I'm not preaching today, which is a relief in some ways. I like preaching, but I'm never sure what to do on Palm Sunday. The lectionary has an incredible amount of scripture for today. One set of readings is focused on Jesus' procession into Jerusalem, and the other covers the Passion. (If one read them all, there would be no need for a sermon.) In fact, my lectionary labels today Palm/Passion Sunday.I don't know if this was always the case, or if it developed because of the tendency for modern Christians, especially Protestant ones, not to attend church services on days other than Sunday. And so without some Passion today, many move directly from "Hosanna!" to "Christ is risen!" We know the cross happens somewhere in between, but why dwell on that?
Every year I must decide how much the Passion gets to rain on the Palm Sunday parade, and I've learned from experience not to neglect the Palm part too much. It makes me wonder what the members of Paul's churches thought of his focus on the cross. In his first letter to the Corinthian congregation he says, "But we proclaim Christ crucified..." and just a few verses later, "For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified."
Curious how Paul saw the crucified Christ as good news, but we often view it as "a downer." I once leaned a wooden cross against the manger during Advent. You'd have thought I'd set the communion table on fire. We wear crosses round our necks and we hang them on the walls of our sanctuaries, but for some reason we don't like to pause for long at the cross.
The cross makes no sense without the Resurrection, but the Resurrection becomes triumphant bluster without the cross. Easter is God's affirmation of the cross. It is God's yes to the self giving, self emptying life Jesus leads and calls us to live. Wave the palms. Shout Hosanna! But don't forget why Jesus enters Jerusalem, and don't forget to wonder what it means to follow this sort of king.
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Thank you James.
ReplyDeleteEaster is affirmation and confirmation, but don't we project Jesus as thumbing his nose at death through resurrection? Isn't Jesus mockingly thumbing his nose at imperial rulers, making his grand entrance on a donkey? 'Laughing all the way, hah hah hah.
Jesus mocks and points to the vanity of kings and kingdoms (then and now), but points obliquely to materialism, fear and hate present in the human hearts of onlookers, and in ours; to that which will insure his earthly death: our denial of him.
We want want to have it both ways, but there is only one way.
Hosanna! Save us, (from ourselves).