Sermon: Accidental Parade Goers

Luke 19:28-40; 22:14-23

Accidental Parade Goers

James Sledge                           Palm/Passion                           April 14, 2019

My memory sometimes misleads me, but I recall the Palm Sundays of my childhood being bigger deals they are nowadays. In my childhood church, the palms didn’t have to share billing with the passion. Every year it was a parade from beginning to end. A lot more fun that way, but with a significant downside. The church of my childhood memory rushed from Palm Sunday parade to Easter parade, from celebration to celebration, and it was easy to miss the betrayal, trial, and execution that lay in between.

In one of his letters, the Apostle Paul writes, But we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power and the wisdom of God. For Paul, and for the gospel writers, the cross is absolutely central, but it is more fun to go from one parade to the next.

Each of the gospel writers tell the story of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem slightly differently. Perhaps you noticed that there were no palms at all in Luke’s version. This isn’t because the writers have heard different versions of events but because they are more like preachers than reporters or historians. The gospel writers have slightly different points and emphases for their congregations to hear and so they tell the story differently.

Luke, like all the gospel writers, connects Jesus’ entry to Psalm 118 and to the prophet Zechariah. The prophet speaks of a coming, victorious king who rides in on a colt, and the psalm is a coronation psalm, one that would have been used in Israel’s past when a king ascended to the throne.

In Luke’s telling, an interesting distinction gets made between the parade watchers and Jesus’ actual followers. Luke doesn’t report a crowd, but he does say that people kept spreading their cloaks on the road, which certainly befits a royal procession. But it is the disciples, and not the crowd or people, who begin to shout joyfully from Psalm 118. “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord.”

Some of the Pharisees object to this explicit naming of Jesus as Israel’s messianic king, but Jesus insists that his disciples are correct. Apparently these Pharisees weren’t overly bothered by cloaks spread on the road. They don’t mind celebrating Jesus as a great teacher or healer, but to declare him God’s Messiah, the long awaited king, is too much.

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 When I started on this sermon, I got a little stuck. That often happens to me around Easter and Christmas. The stories are so familiar. What new is there to say? And so I was sitting at my desk, staring off into space, thinking about parades and crowds and disciples, and wondering what they have to do with one another when I recalled a different parade.

Nearly forty years ago, I accidentally found myself at a parade. I was in the midst of a solo motorcycle journey across the country. I think I was somewhere in Minnesota, not too far from the Canadian border, and I happened to enter a quaint, small town, just in time for some sort of celebration. I don’t recall what they were celebrating, and I don’t recall many particulars about the parade. I do recall that it was wonderful fun, and they were giving out some really interesting tasting beer.

I assume that at one time I could recall what this parade was about, but enjoying it really wasn’t dependent on understanding it. There were crowds and cheering and bands and beer. It was a grand ole time, and as an accidental parade goer, I could simply enjoy it.

It strikes me that large chunks of my life have been somewhat accidental. That’s certainly true of my religious life. I was born into Christianity, and growing up in North and South Carolina over fifty years ago, you had to work pretty hard not to be pulled along by the church parade. The Gideons came to my elementary classroom and handed out pocket-sized editions of the New Testament with Psalms. All the little league, junior high, and high school sports teams I played on said the Lord’s Prayer prior to the contest.

The Palm Sunday and Easter parades came right down my street. It would have required great effort not to participate. But for much of my life, I was simply part of the crowd. I was, in many ways, an accidental parade goer, and if, by some magic, I had been transported to another place and time where the parade was never held, I might well now be as fuzzy about its particulars as I am about that parade in Minnesota.

Such fuzziness is actually rather common. Many in America love the Christian parade yet seem not to know what it’s about. From conservative Christians who imagine that Jesus loves America and guns but hates gays, to liberal Christians who think Jesus was just a really nice guy, America is filled with accidental Christians who’ve never realized that the parade is about making Jesus ruler of their lives. It’s about following one who will not go along with the ways of the world, even when that leads to a cross. It’s about, as Jesus says, denying yourself and taking up your own cross for the sake of the others and the sake of the world.

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When we developed our new missional mandate – “Gathering those who fear they are not enough, so we may experience grace, wholeness and renewal as God’s beloved” – we came up with three basic strategies for doing this. We titled them Gather, Deepen, and Share, and what I’ve been talking about seems to fit well with two of those, Gather and Deepen.

In our gospel reading, both “people” and “disciples” gather for the parade, but only the disciples have some inkling of what it is really all about. The people are accidental parade goers, not disciples. Their hope, their faith is shallow, and in just a few days, some of them will shout “Crucify, crucify him!”

The disciples have gone much deeper, although even they do not fully understand. In the coming days, one will betray Jesus, most will abandon him, and Peter will deny him. It will take the resurrection and the Holy Spirit for them to become the bold leaders who found the Church, willing to give their lives as Jesus had done, but they are not accidental parade goers.

We have gathered today with varying degrees of intentionality, some more accidental than others. But Jesus beckons all of us to follow him, to go deeper, to discover the meaning and joy of living with him as your king and master, as your Lord and God.

In this Holy Week, I hope you will find a way not to rush from a parade of palms to Easter parade. I hope you will go deeper, following Jesus to arrest, abandonment, trial, execution, and grave. And through that journey, may you discover the new life that is possible as disciples of Christ Jesus.