Sunday, April 10, 2022
/Lent
Luke 23:1-49
The Rev. Cn. Joann Saylors
When my niece and nephew were little, they were like most children when it came to their birthdays. They would look forward to their birthdays for months, planning the theme, the location, the guest list. And of course, the most important thing: what presents to ask for? They would go back and forth, influenced by their friends, their parents, commercials. Throughout the process the excitement would continue to grow. The topic of the birthday gift worked its way into the conversation about five times a week. Anticipation would build and build, reaching a nearly unbearable pitch by the time the birthday finally arrived. The opening of gifts flew by in an instant. It was THE BEST PARTY EVER and I GOT EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED.
But then the letdown. That present looked a lot better in the commercial than it does in real life. Putting 11,000 Lego pieces together takes concentration and patience, and that’s not fun at all. The toy doesn’t work the way it was supposed to. Another friend got something newer or bigger. Whatever the reason, the gift they received didn’t match their expectations, and they’d failed to see it coming. Massive disappointment, and tossing the gift aside as the insatiable desire for the next present, the one that really will be perfect, started to grow.
How quickly they go from celebration to despair and anger. The same jarring leap that I feel myself make every Palm Sunday. As Fleming Rutledge, an Episcopal priest and renowned preacher, put it, “We start out in gala mood; Palm Sunday is always a crowd-pleaser. The festivity of the triumphal procession, the stirring music, the palm branches, the repeated hosannas all suggest a general air of celebration. It comes as a shock to us, year after year, to find ourselves abruptly plunged into the solemn, overwhelmingly long dramatic reading of the Passion narrative. It’s a tough Sunday. It begins in triumph and ends in catastrophe.”[1]
It's that movement we get from our readings, the jump from “Hosanna”s for Palm Sunday to “Crucify Him!” in the Passion narrative.
The people of Israel had been waiting so very long for the promised Messiah. The pilgrims coming to town with Jesus were singing the so-called Hallel psalms, the ‘let’s go up to Zion’ songs, kind of like the songs my family used to sing while we hiked — ‘Heigh ho, heigh ho, it's off to work we go’. The Hallel psalms are full of Hosannas which means, “God saves,” and Hallelujahs which means, “praise Yahweh.” They are ancient praise songs, and the pilgrims would have sung them whether Jesus was coming into town with them or not. The line ‘blessed is he who comes (to Jerusalem) in the name of the Lord’ was what the pilgrims sang about and to each other every time they went up to Zion.
But this time the songs were especially meaningful because THIS TIME their king really had come to town. This time the ultimate son of David really had arrived. All the talking and planning and waiting and anticipating was done, the King of Kings was riding into Jerusalem, and things were finally going to change.
But they didn't understand that God's plan wasn't going to unfold in the way they thought it would. I wonder how they didn't realize something was awry. Pilate was riding into town at the same time, on a great white steed, in a glorious Imperial procession. That was how the rulers traveled – with great pomp and circumstance. So how could the crowds not see how far their expectations for Jesus were from reality? How could they not notice that this messiah, this one coming in the name of the Lord, was riding on a donkey, just a colt? It would have been – should have been – ridiculous. But no one saw. No one realized that the gift they thought they wanted, a savior, would turn the world upside down not by military might but by hanging on a cross, They didn't realize because they failed to see.
Those who shouted “Hosanna” should have seen, but they did not, at least not most of them. By Friday, the image of the lowly donkey had faded, if it had ever registered at all.
If this gift wasn’t what we thought we wanted, if Jesus wasn’t the sort of superhero leader we expected,
if we couldn’t make him work the way we wanted to, we’d simply toss him aside. “Crucify him!” It’s easy for us to look back at the crowd and shake our heads, but we would have done the same. We do the same. We shout both lines today, because we are no different from the crowds gathered in Jerusalem. We want clear and believable demonstrations of God’s power and kingly authority. We want God to act in ways we expect, in ways we can control.
God acts – decisively and finally – by coming into the world, but he comes as a helpless baby who grows up to be killed on a cross. That messiah looked a lot better in the commercial than it does in real life. Following him takes concentration and patience, and that’s not fun at all. Discipleship doesn’t work the way we thought it was supposed to. The world promises lots of somethings that are newer and bigger. Why should we serve this God instead?
We can stay in that place. Disappointed, even angry that God hasn't intervened in the way we think is right. We can turn our eyes away from the messy work that God is doing and dream instead of a God who just rushes in to fix things. We can start looking for the next party, the next magic answer to our problems.But if we do that, we will be disappointed yet again.We can’t go from hosanna to alleluia without this terrible journey between.
Easter is our next party, a time when all possibilities are fresh again and the world is made new. It is meet and right to be people who live in confidence that it will come again. But we're not there yet.
We're here instead, on Palm Sunday, in the confusing space between “Hosanna” and “Crucify him!” As we travel with Jesus through Holy Week, my prayer is for us to stay here, to see Jesus as he really is instead of limiting him to who we would have him be. In his life and death, Jesus worked outside the margins of what was comfortable for people, calling his followers to step outside of our own comfort zones.
And in this uncomfortable week we meet Jesus who is abandoned and betrayed. And Jesus who prays at the Mount of Olives that he might be delivered. Jesus who above all prays to obey his Father’s will. Jesus who is beaten and blindfolded, condemned and mocked. Jesus who forgives his tormentors. Jesus who forgives us for how we have wronged him.
When we know that Jesus, and commit to following him anyway, we walk with our Savior to the cross and beyond. Which is where true joy will be found. Because it is only when we live as Jesus lived and die to self as Jesus died, in the service of others, that our deep longing for God can be fulfilled and our disappointment in everything else put aside like so many torn scraps of wrapping paper.
After the darkness and the pain, the light will come again. And we can enjoy the party, grateful for this gift we have been given.
AMEN.
[1]Fleming Rutledge, “The New World Order,” in The Undoing of Death, Wm. B. Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, MI, 2002, 11.