Palm/Passion Sunday
You may have noticed that there was a great turnout for the Shrove Tuesday pancake supper this year. … But, I don’t think we had as many people come out on the following day for Ash Wednesday. … It’s not very hard to imagine why.
We love to celebrate. It’s fun. And we don’t have to feel bad a bout that. Celebration is actually an important spiritual practice. The Bible has many feasts that the people are commanded to celebrate. God wants us to celebrate. What’s not to love about eating and laughing with a community of people you care about?
On Ash Wednesday we are marked with ashes as we remember that we are sinners, and that we will all die. We meet to begin a time of fasting and repentance. We re-evaluate our lives. We seek to turn to God in all parts of our lives, and so we look to see if we have turned away from God in any way. We seek God’s mercy to help us become unstuck in any place that we may have become stuck. … For a lot of people, Lent can feel depressing. … Lent can feel like going to the doctor for a check-up. And you know the doctor is going to tell you think like you should have less salt, and less junk food, and exercise a bit more.
It can be hard for Ash Wednesday to compete with Shrove Tuesday.
Today can feel like a bit of a trick. We come in, and it feels like a celebration. Jesus is arriving in Jerusalem. We are waving Palm branches. Jesus is being welcomed as the Messiah. … Suddenly, Jesus is betrayed, arrested, rejected by the crowds, and killed on a cross. … We came for a party, but suddenly it’s a funeral. The pancakes have been pulled away and ashes have been thrust onto our foreheads.
There was a time when Palm Sunday had its own Sunday. But then, as our society changed, the Passion was added to it because people weren’t showing up for Holy week services. That means they would come for the celebration of Palm Sunday, then they would come the next Sunday for Easter Sunday, without liturgically recognizing the betrayal, arrest, crucifixion, and burial that happened in-between. … I know a preacher who says that we should use a punch card and you can only come to the Easter service if you have been to the Good Friday service, at least. …
We have an understandable aversion to the negative, but this is a part of life. We have birthday parties, but we also have funerals. And there is something unhealthy about only attending the birthday parties and refusing to attend the funerals. Life includes both, and to really be attentive to life, it is important that we are attentive to both.
Today has these realities bound together. Palm/Passion Sunday is a kind of summary of, and preparation for, Holy Week. Today we are prepared for the drama of the last days of Jesus before the cross, and we are invited into that reality. We are invited to find ourselves among the crowds, and to relate to the various characters who appear. The drama of Holy week begins with Jesus entering into Jerusalem for the Passover.
When Jesus entered Jerusalem, he received the welcome of a king. Most of us have seen this on TV, or have been a part of these kinds of welcomes for people like The Late Queen Elizabeth ll. There are people lined up all along the streets. They are waving flags and holding up signs. Some bring flowers to give.
The crowds welcome Jesus into the city as royalty. But this is even bigger. The Roman Empire was occupying their land. They were under the thumb of Pagan rulers- Just as their ancestors were under the thumbs of empires like Assyria and Babylon. … Their king, King Herod, was a kind of puppet king put in power by Rome. There was a broad feeling that the Temple leadership had become corrupt. There were some who felt that they never really left the Babylonian Exile. They were still in a kind of exile.
The crowd is welcoming Jesus as the Messiah. In the minds of most people the messiah would be a king like King David who would remove the corrupt leadership, unify the country, and free them from Roman occupation. The Messiah would usher in a new Golden Age for their nation.
To welcome him they laid their cloaks on the ground, which was a sign of loyalty and dedication. This was done in 2 Kings for King Jehu who destroyed the evil King Ahab. Ahab was turning the people to the worship of Ba’al, the god of his wife Jezebel (2 Kings 9:13). …
In the books of the Maccabees, we read about Jewish leaders who stood against invading Pagan Greek forces to regain their freedom and restore Jewish Temple worship. At one point, a statue of Zeus was actually placed in the Holy of Holies. In these books we read about the crowds waving tree branches in celebration of a leader and laying them on the ground (1 Macc 13:51; 2 Macc 10:7).
So, they welcome Jesus as a king, in the way that they welcomed other kings who removed evil forces. … And he comes on a donkey. … Jesus is very purposely fulfilling a prophesy about the messiah, which we read about in Zechariah (Zech 9:9). … The Messiah is called the Son of David, and another son of David, Solomon, came to the city on a donkey when he was anointed king to succeed his father (1 Kings 1:32-40). So, Jesus is symbolically declaring that he is the Messiah that they have been waiting for. And this is happening during Passover, the celebration of release from slavery, and the city is full of pilgrims who have gathered to celebrate.
A helpful way to enter Holy week is to see ourselves in the drama of Jesus’ last days. The crowd joyfully welcomes Jesus. We too, joyfully welcome Jesus. … But, we see the crowd shift. … We are happy to welcome Jesus when he matches our expectations. But we might be less welcoming when we see that he isn’t exactly who we were expecting. Maybe he is asking something of us we don’t want to give. Maybe he’s challenging us to change. Maybe he’s pointing out something in our life that isn’t in accord with the Kingdom of God. … Or maybe we are the kind of person that just goes along with the crowd. Whatever the people around us think, we just absorb like a sponge. We get caught up in what is going on around us. Maybe we adopt the values of those around us, and we compare our goodness to others in the crowd, rather than to the standard Christ gave us. … Perhaps we can see ourselves in the crowds.
The drama shifts as we turn to the Gospel reading.
Perhaps we have the honesty to see ourselves as Judas. Perhaps we have betrayed our Lord for wealth. Perhaps we have left behind the principles our Lord taught us in order to be a little more financially prosperous. … Though, maybe greed wasn’t our temptation. Maybe some other sin led us to betray the one we called “Lord”.
Maybe we feel more like Peter. We are bold in declaring our loyalty to Christ, but when it comes time to prove it, we back away. Maybe we had opportunities to share our faith, but we backed away. Maybe someone was speaking negatively about Christ and we stayed silent.
Maybe we see ourselves in the disciples who fell asleep. In the time when Christ has asked us to be most diligent- most committed to him- most awake, … we find ourselves drifting away into unawareness. We don’t take his words seriously. And when the Lord looks for mature disciples ready to stand beside him, he finds us asleep.
Maybe we can see ourselves in the women who watched the crucifixion from a distance. Our love draws us to stay near the beloved. Maybe, like Mary Magdalene, we experienced Jesus cast darkness out of us, too. And there is nothing that will get between us being present to the one we love. Even if there is nothing we can do to stop it, we refuse to allow Jesus to be alone in his suffering, even though it means being present to a horrifying act. Maybe you are present for the moment his body is taken down from the cross and placed in the tomb. … Perhaps your deep love leads you to be in places of deep pain.
This Holy Week I encourage you to find yourself in the characters of this holy drama, among its sinners and saints. See yourself among the crowds. See yourself anointing Jesus with perfume. See yourself as the betrayer, and the denier. See yourself as the sleeping disciple, and as the disciple swinging a sword to stop his arrest. See yourself as Pilate trying to decide between what is right and what is easy. See yourself as Joseph of Arimathea as you risk exposing yourself to friends and colleagues as his follower. See yourself as Mary weeping outside his tomb. … Enter into this holy drama, and see where God leads you. AMEN
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