March 24, 2024 | Rev. Loren McGrail
Let us begin this Holy Week, this Palm Sunday with a blessing of our palms. Please look at your beautiful palm branch as you hear this blessing. Please wave if you feel so moved:
Bless these parade palms, O God of Celebration.
May they remind us of the simple joys of living.
May we remember the excitement that comes with following Christ.
Today we begin a journey that holds within it the fullness of our human story; the highs and lows; the hopes and the fears. In the span of just seven days, we will do it all: we will praise, process/protest, break bread, wash feet, make promises, deny, betray, condemn, abandon, grieve, despair, disbelieve, and then celebrate.
Holy week begins in Jerusalem during the beginning of Pesach, Passover, when everyone who could make it pilgrimages to Jerusalem to remember their history of being liberated and saved. The city swelled from 20,000 up to 100,000. These Jewish pilgrims come to pray that God will come again to restore prosperity to God’s people being occupied and crucified.
Jesus knew full well the spirit of this feast and this longing. He also knew full well that he would be cheered and then betrayed. The enthusiastic crowds sang out Hosanna, ‘Save us Now’, with both joyous expectation and desperation that the Messiah had finally come to rescue his people from imperial power and a brutal occupation.
The hope was that he would ignite a violent insurgency against Roman tyranny and Temple collaboration. The palm branches are symbols of victory after a military engagement. It’s a scene of jubilation; full of shouting including street theater like the conquering king riding in on a donkey while the Roman representative, Pontius Pilate, across town rode in on a war chariot through West Gate. There were two processions that fateful day.
In the beginning the crowds who had been singing Hosanna, “Save us” acted like they knew who he was or rather they acted like a people ready to be saved by a victorious king. They missed the symbolism of the donkey not a white steed, and so do most of us.
Furthermore, most importantly, most of us don’t want a Jesus who has come to turn over our lives, who calls us out of our comfortable hiding places, or who will test and judge us. And truth be told, we Protestants prefer a Jesus who is light on the Passion Story, light on all that blood and suffering. We would prefer to go from the joy of Palm Sunday right to a celebration of “He is Risen.” For many of us, it is easier to decorate our cross then to carry it.
Furthermore, we don’t really want to hear about that event in the Temple when he turned over the tables and threw out the money changers; how we too have become complicit with the powers and principalities of our day who continue to squeeze and oppress the poor and marginalized. We are aghast at what our political leaders are doing a when they pass legislation that restrict women’s reproductive rights or trans and nonbinary youth’s rights to health care. We see it. We lament. We are enraged or numb with pain at looking at children being starved to death in Gaza.
Dear Ones, the stones are crying out still. They are crying out in praise of love, in defiance of injustice, and in mourning for God’s creation. I would like you now to take the stones you picked up and feel their weight in the palm of your hands. Now take the marker and name one thing you wish to praise in the name of love. On the other stone, write an injustice that needs to be heard or addressed. Bring them to our table and lay them at the foot of our cross.
Now let us join Jesus, who has come to disturb the peace and challenge the status quo. No justice. No peace. Jesus is weeping because we still have not learned the things that make for peace. Jesus, the greatest peacemaker will confront imperial injustice, rejection, torture, betrayal, and finally execution in the holy spirit of nonviolence. Are we ready to follow this Messiah?
On the path down the Mount of Olives about half- way down there is a Franciscan church made in the shape of a tear called Dominus Fleuvet Church because it is believed to be the spot where Jesus looked out over the city and wept. That view from the church was one of my favorite holy sites as I could imagine him pausing here and weeping not for his fate to come but for our continued lack of understanding about what makes for peace. And so, as it was then, and it is true today.
I invite you to reflect on these lyrics from Father Richard Garland in his hymn He Stood Before the City and imagine the scene:
He stood before the city and wept at what he saw.
He came with holy vision that moved beyond the law.
He prayed that all people would know what makes for peace
And welcome faithful prophets; to find in them release.
He comes and stands among us, still weeps for what he sees.
The hungry and the homeless, the wars and refugees,
the misused wealth and riches, exploited earth and seas.
He call us to repentance. He calls us to our knees.
This Palm Sunday there will be very few Palestinian pilgrims or tourists walking down the Mount of Olives. Palestinian Christians, including our partners, are living the Via Dolorosa now with increased settler violence in the occupied West Bank and the new death toll in Gaza now around 31,000 and this does not include those still under the rubble or children slowing starving to death.
Dear Ones, we are not excused from our spiritual call to accompany Jesus all the way to the cross. The Passion Story of Jesus’ betrayal and suffering still calls us to throw our coats on the ground, to wave our palms, and sing Hosanna today, “Blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord (Psalm 118).” However, it is not only our coats and palms that we must spread under Christ’s feet but our very selves.
Palm Sunday reminds us that we are invited not only to sing and shout or even just listen; we are called now to accompany all whose lives have become constricted, restricted, or targeted--- everywhere even in our own community.
We are called to stay awake and pray for each other and the planet we are destroying. Soon we will be summoned to bear his heavy cross by choosing to live in compassion with those suffering and dying. So, wave your palms, Dear Ones. Listen to the stones crying out, allow your tears to mix with His. Then let us accompany Him all the way down to Sunday’s uprising. Let us remember that in a suffering world only a suffering God is believable.