Palm Sunday Sermon

The crowds gathered, waving their symbols of protest and expectation. Jubilant and confident, they knew were with God on the right side of history, and oh, so ready to bear witness to the demise of their political oppressors.

Sound familiar?

It is not at all lost on me, that – yesterday, while writing my Palm Sunday sermon – communities around the nation were gathering for their No Kings protests.

The conditions of Jerusalem in the early first century and the conditions of the United States, right now, are not dissimilar. Mind you, they aren’t identical. But they are similar, because we humans don’t change. Our fears don’t change. Our emotions don’t change. Our strivings for power and control – political and otherwise – don’t change. We are human.

As was Jesus: fully human, fully divine.

And it was this human, divine Jesus who rode up the temple mount nearly two thousand years, who entered the temple compounds … and wreaked havoc. And, on the following two days, he kept at it. He kept provoking the religious authorities until they could take it no more and they took action against him – bringing him before the Roman authorities, who executed him.

Ah, holy Jesus, what have you done, participating in this spectacle of protest and outrage? What have you done, participating in this human life – this human mess we’re living, so saturated as it is by fear and division and violence? What have you done?

What, indeed?

What was God about? What was God in Christ about – on Palm Sunday and Holy Week? On the cross? In the tomb? In the whole of his ministry? What was he doing here? With us?

“With us.” It is those two words that lie at the heart of it all: “God, with us, Emmanuel.” In our living, in our dying, in our peacemaking in our protesting – always, with us.

For the bulk of Jesus’ ministry, he was basically doing three things: teaching, healing and doing miracles, and casting out demons. You might say, it was ministry to people’s minds, to their bodies, and to the whole spiritual realm. And in all these things, Jesus was proclaiming the Kingdom of God – everything a demonstration of who God is and what God cares about.

And always, the context of this ministry was in relationship. For this, too, lies at the heart of who God is: Jesus was functioning in union with God; and in union with the twelve apostles and with the other disciples – the men and women who were also following him; and with the populace wherever he went. Jesus was embodying this essential reality of existence that there is no good life for me that does not also include my participation in fostering a good life for you. To be made in God’s image means to know ourselves as one, as God is one.

Most of his ministry was in the northern region of Israel, called Galilee. That season lasted about three years. But right at the end, leading up to the last week of his life, something shifted. He came down to the southern region of Israel, called Judah, and to Jerusalem, its capital. Jerusalem was the cultural heart of Israel. That’s where the temple was, and – in Jewish belief at the time – the temple was where God’s spirit uniquely dwelt.

And as Jesus arrived, and in the days that followed, his proclamation of the Kingdom of God took a different form. It was quite explicitly “prophetic action” – a dramatic form of behavior intended to be public, symbolic, provocative, and authoritative. And I what I mean by that is: authentic prophetic behavior embodies and exudes a kind of power that is unassailable – that anyone witnessing it can intuitively recognize, “This guy and his message are the real deal.”

And the job of a prophet is this: to communicate to us the heart and the will of God and what is required of us to align ourselves with what God desires. Which means change. And change is always resisted. Which is why prophets usually get killed. This was true throughout Israel’s history. It would soon become true for Jesus. And it remains true today.

Jesus arrived at the heart of Israel – riding on a donkey amongst crowds of people shouting, “Hosanna, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” He was deliberately putting himself in the guise of the Messiah – the long awaited one who would set Israel free from their oppressors, in this case, the Roman empire. He entered the temple and began tearing things up, denouncing the failure of the temple to function as the holy place of God’s dwelling where all people could come and encounter the living God. The place where the money-changers tables had been set up was actually the Court of the Gentiles, that area of the temple precinct specifically designed to welcome non-Jews who were seeking the God of Israel. And then he tore into the religious leaders themselves, in the most unbridled terms, “Woe to you, scribes, pharisees, hypocrites!” Over and over again. It was a lashing.

