Palm Sunday; Matthew’s Passion Narrative; St. Paul’s, 4/9/2017

Jim Melnyk: “An Uncomfortable Story”

In a few minutes we will hear the story once again – Matthew’s take on the Passion of our Lord.  It’s not a pretty story.  There’s a certain amount of ugliness about it.  It is not a comforting story.  And although as Christians we believe it has a glorious outcome, we don’t have permission to read it all the way to the end today.  The story ends with the grave.  The story and the hymns we choose to sing today, temper the glory of the Eucharist which foreshadows next Sunday’s joy.

It’s “a strange day.”  “It has two names, two themes, [and] mixed moods.” (Don Armentrout, Synthesis)  It’s been known as both Passion Sunday and Palm Sunday.  But I’m thinking perhaps a better name for this day might be Paradox Sunday because of the extreme shifts in tenor and tempo.  This Paradox Sunday underscores the contradictory realities of the Christian faith and the Kingdom of God – a kingdom “in which the least are the greatest, weakness is strength, and death brings life to all” (Paula Gooder, Sojourners On Line).  Paradox Sunday serves as an entry way into Holy Week – a week where, as theologian Jürgen Moltmann once proclaimed, “God weeps with us so that we may someday laugh” with God (Synthesis).

The paradoxical nature of the day is heightened by the two parades we bear witness to in our liturgy.  The first parade begins for us with the blessing of palms and the proclamations of “hosanna” – which means “save us.”  We recall Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem through streets crowded with those who proclaim Jesus as the “One who comes in the name of the Lord.”  The gospel which we’re about to hear reminds us of a second parade – one that will take place before the week is out.  We call it “The Passion of our Lord,” or, “The Way of the Cross.” It is a death march to a lonely hill outside the city of Jerusalem – a place where under darkened skies Jesus will breathe his last.  In truth it is paradox – it is irony – it is scandalous – that the Messiah of God would die in such a cruel and torturous way.

Even the opening parade is paradoxical.  We call it Jesus’ “Triumphal Entry” into Jerusalem, and many Christians proclaim it as a fulfillment of an ancient prediction; but that causes us to lose the symbolic power of the event.  Theologian Marcus Borg challenges us to see this parade in a different light.  Rather than the triumphal fulfillment of an ancient prediction, Borg says “it was what scholars of the Jewish Bible call a ‘prophetic act,’” much like when Jeremiah smashed a piece of pottery before the priests of Jerusalem to show Israel how the city would be broken and the people taken into exile. (Marcus Borg, Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary, Harper San Francisco, 2006, p231).

           

The so-called Triumphal Entry was actually a prophetic act by Jesus, “based on a passage from the prophets that spoke of a humble king who would enter Jerusalem on the colt of a donkey.  He would be a king of peace,” Borg tells us, “who would banish chariots, warhorses, and battle bows from the land and command peace to the nations (Zech. 9.9-10).  By riding into Jerusalem on a young donkey,” writes Borg, “Jesus enacted his message: the kingdom of God of which [Jesus] spoke was a kingdom of peace, not violence” (Borg, 231-232).

It seems to me that the paradoxical nature of Palm Sunday and Holy Week is troubling for many of us.  Jesus’ gospel message of justice, grace, and love resonates with us.  It’s the Good News we want to experience and know for ourselves and for our world, not the evil of Good Friday – because the ugliness of the crucifixion honestly chills us. 

The revolutionary, anti-imperial entry of Jesus into Jerusalem works for us as long as the demonstration doesn’t touch a part of our lives that is sacred to us.  When the revolutionary aspect of the gospel challenges how we live in this world it becomes uncomfortable – disquieting – perhaps even something to be discounted or ignored.

“What do I need to be saved from anyway?” we may ask.  “What’s so wrong with my life that I should need to be saved?  Isn’t that just the language of all those evangelical Christians who like to beat us over the head with their Bibles?”  Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why many of us gathered here this day may not make it back for the theologically and personally challenging liturgies of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.

           

Listen to the story once again with fresh ears.  Listen with fresh ears to the call for God’s kingdom – God’s community of justice, peace, and love.  Listen with fresh ears for the revolutionary challenge inherent in that call by Jesus.  Listen once again to the reality of brokenness in the human condition and how familiar and perhaps even comfortable the challenges of Herod, Caiaphas and Pilate might sound.  Do their mutterings not sound at least a bit familiar – perhaps even just a tiny bit familiar? 

Listen to the story with the knowledge that the Herods, the High Priests, and the Pilates of this world don’t have the last say.  Our brokenness, and the brokenness of this world - actions like the Palm Sunday church bombings in Egypt earlier today - don’t have the last say.  Death – even the violent death of an innocent man on a cross – doesn’t have the final say.

Walk through this hard week together as the Body of Christ gathered and called as witnesses to God’s love.  Listen with new ears – with fresh ears – as we hear the tale of betrayal and trial – as we experience a Jesus who is both agitated and grieved – who struggles deeply with what will come next.  . 

Gather at the table in the upper room as we wash one another’s feet on Thursday night, experiencing the mystery of Christ’s self-giving and our own sacramental gift of self to one another and to God as well.  Watch with Jesus as he agonizes over the coming storm.  Stand one more time at the foot of the cross and experience the paradox that in the Kingdom of God humility is greatness, weakness is strength, and most of all, that even in death we will find life.  Amen.