Isaiah 50:4-9a, Psalm 118: 1-2, 19-29, Luke 19:28-40

Palm Sunday
March 16, 2008
Rev. Patricia L. Liberty

On Winning and Losing

As twenty-first century Christians who pretty much know the routine by now it’s a little difficult to get into the spirit of Palm Sunday. We all know what’s coming a few days down the road.    The shouts of “Hosanna” and “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord” sound just a bit disingenuous in the ears of those who like us know just how it all turns out.

Let’s face it, Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem doesn’t seem like much of a victory. But nonetheless, all over Christendom this day Christians are taking to the streets in re-enactment of the day.  In the last church I served as a settled pastor, many years ago, the Palm Sunday tradition was a parade, complete with donkey that traipsed around a congested little village called Apponoaug.  A hundred or so children, with their church school teachers and parents, along with the pastors, and assorted other folks who loved a parade would snatch up a palm frond and wave it at the passersby.  Their reactions ranged from bewildered amusement to downright annoyance.  Our church school children heard words they should never have heard on any day, much less a Sunday.  Sometimes it seemed the one having the best time was the donkey, because he at least had his fill of carrots and apples as a bribe for continuing his journey.  

So, what’s a post-modern Christian to do with Palm Sunday?  After all, it just doesn’t match the images of victory that are firmly planted in our minds. Victory is what belongs to the team or individual that wins the game.  The Big East Basketball Championships (Go Huskies) The Super Bowl, World Series, Wimbledon, The Stanley Cup, The Masters Tournament, all images of victory.  Somebody wins and somebody loses.  The message is “Win or go home.” It’s pretty clear.

Words like triumph, victory and success are all used interchangeably and all pretty much mean that somebody comes out first and somebody comes out last.  And while most people cop to the old adage “it isn’t whether you win or lose its how you play the game” most of us, when we are deep down honest don’t really believe it.  Just go to a Little League game or a youth hockey game.  When I was serving a church in Massachusetts, a nearby community was utterly traumatized and the rest of us horrified when a father was accused of murder after a skirmish involving the hockey league that was opposing his son’s team. While some people take winning way too seriously most of us agree that winning is better. 

And all appearances to the contrary it’s hard to make the triumphal entry of Palm Sunday into a winning scenario when we know the next step on the tour is Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.  Popularity, like its cousins success and happiness, is so fickle.

Of course, the Gospel writers knew the truth of Easter when they recorded this event. In that way they were not different than we are as twenty first century Christians who also have the truth of Easter as the backdrop for this whole week.  We know how it’s going to turn out, so we don’t really have to go through the emotional roller coaster of a party on Sunday and a funeral on Friday.

We have the advantage of our VCR minds that allow us to watch the fun stuff and fast-forward through the crummy parts. If the whole Palm Sunday parade seems too silly in light of the rest of the week, we can fast-forward right to Easter and not bother with all that blood and agony, desertion and despair. But if we do, we miss the point. 

As Peter Gomes writes, “by removing the Passion from the palms, by saving the suffering for the faithful few, those moral masochists who will come to church Maundy Thursday and on Good Friday, and thereby leave today “free” for the triumphalism and the dress rehearsal for Easter.  Palm Sunday addicts like the procession, they like the anticipated glory of Jesus, and they love the sense that the Lenten gloom imposed these last six weeks has at least risen if not fully departed.”[1]

Passion Sunday is the other theme of today’s worship.  It runs alongside the party of the Palms and reminds us of the truth of the week that is to come.  The alternate lectionary reading for today is Passion Narrative with its account of the betrayal and death of Jesus. It is the solemn side of the day and, as Gomes notes, “it is almost unbearable in its anguish and pathos.”  Even without reading it, knowing what we know of the coming week, the undercurrent of today is the dark side of the human experience and without it we miss something of the true victory that is inherent in this day.  And true victory has nothing to do with winning or losing.

Jesus, who we are told in another part of Scripture, “set his face resolutely to Jerusalem” and began his journey.  He knew what awaited him in the city, and throughout the Gospels he speaks openly of his own death, of how those who were threatened by him and fearful of his message will be overcome with their fears and doubts and attempt to silence his message by silencing the messenger.

Jesus knew that his message about God’s way of life and the new world it would create required new definitions for old terms and new ways of looking at old stuff.  He knew he was turning the world upside down and that lots of folks liked the world pretty much the way it was.  And he went anyway.

The victory of today is not in the fickle crowds or the hoopla of the party.  It is much more subtle than that. The victory is that, knowing the danger and knowing that people with more political clout than he had wanted him dead he went anyway.  Jesus’ clarity about his life, his work, his mission and his message never waned, whether the crowd was yelling Hosanna or crucify.

As we stand on the threshold of Holy Week, today begins a host of living examples of what Jesus is all about; true power has nothing to do with political power that favors the status quo, what is right isn’t always easy,  and faithfulness is first and finally the only thing that matters.  And that’s just for openers.   And for anyone whose own life journey has made stops at high hopes only to find the next step detouring through deep despair, it’s mighty good news to know that someone else has traveled that way held their head high, grounded in the truth of who he was and whose he was. And because He did, we can too. 

Holding the tensions of Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday is the task for the day, an attempt to stand whole and full and complete in the middle of the ambiguity of it all and not be undone.  To truly understand the victory of the day we have to look to the reconciling, life giving love of Jesus Christ that was a reflection of God’s love.  It is the only thing that can make sense out of the suffering, the comedy and the tragedy. 

Peter Gomes continues, “God’s love does do away with conflict, or suffering, or tragedy; the cross should teach us that.  God’s love does not do away with it, God’s love is the thing that makes it possible to bear it, to see it, to share in it, to understand it, and to pass through it.  That is the truth of the gospel; that is the essence of the Passion.”[2]  And that is the victory of today.  Perfect love casts out fear, and Jesus knowing full well what awaited him, came anyway, sat on the donkey, was part of this little sham of a parade because it in no way diminished the truth of what he, the day and the week were about. 

Unresolved ambiguity begins today in the passion and the palms.  It is not an unfamiliar place for us, just an uncomfortable one.  The moods shift, wills vacillate, sentiments are confused, the crowd that yells “hosanna” one minute and cries out “crucify” the next is the same crowd.  The Savior who says, “Let this cup pass from me,” also says, “Not my will but thine be done.” The steadfast disciples who become within minutes deserters and deniers are the same disciples.  And it is uncomfortable.

And Jesus was fully alive to each moment whether filled with victory, despair, disappointment or agony.  Even in that split second when he asked that the cup might land in someone else’s hand and pass over someone else’s lips he never lost sight of who he was or whose he was.  If that isn’t a victory I don’t know what is. The American Heritage Dictionary defines “victory” as “…a final and compete defeat of one’s enemy…” I guess its time to rethink victory and success, winning and losing, not as things that go the world’s powerful and popular and prestigious, but rather as a fulfillment of the promise that perfect love that casts out fear, assurance that we can live in the ambiguity of moments that make no sense, and that no matter what, we are held in the hands of God who never lets us go and never lets us off.  As you think about your own life you can probably add to the list.

So strike up the band, grab a palm frond and get ready to sing your hosannas.  I believe the song for the day is “Ride on, ride on in majesty, in lowly pomp ride on to die.”