Palm Sunday

Mark 11:1-11

Sometimes, this day takes on two purposes, and after the blessing of the palms, we include the reading of the passion, the events that will happen later in Holy Week. On this Palm Sunday though, we are only going to hear Mark’s account of Jesus entering Jerusalem.

Often on Palm Sunday we have processed from the fellowship hall, around the church building and into the sanctuary waving emerald green palms high in the air and shouting “Hosanna.” And especially if small children are invited to lead the palm procession, it feels festive and joyful. After all, who doesn’t love a parade?

I’d guess that Lent and its somber focus on penitence and forgiveness have primed us for celebration. And at the end of Holy Week, we will celebrate, with the resurrection, but today is not about parades and celebrations.

The first part of the story is well-known. Mark, Matthew and Luke all include the conversation between Jesus and his disciples, instructing them to go into the town and find a donkey, or as Mark says, a colt, and bring it back to him. And by way of explanation, they tell anyone who asks that the animal is needed by the Lord. And nobody bats an eye.

Jesus has already talked with his disciples three times about the suffering and death that he will endure. He has challenged their expectations about what kind of messiah he will be. And now, instead of riding a majestic steed, he chooses to enter Jerusalem riding atop a plain donkey.

The cloaks and leafy branches that are laid before his way can be seen as signs of adoration but just as likely, they were a practical way to tamp down the dust that would be kicked up as he rode.

And yet, the passage still reads as though the people are preparing for a coronation or enthronement. Expectations are high.

And then nothing happens.

Jesus goes into the temple, looks around, sees how late it is and leaves.

And the scene ends.

Matthew and Luke have the temple scene where Jesus throws out the money changers immediately follow his arrival in the temple and, as we talked about a few weeks ago, John has it at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. But Mark puts it on the next day, and while it’s possible that the timing of this detail doesn’t matter, the effect here is that Jesus doesn’t speak at all from his entrance into Jerusalem to his return to Bethany at the end of the day.

Imagine how he carried himself or what his emotions or expressions were. Surely if people are shouting acclamation and pleading “Save us we pray” - which is what Hosanna means – you’d react or respond. If this was a modern protest or demonstration, you’d expect speeches; if it was a political rally, you’d expect promises. There’d be some kind of climax.

But instead, at least here in Mark’s gospel, there’s nothing. Jesus appears reticent, unshaken or unmoved by the people surrounding him.

As Lamar Williamson, author of the Interpretations commentary, writes, “his silence seems to suggest, “I am Messiah, and I will save; but not as you expect.” (204)

Not as you expect.

As we enter into Holy Week, I wonder, what are our expectations of the Messiah?

Do we expect a Messiah who saves us from illness, pain or grief?

Do we expect a Messiah whose power and authority are in sync with the world where we live?

Do we expect a Messiah who takes our side and punishes our enemies?

Because in Jesus we meet a Messiah who bears our suffering but does not erase it;

a Messiah who laments and weeps;

a Messiah who is unafraid to love those who the world calls unlovable;

a Messiah who seeks justice even when it makes him unpopular, even when it leads to his death.

We are invited to enter this Holy Week not as if we were atop parade floats accompanied by jubilant noisemakers and crowds, but instead following the Lord knowing that each day we draw closer to the cross.

Let us pray…[i]

God of palm branches and hosannas:

We love a good Palm Sunday celebration. We love the sound of a joyful parade.

We love shouting, “Hosanna!” We love that Palm Sunday means Easter is just around the corner.

We love good news.

We give thanks that even when we get distracted,

you call us back to you, and remind us what it means that you have given us a Savior, a Messiah.

Help us remember that we are known, we are loved and we are forgiven. Again and again and again.

We pray in the name of Jesus, our Lord and Savior. Amen.

[i] Adapted from prayers by the Rev. Sarah Are, A Sanctified Art.

Maundy Thursday

John 13:1-17, 31b-35 

Grace and peace to you.

Maundy Thursday is traditionally when we would hear the story of Jesus eating with his disciples before his arrest, and we would come to the table to receive the wine and the bread for the sacrament of Holy Communion. But because of the coronavirus, tonight is different, and thankfully, John’s gospel helps us imagine a different way of Jesus being with his disciples. In this account, we hear the story of Jesus washing their feet.

