Palm Sunday-April 10, 2022: May God’s words be spoken, may God’s words be heard. Amen.
At the end of this service, we will read the passion of our Lord – and the result of it all will be a wild rollercoaster ride of emotions – from the near carnival atmosphere of the procession of the palms we just made, to the shouts to “Crucify him!” heard later. And, as I point out every Palm Sunday, we shouldn’t be reading the passion gospel at all today, and well, we actually don’t here at Christ Church, at least not as the gospel reading for the day. We stick with the story of the palms.
Now, as you all know by now, the reason that we shouldn’t be doing the passion on this Sunday is that it really doesn’t fit. It’s too soon, and it makes no sense. Some say it began as a way of ensuring that people who did not attend Maundy Thursday & Good Friday services did not go from Palm Sunday to Easter bypassing the crucifixion – essentially that we don’t take the easy path of going from shouts of Hosanna to shouts of, well – you know – the A-word. Because Easter, without the rest of Holy Week, without understanding the journey of Jesus and those who follow him, robs a person of the true joy of the empty tomb of Easter.
Still, maybe that isn’t such a bad thing to have the passion end this Palm Sunday service. After all, it marks the beginning of a week in which we move from the absurdly dark and hopeless to something beyond our wildest imaginations of what love can be. So, why not start this week of contrasting emotions with a service filled with them.
And the reality is that, after two years of pandemic, with hopes for it being over appearing and disappearing with each new variant that seems to pop up without end, maybe this type of rollercoaster ride we will do this day will seem almost familiar to us this year. Still, let’s return, at least for the moment, to the focus of this Sunday – this Palm Sunday – and Jesus’ ride toward his destiny.
Now, if you were paying close attention to the gospel reading, you might have noticed something is missing – the Palms! We call it Palm Sunday, but guess what? No palms mentioned at all! Not in this gospel. Instead, they spread out cloaks. So, if we wanted to be true to this version, all of you would have needed to be waving your jackets around rather than the palms…but, that might have looked a bit like a sports event. So, perhaps not. At any rate, as they say on TV … “The More You Know.”
But whether it is cloaks or palms, let’s just remind ourselves of what happened: Jesus, having just been teaching near Jericho, started toward Jerusalem. He was near the villages of Bethphage and Bethany. Now if Bethany sounds familiar – it is because his closest friends Lazarus, Mary, and Martha live there. Bethphage is where we find the Mount of Olives, and that is where Jesus is when he sends two disciples into the village to get the colt. Now there is a whole lot to be said just about that action, but that was a sermon from a few years ago. Suffice it to say that in this gospel, they never promise that the colt will be returned, as is written in Mark and Matthew. And in John, well Jesus just gets his own donkey – of course he does – it is the Johannian Jesus after all. But in another twist of this gospel Jesus doesn’t place himself on the colt. It says “Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it.”
Hold that in your hearts, and then let’s continue, because we often think that this is a ride into the big city of Jerusalem, and likely the procession continued until he did arrive there, but the text only says that he was “approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives.” The Mount of Olives is just over 2 miles from the old city of Jerusalem, so by a donkey’s colt, he still has a bit to go yet. Soooo, not a triumphal ride into the city?
Well, if we go beyond the text read today, we hear that he does near the city and likely, as the other gospels have it, he continued his journey on the colt as he did – I mean, why walk when you have a ride, right? Yet, to be clear, this Hosanna moment we hear about today did not occur within the city walls of Jerusalem but is likely a smaller gathering on the Mount of Olives nearby.
But just after the text we heard today, was when Jesus does come near, when the city of Jerusalem comes into his view. And it is then that we hear of only the second time in all the gospel accounts when Jesus weeps. In the gospel of John, it was for Lazarus, the one he loved, who had died. The text in Luke, from the last bit of what we heard today, to the next part when he sees the city of Jerusalem, goes like this:
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.”As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.”
