"Hosanna to the Son of David!Don't those Hosannas feel good? Go ahead, give another one a try: hosanna! It's been a long Lent for me, I imagine it has for many of you as well. I'm more than ready for some celebration! So were the Jews. Sometimes we forget that Jesus didn't live among people like us. He lived with, taught, and served the poor and the outcast. He came not to the leaders and the powerful, not even to the comfortable, but to those the political and religious authorities of the day had ground beneath their heals.
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!"
Jesus came to the disenfranchised: to the poor, to slaves, to women, to children, to widows, the disabled, prostitutes, adulterers, and sinners. He came to the people on whom backs had always been turned and he told them that things could be different. He told them that God had bigger plans, better plans, than the ways of men.
But then the crowds listening to him did the same thing we often do, they misinterpreted. When Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey many scholars now believe Pilot (the Roman governor) was riding into the city through another gate. Two processions. One for the wealthy and the powerful, meant to show the unstoppable power of Rome; and one opposite it, different in every way. Except many of those spreading their cloaks on the ground and shouting hosanna didn't realize that. They thought this prophet, this one called the son of David came to take David's place. They still believed that the kingdom of Jesus was one of political and religious power.
We make those same mistakes, though perhaps ours are a bit different. Sometimes we make the assumption that the Kingdom of God is entirely not of this world, and from there come out pictures of that perfect afterlife for those who just do the right thing in this life. Ironically it was that very misunderstanding of the kingdom that was used to maintain the grinding poverty of serfs in feudal Europe. And it is the same thinking that leaves us uncalled to act in the world today.
The truth that Jesus proclaimed when he road a humble donkey over a road lined with palm branches and coats was something quite different. He announced a new creation here and now. A new creation we are called to be integral in creating. That is our call when Christ calls "Follow me!" But right now, on Palm Sunday is where that command to follow gets hard.
A great majority of Christians will take home their palm branches today and won't be back in church until Easter morning. I understand why, we're busy people and it's been a long winter and a long lent. We are hungry for hosannas and alleluias. But if we truly mean to obey Christ when he calls us to follow him then we must follow him not only along the palm strewn path but into that dark upper room, the midnight garden, the interrogation, the lonely cross, and ultimately into that cold tomb. Because without that walk the good news isn't really good news, it's hollow and meaningless.
I am old enough to remember when the Sunday before Easter was just Palm Sunday. When the Passion waited until Holy Week. I understand why the church has compressed the two into one, or at least I understand the logistics that made is seem sensible to someone somewhere. But here at least it is only Palm Sunday. Why? Because Palm/Passion Sunday does a great disservice to those who come to the church seeking to understand the dark times of their lives.
That good news I talked about is here. Our lives aren't made up of Palm and Easter Sundays. We all have our Gethsemanes and Golgothas. And our hope, our promise, our good news from God is that God is with us in those times. When we enter the church with Hosannas and then plunge straight through the darkness of the Passion in one short hour we give ourselves permission to skip over the darkness. We can hold our breath for a brief hour and go back to our lives for a week, emerging unscathed Easter morning. We turn the journey to the cross into a short play, and trivializes our own dark times. We run the risk of thinking darkness is something we can avoid, that we can live on the mountain tops. Christ new that wasn't true.
So I am inviting you to celebrate with me today, I am inviting you to celebrate Palm Sunday and then to walk the painful path of Holy Week. It will be dark, there might be tears, you may grow weary, and this is all right because we will walk through the darkness with Christ. We will walk through the valley of the shadow of death with God, and God will remind us of the Good News: that God has walked through the same darkness and God is with us in our dark times.
Relish today, dear ones. Relish the expectant joy of our Savior. Spend time in His presence, shout with joy, wave your palms, sing. And know that the coming darkness will pass and when it does the light will be infinitely more dazzling than anything we have dreamed of before. Amen.
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