April
1, 2007 (Palm Sunday)
Psalm
113
Prayers of the People
God of fools and children and
all those who are willing to become them, we give you thanks for the surprising
ways you make you make yourself known – in simple affections and complex
formulas, in a tulip unclenching and a storm cloud unloading, in waters parting
that the people might pass through, and in a man on a donkey and on a cross
that the sinful might similarly pass through.
Thank you for the love that holds us and saves us, and for the company
of those beside who share the joy of such gifts.
We pray, no less, for
ourselves – we who welcome your face, but too easily forget it and go our own
way. Forgive us, we pray, for taking
what seems to be the easy, safe and conventional way, when you lead us off in
less popular, less traveled directions.
Forgive us for clinging to our various securities when you call us to
trust your hand. Forgive us for moving
in whatever direction the prevailing winds may blow, instead of by your
Spirit’s breath changing those dominant patterns. Make us, we pray, instruments of your
peace. Strengthen us, that we might not
simply wave our branches as Jesus passes, but climb up behind him…and
ride. We pray in the name of Jesus, Amen
In
Deeper Reverence, Praise
This week the world
celebrated the marriage of the world’s tallest man – a 7-foot, nine-inch
herdsman from inner Mongolia – to a diminutive, 28-year-old woman half his age
and, at 5-feet, 6-inches tall, not that much over half his height. But perhaps I overstated the
announcement. The marriage was made
public, but I doubt many of us shared in the celebration. In fact, I doubt many of us even noticed,
given how “odd couples” have become rather commonplace. Hollywood seems to generate more of them than
Post does “Toasties”; living
oxymorons that seem to have about as
much in common as the two words that anchor the final phrase of the hymn that
has guided us throughout the season of Lent:
Reverence and praise.
Reverence conjures a sense of candlelit quiet, beatific prayer, bent
knees and bowed heads, while Praise explodes in loud and jubilant acclaim –
cheers and confetti and microphones and horns.
And yet there they are in John Greenleaf Whittier’s beloved hymn, one
proceeding from the other.
Creator of all humankind
Forgive our foolish ways.
Reclothe us in our rightful mind,
In purer lives thy service find;
In deeper reverence, praise.
In our deeper reverence,
may God find our praise.
We have been humming along
with the hymnwriter throughout these last several weeks as he probes the
integrity of our worship, the silliness that so often effervesces it, and the
sinfulness that, if we aren’t careful, can get forgotten in it. “Forgive our foolish ways,” we sing to the
one who knows our every stitch and seam; forgive the self-seeking,
self-gratifying tricks we play to make ourselves feel good, to anesthetize the
various hurts and disappointments and embarrassments and fears. Forgive the manipulative froth and fizz that
we employ to make us feel like we are dancing to heaven’s beat; the
sweat-grimaced faces with which we seek to convince each other – and perhaps
ourselves – how “serious” we are about our discipleship. Forgive our foolish ways.
Help us discover the
simple authenticity of knowing ourselves to be your children – loved and
embraced and welcomed home – and in new and purer obedience, discover the
intersection that is the service of you and the patient, loving respect of all
your children – our sisters and brothers who join us on this planet.
And in the deepening
reverence that comes from finding your handiwork in all that surrounds and
enlivens us – in the breathless awe at the sun setting in the western sky and
the wind billowing the sails that push the boat across the waters; in the
wet-eyed joy of the birth of a child and the quiet pleasure of a dog nose
nuzzled against your cheek or a kitten’s hypnotic purr; in the powdery
brilliance of a butterfly’s wing or the giddy shiver at a loved one’s touch; in
the “ooh” of a gymnast’s artful flip and the “aah” of a masterwork movingly
played; the “wow” of a garden come alive and the incomparable warmth of a
reconciled embrace; in the imaginative and compelling vision of a world without
borders and a community where all are fed and clothed and sheltered,
encouraged, and welcomed – may our hearts and lips and lives speak
“praise.”