While we may know the story of Holy Week well enough to anticipate the denials and betrayals that are coming, at this point in the story, Peter has not yet denied Jesus and even Judas is still with him when he gets up from the table, pours water into a basin, and washes the disciples’ feet clean and then dries them.

The act of foot washing itself was ordinary. Even mundane. It was necessary. Sandaled feet walking on dusty roads get dirty. But it was usually the kind of work that was assigned to a slave or servant. Here, Jesus, welcomed days earlier into Jerusalem with shouts of Hosanna and proclaimed King of the Jews, humbled himself to serve the people around him.

Foot washing isn’t like splashing in a swimming pool or even a bathtub; it requires gentleness and compassion. Baring our feet, we expose our hardened callouses, painful corns, cracked or broken skin, and arthritic toes bent by age.

It requires vulnerability and humility, and we are not comfortable being vulnerable.

Many of us shun the idea of participating in a public footwashing; it asks too much of us. We worry what others will think or say. Every one of us carries shame from experiences somewhere in our lives, and we are afraid that vulnerability leaves us exposed. It risks too much.

After he washed the feet of his disciples, Jesus asked them “Do you know what I have done to you?”

Suddenly it’s clear that there’s more happening here than we can see. Led by Jesus, the ordinary has become sacred.

Humbling himself and washing their feet, Jesus has invited the disciples to be vulnerable, to surrender their fears and receive the very love of God, who already knows every inch of our bodies and our being and from whom no secrets are hid.

With never-ending love, God washes away our fears and doubts, the sweat and tears we shed from doing hard things, and the messiness of our lives.

Washed clean by the love of God, we are given a new command, to love others just as we have been loved.

We know how to do that! In this time of quarantine and staying at home, we love others by calling to check how they are; mailing cards to those who live alone; putting an extra can of soup into the collection bin at the grocery store; and staying home from unnecessary travel. Being vulnerable means showing up in the lives of people who are hurting. That doesn’t sound so frightening or impossible, or like it asks too much of us.

Maybe one of the gifts of this Maundy Thursday is that even as we are gathered together online and on the phone, we are just far enough apart to dispel some of those fears that we live with and risk being vulnerable, to each other and to God.

So tonight, after our hymn, I invite you to wash the hands of another person, or if, like me, you are alone, to wash your own hands, remembering that, especially now, the act of handwashing is an act of service to our neighbor.

Jesus reminds us that loving others doesn’t require the impossible, but that our most ordinary actions become sacred and extraordinary because they are grounded in God’s love for us.

Thanks be to God.

Palm Sunday

Matthew 21:1-11

Grace and peace to you.

Throughout Lent we have been in the wilderness, exploring what it means that we worship a God of new beginnings, a God who asks for our obedience and commitment, a God who invites us into life together with our neighbors, and a God whose Word speaks against the death that we experience in our brokenness. And we have looked for the places where God shows up in the wilderness.

One of the places I see God is when the lectionary texts connect to our current events. The texts for today were chosen nearly forty years ago, long before anyone could have foreseen Holy Week happening in the midst of a global pandemic. And yet, listening to Mathew’s account of Jesus entering Jerusalem, we hear, “The whole city was in turmoil.” If we were hearing from Mark, Luke or John today, we wouldn’t hear those words.

There may be a lot about the first century life in Israel that we don’t know or can’t understand, but Matthew’s words connect immediately to our current experience, and we can say, “oh, yeah, okay, I know something about turmoil these days.”

God speaks to us where we are. And that is Good News in turbulent times.

I was caught by this particular word we hear in Matthew’s gospel; the word translated as “turmoil” comes from a Greek word that means “to shake, agitate or cause to quake.” It can be a physical shaking, but it can also be mental or spiritual agitation.

Matthew’s Gospel begins with one of the infancy narratives that tell us how Jesus was born into the world. And how the birth of the One who was called the Messiah frightened King Herod and when the wise men tricked him, he was angered and infuriated. The king and his understanding of both kingship and kingdom were shaken by the birth of Jesus, the incarnation of God’s own Son. The assumptions he had made and what he thought he knew were changed.

According to Matthew, more than thirty years later, the world was still in turmoil, shaken and out of sorts. This year, for us, I think it matters less why that was the case. It is simply reassuring that God’s people have lived in turmoil throughout the ages, and we have witnesses throughout the centuries that God’s people, and God’s church, have survived.

