"So What?" Sermon for Palm Sunday, 28 March 2010

Luke 19:28-40
After he had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. 

When he had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, saying, “Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it.’” So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?” They said, “The Lord needs it.” Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying,
    “Blessed is the king

        who comes in the name of the Lord!

     Peace in heaven,

        and glory in the highest heaven!” 



Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”

“Hosanna, heysanna, sanna, sanna, hosanna, heysanna, hosanna.”  I must admit that I like Andrew Lloyd-Weber’s and Tim Rice’s amalgamation of the Palm Sunday story from “Jesus Christ Superstar” quite a bit.  They tie it all together fairly well and maybe give us a sense of what was going on at the time including villains singing the bass part and the hero on the tenor line.

But if we were among the original audience of Luke’s gospel, almost 2,000 years ago, this narrative would also sound very familiar most likely.  But the familiarities would bring with them enough differences to caused a raised eyebrow or two among us. 

It would sound familiar because it was very similar to how a returning general might enter a city and be fêted for his victories.  Triumphal arches would be erected and in fact in Rome, many of these arches still remain.  Troops would march in, crowds would cheer and there in the midst of all this adulation and glory would be the general on his fine steed.  In fact, not that long ago in our country, George Washington would be greeted in such a way.  I’m not certain when the custom went out of favor--maybe with the onset of gasoline vehicles, it just seemed silly to have the general riding in the back of a jeep through an erected arch.  Once the steed was gone, something about the romance of the event disappeared, I suppose.

And so we have Jesus, the itinerant, backwoods preacher, entering Jerusalem today.  We’re all very familiar with this story; we hear it every year from one of the gospels, not to mention the ‘Jesus Christ Superstar” version.  And of course, such familiarity may not necessarily breed contempt but it may breed instead a certain ho-hum factor in the hearing.  We hear this story, today from Luke, and we add in details to make it fit with what we know happened.

But Luke’s account is a little different.  First off, there’s no palms.  Did you notice that?  Not even any branches of any trees.  Just cloaks on the road in front of Jesus.  Second, no one says “hosanna” which is so associated with this story.  Instead, they sing a song about how great Jesus is and call him the “king who comes in the name of the Lord!”  Third, the crowd, if you notice, wasn’t really a group from Jerusalem, but instead the “whole multitude of the disciples”.  Certainly, since Jesus’ ministry to this point had been conducted out in the hinterlands, his disciples would not be residents of Jerusalem but Galileans.  Somehow, that makes it a different narrative from one of the other gospel accounts, doesn’t it?  Or at least the account that’s in our heads.  Additionally, Luke is also the one who adds in the part about the stones crying out if the disciples were quiet, in response to the Pharisees’ complaints about the noise. 

So we have cloaks and songs and disciples and Pharisees complaining and stones potentially crying out and where does that leave us?  Like I said at the start, this sounded familiar to 1st and 2nd century ears but enough of the details are awry to cause some dissonance. 

To Jesus, for whom the Kingdom of Heaven was a primary part of his preaching, being proclaimed and compared to an earthly king coming in the name of the Lord would be an important moment, even if it’s by his disciples, maybe especially if it’s by his disciples who would know him best.

The references are clear though there are enough changes that the original hearers of this tale would get it.  Instead of a fine steed, Jesus is on a colt.  Jesus’ kingdom of heaven is not going to be like earthly realms.  Some of the paintings that were in the slideshow we just saw got it right: Jesus looks almost ridiculous on the small horse.  No fine Arabian for our king--just a simple colt; enough of a similarity to what the crowds would have seen had Jesus been an earthly ruler or conquering general but enough of a difference too in order to pique their interest a little.

And naturally, all this makes the Pharisees nervous; nervous enough that they ask Jesus to calm his disciples down.  This, by the way, is the Pharisees‘ last mention in the book of Luke.  They disappear from here on out not heard from again through the rest of Luke’s narrative of the events of the coming week.

As I struggled to wrestle my thoughts to the mat as I attempted to get ink onto paper...or pixels into letters...I kept asking myself “so what.”  We have a story about Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem that is told, with varying details, in all four of the gospels.  We know that this event, told in this story, is very similar to other events of the time; events likely much more grand and glorious with soldiers and fanfares and horses and yelling crowds.  We know though that there were differences, important differences, between this event and those other grand events.  And I have to ask “so what?”  Where does that leave us?

I think it leaves us back where any good and careful reading of the gospels will leave us; with the recognition that the Realm of God is unlike any earthly kingdom.  In God’s realm, power is inverted: the last shall be first.  In God’s realm, justice reigns supreme, in spite of Glenn Beck and his off kilter pronouncements of late.  In God’s realm, the truly powerful come riding in on a small horse or donkey.

The “so what” of the Palm Sunday story is that the Kingdom of God is here and if we want to be part of it, we can.  We can be citizens of this topsy-turvy kingdom by following the one who is called the Prince of Peace, a title that surely inverts power itself.  We can be part of the adulating crowd that looks forward to a reign of peace and justice if we choose. 

Of course, we would be remiss if we didn’t stop for a moment and recognize that Palm Sunday is the start of what we call Holy Week, when humanity dishes up some of its worst all to the nodding agreement of the powers that be in the world.  God’s realm, this Kingdom of God that the disciples sang about, does not come without cost or ease.  But certainly, this Kingdom turns on its head all expectations of how power is allocated.  For a time, though, at the gate to the capital of an insignificant puppet nation thousands of years ago, God’s kingdom shone forth.