Sermon

A FLEETING VICTORY

A Sermon by Rev. James D. Brown

Palm Sunday--March 16, 2008

Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29

Matthew 21:1-11, 23-32, 45-46

I don’t know about you, but I think the coming of Easter feels oddly different this year. We had a discussion the other day about whether Easter tulips could survive if we planted them in the pots outside the front of the church. They’re going in next Saturday with a prayer that it won’t go below freezing that night.

The early date is having quite an effect on us. Celebrating Palm Sunday on March 16 and Easter on the 23^rd is truly unusual. As you are probably aware, Easter is a moveable feast, falling on the first Sunday after the full moon following the vernal or spring equinox, which is one of the two times in the year when the sun crosses the equator and day and night are everywhere of equal length.

This, of course, has little to do with the moment when Jesus entered Jerusalem almost 2000 years ago. He arrived there on the eve of Passover when he and others Jews were to celebrate the passing over by the angel of death that spared human life when the Israelites were in bondage in Egypt.

In the early years of the Church, Palm Sunday and Easter were linked to Passover by Christians of Jewish background. But Passover was also a moveable feast in the Jewish calendar, so many years Easter was not even on Sunday, the first day of the week. This led the great Church Council meeting in Nicaea in the year 325 to put in place the formula we now follow. One of the reasons was to establish a date when Christians around the world could celebrate Easter at the same time.

This plan was to come undone in the 18^th century when the Eastern Orthodox Churches opted not to adopt the Gregorian calendar used by the churches in the West. Hence, our Orthodox brothers and sisters in Harrisburg won’t be celebrating Easter the same day we do.

All this is background to why this year feels so strange. Listen to the facts of the matter as spelled out in a recent column in the Christian Century (March 25, 2008): “This year’s March 23 Easter is the earliest…most of us will ever see; only the very elderly of our population have ever seen it this early before. The next time Easter will be this early is the year 2228—that’s 220 years from now. The last time it fell on March 23 was 1913; only those 95 or older were around for that. March 22 is the earliest possible date for Easter, but that is quite rare. The next time for that will be the year 2285. The last time it was on March 22 was 1818.”

With our own unusual context in mind, we’re now ready to enter Jerusalem with Jesus in what has to be one of the most extraordinary welcomes for an entering king ever recorded. The details are graphic enough that I don’t need to belabor them. Matthew quotes a text from the Old Testament about a king arriving on a single donkey, only he interprets the poetry from Zechariah to have Jesus riding on a donkey and a colt. Literalist painters have had to depict Jesus riding side saddle on one animal with his feet draped over the smaller one. Such a rider would have to be praying non-stop that one of the two animals wouldn’t be spooked and suddenly take off!

A large crowd gathers to strew their cloaks on the road, along with branches of trees, shouting “Hosanna to the Son of David, Hosanna in the highest heaven!” The word Hosanna has an interesting history. Originally it was as one-word prayer meaning “Save, we beseech you.” But by the time of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, it meant little more than “Hurrah!” It’s the shout you hear at a political rally or a sporting event that may be little more than a momentary burst of enthusiasm. It may or may not have legs, have staying power.

Talking about the meaning that was originally packed into a single word like Hosanna, I’m reminded of a story one of you sent me. It’s about an elderly monk in the Middle Ages who was in charge of a group of monks who spent day after day copying ancient manuscripts of the Church. One of the monks discovers what seems to be an inconsistency with a certain word and asks the elder monk to go into the archives and check the original. Hours later no one has seen him. So the monk who asked the question went to the archives to look for him. He found the old monk leaning over one the original books crying. He asked what was wrong. The old monk sobs, “The word is celebrate, not celibate!”

Our Palm Sunday text with its cries of Hosanna! can best be understood as a classic crowd scene. And it’s a drama full of irony. There’s a lot of whooping and cheering going on. Excitement is in the air. The city is in turmoil. “Who is this gangly person draped across two small donkeys? What does this mean?”

The answer the crowd gives is perfectly acceptable from a theological point of view: “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.” The crowd had already affirmed Jesus as the Son of David, the heir to God’s kingdom on earth. They now place him in the company of God’s chosen leaders going all the way back to Moses. But we can’t forget for a moment that Matthew is writing with the full knowledge that this is a fickle crowd that will cut and run as soon as Jesus takes up his cross. These “sunshiny day” followers have no intention of really taking Jesus’ words to heart and following him wherever he might take them. It’s no surprise that in a few short hours Jesus will be enraging their leaders with comments about tax collectors and prostitutes going into the kingdom ahead of them—and the crowds will be shouting not “Hosanna!” but rather, “Crucify him!”

