April 5, 2020
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Palm Sunday - Year A
The Rev. Bradley Varnell
Crowds greet Jesus today as he enters Jerusalem. They find branches and cloaks to lay in his path, and they sing and shout and cheer, they greet him with “Hosanna to the Son of David, blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” The crowds are ecstatic to see Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth, coming into Jerusalem.
I can’t help but think of how different today, the start of Holy Week is, from the end of Holy Week. Over the course of this week, as the crowd that greeted Jesus sees what it means for Jesus to be king, as they see the risk that is involved in claiming allegiance to Jesus, as they witness firsthand what happens when the Kingdom of Jesus meets the kingdoms of Herod, Pilate, and powers in charge of this world, the crowd starts to thin out. Eventually, even Jesus’s closest friends and followers leave him until he dies all-but alone on Good Friday – with only his mother and John the Beloved Disciple keeping watch at the cross.
The crowds begin to thin as they realize that Jesus isn’t the kind of king they expected or wanted. This happens with a lot of movements: there’s an incredible amount of passion and energy at the start, at the promise, at the hope – but as reality sets in things begin to fizzle. The crowds wanted Jesus when it meant was waving branches and singing songs, but the crowd didn’t want Jesus when things got hard, when all hope seemed lost, when Jesus didn’t act like or look like a king should.
Now, it’s not that the crowds were especially wicked people – they were simply realists. They read the writing on the wall. They knew what it meant for someone to be handed over to death on a cross, it meant the entire power of the Roman Empire was going to kill them and make an example out of them. Jesus was going to be hung up as an example to anyone who would be silly enough to think they were a king. The crowds that welcomed Jesus knew that victorious kings don’t get killed. Jesus didn’t meet their expectations, so the crowds moved on.
We have the same temptation: the temptation to move on when Jesus doesn’t meet our expectations, when Jesus doesn’t act in the way we think Jesus should. We have our boxes, and when Jesus doesn’t fit in them or stay in them, we find fault with him and go on our way.
Jesus challenges us and our expectations. Will we accept Jesus on his terms, in his way, or will we try and fit Jesus into our box? The church, for 2,000 years, has done a marvelous job of putting Jesus into all sorts of boxes, of trying to stifle him, of making him into a mascot. But God can’t be trapped – and Jesus, despite our best attempts, is still alive, still at work, still willing to be our king if we’re willing to let him define the terms. The crowds abandoned Jesus as Holy Week drug on because they were limited by the box they put Jesus in. According to their box, the dead don’t rise again, killed kings aren’t victorious, death is the end. But Jesus doesn’t fit into that box.
As we begin what is undoubtedly the most interesting Holy Week I have ever experienced, I hope we will keep our eyes open to the ways in which Jesus is breaking out of our boxes, and inviting us to know him on his own terms, not on ours. If we are going to follow Jesus, we have to give up some control, we have to let go of what how we think Jesus will act, and open ourselves up to the possibility that God is still at work, even when everything seems to the contrary. Rowan Williams puts its beautifully when he write “God is not at the end of his resources, when we are at the end of ours.”
Holy Week invites us to re-familiarize ourselves with the central events in the history of our salvation. We are invited to re-hear the story of Jesus’ victory over death and the grave, of the ways in which he has defeated sin through the power of his cross. We are invited to become reacquainted with Jesus Christ, the king who surprises us. We are invited to stick with Christ, to let get of our expectations, and wait to see what Jesus is up to. Amen.