Palm Sunday
April 5, 2020
Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29; Matthew 21:1-11
I don’t know about you, but it seems weird to celebrate
Palm Sunday today. Lent during this time apart, yes. This pandemic has Lent
written all over it, more than any other season of the church year. But we know
that this pandemic isn’t reaching Easter yet. We know that things are expected
to continue to get worse. We haven’t peaked yet. We know Good Friday is coming
and we don’t know whether or not Easter will be just a mere three days around
the corner. So Good Friday, yes, we’re ready for Good Friday. We’re already
holding vigil in each of our homes, waiting – waiting for good news, waiting
for bad news, waiting for the stone to be rolled away and to be allowed back in
public places again. We’re waiting and holding vigil. Yet Holy Week kicks off
with Palm Sunday. It begins with this celebration of Jesus’ triumphal entry
into Jerusalem. And while the calendar says Palm Sunday, you may not be
*feeling* Palm Sunday today. (If we were in person I’d look to see how many of
you are nodding your heads in agreement. I miss the feedback of reading your
body language while I preach!) We know from last week that there’s a time to
celebrate and a time to mourn. Traditionally, Palm Sunday is a time to
celebrate, but we’re in a very different Palm Sunday than we’ve ever been in
before.
The good news is that even if we haven’t been here
before, Jesus has. Jesus is familiar with paradox. Jesus knows about holding
two opposite feelings in tension at the same time. He knows about celebrating
when it’s time to celebrate, even while knowing that a time to mourn is coming.
When Jesus tells his disciples about going to Jerusalem, he doesn’t tell them
about the festal procession and riding a donkey part. He tells them about being
handed over to the authorities who will give him the death sentence and that
three days later he will be raised to life.
It makes you wonder how the disciples reacted to the Palm
Sunday celebration. How did they feel during all this? They knew Jesus was
coming to Jerusalem expecting to die. So were they excited about this welcoming
parade? Did they wonder if maybe what Jesus said wasn’t actually going to happen?
Yet they had to know it would. They’d been with Jesus too long to doubt that
what he said was going to come to pass. How did they hold in tension the
excitement of the parade and the welcome reception with what they knew was
coming? I expect they didn’t do any better than the city of Jerusalem did. We
read that “When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred.”[1]
Other translations say that Jerusalem was in turmoil, shaken, moved, trembling,
in an uproar, confused, and excited. Jerusalem was not at peace.
Jerusalem was not at peace because there were two
processions that day. Biblical scholars Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan
describe them by contrasting them: “One was a peasant procession, the other an
imperial procession. From the east, Jesus rode a donkey down the Mount of
Olives, cheered by his followers. Jesus was from the peasant village of
Nazareth, his message was about the kingdom of God, and his followers came from
the peasant class. They had journeyed to Jerusalem from Galilee, about a
hundred miles to the north… On the opposite side of the city, from the west,
Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Idumea, Judea, and Samaria, entered
Jerusalem at the head of a column of imperial cavalry and soldiers. Jesus’s
procession proclaimed the kingdom of God; Pilate’s proclaimed the power of the
empire. The two processions embody the central conflict of the week that led to
Jesus’s crucifixion.”[2]
That first Palm Sunday was celebration in the midst of conflict. It was
celebration even while knowing that hard times were coming.
It reminds me of the “Doctor Who” TV show Christmas special
from 2011 entitled “The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe.” Dr. Who travels to World War II London and
befriends a family whose dad is away fighting in the war. The mom has just received notice that he was
killed in the line of duty, but she does not want to tell her children yet
because she doesn’t want them to associate this memory with Christmas. Dr. Who talks with her about her inner
turmoil as to whether or not to tell the kids yet. And he says, “…every time you see them happy,
you remember how sad they’re going to be, and it breaks your heart. Because what’s the point in them being happy
now if they’re going to be sad later?
…The answer is, of course, because they are going to be sad later.”
Jesus is part of this parade on Sunday, where crowds are shouting “Hosanna!” He
knows that by Friday those same crowds will be shouting “Crucify him!” Jesus
knows that we can celebrate now because we are going to be sad later.
The psalms are a wonderful place to find these different
emotions held in tension. Part of Psalm 118 is the assigned psalm for Palm
Sunday, and it’s easy to see why. “Open for me the gates of the righteous; I
will enter and give thanks to the Lord. This is the gate of the Lord through
which the righteous may enter.”[3]
Jesus enters the city gates to Jerusalem. Then the line that the crowds quote:
“Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”[4]
Finally, there’s the instruction in verse 27 to “Bind the festal procession
with branches, up to the horns of the altar.” There are all kinds of joyful
references to the celebration of Palm Sunday! Yet we know that there’s another
side to Palm Sunday. Where does that come in? It comes in the missing verses.
