Expectations
Mark 11: 1-11
Click here to view the full sermon video for March 28, 2021, entitled "Expectations."
11 When they were approaching Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples 2 and said to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately as you enter it, you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden; untie it and bring it. 3 If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.’” 4 They went away and found a colt tied near a door, outside in the street. As they were untying it, 5 some of the bystanders said to them, “What are you doing, untying the colt?” 6 They told them what Jesus had said; and they allowed them to take it. 7 Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it; and he sat on it. 8 Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields. 9 Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting,
“Hosanna!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
10 Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!”
11 Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.
Palm Sunday feels like a strange blip of joy in the midst of a somber season, like a premature declaration of triumph here at the junction between Lent and Holy Week. In years when we don’t have a pandemic, we would all have palm branches to wave and hosannas to shout out loud together in this strange moment of…celebration?
Palm Sunday is a confusing celebration, mostly because unlike the crowds at the first Palm Sunday, we know what lies ahead. We know that triumph doesn’t come without significant suffering first, and that it looks very different than any of us expected it to.
Lately, when I come to Scripture, I find myself always asking the question we ask in Godly Play with the children: if we didn’t have this story of Palm Sunday, would we still have all the story we need? What would be missing if it weren’t there?
When I wondered about that this week, I kept circling back to the political statement Jesus is making on Palm Sunday and the way Jesus’ entry exposes our own hopes, expectations, and contradictions.
You see, there were two processions on that first Palm Sunday. During the celebration of Passover the population of Jerusalem swelled as Jewish pilgrims from across the region made their way to the city to mark this celebration of liberation from empire. To the Roman Empire, this festival of freedom felt like a threat which required those in charge to maintain a presence in the city in order to remind all of their power and dominance. The people could celebrate Passover, but any movement towards freedom or any challenge to the oppressive status quo would not be tolerated.
The Roman governor of Judea would be expected to arrive in town for the festival, entering to great fanfare with a military welcome from the western side of the city, riding in on a warhorse in a display of power and might that would loom menacingly over the city during their celebration.
On the Eastern side of town, a different scene unfolded as Jesus made his entrance into the city from the Mount of Olives. Instead of a parade, however, this procession was really a protest. And in Mark’s gospel we see how carefully Jesus planned every little detail of it.
More than half of our passage this morning is dedicated to Jesus’ instructions for obtaining the colt that he was going to ride in on – where to find it, what his disciples were to say to bystanders, the fact that it was to be a colt young enough to never have been ridden….
While Mark is usually frugal with words, he surely devotes a lot of them to these obscure details here, perhaps trying to clue us into the intentionality with which Jesus planned the day. Every detail and symbol carefully staged for dramatic effect and political emphasis.
When the crowds saw Jesus riding in on this young, untrained, colt, they saw what Jesus intended: they saw Jesus riding in the same way as other kings in Scripture - riding in like King Solomon on a donkey to claim his royal throne. They saw a direct challenge to the display of empire on the other side of town. A new king riding in on a symbol of peace instead of war. The words of the prophet Zechariah echoing in their hearts and minds:
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.
Palm Sunday was a day of dissonance. A day filled with contradictions. The warhorse of Pilate and the peaceful colt of Jesus. Power verses humility. War verses peace. Hope and despair. Parade and protest.
Jesus meant to set up these contradictions for anyone with eyes to see. His peaceful, humble entrance into Jerusalem to make a mockery of Pilate’s entrance into town flanked by military power.
But the contradictions between the two processions weren’t all that Jesus exposed that day. In this story we also see the way even the crowd lining the streets with palms also misunderstood Jesus. The way even we today misunderstand Jesus. Palm Sunday exposes our misguided expectations as we all approach Holy Week.
Usually on Palm Sunday we find ourselves waving palm fronds, but on that first Palm Sunday the palms were not for waving, but for laying down on the road alongside their cloaksThis was a well-established tradition in that time – a way of preparing the way for someone important. A rolling out of the red carpet, if you will. Covering the road with cloaks and branches was a way of protecting an honored guest from getting dirty from the dusty road while riding into town – a way to keep them above the mess.
Two chapters earlier in Mark’s Gospel we go with Peter, James, and John to the top of a mountain where Jesus is transfigured before their eyes, and Peter, in his clumsy good-heartedness, offers to build a shelter for Jesus atop the mountain, a place where Jesus can stay very well above the mess. But the true miracle of the transfiguration story is that Jesus then walks down the mountain, down into the full mess of humanity, down into the full suffering of creation, down into the garden of Gethsemane, down from the cross and down into a tomb, down into all the dark valleys through which we must wander.
It’s exactly in the mess where Jesus meets us.
This Thursday in our Maundy Thursday service, we will remember the way Jesus washed the feet of his disciples. As Nadia Bolz-Weber says in her book Accidental Saints, “Jesus meets us when our feet our dirty, not after we’ve managed to clean them up.”
Above the mess is not the place where we find Jesus. And this is what the crowds misunderstand as they welcome Jesus with the red carpet treatment to protect him from that dusty road. This is what Peter misunderstood on the mount of transfiguration and again when Jesus washed his feet. This is what we misunderstand about Jesus when we locate him in a polished sanctuary or mountain retreat instead of in the mess of our humanity,
among the suffering and marginalized,
in our annoying neighbor,
sitting with outcasts and strangers,
with the sick,
with the imprisoned,
with those crying out for justice,
with those who challenge the systems that keep people poor, oppressed, and powerless.
Jesus entered Jerusalem that first Palm Sunday not to be revered as a new king like we’ve always known, but as a radical alternative to Empire anywhere – as one who does not sit aloof on a throne but as one who cleans the feet of his disciples and sits at tables with those who are never invited to halls of power.
On this Palm Sunday, once again we are asked to consider our own expectations and who we believe Jesus is. Do we try to keep Jesus above the mess? Do we try to keep ourselves above the mess? Are we more comfortable with a parade or a protest?
As Jesus enters Jerusalem, as we enter Holy Week, may we all have eyes to see and hearts to follow, May we not skip directly from Palm Sunday to Resurrection Sunday without paying attention to what happens on Friday. And may we find Jesus in all the suffering places in our world, in order that we might also find how the compassionate love of God has the power to transform and bring forth new life in ways that Empire never can.
In the name of Jesus Christ, may it be so. Amen.