Palm Sunday, 2008 March 15, 16
Barbara Schlachter
Holy Week, 2008. It begins today, the earliest it’s been since 1913. We will not have this early an Easter until 2285. It is hard to comprehend what life will be like, if there will be human life at all on the planet, in that year. To give you an idea of how far in the future that is, it is as long to 2285 as 2008 is to 1731. And think how much the world has changed since then. Our ancestors could not imagine how we live today.
One thing they had, however, and one thing we hope our descendants will have in 2285 is the Biblical story and the celebration of Holy Week and Easter. Our story of course goes back much further than 1731. It goes back to 30. That’s far longer than the times we have just been referring to.
How much has changed! And yet, how little has changed, at least in some significant ways, since that first Palm Sunday, that Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem.
If you have read Marcus Borg’s book, The Last Week, on the procession that day, you will never be able to forget that there were two processions. The first procession is the one we honor today. Jesus, riding on a donkey, with people spreading their cloaks for him and waving branches of palm and cheering “Hosanna! Hosanna! Can we see ourselves among the crowd cheering, our hearts hopeful that this Passover for which we have come to Jerusalem will finally be the one that reverses the Roman domination and will be the one that brings in the reign of God? Here is Jesus, the teacher, the miracle worker, fulfilling the prophecy of Zechariah. Matthew quotes the prophet:
“Tell the daughter of Zion, look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” And what kind of king will he be? Zechariah says “He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war-horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall command peace to the nations.” This is the procession and the promise we honor every Palm Sunday.
But there was another procession, Borg reminds us. The Bible doesn’t tell us about this one, but the history books do. It was the procession of Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, coming in at the end of a column of imperial cavalry and soldiers. They came every Passover, not because they honored the Jewish holy day, but because there might be trouble and they were to keep the peace, the peace according to imperial Rome. They were there in the name of the Emperor, the son of God, lord, savior, the one who brings peace on earth.
Those titles are familiar to us, son of God, lord, savior, one who brings peace on earth, but we have forgotten that they ever applied to Caesar because we are used to them referring to Jesus.
What a reversal! The humble man on a humble donkey contrasting with the gold and lavish appointments of Pilate and the emperor’s minions. And yet, today, we remember Pilate only as the one assigned a circle in hell by Dante, because he washed his hands of all responsibility and allowed an innocent man to go to his death. The titles that went to the emperor have since all gone to Jesus.
But imperial domination is still with us. As a social system it was marked by three major features, all of which we can find in the world in which we live today. They are political oppression, economic exploitation, and religious legitimization. Same old, same old, same old.
What has changed? I am not willing to say that nothing has changed. I do not believe that. I could not stand here if I thought that. But before I tell you about what has changed, I want to flesh out this particular Holy Week, 2008, a bit more thoroughly. In the course of this earliest Holy Week of our life times, we will celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, the spring equinox, what would have been Mr. Rogers’ 80th birthday, and the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq,
That’s quite a combination. St. Patrick’s Day with its rowdy celebration of the green goes well with the joyful return of spring after one of the most brutal winters we have had in a long time. The remembrance of one of our earliest childhood television friends: Fred Rogers, a man who saw television as a way to model the love of Jesus for young viewers, that fits nicely with Holy Thursday and our day celebrating the oldest ritual of the church, the Eucharistic meal. We are all supposed to wear cardian sweaters on Thursday, by the way.
And even the 5th anniversary of the war seems to fit appropriately in a week that is a week to repent and lament. No matter what you thought about the rightness of being there in the first place, there are few of us who think the cost of human life and economic and other resources can be justified five years later. I hope you will join those of us who will be holding candles at the Courthouse on Wed. at 7pm in a peaceful vigil.
Holy Week is a big enough week to hold all this together. Today, we focus on
Palm Sunday. Everyone who had heard about Jesus or had encountered him or who had walked with him on his life’s journey were there in Jerusalem, filled with hope and expectation. The reception he received must have overjoyed them all. It was going to happen, this second Exodus, only instead of leaving Pharoah’s land this time they were going to have Pharoah leave their land. No more domination! God’s peace for Jerusalem forever!
We know how it is to be truly hopeful, and we know how it is to have our hopes dashed.
Forty years ago, a good Biblical number, we were not prepared for the death of our leaders Martin Luther King, Jr. or Bobby Kennedy, two people so full of promise for those of us under 30, at least.
The folks in Jerusalem were not prepared for the events of the rest of that week that took them from the height of hope to the depths of despair. No matter if Jesus had alluded to his death; those closest to him were not really expecting it. No matter if Mary anointed his feet as preparation for the death she was insightful enough to see coming. Jesus was taking charge, he threw out the money changers in the temple, he preached and taught. He was going to celebrate Passover with his dear friends in the Holy City, and he did. And then, it all went to hell in a hand basket.
The image I have been living with is a bunge cord. The disciples expected a golden parachute, well, metaphorically, at least. They could not literally conceive of a parachute dropping in out of the sky. But they thought they were going to have a safe conclusion, a triumphal conclusion, to their journey. But it was not the graceful end they anticipated. It was more like a bunge cord when you are expecting a parachute. Instead of a relatively controlled and graceful landing, you are making a plunge. At the last minute, as you are contemplating the water or earth under you, coming up fast to smash you, you are pulled up to safety.
Only on Good Friday as the bunge cord descends, it seems to fail to come back up for Jesus. He has plunged into the waters of death, into the depth of the earth. It was over; he was gone. And yet, on Sunday, on the first day of the week, the women who go to his tomb discover that the bunge cord worked after all, he had gone through death and had risen. It wasn’t all over; it was only beginning in a new way.
And it is still going on, more than two thousand years later. We have built into us, through our baptism, through our genetic make up, our brain, wherever you want to give credit, the awareness that hope triumphs and for Christians, Christ is alive! By participating in his death, we participate in his resurrection and are empowered to live different lives that make a difference.
It has all changed. Oh maybe the domination system hasn’t changed, but a way to live fully and faithfully has been given to us, the desire to change the domination system has been put into our hearts as a love of freedom and truth and concern for the least of our brothers and sisters. The late great Gerry May, who wrote about how much of our life is hidden deep within us with Christ in “The Dark Night of the Soul” claims simply “that our sympathetic response to life’s unfairness may be the surest proof of God’s reality.”
We enter Holy Week as we enter into a great mystery. Its truth cannot be tied up in a few choice sentences. It can only be lived and allowed to ferment like fine wine deep in our souls. Next Sunday we still stand here and proclaim Christ is Risen. If you want it to mean much more to you than a beautiful service on the surface of your life, I hope you will enter into it wholeheartedly, first with hope and joy, then with repenting and lamenting and sorrow, and then you will find your joy again. But you have to show up—either to your prayer desk or to the services that happen here, Monday with the Stations of the Cross, Tuesday with the beautiful lament of Tenebrae, Wednesday with the Vigil on the 5th anniversary of the war, Thursday, with agape, footwashing and eucharist, Good Friday with the remembrance of the crucifixion, and then the Great Vigil when we celebrate the moment of Passing-Over.
Like most things in life, you will get out of it what you put into it, with the grace of God.
