Palm Sunday, March 28th, 2010

The Rev. Dr. Katharine C. Black
Isaiah 50:4-9a
Psalm 31:9-16
Philippians 2:5-11
Luke 22:14-23:56

This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. AMEN.

"Hosanna in the highest to the Son of David. Blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord, but we don't say "Hosanna" for long. We don't enjoy the "glory, laud, and honor" we sing to the Lord for long either. If I were to bet, and I'm not a betting person, I would bet that there aren't more than 6- and that's pushing it- people here who could say the verses of the hymn we've just sung. We're always walking around when we sing it, and we glue our eyes to the words, not the poem or the whole verses. I'm sure Jeffrey and John, maybe Corey who remembers words too, could say the whole hymn, but are there others? Maybe. Even not having just sung them, I'll bet more could recite the hymns to come all this long, hard week. We don't focus on rejoicing for long, because we know where we're going: to Maundy Thursday (here at 6.30 with simple meal to follow,) Stations of the Cross (noon on Friday,) and the Liturgy of Good Friday (6.30.) We feel the weight of the reversal of the triumph into sadness, sorrow, and pain.

For the last two weeks I've talked about pairs of events that Jesus participated in. Two weeks ago he talked about the Prodigal parent receiving his lost child back, and throwing an extravagant feast of celebration. Last week Mary washed Jesus' feet with extravagance and intimacy. We know in this week to come there will be an echo of each: the supper with the disciples before the crucifixion and the beginning of that meal, with Jesus' washing the disciples' feet.

Traditionally the foot washing is preached as the quintessential example of servant ministry. We see pictures in the paper of the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, or a lofty Metropolitan stooping to wash one foot of some paupers, nicely tidied up for the occasion. We then go on to preach the Last Supper as a kind of Seder. We cannot do a Seder, because it feels awkward or even unauthorized to perform someone else's sacred liturgy as part of what we do. (We would not be all that pleased for the world's Seders to end with an afterward to show what went off-course with some Seders ending not ritually but in an alien way, in a Eucharist. However, the Seder giver would explain that the Seder was the real thing.  We would be offended, as many Jews are profoundly offended by some Christian uninformed reenactment of their Passover Seders.) Both these Holy Week events, Last Supper and foot washing are in dim light, earth tones, and are inordinately somber, compared to the feast and washing each is paired with.

The feast for the lost and the foot washing for Jesus were anything but. They flesh out, incarnate, perhaps, the glory of the heavenly feast promised to come, and the delights for people in the heavenly existence to come prefigured by the sensuous pleasures of Mary's foot-washing. There were two pairs of extravagance with real, modest, follow-throughs. Maybe, though, there is a third pair.

Jesus' entry into Jerusalem was a real parade of joy and welcome. We know that it was also a political affront to Roman power and those managing Jerusalem's population. We know about the symbolism of the donkey instead of Caesar's mighty horse and horse attendants. We know that this entry took Jesus right into political conflict with the power structure, which reacted with fear and hostility, demanding and forcing Jesus' death. That wasn't the feeling of the parade for the crowds that greeted Jesus with love and honor, welcome and glory, triumph and hope. They'd heard his message of support and assurance of the reign of heaven's immanence. He'd promised that the last would be first, and those people: the last, the downtrodden, the poor, the sorrowing, the lost, people abused by powerful structures, women who'd suffered with few rights or possibilities, the sick and maimed, people with faith but not religious authority, children, and more- the rabble and underclass, the out of favor, and others who'd heard and believed Jesus and wanted to follow him anywhere-it was their procession and parade, and it was one of happiness and expectation. (I read a piece by someone about preparing for Holy Week- I actually didn't read it all, but the title "Now, can we sing?" framed my thought.) The entry into Jerusalem was an extravagant parade and as it turned out, a dangerous one for Jesus, but it was a whopper of a festival. Isn't it a pair with Jesus' walk to his cross? We have walked those stations every week in Lent, here, and we'll walk that sad path again at noon on Friday, but when can we sing, when can we shout, "All glory, laud, and honor" and keep on singing that? Why might we remember to do that?

If this blowout entrance to Jerusalem is part of a third pair of events, it must be a foretaste of passage to heaven. We don't expect the heavenly banquet to be this flat meal, nor do we expect our souls and bodies to be welcomed with ivory soap and the washing of one foot (so weird...) or our passage to heaven be one of abandonment by our friends and torture and wracking pain for our bodies. We anticipate a banquet of unimaginable delights, a welcome of unimaginable pleasures, and a passage of unimaginable celebratory home-coming.

