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Jay Weldon Year A Palm Sunday When I first came to the Episcopal Church, I was uncomfortable with the Palm Sunday liturgy. I already knew the stories, but I didn’t like the role it put me in. I was fine with waving my palm branch as we walked into the church saying, “Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” Those were comfortable words to me, words that came from my heart. I had been called in baptism to turn to him and put my full trust in him. It was the part of the passion narrative in which we cry, “crucify him,” that I didn’t like, words that I still don’t like, words that make me shutter. I wouldn’t have crucified him. I would like to believe I would have been one of the few who stood up for him. I love this man. I like being part of the first crowd, but I don’t like being part of the crowd that yelled for him to be crucified. In this Palm Sunday liturgy and drama, it seems that we become a part of them. We cheer his coming, we cry for his crucifixion, we pray that Jesus will bring us the salvation we have always needed, and we watch as his time passes us by, wondering why it had to happen this way. As we act out this drama of life, we are compelled to become a part of it. First we see the disciples. They have been with him for as long as we can remember. With memories of days by the lakes, the miracles, the signs, they remind us of the kinds of people we always wanted to be, walking proudly into Jerusalem at Jesus’ side to the sounds of cheering and jubilation, until that moment when the shepherd is struck and the flock is scattered. And we wonder why they would sleep through his tears and desert Jesus at the moment of his passion. Then we remember that they are much more like we are than we ever knew. It wasn’t just Judas who deserts the faith from time to time. There by the disciples are the poor. So many of them have been following Jesus since those early days in Galilee. It was so easy for them to get up and follow him when he said, “leave everything behind.” They didn’t really have anything to leave behind. They were the widows, the blind, the deaf, the orphans, the ones that history would forget. But he never seemed to forget them. They were always on his mind, and he was always on theirs. They hoped that he was the messiah, but it didn’t really matter. He was their messiah, their savior. He was more than a politician who took up the cause of the poor; he was one of them. They cheered and waved and cried and climbed trees and believed that, for once, their hope would come true. But as it is with the poor and oppressed and forgotten, their voices are often silenced. They, as we, cannot seem to find a way of preventing this tragedy, of altering the course of history. The passion continues, and there is nothing that they or we can do for Jesus now. “Jesus, remember us when you come into your kingdom.” There are the people of Jerusalem, the ones who hope that this is the messiah, the one who will completely establish the glory of Israel. They are tired of being everyone’s slave. First it was the Egyptians, then the Assyrians, then the Babylonians, and now the Romans. They were tired of being so small and inconsequential, every other nation’s footstool. But all of that would change when God’s anointed one came. The messiah would set up a kingdom that would stand forever, and the people of Israel would never be slaves again. Unfortunately, they, like we, never seem really to understand the kingdom of God. His kingdom was not of this world, and he told us that the key to being great is to live as a servant of God and of all. And like so many of those Jews, we are drawn to Jesus and want him to rule, as long as the Kingdom of God benefits us. We want Jesus to save us, make us prosper, and give us our best life now. And it isn’t really that he doesn’t care about us as God’s beloved children, but he did not just come with a self-help program to make us feel better about ourselves. Yes, he is busy today… reconciling the world to God. There are the Romans. They are foreigners in Israel. They don’t belong. They serve different gods than we do and they are typical of what is wrong with this world. If only everyone would believe as we do, the world would be a better place. They wield power over Israel, killing anyone who stands in the way of the empire, and they tell you it’s a necessary sword. They count Roman deaths in different numbers than those of the local peasants, and there is no remorse in their eyes… until the centurion stands at the foot of the cross and bends the knee of his heart, and we see that they are the same as we are. And maybe that is why… Jesus died to reconcile the entire world to God. There at the center of the stage in this passion play is our friend Jesus, the firstborn of creation, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, the author and finisher of our faith. He seems to go so willingly, and that is what is so beautiful about him. It is the way he so naturally loves and represents the divine, the way of God, that is in each of us. It is his mind, his beautiful mind, that sees the poor and has compassion, that sees God at work in the world, that gives himself utterly and completely to God for us and for all of the world. Of all the players on stage, we have so little in common with him and everything in common with the rest of them. But he is the one with whom we need to have everything in common. St. Paul says that we can, that the same mind—the same beautiful mind—that was in Christ Jesus can be in us. Finally there is the unseen participant. We know that God is there, somewhere. You, watching this drama unfold, not just in Jerusalem, but in us, beholding this human family to which we belong, for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be betrayed, and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer death upon the cross; who now lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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