Later this week, on the afternoon of our Lord’s crucifixion, we’ll hear that the world was shaken again. Matthew tells us that after Jesus breathed his last, the curtain of the temple that separated the holy of holies from the nave or sanctuary is torn in two, the earth shook and the rocks were split. And yet, we know that isn’t the end of the story.

For today in the midst of a world in turmoil and shaken by uncertainty and having to let go of expectations, may we remember that Jesus still leads on.

Jesus, the Son of God who came and lived among us because God so loves us, leads the crowds into Jerusalem on this Palm Sunday, triumphant not because he has fought wars and won,  but because he has announced a new kingdom and new life for all who follow him.

He is, as our next hymn says, the one who guides us by our hands into the promised land. He is our comforter and consoler, leading us home.

Thanks be to God.

Maundy Thursday

Exodus 12:1-14

Throughout Holy Week our worship is a retelling of the events of the last week before Jesus was crucified. Luke tells us that after teaching each day in the Temple, at night Jesus went and slept on the Mount of Olives. (Luke 21:37) On Palm Sunday, we heard how he entered Jerusalem from there, and tonight is Maundy Thursday, named for the mandatum, or command, that Jesus gives his disciples in John’s Gospel “to love one another as I have loved you.”

But, unlike John’s gospel, none of the synoptic gospels — Matthew, Mark and Luke —have Jesus speak that command or wash the feet of his disciples. Instead, the focus in these gospels is the Passover meal that is shared between them.

The modern Passover meal or seder is not the same meal that Jesus ate with the disciples; many of the foods that are eaten and the traditions that shape that ritual today developed after the destruction of the Temple, more than forty years after Jesus’ crucifixion. Even so, understanding the Jewish Passover helps us understand the words that Jesus speaks at the Table in tonight’s gospel.

When Israel was living in slavery in Egypt under the rule of the Pharaoh, Moses and his brother Aaron went to the ruler and tried to negotiate freedom, and Pharaoh refused. Nine plagues struck the Egyptians but Pharaoh’s heart remained hardened. Then, on the night before a tenth plague struck, the Israelites were instructed to smear blood on their doorposts and lintel, and they were promised that the Lord would pass over them as he struck down the Egyptians.

The next day, Israel was delivered from slavery and, in the millennia since, the Jewish people have commemorated the exodus in the Passover meal that is described in our reading tonight. In this meal that is shared with friends and family, they retell the story of God’s deliverance, eating foods that symbolize different events in the biblical narrative, celebrating the day as a festival to the Lord and remembering the events throughout generations.

Tonight’s reading from Exodus Chapter 12 details how to prepare the Passover meal, and in the Hebrew, in verse 6, the writer’s words are, “It will be for you.” These are the same words we hear Jesus say when he tells the disciples his body is given, and the new covenant in his blood is poured out, for you. (Luke 22:19-20) God provides the gift of salvation — protection from death —for each one of us.

The liturgy of the Passover makes worshipers participants in God’s saving activity. Our liturgy of Holy Communion also renews our participation in God’s saving activity. In Holy Communion, we celebrate God’s Word, or promise of forgiveness of sin, joined with the earthly elements of wine and bread and the command to “do this for the remembrance of me.”

But the task of remembering is not passive.

Returning to the Exodus text, did you hear how Israel was instructed to eat their meal? (verse 11) The Lord said,

11 This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it hurriedly. It is the passover of the LORD.

As scholar Christopher Hays writes, “[God’s people] are commanded to be ready, at any moment, to move with God.”[i]

This meal isn’t a prolonged wedding feast with liters of wine, and it isn’t merely comfort food shared in thanksgiving. In this meal, we are both protected from death, which is separation from God, and we are given food for the baptismal journey which we are living.

This meal prepares us to give ourselves to the world.

As joyful as coming to this Table is, participating in this meal means taking a risk.[ii] Just as God delivered Israel, God delivers us and God expects us to be on the move and ready to follow Jesus when we’ve been fed.

We are invited to the meal but not just the meal; we are invited to life together. At the table we are bound to our brothers and sisters, and our welfare — our whole lives —are connected to one another. In his essay “Freedom of a Christian”, Luther wrote, “A man does not live for himself alone, …but lives also for every man on earth.”[iii]

There isn’t any expectation that we will follow Jesus perfectly. Judas, who betrays him, is at this table, and later on this same night, the disciples who shared bread and wine with Jesus flee when he is arrested. But God invites us anyway.