Those three heavenly entrance events are the ones promised by Jesus. He had to go through a real, limited, simplified event in order to make his mundane versions, now understood as symbols, demonstrated in the three extravagant events to show the heavenly version to come. His acceptance of each of these in ordinary, human, even miserable, form was intentional. He did not skip any stage of his life, death, and beyond. He had to go through it all, experiencing each hard occurrence in order to know the depth of human living. If the last supper had been the best meal possible at the best table, with the best wines and fruit, meats and pastries, we would have known all through these years, that it wasn't for us. We could imagine that feast-but in heaven, not on our budgets, not for the likes of us, not in our lives. Jesus had a meal we could have served, eaten, and been part of. Jesus washed his friends' feet in, as ordinary way as possible, the way we sometimes massage our friends' necks when they're visiting, or offer them a place to freshen up. It was ordinary hospitality by a host for a guest.

When Jesus entered Jerusalem the golden, it was a real celebration, for him, not like the weary walk to the cross. No one is going to have a parade for us, but we can surely imagine drudging on to our own deaths. If the simple meal and washing will be glorious in heaven, so too will be our arrival there. We'll be greeted with joy and loud hosannas. We will have made it, each of us, all of us.

We've been using Eucharistic Prayer C all of Lent, because Jeffrey and I had read it was right for Lent. I'd previously heard highlighted the phrases about "memory, reason, and skill" and the wonderful star wars phrase about "the vast expanse of interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses, and this fragile earth our island home." Instead this Lent I heard as though new, "We turned against you, and betrayed your trust; and we turned against one another. Have mercy Lord, for we are sinners in your sight."  We say that together, acknowledging together both our personal, individual sinfulness, and our sinfulness corporately. That is reason enough for us to be saying this together in Lent.

However, when we've used Prayer B, there is a choice of Lent prefaces. Without exception, I always use this one, and I miss it: "You bid your faithful people cleanse their hearts and prepare with joy for the Paschal feast."

How and why might we spend these last days of Lent preparing with joy? The how is the harder answer. We are so practiced in the sorrowing we must do in the face of the pain, which our Lord endured and is to endure, because we acknowledge our part in his death. We feel guilty both for our sins and also that our sins are part of the eternal burden Jesus took on for us and for all humankind. As I've said tediously before, guilt and shame don't produce much. (I had an outstandingly weird phone call this week. An unknown man told me over and over how guilty and ashamed he was for something he was doing repeatedly. He kept asking what to do. I kept saying, "Just stop." He kept saying that he wanted to keep doing it, and maybe it wasn't so bad, maybe it wasn't so illegal, maybe I could make it all OK. No. I think he'd hoped if he felt bad enough it would be enough punishment so he could keep doing it, that guilt was enough punishment for the awful behavior. Keeping on doing it was shameful and not enjoyable, except he liked doing the bad thing, so he figured he could keep on doing it. Nope.)

We're supposed to bewail our manifold sins and wickednesses and stop doing them, as part of preparing with joy to greet out Lord. We're supposed to name them, make restitution, and move along. We do not get extra credit for feeling guilty or continuing. Name the sins; hang them out to be aired. Let light shine on them and bleach them; then fold the sheets, put them away, fresh and clean.

Why, then do we prepare for joy? Again in the words of Prayer C, "By his blood, he reconciled us. By his wounds, we are healed." While it's hard to believe, or imagine, or contemplate, or encompass, that's the answer. God lived in Jesus, step by step, without sin, until Jesus accepted his own death on a cross for everyone's sins. God accepted that human life, found sinless, as acceptable forever. God's living human life, I think, caused God to understand, identify, empathize with more ordinary humans, than Jesus. God's living in and with human life reconciled human frailty to the Godhead. That's an understanding of humans reconciled to God. However, in reconciling God to humans, Jesus being human, had to believe that God accepted human limitations and people's doing the best they can. Then humans can trust God and trust that God has not made human life either quixotic or a trick, creating life where people are programmed to fail. In accepting Jesus' life, God made known that humans can trust God's mercy for all humans, and so humans can be reconciled to God. In the realization of that mutual reconciliation, the core of our Easter joy, humans have more than enough reason to sing, more than enough reason to see the walk towards the cross, as a dance, a parade, as an everlasting personal welcome to Heaven. More than mere good news, that becomes the greatest news for us and for all people, and it's Gospel-good news.

© Katharine C. Black, 28 March 2010