Palm Sunday
Paul writes to the Philippians, Let the same mind be in
you that was in Christ Jesus [ 2:5-11]. How amazingly hopeful is Saint
Paul. If only we will let it, the mind of Christ can be in us – it’s you
plural, us plural. Us, a community of Christ. When any given day it is a
challenge to be of one mind in one’s self, imagine what can happen if we, all
of us, were of one mind – and that that mind is the mind of Christ.
We want to imagine his entry into Jerusalem as being
“triumphant,” when in fact, it was so humble as to be almost pitiful and one of
the more satirical moments in recorded human history. The great monarchs of
Israel and Rome would come through the Golden Gate he chooses to enter – the
gate in the ramparts surrounding Jerusalem that legend, dreams, and all hoped,
would one day welcome God’s anointed, God’s messiah. Who was, in fact, imagined
by many to be a mighty warrior who could vanquish the mighty occupation of
Caesar, maintained by those of the Herod family, and a middling functionary of
Rome, Pontius Pilate. Both the Herods and Pilate prided themselves on their
utter brutality in “keeping the peace.” Pilate would not think twice about
slaughtering hundreds of pilgrims at Passover or any one of the other major
festivals. And Matthew has made it clear from the very beginning that Herod
never lost a night’s sleep after slaughtering hundreds if not thousands of
babies, and any parents or relatives who dared get in the way, just to keep the
baby Jesus from any chance of growing up. This is how the story began and must
be how it ends. So the Herods of this world want us to believe.
Here he is, Survivor Jesus, some thirty years later at the
Golden Gate with a rag-tag band of followers at the gate the Emperor uses, on a
mighty white war horse, surrounded by chariots and armed centurions. Instead,
here is Jesus on a donkey, perhaps the same one that bore his mother Mary, the Theotokos,
the Mother of God, to Bethlehem that cold night years ago, still not quite
understanding how she found herself in such a situation – and then having to
host shepherds and traveling magi all night when all she and her baby boy
needed was a good night’s sleep.
At best, his followers were farmers, fishermen, perhaps a
few tradesmen and women. Yes, there were women who, like those who kept the
campfires going and uniforms repaired during our own civil war. These women
were the material and spiritual support for Jesus and all the beggars, the halt
and the lame who made up the bulk of the crowd scattering their very clothing
on the ground, with branches from the nearby trees, before the only one who had
ever seen them for who they really are – beloved children of God. Is it hard
for us to imagine that they included Nicodemus the Pharisee who had visited
Jesus at night so as not to be seen in God’s presence? And of course, the
Samaritan woman who had lived a life of loneliness and ridicule? The man who
had been blind since birth but whom now everyone thought he had been pretending
all along? Poor Lazarus, who had been bound and gagged in a tomb for four long
days? Even some of the many charlatans, fakers, miracle workers, mendicants,
and wandering wise men who were curious to see how this particular wise young
man might fair against the power elites who would themselves want to
interrogate him once inside the mighty city on a hill.
Most of the thousands of pilgrims from all over the ancient
world would pay this traveling caravan little attention, so busy were they
purchasing pigeons and sparrows to sacrifice, and souvenirs to take home to
remind them of the once in a lifetime experience to observe Passover in
Jerusalem. There can be no doubt that the Roman legions garrisoned in the Holy
City on a Hill rounded up as many as they could to send to the jails to meet
their monthly and weekly quotas set by Pilate himself. But of Jesus’s
procession, there were hardly enough to make a spectacle let alone seem the cause
for any serious trouble. No, this was no triumphant affair, but instead, a brilliant
political satire of those who presumed to wield the power of the Empire against
the power of YHWH, the power of Love – love of God and love of neighbor.
This is the love-power many of those in the procession had experienced
with the one riding the slowly moving donkey. Jesus, making his own personal
march to the scaffold. Going into Jerusalem to speak truth, God’s truth, his
Father’s truth, to power. There was always a chance the Empire might be
converted, transformed – but that is a story some nearly 300 years in the
future. Every day, Paul tells us, Jesus “emptied himself, taking the form of
a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he
humbled himself, and became obedient to the point of death--even death
on a cross.” From his emptiness, he gives all he has to all of God’s
people, and now he rides into the jaws of the Empire’s ravenous hunger for more
and more money and power, offering the opportunity one more time for the Empire
to meet those he loved, those who walked beside him, no longer afraid, no
longer alone, and be moved. They walked from all walks of life one more time
into the lion’s den toward the new world, the new kingdom of love.
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
wrote Paul of Tarsus to those early Christians in Philippi, a city named for king
Philip II of Macedon, himself a master warrior and military strategist, who
after his assassination was succeeded by his son, Alexander the Great. There
were those throughout Israel who hoped and prayed Jesus would be like one of
these mighty men of Macedon. No one was prepared for the emptied one, the servant
of all, the humble embodiment of God’s love for all people and all of creation
to be God’s anointed one.
Once inside the gates of the Holy City on a Hill, the story
continued, but did not end there. For the Passion of Jesus for God his Father
and his Passion for others, all others, continues to this day, here and now:
The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew – Matthew
27:11-54…
After the Passion, a period of Silence
O Lord Jesus Christ,
Thou didst not come to the world to be served,
But also surely not to be admired
or in that sense worshiped.
Thou wast the way and the truth –
and it was followers only Thou didst demand.
Arouse us therefore if we have dozed away into this delusion,
Save us from the error off wishing to admire Thee
Instead of being willing to follow Thee
And resemble Thee.
-
Soren Kiekegaard (1813-1855), Training in
Christianity
Amen.
Let us sing Hymn 439
What wondrous love is this, O my
soul
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