BREAKING NEWS: Nearing the village of Bethphage, Jesus just sent two of his disciples ahead to look for a donkey.
UPDATE: Crowds are gathering. They are spreading cloaks and palms on the road and are singing “Hosanna to the Son of David; blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!”
Last year, I signed up for Holy Week text alerts, from a project called TryTank, associated with my seminary. Starting on Palm Sunday, alerts came to my iPhone every day, keeping me up-to-date on what was happening some 2,000 years before text messages and iPhones were invented. These “breaking news alerts” made it hard to forget, in this 21st-century world, the earth-shaking (literally), history-making events of the first-century world, the political and religious and social upheaval caused by a carpenter’s son, 12 itinerant disciples and those people whose lives they changed by preaching and teaching a new world view, grounded in love.
This morning, we mark both Palm and Passion Sunday, remembering the events of Jesus’s last few days before his crucifixion, when everything came to a head, when the political leaders couldn’t ignore him any longer, when Judas couldn’t take it any longer, and when Jesus knew that his hour had come.
JUST IN: Religious authorities are arguing whether or not Jesus can be stopped without a riot. Consensus is forming for a plot to kill Jesus.
I’ve been thinking this week about a question from last week, last Sunday. We read that day from the Gospel of John, at a point where Jesus has already reached Jerusalem – it’s one of those times when the lectionary cycle of readings gets a little convoluted and out of order. Jesus is a celebrity – everybody is talking about him – some people love him, some people fear him – everyone’s taking about Lazarus being raised from the dead, and the other miracles Jesus has been performing. They say he’s the Messiah. They are expecting him to conquer Rome.
And in the middle of all of this excitement, if you remember, some Greeks come to Philip with a request.
“Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”
And that request, and Jesus’ answer – or perhaps non-answer – to it, has stayed with me all week. Sir, we wish to see Jesus. Philip snags Andrew and they both go to Jesus and say, there are some Greeks who wish to see you. And Jesus doesn’t respond, sure, invite them in, please – instead, he says, “The hour has come.”
We never know if Jesus talks with the Greeks. His mind is elsewhere. He has come to
Jerusalem, it’s the Passover, he’s aware of the uproar and controversy surrounding him. He knows what God has asked him to do, and he knows that it will happen soon.
Sir, we wish to see Jesus.
The hour has come.
I think Jesus’s answer to the Greeks lies in what comes next – the events of this Holy Week.
BREAKING NEWS: Jesus is washing the feet of his disciples and saying that this service is how to lead and love.
JUST IN: Jesus and the disciples head for the garden of Gethsemane. Jesus is overwhelmed with sorrow. It doesn’t look like anyone will stay awake with him.
As we move through this Holy Week in the 21st century, we, like the crowds of the first century, see Jesus clearly, and not in any of the places or situations we would have expected. Yes, we see Jesus triumphant and beloved, coming into the city to the sounds of hosannas – but we also see him betrayed, humiliated, condemned, tormented, executed and buried. We see Jesus at his most human and fragile – we see Jesus loving us so much that he goes through this week, this Holy Week, walking straight towards death – and straight towards resurrection.
Last week I was visiting one of the small churches I go to once a month, Good Shepherd, up in Blue Grass, Virginia, Highland County – you cross a few mountains to get there, and it’s a beautiful spot. Last weekend was the annual Highland County Maple Festival, which is a really big deal, and so a lot of the small congregation were absent because they were volunteering for the festival. There were just five of us, and because the sanctuary was a little cold – it had snowed not long before that – we had church in the kitchen. We vested in albs, and the eucharistic minister brought in the chalice, the wine, the bread, the candles, and we sang hymns and we read the
scripture, and we had Eucharist around the kitchen table.
And we talked about the Greeks, and their question, and about where we see God, where we see Jesus. For instance, in the mountains surrounding us. In the spring flowers, which were blooming despite the cold. In places where there is war. In the kindness of compassionate people. We saw Jesus there at the kitchen table, in the wine and the bread, in the stories of healing and grandeur and war and peace.
Richard Rohr writes that we see Jesus in “in other human beings, a mountain, a blade of grass, or a starling… “Everything visible,” he writes, “without exception, is the outpouring of God.”
UPDATE: Jesus just arrived before the Roman governor Pilate for sentencing. The crowd is starting to whisper what others have started to yell: “Crucify him!”
BREAKING NEWS: A cross is put on the shoulders of Jesus, and He begins the procession to Calvary.
Today, and this Holy Week, we see Jesus, God’s beloved Son, clearly. We see him arriving in Jerusalem, on a donkey, not a chariot. We see Jesus at the table with his friends – maybe a kitchen table – breaking bread, washing their feet, watching Judas turn away. We see Jesus in the garden, praying to God to take this cup away. We see Jesus arrested, put on trial, condemned by the crowd, by the political and religious leadership, by his own people. We see Jesus die on a cross, impossible to not see, in view of everyone. We see Jesus buried in a tomb by those who loved him, and by those he loved. We see Jesus, from beginning to end.
And we listen to this story today, and for the rest of this week, on Maundy Thursday, on Good Friday, on Holy Saturday, to remember, to live in, to be with Jesus. We exist in the story for a short while, imagining ourselves in the place of Jesus, in the place of his friends, of those who grieved for him, but we also imagine ourselves and must know ourselves as those who shouted hosannas and then shouted Crucify.
Lutheran pastor and chaplain Yvette Schock writes, “We spend time with the story of [Jesus’] suffering, listening in community with others … We fix our gaze on the cross because God is revealed there, and if we look away we will miss something vital.”
BREAKING NEWS: Jesus declared, “It is finished.” He just took a last breath. Darkness everywhere! The earth quakes! The Temple curtain is torn in two!
Two thousand years ago, that is what the crowds saw. Two thousand years later, we see light behind and beyond the darkness. We know this unlooked-for gift of mystery and miracle – Jesus’s death is not the end. We see Jesus crucified, but we also see beyond – beyond the cross, beyond the tomb, beyond the heartbreak of this week. Death is not the end of the story, not for Jesus, or for us. In walking with Jesus through this Holy Week, we see him, clearly. And in seeing Jesus, we see love, we see grace, we see peace.
Amen.
Sermon for Palm Sunday at Trinity Episcopal Church, Staunton, Va., March 24, 2024
