Palm Sunday

 

Matthew 21:2-11

Today is Palm Sunday.  The first day of Holy Week.  Today is the day that stands as bridge between the season of Lent and the deeper parts of Holy Week.  And this year, you will notice that things are just a bit different.  Usually, the Palm parts of Palm Sunday are only a few minutes long, with the day shifting pretty quickly away from the festivity of the Palm procession to the reading of the Passion story which we also usually do on this day.  Shouts of ‘Hosanna’ turn quickly to shouts of ‘Crucify Him’.  But in this our season in the wilderness, we are going to take things a little bit slower this year.  Because the Palms are important too.  The path out of the wilderness is nearly as important as where it ultimately leads.  And so, we are joining our friends in Massachusetts and in other Episcopal congregations around the country in participating in the trial use of a new Palm Sunday liturgy which moves the traditional reading of the Passion to the end.  Giving us ample time to dwell with the story of the Triumphal Entry while still ushering us meaningfully in to Holy Week and Jesus’s Passion.  And one of the great bonuses of this new configuration, is that I actually get to preach about the Palm part of Palm Sunday, which is a rare and exciting treat because this story is great and important and often overlooked.

Now, in order to understand what is happening in this story, you really have to understand something about Roman culture in Jesus’s time.  And that was that the Romans loved a parade.  They were huge fans of big military processions, marching formations, parades and spectacles of all sorts in honor of their major generals and politicians and officials.  It wasn’t uncommon for people like Pontius Pilate or King Herod to travel with hundreds or even thousands of armed soldiers festooned with banners, drummers, trumpeters and all manner of pomp and circumstance every time went anywhere for an official event.  So in the days leading up to a major holiday like Passover, which would have drawn hundreds of thousands of pilgrims into Jerusalem, there probably would have been half a dozen or more large parades coming into the city, all designed to show the massive might of the Roman military machine and its power to control, subdue and destroy if necessary, anything that would stand in its way.

And then, on the other side of the city, here comes Jesus on his donkey.  Escorted by peasants and townsfolk, with nothing but palm branches and cloaks instead of swords and royal banners.  It was the polar opposite of these Roman parades.  And the antithesis of even what most of the Jewish people of the time would have expected from their Messiah.  Because pretty much everyone thought that when the Messiah came, he would be a great military conqueror.  One that would not only rival the Romans but utterly outmatch them.  They were expecting the warhorse and chariot, they were expecting a Roman style victory parade, and that is not what they got. 

But scripture also tells us that not everyone actually agreed on what the Messiah would be like. When Jesus tells his disciples to go fetch the donkey, he quotes the Old Testament book of Zechariah to them.  “ ⁹ Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” Jesus never intended to be a military conqueror.  He always knew what kind of Messiah he would be, one who comes bringing not war but peace, reconciliation and joy.  The exact opposite of Rome.  It was a total reversal of what people expected, but exactly what God had always intended.  Jesus was coming to save the people, not with weapons and armies but with peace and love. 

But make no mistake, this parade, even though it appeared humble and simple was still deeply political, and dangerous.   Palm Sunday is and always has been most fundamentally a protest march.  And like great peaceful protest movements before and after these actions may be humble but they are not weak.  In fact, they have the power to crumble empires and change the world.  Because at its heart, it makes a most dangerous claim.  If Jesus is King, then Caesar is not.  And there is nothing more terrifying to empires that rule by coercion and fear than those who live by love.

And so the people in the crowd that fateful day shouted “Hosanna, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna.”  Now Hosanna is a kind of weird word.  It is one of the few places where Jesus’s native language of Aramaic bleads through into scripture.  It means ‘Save us Lord’.  And it again is deeply political because it is an action word.  Save us Lord.  Do something, change something, Act, Now.  ‘Hosanna’ cannot tolerate the status quo.  They shouted it for Jesus because they knew that this man with his humility, peace and love is what could save them when all the might in the world could not.

And I think that this year, at this moment in our history and in our politics we really need to hear this.  And we need to shout this.  Because it is still true.  No matter what the war machine says about might making right.  No matter who tries to set himself up as king or emperor.  No matter who tells us there wouldn’t be a problem if people just complied.  If Jesus is Lord, then Caesar is not.  And no one else is either. 

And just like the first Palm Sunday, even 2000 years later, Jesus still shows up, humble and riding on a donkey into a world that seems to desire just the opposite.  Yet his love is still true.  His salvation is still sure.  We still shout Hosana because God still saves us, even if it is in new and previously unimaginable ways.  Because in the midst of all the bad news and dire predictions and new restrictions, we still also see examples of the love of Jesus showing up in the most beautiful ways.  In protests, and neighborhood watches and mutual aid, in subtle and unsubtle forms of resistance.  In selfless acts and communities that refuse to turn on each other.  In care and kindness and love for our neighbors, all our neighbors.  Because today we remember that Jesus is Lord. 

And then at the end, with our shouts of Hosana, we have to turn and face the truth.  Because we know where this wilderness road ends, at the cross.  Because we know we serve a king who triumphs only through humiliation and death.  Save us Lord.  But help us know, truly and deeply in our hearts this week that you only save us through the cross.  Amen.