Palm Sunday

My sermon at St. Swithin's Episcopal Church today.

Several years ago, I took scuba diving lessons.  One of my classmates was a member of a group that all went on adventures together – bungee jumping, what have you.  Scuba diving was the latest adventure they all wanted to try.  The last one they tried was skydiving.
My friend told me that skydiving class was very thorough.  They spent many hours in the classroom, learning the equipment inside and out. They learned what forces would be acting on their bodies when they finally took the dive, and how to cope with them.  They learned how to deal with emergencies, what to do if the chute wouldn’t open, and what to do if THAT failed.  Everything they would possibly face was drilled into their heads, and they were as prepared for this as they were for anything in their lives.

Still, he said … the day of the first dive … that walk from their preparation area to the plane was the longest walk of his life.

People of God, we are a pilgrim people, and we are used to long journeys. We come from wanderers.  Abraham was a wandering Aramaen, a stranger in a strange land.  Moses led his people out of Egypt and for forty years in the wilderness.  Six centuries before Christ, the Babylonian kingdom scattered the Jews all over the civilized world, a diaspora that we live with today.  And Christ himself wandered along the map of Judea during his time on earth.

Yet sometimes the most significant journeys of our life don’t have many steps.  When I was a hospital chaplain – and even in my own life – sometimes that journey was only as long as a hospital corridor.  At the end of it was a door.  And you knew when you walked through that door – your life would be changed forever.  Someone was joining your life – someone was leaving your life – it would never be the same.

Sometimes the life-changing journey is only as long as a courthouse hallway – to a room where you are declared guilty, or liable, or simply watch as the judge signs some papers.  And you know all your previous hopes and dreams, and that wonderful day with the flowers and the music, and the vows –is all swept away, and consigned to a file that no one will ever look at again.

This week, this holy week, the greatest week in our calendar – is all about significant events that take place at the end of relatively short journeys -- in and around the precincts of Jerusalem.

Just look at our Gospel reading – from the upper room, to the Mount of Olives just outside of town … then arrest, and taken to the home of the high priest … then to Pilate, then to Herod, back to Pilate, and on to the way of sorrows, the way to the Cross.
In distance, not so far.  In meaning, these journeys contain worlds.

And these small journeys started with the one we remember today, which isn’t even in our Gospel reading.  It’s Christ’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. 
I recommend you to Luke 19: 27-40.  – the disciples commandeer a donkey, and Christ rides into town on its back, to the shouts of the faithful.  (Don’t look for the palms in Luke, tho’ – check the other Gospels!)

Let me digress a little bit on this procession, because it’s a pet subject of mine.  As I get older, the more I study scripture and the more I study the academic books and the church fathers – the more I know, the higher my Christology becomes.

Christology is a $10 theological term about the study of the two natures of Christ – being human, and divine.  The older I get, the more divine Christ becomes.  So if I hear anyone talk too much about “our brother Jesus,” I feel my teeth grind.  In a sense it’s true, but – he’s not my brother.  He’s my Lord.

Anyway, one Palm Sunday many years ago, I was at another church and the preacher was talking, in rolling tones, about “our brother, Jesus,” entering Jerusalem on a humble donkey.  And that just started my teeth grinding, because that wasn’t the whole story.

You see, back in the days of the kingdom of David, the Hebrews hadn’t mastered horsemanship.  Riding was restricted to the royal family, and they rode on donkeys.  Check the books of Samuel and Kings if you don’t believe me.

That’s why Jesus was looking for a donkey to ride into town.  If it was all about displaying his humility alone, he would have walked in, as he’d walked in so many other places.  But arranging to ride in on a donkey was to remind the people of a passage in the prophetic book of Zechariah.   In Chapter 9:9-10, it says:

Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!
Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey; on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off,
And he shall command peace to the nations; his dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.

He was humble, yes – but also a king, a triumphant king, and a king who brings peace. Jesus riding into town on the back of a donkey attracted a crowd who sang Hosannas, because it was a royal entrance, the entrance of the king, the entrance of the Lord.
At the same time, he was not the king they were looking for.

Kosmas Domianades, an Australian Greek Orthodox priest, wrote in one of his sermons:

“The people of Jerusalem expected a lion but received a lamb.  They were expecting a king of war yet He came as a king of peace.  They were expecting a king who would lead the people to rebellion, yet He taught them obedience to God.

They expected to see the blood of their foreign overlords and his enemies, yet he spilt His own upon the cross.  They wanted someone to look up to, yet He lowered his head and let them spit on Him, whip Him, beat Him and torture him. 
They were expecting someone on a large valiant horse, yet he came on a small brown donkey.”

Holy Week is almost a misnomer, because this week is very dark, indeed. 

From the triumph of Palm Sunday, Jesus enters into the week of horror, degradation, and rejection.  He was rejected by the religious authorities, by the Jewish civil authorities, by the occupying authorities, by the people, and by his friends.  In the prayers at the garden on Mt. Olive, it even seems as if he was rejected by God. This path was the risk he took by choosing to live among us as a human – that he would suffer the worst that we are capable of inflicting on each other.

If he knew this might happen, why did he come here?    The answer, simply, is love.  The $20 theological word – and it’s $20, because it’s a Greek word – the Greek word for what Christ did is kenosis – that God emptied himself, limited himself, in order to be able to live among us as one of us.  My explanation – spoken as someone with two special needs children – is that the Incarnation in Christ was God disabling himself in order live with us and love us.

But even in this dark week, God offers the promise of light.  Today’s Gospel reading begins with Jesus establishing the bread and wine as his remembrance.  Even as he has emptied himself, disabled himself, to be one of us and all that entails, he offers us a chance to be one with him.

He says “This is my body, this is my blood.  I offer this to you – even as I share in your human nature, I offer for you to partake of my divinity, to become a part of me.”  Even as he has disabled his full God-ness to become part of the human family, he offers to lift us up, adopt us into his family, his divine family.  And more – in a way that even lets his body become part of ours.

So our week of darkness includes a promise of light to come.  We know that, next week at this time, we will stand in triumph with He who has risen.  This is an old story to us, but it would not have even occurred to the apostles in the upper room.

Jesus took that time of quiet darkness to invite them – even as he invites us – into his story – into God’s story.  And he knew – as they could not, then – that even that last journey to the tomb is not the end of it.  Because God’s story never ends.  And he invites us to be part of it.

Amen.