“If these were silent, the stones would shout out.”
“If you…had only recognized…the things that make for peace!”
The disciples set Jesus on that donkey in this gospel perhaps because they hoped to bring about the prophesy of Zechariah of the Messiah who would deliver them. Yet their understanding of what that meant was far from what was about to happen. They expected a victorious Christ, and they got one – far more so than any defeat of the Romans could have brought about for the people. They were looking for a heavenly war, but Jesus wept for the peace that eluded them and all the world. Despite all that Jesus had taught them, they could not see the cross that awaited; and so, along with others, they set their longed for Messiah on a colt, headed toward Jerusalem, shouting “Hosanna!” along the way.
So, when Jerusalem finally comes into view, we can imagine why Jesus would weep. Not for his own pain, though his fully human side certainly had moments of wanting this cup to pass from him. No, but for the destruction of the temple to come – his own body – and of the actual temple, as the author of this gospel would know. And he also was weeping for the lack of understanding in his own disciples and all the people of Jerusalem – for the time when the “Hosannas” stopped, and the betrayal, denial, and silence remained. When even the stones were silent, and wept.
When we begin to consider what was to happen, and what is happening now today, we join Jesus in weeping. For he was taking the final steps toward his betrayal by those he loved, his execution by the Romans, and his resurrection by the grace of God for us all. And in that moment of pain, as he wept for what was in this world, many today do the same. For peace has not yet come to Jerusalem, or to the world, and many remain as silent as stones.
In their pastoral letter, distributed today as required by all clergy, the bishops of our church proclaimed that “The peace of Jerusalem is a promise not yet attained, but it is proclaimed by the prophets of all three Abrahamic faiths. Their words embody principles of love, humility, forgiveness, putting others first, and a preference for the marginalized.” (see: Pastoral Letter)
And yet, while well intended, as noted by the Episcopal Peace Fellowship Palestine Israel Network in their response to this pastoral letter, they wrote: “The letter is a regrettably tepid response to the decades of a tragic constellation of injustices and violence against the Palestinian citizens and residents of Jerusalem, including the Palestinian Christians. That the letter avoids naming the injustices, which are the true obstacles to peace, is perplexing and disturbing.” (see: Episcopal Peace Fellowship Response)
Jesus weeps for the peace that eludes the holy city.
In Ukraine, citizens were killed this week as they stood at a train station by a Russian missile with the words “For the children” written on it. “For the children!’ Dear God! Yet this is not the first attack on civilians – hospitals, shelters, residential buildings, and even schools – all have been the targets of Russian artillery, and the bodies line the streets of the cities.
Jesus weeps for the peace that eludes the world.
In our own country people are marginalized and oppressed for the color of their skin, for being female, for who they love, and for what they believe. Our love of guns outweighs our love of our neighbor – and more die every single day.
Jesus weeps for the peace that eludes our streets and our hearts.
Jesus wept as he neared the city, the shouts of “Hosanna” still ringing in the air.
And Jesus weeps now for we seem to still not know “the things that make for peace.”
Will the stones be impelled to shout out for the silence of the people?
Or will we turn our face toward the cross where Jesus is crucified today, and speak – not with empty “hosannas” – but with the love, faith, and courage of him who died for us.
For only then will we become what we are called to be in Christ Jesus.
Only then will truly recognize that we are the very things that speak for peace.
And the world will rejoice, and the stones will shout for joy.
Amen.
For the audio, click below, or subscribe to our iTunes Sermon Podcast by clicking here (also available on Audible):
The Rev. Diana L. Wilcox
Christ Church in Bloomfield & Glen Ridge
April 10, 2022
Palm Sunday – Year C
The Liturgy of the Palms
Reading – Zechariah 9:9-12
The Liturgy of the Word
1st Reading – Isaiah 50:4-9a
Psalm 31:9-16
2nd Reading – Philippians 2:5-11
Gospel – Luke 19:28-40