When Jesus rode up the temple mount on Palm Sunday, amidst the people’s frenzied support, what they expected (most likely) was that he would take charge in overcoming the Romans – that he would lead the rebellion. Instead, he attacked the religious leaders. He rebuked the whole system and all the ways it had failed in its essential purpose to draw people into union with God and the heart of God.

And it is this rebuke that weighs on me as a priest in the Episcopal Church – in the way I lead and the way I live. Were Jesus to appear today in Gig Harbor, at St. John’s, I would not want him to point his finger at me and say, “Woe to you priest, rector, hypocrite. You lead your liturgies, you decorate your church, you collect your pledges.” If Jesus were to appear today, I would want him to find a priest who is leading a church with integrity in their mission of trying to be like him – where the least are made first, where the trans youth or the blind window knows they are safely at home with us; where compassion is flourishing and judgment withers; where enemies are prayed for and no one is ridiculed; where the hungry are fed and the wealthy are modest and generous; where God is at the center and God’s mercy is proclaimed and enfleshed among us; where the door is opened to all – knowing that sometimes when people arrive, they’re a mess and they’re going to be a mess for a while, and it’s okay.

My job as the priest – which means, our job as the church in Gig Harbor – is to keep proclaiming the Kingdom of God with integrity.

The church does not have the power to make laws or policies. Nor does it have the power to enforce laws or policies – be they in our society or even within our own church. I can’t make you do anything. I can’t make you love. I can’t make you be generous. I can’t make you forgive. I don’t have that power, and I’d be a fool to try. In fact, what I’d be building is a cult – where rules and behavior are enforced. But I can preach God’s love, God’s generosity, God’s forgiveness. And I myself can choose love and choose generosity and forgiveness. And you can, too. And when we choose this way to live – here, in our homes, in our communities – then is the Kingdom of God made manifest.

The church’s duty is to proclaim the way of God with such beauty that who people are and who they are becoming is a reflection of who we are encountering God to be with us.

And so, as we seek to “be like Jesus,” the bulk of our days will be spent in loving people however we can and with whatever is at our disposal – of our spirits and of our resources. When we choose love, that will be a true proclamation of the Kingdom of God. And sometime, like Jesus, there will be times to be angry and to tear things up. But be careful. That is a “right” easily abused. True prophets have a spirit of authority rarely evidenced amongst the self-righteous mobs. And remember, when Jesus chose prophetic action, he directed it within, to the religious leaders and systems whose duty was to foster access to God: to the knowledge and the experience of God’s love. And remember, too, when Jesus chose prophetic action, he was choosing the way of the cross.

His prophetic action, ultimately, became one of sacrifice. He first revealed the hypocrisy of religion and all the ways it was focused on its own reputation and survival, and then he gave his life away. He gave away his reputation. He gave away his right to speak and to defend himself. He gave away his authority. He gave away his clothes and his dignity. He gave away his body, with all its comforts and needs. He gave away his life.

The prophetic action Jesus chose in the end was sacrifice. And it was this sacrifice that revealed to us: This is who God is.

Everyday, God’s reputation is tarnished by the church and religions throughout the world.

Everyday God is silent while being mocked or ignored.

Everyday God lets us choose what we will do, when most of what we do is careless and self-serving.

And everyday, God is the life that keeps giving of itself to sustain all life: God is the light – the fire the sun – that gives light to the world. God the living water, coursing through all that lives. God in each plant and animal that lays its life down to become our next meal that we might live the next day; God in the bread and the wine, the body and blood, ingested by us, to become our own body and blood.

Our God is one: one within the Holy Trinity – the Father, the Son, the Spirit; one within the church – for we are now the body of Christ, given for this world; one within all creation, for all is birthed of God. And, in its time, everything must give its life away to become life for the other.

God is one: in every birth and every death – in the manger and on the cross; in you, in me, in every neighbor, without exception.

And this week begins again, for us, another Holy Week of ritual and reminder that God, in Christ, revealed for us who God is and how God loves and gives himself (herself) away that we may live, and that we may live as God lives. Amen.