Palm Sunday is such a mixed bag. We cry out shouts of acclamation, but we are already beginning to duck and hedge our bets. As one commentator puts it, Palm Sunday enthusiasts “have all of the notes and none of the music.”

The commentator adds: “Knowing the truth is not the same thing as doing the truth….What one social psychologist said of university students is also true of the kingdom: ‘It is possible to make an A+ in the course on ethics and still flunk life.’”[i]

So it goes for Eliot Spitzer, and so it can easily go for us.

Our Palm Sunday service this year has been developed on the premise that we will do no better than the crowds in Jerusalem if we go directly from shouts of Hosanna to the Resurrection of Jesus without any mention of the cross in between. Cheering Jesus on when we gain a glimpse of him on a sunny morning and then ignoring the way of the cross because of its message of suffering love will lead us to an o so fleeting victory.

The close of today’s service will point us toward the abandonment of Jesus by his friends and the bitter agony of the cross. The drama of Matthew’s Gospel makes clear that any attempt to bypass Holy Week and go straight to an empty tomb may leave us strangely unaffected, unchanged.

My appeal to you today is that you make the schedule of upcoming services your roadmap to Easter, and in so doing apply new diligence as you follow in the steps of Jesus, including ones you might rather avoid. Wednesday is a chance to sing and pray in the context of Taizé worship on Wednesday, to slow down and breathe deeply of God’s ever-present Spirit.

This year’s Maundy Thursday Service will be the same as always and yet different. Kelly and a team she has been working with over a number of weeks will be opening up for us an aspect of the Last Supper that we usually give short shrift—the manner in which Jesus astonished his followers by washing their feet, giving them a taste of upside-down love that has the master washing his servants’ feet.

Just my standing here and talking out loud about Jesus washing his disciples’ feet gives a powerful message that this may be a time in our lives when we need cleansing as well. Our nation does. Our world does. We do.

This was driven home for me the last weekend in February when a small group of us went to New York to meet with a group from Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, a large and vital synagogue. “Why B’nai Jeshurun?” you should rightly ask.

The pilgrims from Market Square Church who went to the Israel and the West Bank were in the Holy Land at the same time a group from B’nai Jeshurun was there. Mim Warden was part of the delegation form BJ—as they call their synagogue, and once our two groups returned we came up with the plan of getting together to compare notes and seek together for signs of hope in the Middle East—no simple task to be sure.

Mim made the arrangements for us to attend worship on a Friday night and Saturday morning, and spend the night in the homes of members of the synagogue. At noon on Saturday a meal was scheduled, at the conclusion of which we were to tell our respective stories to one another.

The time together on Friday night and Saturday morning went very well. Our hosts were unbelievably warm and gracious. But nonetheless our group felt a bit of anxiety on Saturday as noontime approached. After all, our trip had focused primarily on the plight of our sister church, St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in the West Bank town of Jifna, whereas the large group from BJ was involved with a sister synagogue in Israel proper. Both groups had gone to the Holy Land, but our itineraries and the people we met had been very different indeed.

The time for the meal arrived. We gathered in the fellowship hall of B’nai Jeshurun. Then something happened that took all our fears away. It was so simple and yet so tantalizingly profound. Several members of the synagogue brought out a pitcher and basin and towels. We lined up, and when my turn came I did as everyone else—I held my hands over the basin and warm water was poured over my palms and the back of my hands. Not a word was said—there was just the gentle splashing of water. I took a towel and wiped my hands, and in so doing became suddenly aware that all of us coming to the tables in that fellowship hall had become one in the act of being cleansed.

The meal was a delight and the conversation that followed was rich and hopeful even though we were not all on the same page when it came to a number of issues. But our common humanity and our unity as people of faith had been established in the simple ritual of the washing of our hands.

This Thursday there will be a ritual foot washing as part of Kelly’s sermon—taken straight out of John’s Gospel. Then worshippers from Pine Street and Market Square will be invited forward for communion by intinction. The two lines will come down the center aisles, and along the way there will be two stations where you will have the opportunity to experience the washing of your hands before you take the bread and dip it in the cup.

I think this is an extraordinary opportunity for us to be cleansed—body and soul. It is in ways like this that we dare to let the Gospel of the Suffering Servant Jesus take in our lives, penetrate so deep that we can face the Good Fridays which come our way—and not run off and wallow in our fears.

If you can, join us here on Wednesday for Taizé worship, on Thursday for the Last Supper and on Good Friday for a Tenebrae Service at Pine Street Church where we will experience the gradual extinguishing of light at the foot of the cross. Then, for heaven’s sake, come out on Easter in time for music at 10:40 that will set the stage for the announcement that Jesus has been raised from the dead—on our behalf. Easter is as early as it will ever be in our lifetimes. So be it. We need Good News early this year!