Fasting from Expectations: Luke 19:28-40
Palm Sunday
28 After he had said
this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem.
29 When he had come near
Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of
the disciples, 30 saying, “Go into the village
ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has
never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 31 If
anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs
it.’” 32 So those who were sent departed and found
it as he had told them. 33 As they were untying the
colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?” 34 They
said, “The Lord needs it.” 35 Then they brought it
to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on
it. 36 As he rode along, people kept spreading
their cloaks on the road. 37 As he was now
approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the
disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of
power that they had seen, 38 saying,
“Blessed is the king
who comes in the name of the Lord!
Peace in heaven,
and glory in the highest heaven!”
39 Some of the Pharisees
in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” 40 He
answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.” (NRSV)
Traveling is a
good time for pondering. I have solved
the problems of the world several times over in conversation with my backpack
tossed into the passenger seat on an eight or ten or twelve-hour drive. You have to focus on where you’re going, but the
rest of your mind is free to wander. It
can be nice, especially if you have something in particular that your mind
needs space and time to unpack.
After three
years of public ministry, Jesus found himself in Jericho meeting a tax
collector named Zaccheus. Now that I
have the Sunday school song about him being a wee little man stuck in your
head, remember that Zaccheus was not popular; when Jesus invited Himself to
lunch at Zaccheus’ house, people grumbled to each other about how this seeming
holy man was going to eat with a sinner.[1] After Jesus completely ignored them on that
point and instead lauded Zaccheus for the tax collector’s promise to be
generous to those in need, Jesus told a parable. “A man of noble birth went to a distant
country,” He began, and talked about how that man left servants in charge and gave
ten of them one coin each. When the man
returned, he rewarded the servants who had grown their financial loan and
punished the ones who had not, saying, “I tell you that to everyone who has,
more will be given, but as for the one who has nothing, even what they have
will be taken away.”[2]
“After He had
said this, He went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem.”
Travel is a
great time to ponder things.
We come to
Palm Sunday, the beginning of what Christians call Holy Week, and many of us
have been here a number of times before.
The palms may be familiar, the shouts of “hosanna!” easy on our tongues,
plans for Easter dinner already formatting themselves in the backs of our
minds. But here on Palm Sunday, we pause
with Jesus just outside of Bethany and breathe, for a second; no matter how
many times we hear this story, we should never forget that none of this is what
we humans expected. All of this should
require some traveling pondering time.
“Go and get a
colt that has never been ridden.” Have
any of you ever gone horseback riding, or ridden some other kind of
animal? There’s a reason the ones at
stables for rent to anyone have been in the business for a while—riding an
untrained colt is a recipe for disaster.
They have not learned how to obey physical commands; they have not
learned how not to buck or bolt if something surprising happens; they have not
learned that their rider is not there to make their lives miserable. That kind of trust and patience have to be
trained—into people as well as horses, really, but Jesus asking for an unridden
colt would seem like Jesus is just looking to get Himself hurt. To He Who has a rowdy animal, pain will be
given.
The disciples,
well used to weirdness after three years of hanging out with this guy, go get
the colt.
Jesus rides
said colt into Jerusalem, a city on a hill, which is a nod to the words of the
prophet Zechariah: “Rejoice greatly, O
daughter Zion! / Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! / Lo, your king comes
to you; / triumphant and victorious is he, / humble and riding on a
donkey, / on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”[3] What a wonderful thing! No wonder the people are throwing their
cloaks down in front of this man on a colt—Zechariah wrote that while talking
about how God was going to crush the oppressors of Israel; rejoice greatly, for
the time of your subjugation is ending, see, here is the king on the colt
coming to save you. For a people bent
under the rule of Rome, this was more than enough cause to toss their cloaks to
the ground. “Blessed is the king who
comes in the name of the Lord!” the disciples scattered through the crowd
shout, ready and willing to prep the others for how to see this moment; blessed
is the one who has come triumphant and victorious to ensure no oppressor ever
again overruns us!
Except—Jesus doesn’t. Not in the way anyone thinks He should,
anyway. Not with the pomp and power and
righteous smiting that a “king” should bring, not like one who has much and
will be given more, not like the Roman leaders who were entering town by a
different gate after having done quite a bit of triumph and victory over others. South African conflict mediator Peter Woods
points out that that kind of kingship “was not what Jesus wanted to be associated
with…In three and a half years he has modelled what kings are intended to do
for their people: He has healed the
broken and restored them to full participation in community; He has forgiven
those who missed the mark of required ethical and religious standards and
included them in his new community; He has raised the dead so as to offer
social security to those women who would be destitute by the deaths of the men
(Lazarus, Widow of Nain); He has raised and healed children to break the
bondage of bad theology that blamed bad things on parental conditions and
culture (Children of Jairus and the Canaanite woman); [and] He has been
inclusive, unconditionally accepting, and restorative in his words and actions.”[4]
Blessed is the
one who comes to bring peace, but we don’t actually want peace; we want peace after
the ones who make us afraid have been knocked down from power. We want peace after the ones who were
given much have had that taken away to level the scales. We want peace after whatever fighting is
needed to reshape the world into something that does not hurt us. We want peace after the one who comes
in the name of the Lord has fulfilled the promise to tear down the proud and
the cruel. We will certainly praise God
with loud voices for that kind of peace.