You may have noticed we read verses 1 and 2, and then 19-29. Verse 5, 6, and 7
of the same psalm says, “Out of my distress I called on the Lord; the Lord
answered me and set me in a broad place. With the Lord on my side I do not
fear. What can mortals do to me?” Or, with the Lord on my side, I do not fear; what
can a virus do to me? My soul, my
life, my times belong to Jesus. “The Lord is on my side to help me; I shall
look in triumph on my enemies,” on my fears, on my anxieties. There is actually
lament included in this psalm of thanksgiving. It’s not either/or. It’s
both/and.
I was also reminded of a psalm that recognizes that it
can be hard to shout Hosanna in some circumstances. Psalm 137 was written
during the exile in Babylon. It begins, “By the rivers of Babylon we sat and
wept when we remembered Zion (Israel). There on the poplars we hung our harps,
for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
they said, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’ How can we sing the songs of the
Lord while in a foreign land?” We have been grieving the loss of our usual way
of life. In a way, we are in exile. There are a lot of things we can’t do right
now. So, if you’re not feeling Palm Sunday celebration that could be why. How
can we sing a song praising God from exile? My daily devotional yesterday
paired Psalm 137 with Psalm 144. Psalm 144 is one of six psalms that say “I
will sing a new song to the Lord.”[5]
The book of Revelation also talks about singing a new song. When this time is
over, we’re not going to be singing the same song. We’re going to be singing a
new song.
You see, we are in a time of being transformed. The new
is not going to look like the old. Life after COVID-19 is not going to be the
same as life before. We are in the refiner’s fire. We are being pruned and
reshaped. God is doing something new, deep within us, if we are willing. There
is movement during Holy Week. The crowds shifted from shouting “Hosanna!” to
shouting “Crucify!” The procession moved from the street to entering the temple.
Jesus was welcomed on Sunday and betrayed on Thursday. Jesus was “the stone the
builders rejected [that] became the chief cornerstone,”[6]
from rejected to essential. Jesus himself moves from death on Friday to
resurrection on Sunday. The psalmist, and us, move from feeling distant from God
to experiencing God’s presence. We are in that in-between time, now more than
ever. The lessons learned here are supremely important. We’ve learned about how
the arts are essential to our well-being, with many artists offering their
music and skills to us. There have been concerts on TV and on YouTube. The art
teacher from Lisbon Elementary School is doing art class on Facebook Live at 10
a.m. on weekdays, as is Mo Willems, the author and illustrator of the Gerald
and Piggy books, for those familiar with children’s literature. We’ve learned
about how many hourly wage jobs are vital to running our grocery stores and
home delivery services. We’ve learned where the weaknesses are in our national
infrastructure.
While our Lenten series on Busy and Reconnecting with an
Unhurried God fared us well this year as we were forced to slow down and change
our way of living, today’s theme doesn’t fit as well. It was called “Give It a
Rest” and about telling the status quo to give it a rest. The status quo for
Pontius Pilate and the authorities in Jerusalem was all about control, money,
and power. Demonstrating that the status quo in God’s kingdom is radically
different is what made Jesus such a threat to the authorities. The last will be
first. God should be first in your life, not country or money. Jesus kept
turning things upside down and shifted the thinking about what was truly
important. People, not profit. Healing, not strict rule-keeping. Compassion,
not military strength. Connecting, not appearances. To the status quo, Jesus said,
“Give it a rest. Give them a rest.” The Coronavirus has made it much more
obvious who is suffering because we as a country have clung so tightly to the
profitable bottom line. To end our Lenten series on Busy, some things need to
be told, “give it a rest.” And that is part of what’s making us uncomfortable.
It’s not just that we’re cooped up in our houses, with or without our loved
ones, normal daily activities suspended; we also know life is changing. During
this in-between time, may we be able to celebrate when it’s time to celebrate.
May we remember the lessons learned in the fire when we’re on the other side. May
we continue to sing the Lord’s song, whether upbeat or a dirge, because Jesus
knew both. May we remember to sing to the Lord a new song for the One who is
our shield and fortress, a very present help in times of trouble, who is on our
side delivering us from our fears.
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