awakened to cheers
after years at the faultline
Well, this isn’t the Palm Sunday we planned for, is it?
And it is most certainly not the Palm Sunday we wanted, either.
…No, we wanted the Palm Sunday with the kiddos leading the procession, and the piano leading “All Glory, Laud and Honor” as we marched in to the sanctuary waving our palms.
But this year there will be none of that. There will be less glory, laud and honor this Palm Sunday. Won’t there?
There are only four of us on this side of worship. And the real worship, when you participate at home, will be whatever you can cobble together.
It’s not the same. Is it?
No, this Palm Sunday is not the one we wanted. This year there will be sorrow, disappointment and frustration mixed with our glory, laud and honor.
…So it is something of an irony that this year, due to logistics, the only way to put this service together was to have a strict Palm Sunday service.
Usually, we have a Palm/Passion service. A serve with Jesus’ passion, his arrest, trial and death.
That way, if someone missed Maundy Thursday, and, specially Good Friday, they wouldn’t go from the glory of “Hosanna,” to the glory of “He is risen.”
But, knowing how distracting our devices can be, I thought there was no way a long reading of the passion was going to work for our virtual worship.
So, on this year, when there’s no chance of going from glory to glory, our service is all “glory, laud and honor.”
It’s feels a little like salt in our wound…
The assigned reading for Palm Sunday is Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem. His parade into the capital, as the groundswell of his grassroots movement launches his entry into the temple to take back his rightful throne.
The scripture is clear, too; this event is comparable to a parade.
The affair is orchestrated; arrangements are made and staging is planned. Even scripts are followed!
It begins as Jesus sends a couple of disciples with a password to obtain a specific colt for him to ride into town.
Then, once that’s procured, the disciples fashion a saddle for Jesus, the king.
Then, almost like a musical, people devise a red carpet with cloaks and leafy branches cut from the fields. Waving those branches as a banner, and breaking into song, hymn number 118 in the psalter, to the announce; ‘the king has entered the building!”
It’s a big to do.
…Only, and I only noticed this, this year; but that’s not really what happens. Is it?
Apparently the ethical palm branches we’ve ordered every year have obscured some details…
For instance, have you ever noticed it’s not until the parade is over that Jesus enters Jerusalem???
Check it out, verse eleven; “Then he entered Jerusalem.” Then!
Only after the parade has disbanded does Jesus actually enter Jerusalem!
And then, for as anticlimactic as that is, it only goes downhill from there!
“Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple,” and this is when we expect something dramatic to happen. “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.”
What?!? That’s no way to culminate a march! No way to storm the throne!
This parade just fizzles out. Jesus doesn’t do anything when he gets to his destination. He doesn’t flex his muscles, he just gawks around, and goes home!
…I suspect all these years of celebrating Palm Sunday with the bells and whistles, even with our obligatory reading of the passion, has dulled our senses to the real triumph of Palm Sunday.
A triumph that doesn’t look like triumph. A triumph that decidedly cross-shaped! A trump that looks like entering the temple that is by all means his anyway, and just looking around and then leaving.
But this how Jesus always comes!
As Isaiah rightly prophesied, “…he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.” (Is. 53:2)
Jesus comes hidden in humility!
Isn’t that what Jesus did on our other great festival, Christmas? When he left the power and glory of right hand of God, to show up among us mortals as a helpless child. Destined, not for great parades, but the cross!
Jesus’ true triumph looks like defeat every time!
Jesus quit the game of “glory, laud and honor” to instead be crucified as a common criminal! His honor was a fate reserved for the most notorious losers!
But hidden in that apparent defeat, was his greatest triumph! Salvation! And he won it, not for himself. But for you and me!
This is what Jesus’ true triumph looks like! Not receiving “all glory, laud and honor,” but laying it down, to die as one accursed, rejected by all.
Jesus’ triumph is his forfeiture of his triumph, to hand it over to YOU and me!
As Saint Paul says, “But thanks be to God who gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!” (1 Cor. 15:57)
The true “glory, laud and honor” we have to offer Jesus isn’t any of our own. After all, all that’s pretty hollow. Just look around these days if you’re not convinced. No, the praise we give to our redeemer king is nothing other than our cries for his help.
Jesus’ triumphant entry, is his entry into our loses!
And we have plenty of those right about now, don’t we?
Which, paradoxically, has got us ready to truly celebrate Palm Sunday!
Now, maybe for the first time, we are ready really to sing, “Hosanna.” Which means, “Save now!”
Now, that we know we need saving, we’re not paying lip service when we sing Hosanna. Are we? No, we mean it!
Why, we’re even ready to sing, “My Hope is Built on Nothing Less,” this year! Because “all our supports are being washed away.” Aren’t They?
We’re all going through the painful realization of how much of that other stuff we’ve built our hope on. And how unwilling we are to part with them.
But now, as all those other supports are being washed away, Jesus is really, truly becoming “our hope and stay!"
This hymn was written in 1834, and first sung to a dying women.
This hymn was written in 1834, and first sung to a dying women.
Since then, Christ has proved the solid rock for all who are sinking under the shifting sands of life.
And he’s not about to stop now!
This present virus is no stronger than the one of Sin and Death cured from the cross! Our present cries for liberation are no more dire than the ones cried to Jesus on that first Palm Sunday!
Which makes this Palm Sunday, a true Palm Sunday!
It’s exactly into these kind of circumstances Jesus comes entering triumphantly every time!
This year, now that don’t have any of your own palm branches, you’re really waving Jesus into your lives! You’re really crying for his deliverance!
The banners for Jesus that first Palm Sunday were improvised! Their red carpet, makeshift! It was the best they could do that year.
But Jesus wasn’t too good for their homely little, homemade parade. Was he? No, he triumphantly marched into it!
Just like he’s marching into your’s!
Jesus wasn’t too good for an underwhelming Palm Sunday on the edge of the empire two-thousand years ago, and he isn’t too good for your’s this year, either!
Now, as you’re at home, with your humble little Palm Sunday, Jesus is triumphantly marching into your presence and bringing you his upside-down triumph that’s truly triumph because it comes from him alone!
Now, as it’s just you and whoever may be with you, singing “All Glory, Laud and Honor,” Jesus is bringing the heavenly chorus gathered around his throne to sing along with you!
You are not alone!
Now, as you sit cooped up, waiting for liberation, offering nothing more than your cries of Hosanna, “Save now,” Jesus is triumphantly entering into your presence giving YOU his glory, laud and honor!
…Jesus will deliver you! He has delivered you! He is, right now, in this very moment, delivering you!
Now, your empty hands, holding nothing more than cobbled together palms, are perfectly poised to receive Jesus’ true triumph! Now that your only song is humble cries of Hosanna, save now, you’re truly bringing God “glory, laud and honor!”
Bringing our brightest and best before God doesn’t honor God. In fact, it dishonors God. It shows we don’t trust God and feel the need to hedge our bets.
But, now that all those other supports are washed away, you’re truly honoring God! Asking God to be God FOR your!
It may not look like much, but your broken, little, unassuming Palm Sunday is as glorious as they come in the kingdom of God!
Amen.
My Hope is Built on Nothing Less, ELW 597
My Hope is Built on Nothing Less, ELW 597
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