Tonight, as you come to be fed, know that Jesus “eagerly desires” to share in this holy meal with you. Hear the invitation not just to come and eat; but, quoting Luther again, to “give [yourself] as a Christ to [your] neighbor, just as Christ offered himself to you.”[iv]

Let us pray…
Holy God,
We remember Your mighty acts throughout history;
with thanksgiving we remember that by Your saving grace through Your Son Jesus You move us from sin to reconciliation, giving us the gift of salvation and new life,
that we would live, not for ourselves, but for the world.
Nourish us tonight at this Table and send us out guided by Your Holy Spirit to take risks for the sake of the world.
Amen.

[i] Bartlett, David L.. Feasting on the Word: Year C, Volume 2: Lent through Eastertide . Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.
[ii] Amy-Jill Levine. Entering the Passion of Jesus.
[iii] Martin Luther. “Freedom of a Christian.” Three Treatises. 301.
[iv] Luther. 304.

Sunday of the Passion

Luke 22:14-23:56

In 2001, a man named Charlie Todd launched a comedy collective “Improv Everywhere” in Manhattan, arranging “scenes of chaos and joy” that erupt all across the city. In one of their projects an enthusiastic woman in a marching band uniform solicited passersby to lead a parade, and while some declined, those who took the baton were then joined by a contingent of marching band musicians, playing instruments and following them wherever they were led. The spectacle of the crowd was jubilant.

When I hear the story of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, even in today’s Lukan account that skips the palms and hosannas, what I hear first is joyful exuberance, the kind of high emotion that makes your face hurt from smiling so widely. The crowd was roiling with the anticipation of seeing the man whom they’ve heard stories about, the hope of seeing him “perform” miracles, and the energy gained from simply being in a crowd.

But that’s not all that’s happening in the crowd that meets Jesus.

Marcus Borg, a theologian and scholar who wrote about the historical Jesus in a number of books including one titled The Last Week, described what was taking place that day. It was the beginning of the week of Passover, the “festival that celebrated the Jewish people’s liberation from” Pharaoh who had enslaved the people of Israel centuries earlier.

The Roman governors of the region lived nearer to the Mediterranean coast, but they regularly traveled to Jerusalem for the major Jewish festivals. Proceeding down the western Watershed Ridge, Pilate and the imperial army would have approached Jerusalem in a mighty procession with armored foot soldiers, the cavalry on horses, weapons, banners and all the sounds of a conquering army.[i]

In contrast, Jesus approached from the opposite side of Jerusalem, from the eastern Mount of Olives, riding into the city on a borrowed colt and people lining the way into Jerusalem spread their coats on the road ahead of him. These people had chosen to come and honor Jesus at his parade and reject the imperial power that sought to rule over them.

In April 2012, 40,000 people showed up in front of the courthouse in downtown Oslo, Norway to sing a children’s song. Their presence and their song were their response to a national tragedy that had happened the summer before when a man had killed 77 people.

When the accused killer made a bizarre claim during his trial that the country’s children were being brainwashed by the popular children’s song “Children of the Rainbow” two women committed to take the song back. They organized an invitation to a sing-along that went viral, and at twelve o’clock on the appointed day, the country stopped to sing. [ii]

The people who sang that day were not trying to entertain or provide a distraction; that day the crowd was rejecting the claim of the criminal who had caused so much grief, rebuking the violence they had witnessed, and confessing, “We’re all in this together.”

As the story of Jesus’ passion, his arrest and trials, and his crucifixion unfold through the events of this week, the darker and more dangerous power of crowds is revealed.

There is a thin line between intense love and hate, and the power of a crowd can shift quickly from exuberance and hope to danger and destruction, fed by our baser “instincts that favor self-preservation over the welfare of others.”[iii]

The crowds who were there when Jesus entered Jerusalem appear again when the elders and chief priests who had him arrested and taken to Pilate for trial. Trying to reason with the crowd, Pilate tries to acquit Jesus three times; he says he cannot find any basis for their accusation and then he announces he has examined him and not found him guilty, and finally, he tells them that he has no ground for the sentence of death.

But Luke’s account tells us that the crowd continued their urgent demands and “their voices prevailed.” (23:23) The crowd prevailed — not justice, not the gospel and certainly not God.

