Mark 11:1-10
1 When Jesus and his followers approached Jerusalem, they came to Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives. Jesus gave two disciples a task, 2 saying to them, “Go into the village over there. As soon as you enter it, you will find tied up there a colt that no one has ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 3 If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ say, ‘Its master needs it, and he will send it back right away.’”
4 They went and found a colt tied to a gate outside on the street, and they untied it. 5 Some people standing around said to them, “What are you doing, untying the colt?” 6 They told them just what Jesus said, and they left them alone. 7 They brought the colt to Jesus and threw their clothes upon it, and he sat on it. 8 Many people spread out their clothes on the road while others spread branches cut from the fields. 9 Those in front of him and those following were shouting, “Hosanna! Blessings on the one who comes in the name of the Lord![a] 10 Blessings on the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest!” (CEB)
Palm Sunday 2012
There was no way around it for me-aside from the amazing hole-in-the-wall falafel restaurant my Bible professor took me to, Jerusalem was bound to disappoint me somehow. It is nearly impossible to hold something worldly in such high esteem, and then finally get to see it, and not be disappointed. Just ask the kid who didn't get to go to Disney World until he was in high school. The Via Dolorosa, the route that tradition tells us Jesus took to Golgotha, has become a veritable bazaar of purveyors of mystical Holy Land junk, nearly all of which most people could easily do without. The Western Wall is now surrounded at all entryways by airport-style security, making entrance to one of the holiest sites in the world a stressful and invasive experience. The awe-inspiring Church of the Holy Sepulcher, built over the traditional site of the Crucifixion, is run jointly by a myriad of Eastern and Western denominations, which may or may not always get along with one another. And the gates of the Old City of Jerusalem overlook more than simply the path that Christ took into the city of David on Palm Sunday, they also overlook the once-armed border between Israel and Jordan, a stark reminder that the land the Prince of Peace once trod upon has yet to actually enjoy any semblance of real peace. It was, in a word, sacred and profound and holy, yes, but also disappointing.
So, I’ll just come out and say it—I used to dislike Palm Sunday with a passion. It isn’t the story itself, or the cast of characters, or even the fact that Scripture actually puts more emphasis on the cloaks as a path for Jesus’ colt than the palms themselves—as Mark, my college chaplain, was fond of saying, “They should rename Palm Sunday as ‘Cloak Sunday!’” No, it wasn’t any of those things. It was that I would be pressed into service every year, without fail, to run up and down the aisles of the sanctuary waving palms with all the children of the church, like I was an overgrown young adult still being forced to sit at the kids table, where your knees come up to the table itself. Next thing you knew, I’d have to re-enact Jesus’ baptism with water wings.
I loathed having to do the whole dancing-with-the-palms ritual. It’s not because I dislike seeing others do it, or that I think dancing is wrong—although I have it on good authority from that ‘80’s movie starring Kevin Bacon that dancing leads to hand-holding—it is that I was, (a) hideously self-conscious, almost to a fault, and (b) convinced that whatever it was we were doing, it probably had zero resemblance what actually happened when Jesus actually rode triumphantly into Jerusalem so many years ago. I felt the same way about those churches back in my hometown in Kansas whose members would, on Good Friday, walk up and down the streets carrying fabricated crosses to re-enact the Via Dolorosa. I would see them and think to myself, “Yep, totally looks like The Passion of the Christ out there. Jesus definitely wore an AC/DC tank top to his Crucifixion.” That’s harsh, I realize. But I really worried that, say, Jesus would come back at that exact moment, see what we were doing, and just say, “What the heck? I never did it like that! Is this some kind of spoof that’s going on Youtube as soon as this is over?” I tend to worry that when we try to re-enact the Bible today, we sometimes come so far from the mark that what we end up creating isn’t an homage, it’s a parody.
And, in some respects, it is a parody of a parody. The triumphal entry of a hero into a city would have been nothing new to Jerusalem in the time of Jesus—Alexander the Great held one when he conquered Babylon, for instance. But such spectacles were reserved for the emperors or their proxies—the people who represented imperial power to the masses, certainly not for a humble Jewish carpenter. But those emperors, governors, and soldiers, they would have entered the city on their finest horse, not on a donkey or a poor little colt—it would be as though the President of the United States pulled up in a motorcade made up entirely of clown cars! And so while scholars argue that Jesus riding in on the animal that He did was meant to fulfill Scripture, to fulfill prophesy, there is a certain amount of theatrics that Jesus is employing here, it is a spoof of the Roman powers-that-be whom Jesus, or the Jewish rank-and-file population of Judea, probably didn’t much care for. If Jon Stewart and The Daily Show were around back then, this would have been something they might have concocted!
The irony cuts both ways, however—we know, as the New Testament scholar Douglas Hare puts it, “that the man who is here hailed as Messiah by a throng of joyful pilgrims will soon be condemned by his nation’s leaders and suffer an excruciating and shameful execution. Explicit joy is thus overshadowed by implicit sorrow.” And in response to this, God pulls the only card He has left to play, the only ace left up His sleeve—He turns Christ’s imminent death into a resurrection and declares love’s victory over the sin that led Jesus to be condemned to death. Just as we begin Holy Week with a sense of joy at Christ’s arrival in Jerusalem, so too do we end Holy Week with a sense of joy at Christ’s arrival in the world as the risen Son.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves just a tad, aren’t we? The problem is, so are the crowds of pilgrims themselves—what they are shouting, “Hosanna,” literally means, “Save us now!” Hosanna in the highest heaven—hosanna in excelsis—in turn means, “save us now, God who lives in heaven!” It is that beautiful line from the Robert Browning poem—God is in His heaven, and all is right in the world. Except that deep down, we know that it isn’t. Christ has come, Christ has gone, Christ will return again, and our world still bleeds. Our world still bleeds because we are waiting for Christ to come again, but we are shouting, as the crowds did nearly 2,000 years ago, “save us now!” Not, “save us tomorrow,” but “save us now!”
It’s a pretty common refrain, isn’t it? There is usually something in our lives that we want to be saved from—a substance we use too much of, or a job we find unrewarding, or a home life that does not nourish us. And that’s much more what we need saving from than the things that we usually try. Last Friday, the Mega Millions lottery jackpot hit $650 million. It made the national news, even people who never, ever played the lottery were snapping up tickets. One of the three winning tickets was bought in my home state of Kansas, but since my phone has NOT as of yet been ringing off the hook, I can just as soon assume that my family and friends are no more materially wealthier now than they were on March 29. But think of what our expectations had become—we paid attention to this lottery, to the money it would promise, as though it would deliver us, like the materialistic Messiah that money is, from the dreary duldrums of our status quo life and into the Paradise of wealth and riches. In buying Mega Millions tickets, we were saying to that jackpot, “Save us now!”
But here’s the thing—this is Palm Sunday. The Resurrection is still a week away. The people who are calling out for Christ’s saving power must still wait another week before God’s victory over death is complete. And so, too, must we also await our ultimate salvation. It is tempting to put our faith into money, or power or prestige, or material possessions, because of what they can deliver to us in the here and now, but when we do so, we are creating yet another parody, this time of our own faith, and what—or who—we choose to put that faith in.
Palm Sunday is a day for rejoicing, yes, but mostly, it is a day for rejoicing of what is to come. When we lose sight of that patience that is required, we run the risk of disappointing God and disappointing ourselves. So when we shout our own praises to Heaven, simply remember that salvation arrives on God’s timetable, not ours.
Hosanna, hosanna in excelsis! Amen.
Rev. Eric Atcheson
Longview, Washington
April 1, 2012
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