We expect a bit of violence, first.
That kind of
peace or no, the Pharisees aren’t having it.
“Make your disciples quiet,” they say, because such a ruckus is
unbecoming. Such a display draws too
much attention to this part of town, to this religion that is celebrating its
high holy rituals of Passover and trying not to get squashed by Rome while
doing it. Be quiet, Jesus; make Your
disciples quiet, don’t You see how bad this makes us look?
“If these were
silent, the stones would shout out.” The
earth itself would proclaim that there will be peace and blessed is the One Who
brings it—but what an interesting thing, to think about what kind of peace the
stones are celebrating.
We come to
Palm Sunday, for the first time or the fiftieth, and everything about this
story should be weird to us. The people
of Jericho expect a condemnation and get a parable, the disciples expect fame
and get danger, the people expect a king and get a healer, the Pharisees expect
decorum and get chaos, Rome expects obedience and gets the most radical kind of
noncompliance that the world had seen.
We are entering a week called holy and our very first steps are already
chucking our nice and neat little picture of meek and mild Jesus out the
window. This man takes on an untrained
colt to go to the heart of worship and declare that even the stones themselves
have to praise God for peace—not the kind of peace that fights first or that
takes more but the kind of peace that will, in a few days, die on a cross to
expose just how violent the human heart can be.
Peter Woods also writes, “[I]n the Palm Procession we do not have a Lamb
to the Slaughter, pre-programmed robotic Jesus, we have a living, choosing,
inviting Jesus making one of his final offers to the people and powers of
Jerusalem. An offer they reject not because they are scripted to do so, but
because the cost of compassion and inclusive community is far greater than the
system of scapegoating shame and blame religion and power that is in place.”[5]
I was talking
with a dear friend of mine last night who reminded me that, in the Celtic
Christian tradition, the imagery used most often for the Holy Spirit is not a
dove but a wild goose—loud, chaotic, passionate, fearless.[6] Those of us who have spent any time near
Canada geese, here in this season where they return in wide honking Vs across
the cloudy spring sky, know that geese are not to be trifled with. In this narrative of triumph and failure and
death and resurrection, that goose is severely undercutting the expectations
not only of the people involved in the events but us as well. How easily do we fit Jesus in the box of our
own expectations? Wave palm, eat bread, be
solemn on Friday, wear best outfit on Sunday, cook large meal, repeat next
year. Welcome Jesus in, watch Jesus die,
celebrate Jesus’ resurrection, repeat next year. The story is old hat—literally, old,
thousands of years old.
“The Jesus of
the Gospels is surely not convenient for us,” said Pope Benedict XVI. This Jesus rides an unridden colt into an
empire over people’s jackets and says “this day you will be with Me in
paradise” to dying thieves. This Jesus follows
the seemingly erratic paths of a wild goose in stomping right past all of our
carefully-crafted ideas of a sweet man who just wants us to be nice to each
other. This Jesus tells us that peace
does not come with vengeance, that true penitence deserves forgiveness no
matter who the person is, that caution in the service of cowardice is not
rewarded, that greed does not make a good leader, that the outcast belongs in
the community, that no one is outside of God’s love, that healing begins in the
heart and not the body. This Jesus has
no interest in smiting and every interest in restoration. This Jesus calls us, here, now, in the 21st
century to listen to people who are not like us and learn to love them, to care
for the ones the world deems less, to tear apart the systems that perpetuate
violence against the value and wonder of all created things.
We stand at
the beginning of Holy Week, this week of a very specific kind of travel with
plenty of room to ponder, we who expect so much from ourselves, we who expect
so much from God, and already the palms are drying out and the dust-covered
cloaks are pulled back. We are in
Jerusalem, where a supper and a cross and a grave await us. What do you expect out of this week,
Church? Will you allow the chaotic goose
of the Spirit to brush those expectations aside and show you something entirely
new instead? Will you walk with your
palms to the table, to Golgotha, to a garden, ready to meet whatever finds you
at every place?
The story
begins again. Let us meet it; blessed is
the King Who comes in the name of the Lord.
Amen.
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