The passion narrative is an indictment against every one of us. It sometimes has been used wrongly and anti-Semitically to condemn the Jews and Israel for their rejection and execution of Jesus, but in Luke’s gospel, “Jerusalem” should be understood as “the whole world.” The responsibility extends to all humanity.

Every one of us is part of the crowd who cheers for the Messiah one day and then jeers at Jesus from the courtyard; every one of us shouts “Crown Him” one day and then hollers “Crucify Him!”

As we enter into this Holy Week we are called to ponder what it means for us to own a share of what happened to Jesus.

It does not matter that we weren’t present or even alive, when Christ was crucified. As surely as our faith stands on the shoulders of those who went before us, we are complicit. 

In our Lutheran understanding, by original sin and human frailty, we are sinners, and we contribute to the evil and violence that is perpetrated in the world even if our hands don’t get dirty. In our self-centeredness, we put our own interest over the welfare of others.

This Lenten Season we have focused on returning to God with all our heart, repenting with confession on our lips. So, let us ask ourselves: When has our love turned to hatred? When have we denied Christ to save ourselves from embarrassment or persecution? When have we ignored someone who needed our compassion to save ourselves the hassle? These are the questions we must carry with us as the shouts of Hosanna fade, the soldiers’ swords clatter on Thursday and the sun’s light fails on Friday.

Thankfully, through it all, the Good News we hear from Jesus from the cross is that just as surely as we have sinned, we are forgiven. God who loves us is merciful and pours out abundant grace upon us.

Let us pray…
Merciful God,
Thank you for the passion of Your Son Jesus who emptied himself on the cross and forgiving the crowds, forgives us for our sin, known and unknown, giving us new life to live as witnesses to your abundant love and forgiveness.
Accompany us in this Holy Week as we experience the journey into Jerusalem and witness our Lord’s arrest and crucifixion, even as we look ahead to the celebration of the resurrection.
Empower us by Your Spirit to go out into the world rejoicing when there is reason to celebrate, defiant when we must stand for justice, and repentant when we fail to do so.
We pray in the name of your Son Jesus.
Amen.

[i] Marcus Borg. The Last Week. 2-3.
[ii] “Can Crowds Celebrate As A Form Of Protest?”, TED Radio Hour, NPR. https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=152871050, accessed 4/13/2019
[iii] John Seabrook. “Crush Point”, The New Yorker. 1/30/11. Accessed 4/13/2019.

Maundy Thursday

Mark 12:22-42

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our LORD Jesus Christ.

I don’t know about you but many of my favorite memories feature food. I often tell a story about my grandmother, who didn’t bake, except for meringues, but she always had pantry shelves filled with Pepperidge Farm cookies. I remember too, as a child, going to my friend’s Polish Catholic parish where we ate cabbage rolls, potatoes and sweet pastries. I remember Sunday brunch with hearts of palm and dinners where roast beast was carved at the table. I remember my mother’s paella and coq au vin and eating barbecue and Brunswick stew from Creedmoor. But these food memories aren’t just from childhood.

Two years ago, a group of folks here in Shelby created a community Thanksgiving meal.
Inviting people to come and eat,
they took donations of turkeys and side dishes, sweet tea and desserts;
they prayed before the meal to bless the gifts of food and presence that had been given;
they broke bread, opened chafing dishes of mashed potatoes and green beans, uncovered pie plates and tins of cookies;
and gave the bounty to the neighbors who gathered.

Somehow gathering around a table for a meal fills more than our bellies and nourishes our bodies; it contents our hearts and strengthens us for what lies ahead.

Tonight, on Maundy Thursday, named for the mandatum, or command, that Jesus gives his disciples in John’s Gospel “to love one another as I have loved you,” we inhabit another part of the story from the night of Jesus’ arrest — the meal. In John’s Gospel, it is not a Passover meal, but in the synoptic gospels – Mark, Matthew and Luke – it is, and that’s significant because the Passover meal is not just about sated appetites, full bellies and nourished bodies; it is an act of remembering the mighty act of God’s salvation — God’s rescue —from death and slavery.

The people of Israel were enslaved by the king of Egypt, and when he would not free them, God promised judgment against the people there; the Israelites were told to mark their doorposts with the blood of a slaughtered lamb and the blood would be a sign of the covenant they had with God, and God would pass over their households and save them. (Exodus 12) After his own people suffered God’s judgment, Pharaoh let the Israelites go and they fled Egypt but throughout their journey to the Holy Land, God accompanied them.

