Ok, this ended up being a whole sermon, basically, although I had aimed for it to be about half as long and just to kind of set up and explain the swing in our worship between the palms and passion gospel readings. I think it still does that. Here it is:
This week I’ve been thinking about processions and protests – the incredible good and violent bad crowds can do. On Palm Sunday we find ourselves in the middle of both – our worship opened hearing the stories of crowds who welcomed Jesus as Messiah. But our worship closes with other crowds that shout “crucify.”
When you flick on the tv or scroll by “breaking news,” and see a gathered crowd, I wonder if for even a split second there’s a stress response that rises in your throat and down your limbs until you know why that crowd is gathered. If you drive downtown (DC) and see a mass of people, do you feel that surge of anxiety until you know what’s going on, especially after all that has happened in our city this year? I noticed it when I turned on the news this week, saw dark streets of Boulder lined with bystanders and officers – I thought – what’s going on? I realized they were honoring the police officer who died trying to protect in this week’s mass shooting, and was moved by this and the reality of his sacrifice. The same day I listened as one of my best friends who lives in Minneapolis, described how the city is bracing, reliving the trauma of George Floyds’ death as Derek Chauvin’s trial starts this week. A trial. For holy week.
Maybe this happens every year, but the news ties in almost too well to the drama and reality of the Holy Week scriptures. Take the example of two much smaller crowds. In Georgia a small crowd of white men gathered behind their governor signing a bill which in part, forbids giving food and water to people waiting in line to vote. In Virginia, a more diverse crowd, some visibly emotional, gathered behind their governor to sign the abolition of the death penalty – just in time for holy week.
I’m planning gatherings, processions for holy week worship and a wedding, all full of life and celebration, things I love to do, and yet limited and small because this pandemic still looms. I have celebrated the news of so many of you getting vaccinated – hooray!! And a seminary classmate who’s my age was hospitalized this week from the virus.
When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the crowds packed in because it was time for Passover – not just to see him. Picture it thick as tourists in the tidal basin for cherry blossoms. And probably some of those in the crowd got caught up – asking the person next to them – who’s this? Jesus from where? He has done signs and wonders you say? Huh – glad I was here for this! Do I join the crowd shouting? If they shout “Hosanna, or crucify?” If I do, am I agreeing with everything the crowd does? Will I be called out later for being a part of this crowd? Do I believe what they say about him? Does it matter?
Debie Thomas writes “If there’s a single day in the [church] calendar that illustrates the dissonance at the heart of our faith, it’s Palm Sunday. More than any other, this festive, ominous, and complicated day of palm fronds and hosanna warns us that paradoxes we might not like or want are woven right into the fabric of Christianity. God on a donkey. [Life through death.] A suffering king. Good Friday[?]
“These paradoxes are what give Jesus’s story its shape, weight, and texture. On good days, I understand that these paradoxes are precisely what grant my religion its credibility. If I live in a world that’s full of pain, mystery, and contradiction, then I need a religion robust enough to bear the weight of that messy world.”
In reference to Palm Sunday, Frederick Buechner writes this: “Despair and hope. They travel the road to Jerusalem together, as together they travel every road we take — despair at what in our madness we are bringing down on our own heads and hope in Jesus who travels the road with us and for us and who is the only one of us all who is not mad.”
Thanks be to God for Jesus – for these honest, joyful, hard stories, we sit in the middle of, and the promise that they end always with new life. Amen.
A Wideness in God's Mercy 