with the Teacher who refuses to stop loving us. Which path will you choose?