PEOPLE'S CHURCH OF DOVER

John 12:12-16                                                     Hosanna Hey-sanna Sanna-sanna Ho

Palm Sunday Sermon April 5, 2009:  People's Church of Dover:  The Rev. Dan Griggs

 

            The sun was just peeking over the Mount of Olives, casting its morning rays on the golden doors of the temple in Jerusalem.  At the top of the eastern hill a strange sight appeared—a man wearing a scarlet cloak, riding a donkey, accompanied by a small crowd of people, men and women.  As they made their way down the road toward the city gates and the people already there saw them, a shock-wave ran through the crowd.  "Do you know what that is?"  "Yes, it's the fulfillment of the approach of the king psalm!"[1]

They knew the temple choir would sing this psalm this week—it was used in the celebration of Passover.[2]  And now, here is the fulfillment of it!  So they spread their own cloaks on the road before him—a red carpet for the Anointed One; and they cut palm fronds in the fields and joined the parade, waving the palms and singing Psalm 118.  Meanwhile on the temple balcony the Sanhedrin, the temple board of directors, stood scowling:  "One more trouble-maker."  They were afraid the Roman governor would shut the festival down completely if things got out of hand.  And some people were just confused:  "What's going on now?"  In the outer temple court the money-changers continued their exchange business, and the sellers of sacrificial animals continued to sell:  of course people are coming from the eastern territory.  Farther north, the Roman legionnaires standing guard on the parapet of Antonia Palace looked at each other and shrugged.  Somebody went inside and told Governor Pilate. 

            This is Palm Sunday.  This is what the church calls "the Triumphal Entry."  It strikes me as something like a Rorschach ink blot—you know, the psychologist shows the patient each of twelve ink blots on paper and the patient tells what she thinks it looks like:  and what it looks like to the  patient reveals what's going on in this person's life.  Jesus' Triumphal Entry was then and always has been a Rorschach snapshot, and each one makes of it what we want.  This is nothing new.  The Renaissance painters depicted Bible scenes that look more like Italy or France than Palestine, and the people look more like lords and ladies of the High Middle Ages who were maybe even modeling for the artists.  The British composer David Lloyd-Webber wrote the music to "Jesus Christ, Superstar," a rock opera, in which he captures the flippant attitude of some watchers:

            What do you see as you watch Jesus riding the donkey up to the gates of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday?  The Messiah?  His messianic work has yet to be accomplished.  The Teacher of the faith?  Our Example of servanthood to others?  A heavenly Being?  A sly manipulator of the political situation?  Maybe all these.  I see a man riding a donkey, who is an enigma—and we make of him what we wish.  He came to Jerusalem, stirred up trouble, was executed, and yet he's still around. 

            All these pictures!  All the different ways of seeing Jesus!  Yes, this is a Rorschach ink blot.  I think God intentionally set it up this way.  Literary analysts would say it's a "multivalent story."  It gave Jesus almost a week to be free to complete his teaching task and to get ready to fulfill his most fearful calling. 

 

            The odd thing is, we see just as much difference in people's reactions today about the news.  One writer has suggested that the one clear fact about our situation these days is that "we are in a state of collective and massive grief."[3]  You can't get away from it.  The news is everywhere—on the radio, in the newspapers and magazines, on TV, on the internet:  it's as if we are watching the collapse of the America we have known all these years—the stability is gone.  It's not just that I as an individual am wondering what's happening to my property values and my pension plan, and how much gasoline is going to cost by June, and whether I'm going to be able to get my Chrysler LHS serviced this summer:  we are all watching and we're grieving.  The theological seminary from which I graduated D.Min. has cut its budget in half, is dismissing teachers, trimming programs—and, of course, sending me mail containing return-postage envelopes.  Two of the seminaries of the Episcopal Church have sold their campuses, combined and are renting space from a college.  The big banks that have been buying up little banks for twenty years are themselves now tottering.  Hospitals are closing their emergency rooms.  Art museums, libraries, even churches are closing.  Even without Bernard  Madoff, the investments of so many service organizations and pension funds (not to mention individual 401k's) look like a disaster zone.  And we are grieving the loss of the way America used to be. 