In the same way, the meal we share at the Table every time we celebrate Holy Communion together remembers the mighty act of God’s salvation in our lives.

In his Small Catechism, Martin Luther explains, “The words ‘given for you’ and ‘shed for you’ for the forgiveness of sins show us that the forgiveness of sin, life and salvation are given to us ….”[i] “The treasure is opened and placed …upon the table [for everyone.]”[ii]And he reminds us that it is not our eating and drinking that do it, but “the bread and wine set within God’s Word and bound to it.”[iii]

Daily, we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves. But, unfailingly, God rescues us, delivering us “from sin, death and the devil.”[iv]

Again, hear Martin Luther’s teaching, “There are so many hindrances and attacks of the devil and the world that we often grow weary and faint at times even stumble…the devil is a furious enemy;…when he cannot rout us by force, he sneaks and skulks at every turn, trying all kinds of tricks, and does not stop until he has finally worn us out….For times like these, …the Lord’s Supper is given to bring us new strength and refreshment. ”[v]

On this Maundy Thursday night, like the disciples often did, we want to deny what is going to happen to Jesus. We want to remember the scene the way Leonardo Da Vinci painted it: an upper room with a festive table overflowing with food and wine where Jesus and his disciples gathered. We want the garden to be filled with birds’ night song and the sweet aroma of fresh blooms, instead of the shouts of soldiers and the pungent smell of burial spices.

But tonight, especially, we cannot deny Jesus’ fate. Gathered here tonight, we are bearing witness not to a farewell party, but to the last meal of a condemned man, because we cannot get to the joy of Easter without first seeing Jesus stripped and mocked and finally, executed.

As darkness falls, we join the whole company of disciples around the world and across time who come to this Table, confessing our sin and naming our need for God, confident that God gives us “food for the soul [ that] nourishes and strengthens [us for what lies ahead.]”[vi]

Thanks be to God.

[i] Martin Luther, “Small Catechism,” Book of Concord. 362.
[ii] Martin Luther. “Large Catechism,” Book of Concord. 470.
[iii] ibid 467.
[iv] ibid 459
[v] ibid 469.
[vi] ibid

Palm Sunday (March 25, 2018)

Mark 11:1-11

Today, at the beginning of Holy Week, we heard first about Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem and then we heard the account of his execution just days later. Our human brokenness is realized in our Lord’s crucifixion when the same disciples who confessed Jesus as Lord ran away and hid after he was arrested.

We’ll visit the events of the Three Days – from the last Supper through Holy Saturday – later in the week during our worship on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, but today I want us to stay a little longer with the crowds shouting Hosanna, crying out to Jesus to “save us.”

Marcus Borg, a theologian and scholar who wrote about the historical Jesus in a number of books including one titled The Last Week, described what was taking place that day. It was the beginning of the week of Passover, the “festival that celebrated the Jewish people’s liberation from” Pharaoh who had enslaved the people of Israel centuries earlier.

The Roman governors of the region lived nearer to the Mediterranean coast, but they regularly traveled to Jerusalem for the major Jewish festivals. Proceeding down the western Watershed Ridge, Pilate and the imperial army would have approached Jerusalem in a mighty procession with armored foot soldiers, the cavalry on horses, weapons, banners and all the sounds of a conquering army.[i]

According to Mark’s gospel, which was written in Rome, to Christians living in Rome, between 65 and 70 CE, Jesus approached from the opposite side of Jerusalem,
from the eastern Mount of Olives, riding into the city,
not on a stallion, but on a borrowed colt. Bishop Mike Rinehart of the Louisiana-Gulf Coast Synod notes, “Royalty arrives on a donkey in times of peace (Genesis 49:11, Judges 5:5, 10:4). [and it] arrives on a horse in times of war.”

For Roman citizens, familiar with the governors’ triumphant marches, Jesus’ arrival would have been a clear and obvious challenge to the status quo. Instead of riding high atop a warhorse, Jesus, the Prince of Peace, rides into town on a donkey, not as a conquering hero, but as a humble servant king.[ii] Instead of a lavish demonstration of human power and military might, Jesus displays the already (but not yet) present kingdom of God. The kingdom is not yet fulfilled because we still live in sin, but God is present in the midst of our suffering, in the midst of persistent injustices and unacceptable deaths.