Perhaps that was what we
were commemorating in the opening of our service – a moment, at least, when
nothing else in those people’s lives seemed to matter nearly as much as
celebrating the presence of Jesus; the life-giving, hope-inspiring,
hate-defying presence of Jesus. And so
setting aside their more ordinary routines, they shed their coats and used them
to carpet his way; cut branches and spread them and also waved them and shouted
so loud that Rome and Hell and Heaven’s own gatekeeper could hear them, “blessed
is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”
And in so doing, gave themselves to the saving power they had somehow
come to sense was in him.
It was to be a powerful
week, though most of us moderns have long-since forsaken our observance of it,
and – if we ever really had it – long-since lost touch with the deepest
significance of it.
In their recent book, The Last Week: A Day-By-Day Account of Jesus’ Final Week,
New Testament scholars Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan recall a time when
the world seemed to stop, for example, on Good Friday – school was dismissed,
businesses closed, and churches held multi-hour services to lead the faithful
through the experiences of the day. But
it doesn’t take much looking around to see that the world no longer stops. We continue to hold services on Maundy
Thursday and Good Friday, but any normal size closet could house the typical crowd
that attends – partly because of work and other conflicts, but mostly because…well,
let’s be honest: we just aren’t willing
to carve that much time out of our lives for things that happen at church.
But
as those scholars point out, our disconnection from the whole story of Holy Week comes at a price. With little thought about it we go from
triumphant celebration to triumphant celebration – as if that were the whole of
it – without much attention to the very different nuances and events in
between. Oh, most of us are aware of
those little dips in the story known as the trial and crucifixion, but Easter
is what it’s all about. Right? Well, consider the possibility that the
answer just might be “no.”
Perhaps
that might be enough to whet your curiosity enough to return on Thursday
evening and again on Friday. But today
is Palm Sunday, and so let’s at least pay close attention to it.
As
Crossan and Borg unpack it, Passover – the Jewish festival season on top of
which the events of Holy Week are superimposed – was “a tinderbox time in the city,
with the Jewish people celebrating divine deliverance from the past Egyptian
Empire while under the present Roman Empire.
Two very large and very lethal riots took place precisely at Passover in
the generations before and after 30 CE.
And so, at each Passover, the Roman governor – Pilate in the time of
Jesus – rode up to Jerusalem from the imperial capital Caesarea on the coast at
the head of a cohort of imperial cavalry and troops to reinforce the Roman
garrison in Jerusalem as a deterrent against and preparation for any possible
trouble. Pilate’s procession, arriving
from the west, symbolized and actualized Roman imperial power.
Jesus
entered the city from the east in another procession, a counter-procession. Whereas Pilate rode into the city on a war
horse, Jesus entered on a donkey. Mark
makes it clear that Jesus planned it in advance: he tells the disciples to go into a village
to get a donkey and says, ‘If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’
just say this, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here
immediately.’’ Implicitly in Mark…and
explicitly in Matthew…the symbolism makes use of the prophet Zechariah‘s
anticipation of a king of peace on a donkey who will banish the war horse and
battle bow from the land.
The
contrast is clear: Jesus versus Pilate,
the nonviolence of the kingdom of God versus the violence of empire. Two arrivals, two entrances, two processions
– and our Christian Lent is about repentance for being in the wrong one and
preparation to abandon it for its alternative.”[1]
The
alternative of Christ’s way of peace, in which the “winner” is not the one who dies with the most toys
or earns the biggest salary; is not
the one who carries the biggest stick and coerces others to go his or her way;
is not the one who shouts the loudest
or owns the biggest block of stock. And
the truly powerful are those who come to understand it; come to know their
lives made large and full in the company of this one who rides this humble
beast, and who, humbled themselves through the transformation and reorientation
of their heart, newly grateful and full beyond containing, exclaim a “hosanna” and a “hallelujah”, irresistibly join the parade…
…And
in such deeper reverence…
…praise.
Praise
the Lord!
Blessed be the name of the Lord
from this time on and for evermore.
From the rising of the sun to its setting
the name of the Lord is to be praised.