Let Israel proclaim,
“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”
And the people say,
“Crucify him! Crucify him!”
Let the people proclaim,
“Peace in heaven,
his mercy endures for ever!”
And the people say,
“Away with him! Crucify him! Crucify him!”
These are hard, hard words to speak aloud. And for all that we force them out during this morning’s reading together, for as much as we want to avert our eyes when we read them on the page and as much as we cringe when we hear them, they are our words. We wave palms, we spread cloaks on the path, we sing, we shout hosannas, and we follow Christ all the way to the cross.
But we cannot journey with Christ through this week without recognizing that we are part of the voices of that crowd, without taking a good hard look at our past and our present to hear where those voices still resound. Even after Jesus was born in human likeness, humbling himself, living with us, healing us, teaching us, traveling with us, dying for us and returning again to us, in the two millennia since then we have continued to see and experience and cause grief, war, oppression, injustice, slavery, genocide. Sometimes it feels like every parable Jesus told, every kindness he extended, every pair of eyes he opened and every child he welcomed has been forgotten. Not because we forget the message of his death and resurrection and the hope therein, but because we forget the message of his life.
Earlier today at the 8:00 service, we read the other Psalm appointed for today, for the Liturgy of the Palms, we hear the deep, ancient teaching that Jesus’ life would eventually illustrate, words that he was familiar with himself.
The same stone which the builders rejected
has become the chief cornerstone.
This is the Lord’s doing,
and it is marvelous in our eyes.
The same stone which the builders rejected became the chief cornerstone. The stone that didn’t fit became the foundation for the building, the foundation for the life of the world.
Centuries after the Psalms were written as the prayers of God’s people, Jesus lived into the truth of them, his life the stone that was rejected. Jesus, a poor carpenter’s son, spoke up on behalf of the powerless – he welcomed the outcast – he broke the Sabbath rules – he loved those who were least – and in loving and welcoming and healing and feeding those who were rejected by the rest of society, he was rejected himself. He had no power, and he had the greatest power of all. He was arrested as a heretic, humiliated as a criminal, convicted without due process, and sent outside the sanctuary of the city to be executed in the most shameful, traumatic way possible.
But we know how the story ends – or how it doesn’t end. And we know that joy comes in the morning.
But before the joy, there is this morning, and this story.
What about Jesus’s life made those in power so angry? What was so appalling and threatening about his way of living, teaching and preaching?
Jesus looked around him and saw beyond class, tribe, color, age, gender, or physical strength. He knew the hope of the woman at the well. He knew the yearning in the fishermen by the sea. He knew the heart of the criminal crucified next to him. He knew the humanity of the soldiers who nailed him to the cross. He loved past and because of all of it. He looked around him at the world and saw not soldier, emperor, leper, mother, tax collector, prostitute, scribe, rabbi, toddler, sailmaker, merchant, prophet, widow, servant, king –
He saw God’s children, beloved humanity, in all of their beauty and weakness and sorrow and imperfection and greed and grief and doubt and fear and sickness and anger and gentleness and curiosity and humility and vulnerability and pride and shame and compassion.
Jesus said, forgive them, for they do not know what they do. He said, you will be with me in Paradise. He said, you will deny me. He said, take this cup from me, if you can, but your will be done. He said, take care of my mother. Jesus said, this is my body, which is given for you. He said, do this in remembrance of me.
Too often, we have not remembered.
Jesus asks us to be with him over this hard week, to remember, not only his death and not only his coming resurrection, but the shape and the teachings of his life. He knows that in one moment we will cry “hosanna” and in the next “crucify,” and yet he loves us anyway. He asks us to come to the cross with him – not in punishment, but in empathy. In compassion. He asks us to forgive as he forgives, to love as he loves, to see the world the way he sees the world. He asks us to be cornerstones, to push back against what the world expects, what the world insists upon, even if we are rejected for it – to see and love past the categories we put each other in and reject others in, to recognize the imago Dei – the image of God – the beloved child of God – in the tax collector, the emperor, the leper, the refugee, the single mother, the politician, the prisoner, the soldier, the protestor, the widow, the professor, the scientist, the artist, the person living on the street.
Jesus asks us to walk in love, this week, and always, to walk in love as he loved us and gave himself for us.
Amen.