Most of us have never lived under occupation, nor known the oppression that enslaved peoples have known. Few of us, including me, have even witnessed it first-hand. But Jerusalem was an occupied city, where Israelites lived under Hellenist Greeks until 164 BCE and then fell again in 63 BCE to Rome. The emperors were brutal and exploitative, and when there were revolts, whole cities burned and rebels were crucified en masse.[iii]

While it is ancient history for us, for Mark’s audience, those massacres would have been as familiar as the horrors of the Holocaust are to us today. In the midst of this destructive and disruptive violence and dis-ease, Jesus affirms that “God’s resolve for peace in human communities is unshakeable.”

As large as the crowds were on the road between the Mount of Olives and the City of David, they wouldn’t have included everyone. Some might have been obligated to attend the governor’s procession or been curious about the spectacle. And John’s gospel tells us, “[the Jewish religious leaders] had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue.”[iv] That meant being rejected, exiled from worship and cut off from community. So, some people would have stayed away because they were afraid. The cost of choosing instead to follow Jesus was high.

Now as then, following Jesus means choosing another Way, one that isn’t rooted in fear or force but in the Good News of God’s saving power and life-giving grace. The Good News, as Pastor Bobby Wilkinson writes, “those who wield death … have no real standing against the One who wields the power of new life.”[v]

Entering into this Holy Week, we are invited to hear the gospel call to prayer and action for the sake of the world and to take the risk of following Jesus in plain sight, all the way to the cross.

Let us pray…
Hosanna, Lord God,
Thank you for Your Son Jesus who comes into the world and brings life to all of us who choose death;
Accompany us through this Holy Week that we would confess what we have failed to do and receive your forgiveness and mercy;
Lead us by Spirit to bring life and light into our community as witnesses to Your love.
Amen.

[i] Marcus Borg. The Last Week. 2-3.
[ii] “Passion/Palm Sunday, March 25, 2018.” https://bishopmike.com/, accessed 3/22/2018.
[iii] Borg, 14-15.
[iv] John 9:22
[v] https://robertwilliamsonjr.com/palm-sunday-time-trump/, accessed 3/23/2018.

Maundy Thursday 2017

Recalling that the name given to Maundy Thursday comes from the Latin mandatum, for commandment, tonight we celebrate the new commandment Jesus gives us.

Except that it’s not really new at all, is it?

After all, in Leviticus 19, we are told to love both our neighbor and the stranger. What makes it new here is that Jesus shows us how to love: “Love as I have loved you.”

Hearing the story in John’s gospel of the last supper, tonight we celebrate the sacrament of the table and the gift that Jesus gives us in the Eucharist - his body and blood given for us.

Except that it’s not really just about Jesus and me, or you, is it?

Listening to Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth, we are reminded that in the sacrament, we are bound together in the body of Christ, no longer living for ourselves but for Christ in us.

So, tonight we are witnesses not only to a new commandment and a new rite, but to a new understanding of the God who is revealed in Jesus in his last days in Jerusalem.

On this night, we are witnesses to the weakness of God — God who suffers in the world because of God’s love for the world.

Instead of insisting on the prestige and sovereignty that would accompany a triumphant Messiah, our suffering God settles in with the outcasts and the persecuted — the ones who aren’t allowed within the walls of the temple: the Samaritan woman, the man born blind, or, in modernity, the immigrant or the refugee.[i]

Instead of exercising absolute, authoritative or imperial power over the Roman soldiers or the Jewish authorities, our suffering God stands with Jesus when he is handed over to soldiers, humiliated and beaten. God stood with the marchers on the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma on Bloody Sunday and with the Coptic Christians just four days ago on Palm Sunday in Cairo.[ii]

Later tonight we will witness the altar being stripped and laid bare, just as the soldiers who arrested Jesus on this night stripped him of everything they could.

And yet, he was not defeated, for he remained the Son of God.

Here, the altar candles will be snuffed out,
the chalice and paten will be handed over, and
the rich scarlet paraments will be removed.
The books containing God’s Word and the instructions for our communal worship will be closed and taken away.
The cross will be veiled and the light of Christ that is the Paschal candle will be extinguished.

