What’s Next?

What’s Next Palm Sunday Luke 19.28-40 3.20.2016

What’s Next

Palm Sunday Sermon for Sardis Baptist Church

3-20-2016

Luke: 19:28-40

It’s early in the morning, and Jerusalem still sleeps.  But the vibrations are growing louder. The echo of a donkey’s deliberate trot and the banging of an eerie drum will soon wake this place.  Two men are on a collision course. And Jerusalem will never be the same.

Jesus:

From the east, high atop the Mount of Olives, Jesus descends toward Jerusalem.  He rides on a humble donkey.  He is flanked by his disciples and other close friends.

Jesus and his followers are pilgrims.  For more than seven centuries, good Jewish folk from all over the Diaspora have made their way back to the capital city for the Passover Festival.  This city of 50,000 will swell to nearly a quarter-million in the coming week.  Here, the pilgrims will remember the Exodus – the moment when God liberated the Israelites from captivity in Egypt, and made them a mighty nation.

These pilgrims share a commonality with their ancestors.  They too are held captive.  Israel has endured a new captivity: a never-ending, six-century-long occupation by Assyrians and Babylonians, Persians and Greeks, and now Romans.

But hope still stirs in this place.  Our pilgrims have read their scriptures.  Zechariah reminds them that God’s anointed, the Messiah, the new King will come riding into the city on a donkey – this king will bring peace to a weary world.

And it finally occurs to the disciples that perhaps Jesus is the person Zechariah has been talking about.

And all at once, the disciples are flooded with three years of memories: persons suffering from paralysis and leprosy and mental illness and grief and loss and pain, all made whole in the presence of Jesus; Dinner tables, walking paths, drinking wells, widow’s homes, all transformed into sacred spaces with sacred possibilities in the presence of Jesus; Abundance and enough-ness and satisfaction and God’s grace, all accessible in the presence of Jesus.

Jesus, their friend, their teacher…he’s Messiah!  And Jesus will set the captives free!

The excitement of the small crowd builds momentum.  Other travelers hear the conversations, and they too become excited.  Could this be the day we’ve waited for?

Joy abounds!  Momentum is building.

Jesus rides on. His pace is slow, but deliberate.  The road is steep. And narrow.  And rocky.

And with each new bend, Jerusalem grows larger in the vistas, her brown, stone walls and fortifications inching higher and higher into the horizon.  And as Jerusalem grows closer, the pilgrims’ enthusiasm increases.  They imagine a new world, new possibilities.  And in their exuberance, they sing round after round of a familiar psalm:

Blessed is the king

Who comes in the name of the Lord!

Peace in heaven

And glory in the highest heaven.

 

Branches are waved. Cloaks and garments are laid down to honor the king.  Abundance is created out of simplicity.  In the presence of Jesus, God’s realm is here. Now.

But the narrow road from the Mount of Olives will soon fan out into larger byways, and these byways will funnel the crowd through the gates of Jerusalem, and into its pavilions and city squares.

This crowd of hundreds will enter a sea of tens of thousands.  They’ll still hear the deliberate clicking of Jesus’ donkey, and they’ll still sing their loud hosannas, but pretty soon, another rhythm will drown them out.  Across town, drums are banging.

Pilate:

Pontius Pilate enters Jerusalem from the West.  The governor sits high atop a regal, white horse, and he is decked out in shiny, bronze armor, and flanked by a sea of cavalry and centurions.  He is Rome.

Drummers declare a pace. Each cadence of quarter notes is accompanied by the left-right marching of a thousand imperial soldiers.  With each set of footsteps, the earth shakes, sending vibrations across several city blocks.  The tips of a thousand spears slash into a thick, heavy air, and the clanking of a thousand sheathed swords bumping against a thousand armored hips creates a disturbing set of chimes.

Pilate is Rome.  And his army is here to make a statement: there will be no second exodus today.  There will be no new king.

There is one ruler: Caesar.  There is one nation: Rome.  And there is one truth: Serve Caesar or cease to exist.

The drums are banging, and try as you might, there is no escaping their presence.