            Somebody says, "I'm not grieving:  I'm angry!"  Anger is part of the grieving process:  it can flip over into depression in a moment.  When it all first began to ravel back last winter, and the government sent out those Economic Stimulus checks to all taxpayers, we didn't get it:  we were a country in denial—nothing is really wrong, nothing bad can be happening.  Now, a year later, as the economic stimuli flow to the auto companies and the financial institutions, we're beginning to get it, and some of us are mad, and some of us are scared, and some of us are depressed.  Might as well say it out loud. 

            We're like an ant colony that a boy started digging into with a stick:  we're running off in all directions; and the direction each of us is running says something about the nature of his or her life.  We're watching a Rorschach ink blot splattered across our economic future, just like the people of Jerusalem were, watching Jesus riding into Jerusalem, and each one interpreted it as his life was lived. 

            Is there any good news for us?  Hear the gospel of hope:  your God will sustain you. 

 

            Looking back at the people singing Psalm 118 as Jesus rode his donkey down the hill to the city gate, we see something helpful, something hopeful.  At least parts of that psalm were sung antiphonally—a choir on the left sang the first line, and a choir on the right sang the second part; and the second part was always the same line—a repeated announcement of hope.  They sang: "His steadfast love endures forever."  That psalm was given its final form after the Jewish exiles returned from Babylon and rebuilt the temple.[4]  They were under pressure from jealous neighboring colonies.  Their harvests weren't very successful.  They had no wall around their capital, so it was unprotected.  There was an upheaval in family life because their governor and their chief rabbi, Ezra, demanded that Jewish men who had married non-Jewish wives divorce them and send them away.  What a mess they were in.  But as the high priest and the governor moved up the temple steps to enter the great doors, the two choirs sang of a hope that transcends the moment—transcends their moment, and transcends our moment; they sang of a God who makes us a promise and then, in spite of everything, keeps the promise.                                   "His steadfast love endures forever."

            It isn't surprising that the early Church applied this psalm to Jesus.  Whatever those people on Psalm Sunday thought they were looking at in the Triumphal Entry, the first Christians came to realize that all the twists and turns, all the set-backs and crises, all the guilt and fear that runs through us in times like these—it's all brought to solid ground in Jesus.[5]          "His steadfast love endures forever."

Your God will sustain you! 

 

            The God whose eternal purpose of blessing sustained Jesus himself as he rode into the mess on Palm Sunday, toward the fulfillment of the cross and resurrection—that God also sustains us in his eternal purpose of blessing.  God promised:  God will keep faith with you.

            So has your son or daughter, or grandchild lost their job in this economic panic?  Your God will sustain them.  Are you facing a physical challenge or an illness and discovering that your health care insurance program is balking?  Your God will sustain you.  Has the company that has been providing your pension begun to totter, and you've begun to feel anxious about your pension?  Your God will sustain you. 

            This is not a "maybe," or an "I hope so":  the Christian hope is a promise God has made to you, and you have something to look forward to, because God is faithful.  If the Triumphal Entry functioned as a kind of Rorschach ink blot test for everybody who saw it, it was not so for Jesus himself:  he knew where he was going, what God wanted of him, and how he was going to explain it.  If the present social upheaval has thrown you into grief—either anger or depression—over losing the American dream of your entire life's experience, it is already taken under the shadow of God's eternal blessing.  This you can depend on.         Your God will sustain you.

 

            Have you ever gone to the airport, dragged your baggage out of your car trunk and lugged it to an elevator to take you to the check-in level, and by the buttons was a sign you didn't want to see:  "Out of Order"?  Have you ever driven up to the drive-through ATM, inserted your card, keyed in your PIN, and then the screen announces:  "This ATM is not disbursing money at the present time"?  Well in dark times, as the Quaker philosopher Rufus Jones said:  "If we are to go to great heights it will not be on a 'cosmic escalator,' it will be rather

But, Jones also said:[7]

 

Jones wrote these words in 1943, after thirteen years of the Great Depression, in the darkest days of the Second World War.  My friends, hear the gospel announced from the steps of the ancient temple:

"His steadfast love endures forever."

Your God will sustain you.

AMEN