On this night, Jesus teaches us the art of losing,
showing us that even when everything else has been taken away, God’s presence and love remains.[iii]

God’s power is revealed in God’s weakness, and we witness how “God is a God who is present in and works in human failures and helplessness….”[iv]

Because God loves, God does not manipulate us like a puppet master, nor is God a distant watch maker who sets a mechanism in motion and leaves it undisturbed to run down. Because God loves, God does not forsake us. God is with us, accompanying us in our suffering and grief, and working good out of what was intended for evil.

God was with Joseph when his brothers discarded him, and God is with the child who is left forgotten on a front porch in the cold. God was with Israel in exile and God is with the families in Syria who were attacked with chemical weapons. God was with Jesus in the garden when his disciples abandoned him, and God is with you when you feel like no one else is.

The good news of this night, is that when everything else has been taken away, God’s presence and love remains.

Let us pray…
Holy God,
Tonight as we witness the power revealed in your weakness, the love revealed in your Son,
Transform us by the saving power of Jesus’ suffering, death, and resurrection,
That we would be witnesses of your grace to the ends of the earth.
Amen.

[i] John D. Caputo. The Weakness of God. 45.
[ii] ibid
[iii] Richard Lischer. “Stripped Bare: Holy Week and the Art of Losing.” Christian Century.
[iv] Rowan Williams. The Wound of Knowledge. 5.

Sunday of the Passion 2017

(as Simon of Cyrene)

I was there, you know.

My name is Simon, and I was in the city for the Passover festival.

My pilgrimage was more than 900 miles to reach Jerusalem. I knew there would be people from all over Judah, but it was even more crowded than I expected. And they weren’t just excited about the festival; there was something else in the air. There were people shouting angrily while others shrank back, whispering in fear.

I heard the crowd before I saw it surging up the street. Have you ever been in a crowd like that, where the people move like a wave, and you’re not really even touching the ground anymore?

I tried to stay out of the soldiers’ way, but I guess I failed. And then they ordered me to pick up the crossbeam for that man – the one they call Jesus.

When a Roman soldier tells you to do something, you do it.
At least,
if you want to live.

I wanted the chance to return home, so I followed their orders.

It was so heavy, probably as much as carrying both of my young sons – Alexander and Rufus – on my back.

The wood cut into my shoulder and made me wince, and I think I still have splinters in my palm.

But the weight of that cross wasn’t as heavy as the burden of others carry. They are the ones who crucified him.

The high priest here Jesus blasphemed, that he spoke against the Holy God of Israel, and there are others who say he was sent by the ruler of demons.

But, I had heard about this man Jesus from merchants at our ports back home.

They were laughing because he was heard calling people “fishers of men.” Ha!

They want to fill their nets with the catch of the day, not more mouths to feed.

But they also shared the stories of how he healed people from their diseases and sicknesses, and even revived Lazarus. They said he was a good rabbi, too; he knew the Torah and the words of the prophets of old. Some even said he was the Messiah – the anointed one, and, you know, I wondered.

I never expected to come face-to-face with him though. But there, in the street, I lifted the cross off him, and carried it beside him, as we trudged toward the place they call Golgotha.

He was exhausted, beaten and bruised, but he wasn’t defeated.

I watched with the others, as they raised him on the cross.

They mocked him calling him King of the Jews and Son of Man, but, I can’t help but look at how his life fulfilled the Scripture – from the words of the psalmist to those of Isaiah, Jeremiah and Zechariah.

A Nazarene born in Bethlehem,
He was scorned, spat on and struck;
His followers fled, scattering like sheep.

And, now,
he’s been killed.

I confess, that’s not how I imagined the Messiah coming.

I thought at least our enemies might be driven away and we would be free to worship without persecution.

I thought we might know restoration and jubilee,
but maybe we will see that in the kingdom of heaven Jesus described.

Or maybe, that is what is left for us; maybe that’s what he meant when he talked about the kingdom of heaven. He said the kingdom of heaven will come to us who are merciful and who are humble. But I don’t think that means we can shrink back in fear. Sometimes we have to walk the way of the cross, even when it means we will be reviled for our faith or persecuted for righteousness – for standing up for God and God’s people.

After Jesus was crucified, I heard the soldier call him God’s Son. And you know, I think he was right. I cannot understand why Jesus died on that cross, but I can look at how he lived, how he loved people, and how he loved God and follow him.

Shalom.