What Do We Do?

Palm Sunday 2018 – Introduction to The Passion According to Mark 

St. Paul’s, Smithfield Jim Melnyk: "What Do We Do?"

What do we do with a Sunday like Palm Sunday?  It starts with the air of a festival – cheering crowds lining the streets and shouting their “hosannas” as Jesus rides into Jerusalem.  Even if the people were to stop shouting, Jesus tells the religious leaders who confront him; the very stones along the way would take up the cry. 

What do we do with a Sunday like Palm Sunday – this story like something out of the haunted depths of Stephen King’s mind – a story where, before we finish telling the tale our hero is found beaten, bloodied and hanging on a cross?  What do we do with a hero’s tale gone awry?  What do we do when the party is spoiled – when the guest of honor is dragged away before our very eyes – and we view a fall so great that it shakes the very ground upon which we stand?  What do we do with a Sunday like Palm Sunday?

Our temptation, I believe, is to watch it unfold from afar – like many of Jesus’ disciples who fled on the night of his arrest.  The temptation to hear the story with closed ears – or with what theologian Marcus Borg would call, a “closed heart.”  After all, we’ve heard the story before.  We know how it turns out.  We’ve read the last chapter of the book.  Why invest our emotions yet again?

But there’s something about this story that should give us pause no matter how many times we hear it – perhaps even give us chill bumps, or make the hair on our necks stand on end.  Because, it seems to me, the pattern of the story is so familiar to us – and not just because we’ve read the book or retold the Passion Narrative every year since we were yea tall – but because we’ve seen its reality lived out before our very eyes – sometimes within our very lives.  If we listen with open hearts we see the rhythm of the story all around.

Since the last time we read any version of the Passion there have been fellow parishioners – perhaps even someone sitting next to you this morning – whose lives have changed drastically: a summons to a supervisor’s office and a pink slip – an unexpected phone call from the doctor – a summons from a family member – come home right away, your father, or your mother, your sibling may not make it through the night – or perhaps even a betrayal by a close friend – all realities of life and death.  I think of the line from one of my favorite Sinatra ballads, “That’s life.  That’s what all the people say.  Riding high in April, shot down in May.”  The whiplash of Palm Sunday is often all too real for all too many of us gathered here today.  Oh, what do we do with a Sunday like Palm Sunday?

It is the women in the story who leave us with an example of how to listen with open hearts – those who stand by the cross until the bitter end – who seem to hold on to hope up until the last possible moment – who sit by the tomb as Jesus is buried – it is the women at the cross who first meet the Risen Christ.

We live in a broken world.  Frederick Buechner puts it this way: “God creates the world; the world gets lost…”  God creates the world; the world gets lost… (Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity).  We look at the Bible and we see in the faith stories unfolding before us the image of a God who, to use Buechner’s words, “seeks to restore the world to the glory for which God created it” (ibid).  And in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus we find a way – a roadmap – a pathway that can bring not only each of us – but this “lost” world of ours back into the heart of God.  As forsaken as Jesus may feel as the reality of death overwhelms him – “My God, my God!  Why have you forsaken me?” – God is still present – as God is always present for each of us – for the whole of God’s creation.

What do we do with a Sunday like Palm Sunday?  We stay in the story.  We walk the streets of Jerusalem with Jesus in his final days.  We break bread together and wash one another’s feet – as Jesus commanded we do in remembrance of him.  We stand at the cross with the women who followed Jesus and offer our own lost-ness.  We offer our own brokenness.  We offer our own pain.  We offer our own need for forgiveness and reconciliation – as individuals and as a community that spans not just this church, or this town – but this county – this state – this nation – this world.  And we offer to God all of our hopes and dreams for tomorrow. 

We stand in the midst of the One who gives up his life for the life of the world – the One who reminds us how powerful love can be.  But just as the whole story doesn’t begin with betrayal and arrest – it never ends at the place of the skull.  In the beginning, there was God.  Even when we feel most lost – when we feel most alone – when we feel most abandoned – even when we feel most broken – there is God.  And when the story comes to its final ending – waiting for us – wanting us – embracing us – loving us – and ultimately raising us – there is God.