Palm Sunday:

Today is a remembrance of Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem.  But it’s a mix of joy and sorrow.

The rag-tag band of pilgrims that proclaim loud hosannas will soon disburse.  They will hear the banging of Pilate’s drums.

For in this pre-Easter world, they are still only capable of imagining one kind of realm.  Rome, and all the powers that preceded her, have told people that strength and domination, military and economic might – these are the only signs of prosperity.  Rome’s is a world based on a zero-sum gain – it’s not a world of abundance, but rather it’s one of scarcity.  Every resource, even love is finite.

And as the pilgrims descend the hill, their assurance and faith in the would-be King Jesus will diminish.  Jesus heals the sick, brings good news to the poor, even proclaims liberty to the captives, AND, AND we want to believe in his power to do anything, BUT, BUT… a donkey and palms and loud hosannas are no match for war horses and swords and banging drums.

Jesus has come to free the pilgrims from the captivity of a monotonous and predictable world – a world where human need supersedes God’s needs and desires.

But the pilgrims expect a different kind of exodus.  They don’t desire a world full of God’s possibilities. They just desire a role-reversal, a chance for subjects to become oppressors, and oppressors to become subjects.  Today, the pilgrims fully expect seven centuries of subjugation to be righted.  Today, the pilgrims expect that Jesus will demonstrate his power.

It soon becomes clear that Jesus has other plans.  Jesus will proceed with a quiet dignity, palms up, and peaceful.  There is no aggression in his posture, nor will there be in the week to follow.

And the pilgrims hear the drums, and their confidence falters. Some duck off into ally-ways.  Others join different crowds of pilgrims, those who proclaim a less volatile message.  Others will join an angry mob – false justice is better than no justice.

By Thursday, a hundred pilgrims have become a dozen.  And when the authorities come to arrest Jesus in the early morning hours, the remaining dozen will scatter.

On Friday, Jesus will faith it all alone.  He’ll put his trust in God, that a Galilean Peasant can walk unarmed, and unapologetic into the teeth of Pilate’s machine, and on Sunday come away unscathed.

The joy of Palm Sunday is that for one glorious moment in time, the world realized the presence of God in its midst.  And the world celebrated with loud hosannas.

The pain of Palm Sunday is that despite this realization, the world lacked the courage and belief to trust in the possibilities of what God could do.  The world did not want the exodus that God offered. And in darkness, the world acknowledged what it had lost, and hoped beyond all hope that God was bigger than what humanity could imagine.

But here’s the other thing about Palm Sunday. It’s not just an historical event, or a marker of significance.  Palm Sunday happens today, right here in this building, among our own group of pilgrims.

Christ’s presence is among us.  And if we listen carefully, we will hear the deliberate clicking of a donkey’s hooves.  This cadence reminds us that God’s realm is here, ready to burst into every aspect of our lives, if only we will open ourselves to God’s possibilities.

But Pilate’s drums are still banging away, too.  They have new owners now, but these new owners have the same old characteristics: politicians who talk of domination and winning and exclusion, stirring up fear and hate to maintain the powers of privilege; some of these politicians even seek to mimic Caesar’s terrible haircut. They’ll tell you that the most deserve more, and that the least should be left out; they’ll tell you peace and patience and cooperation are signs of weakness; they’ll tell you that might always beats right.

And if you let them, they’ll use their drums to silence your loud hosannas.

But friends, we do have something on our side.  Unlike our pilgrim ancestors, we live in a post-Easter world.  We know what happens next.

This week, we walk into the teeth of Pilate’s drums.  And as we do, the cadence of Jesus’ donkey may grow faint, and our loud hosannas may sound muffled.  But they will not disappear.

Jesus has chosen to faith it.  And should we choose to follow, we’ll experience the exodus we were intended receive on that first Palm Sunday:

Jesus’ kingly procession is more than the tired, over-played military parade of Caesar’s lackey.  For Jesus is more than a conqueror. Jesus is an avenue to an exodus where neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able separate us from the love of God.

This week, Jesus marches toward God’s realm.  Will we follow?