Come, See, Taste”
Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29 Matthew 21:1-11
A Palm Sunday Sermon by the Reverend Odette Lockwood-Stewart
Ched Myers calls the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem “Political street theater.” Palm Sunday is the most dramatic threshold in the Christian Calendar. Laurel Dykstra describes it this way:
“At Passover, the liberation of slaves is celebrated with a pilgrimage festival to an occupied Jerusalem. Security is high and the situation volatile. In this fraught atmosphere the kingdom movement stages a performance that lampoons the Roman imperial procession. The “king of peace” is not a warrior but a peasant healer who comes riding not a war chariot but a donkey, and crowds fill the streets celebrating an alternative vision. Exciting, dangerous, transformative, participatory, nonviolent – this is street theater at its best. Hosanna!” (Sojourners, March, 2008, p. 49)
Jesus rode into the city on a colt surrounded by the poor, his arrival announcing that there is another way, an alternative vision to “the way things are.” The entrance and procession of the Messiah, the nearness of God-with-us is experienced as a contrast to the entrance and procession of the military and might of the Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate. The Way of Jesus is a reversal of “the way things are.”
When Jesus enters the city crowds shout “Hosanna.” We sing Hosanna as a song of praise ... “Hosanna, Loud Hosanna, the little children sang.” ... It sounds like a song of praise. It feels like a shout of joy. But the Hebrew word “hosa” actually means “Help us! Save us! ... “anna” is a sigh that means “Oh, please.” Hosa –anna ... Hosanna ... means “Help us, please.” It carries a tone of desperation as much as adoration.
A few minutes ago, I asked the children to name ... what in the world needs saving now. Hunger. Homelessness. War. Violence.
The waving of palm branches, is a cry ... “Hosanna” ... “Save! Help ... now ... please!”
The Christian faith has such a dominant “crusading” heritage ... our expectations of what it takes to save ... tend to involve military ... imagery. “War on drugs” ... “War on Terror” “Onward Christian Soldiers, marching as to war...” Take evil on, conquer it, destroy it.” “In the way things are” victory requires strength ... and power ... and certainty.That’s why the paradoxical threshold of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is so crucial.
Come, see, and taste ... not just this day ... but the whole week we call holy. It’s anything but a show of triumphal power, it is the transformation of power through vulnerability and vision and trust.
John Shelby Spong preached a sermon that Lucy Negus shaped into a poem called, “Christpower.” It could have been inspired by a witness to Jesus’ donkey riding entry into a city in turmoil. She wrote,
Look at him!
Look not at his divinity,
But look, rather, at his freedom.
Look not at the exaggerated tales of his power,
But look, rather, as his infinite capacity to give himself away.
...
Stop your frantic search!
Be still and know that this is God:
This love,
This freedom,
This life,
This being;...
(Spong, Jesus for the Non-Religious p. 292)
Palm Sunday ... and Holy Week ... invite us to consider the shocking incongruity of Jesus’ vulnerability and his power ... Jesus’ relinquishment and his victory. Come and see.
Last Thursday I went to Cal’s Graduate School of Journalism to hear E.J. Dionne (Washington Post, NPR, Brookings, Georgetown University). He spoke about his new book Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right. (Described the religious right as a brief historical detour...Heritage Foundation cutting staff in the area of religion, the Institute on Religion and Democracy’s waning influence).
The book’s title, Souled Out, claims that people (including
conservative evangelicals) are tired. Tired of narrowing religious values in the public square to a few politically selected issues that sell out the depth and breadth, the passion and the humility essential to faith and politics.
He quotes the great 20th Century theologian Reinhold Neibuhr who said, “Some of the greatest perils to democracy arise from the fanaticism of moral idealists who are not conscious of the corruption of self-interest.” The soon-to-be former Governor of New York, the current electoral religious postures and political attacks, the arguments now waged before the California Supreme Court, are just some examples of hubris and self-interest.
E. J. Dionne writes, “I conclude that the forms of religious engagement in public life that are rooted in doubt and humility are far more likely to be effective – and far more apt to be just – than approaches rooted in utter assurance and arrogance, in the total identification of a human political agenda with the cause of God.”
This week taste the last shared meal Jesus had with his closest friends ... where he broke bread with them, and shared a cup with them ... and talked about his body that would be broken ... and his blood that would be shed ... and asked them to remember him.
This week come hear the stories of Jesus’ betrayal and abandonment by all of his closest friends... his arrest and trial by officers of the Roman Empire as a political enemy of the state.
This week be there at the cross when he is killed ... be there at sunrise, come and see the tomb that could not contain him ...
This week begins with a donkey ride and threatening street theater, ... and this strange story’s call to passion and humility.
Rebecca Parker begins her poem “Benediction” with these words:
Your gifts
Whatever you discover them to be
Can be used to bless or curse the world.
The mind’s power,
The strength of the hands,
The reaches of the heart,
The gift of speaking, listening, imagining, seeing, waiting.
Any of these can serve to feed the hunger, bind up wounds, welcome the stranger, praise what is sacred, do the work of justice or offer love.
Any of these can draw down the prison door
Hoard bread,
Abandon the poor, obscure what is holy,
Comply with injustice
Or withhold love.
You must answer this question: What will you do with your gifts?
Choose to bless the world.
The choice to bless the world is more than an act of will
A moving forward into the world
With the intention to do good.
It is an act of recognition,
A confession of surprise,
A grateful acknowledgment
That in the midst of a broken world
Unspeakable beauty, grace and mystery abide
There is an embrace of kindness
That encompasses all life,
Even yours....
Hosa ... anna. Hosanna.
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