Hosanna!

Scriptures: Isaiah 11:1-9, Matthew 21:1-11
 

 One week ago, I was at the Hands-off protest in the little town of Lihue, on Kauai. For a couple of blocks people lined the street on both sides, cheering and waving all manner of signs, while music blared over the loud speaker: I get knocked down, but I get up again… We didn’t start the fire, the music mingling with the rhythmic pounding of a group of hand drummers, voices shouting and horns honking. I teared up, of course, picturing us here, on this tiny island way out in the Pacific Ocean, hours after everyone else, sharing in this thing that was happening all over the country. The feeling of collective action and comradery was electric.  It felt like hope, like possibility, like anticipation, like we were part of something bigger, something coming.

 
And then I saw him. The man in the tan t-shirt and fishing hat, bouncing an actual tiny palm tree in the air.  And it stopped me short. Because of course, I thought of this moment.  
 
How different are we, really from those 2000 years ago who lined the streets on Palm Sunday shouting,Hosanna, which means Save us!, protesting an oppressive regime and anticipating deliverance by this one who would restore their rightful place, and take his place as king, and rule them like King David did 1000 years before? 
“Hosanna to the Son of David!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!”
 
Those in Jerusalem that day wanted Jesus to save them from the Roman Empire, to make Israel great again, to bring back stability, and raise up the weak, and destroy the corrupt mighty.  And maybe they even had in their minds the idea that Jesus was the fulfillment of prophesy. Because while, for Holy Week, we’ve momentarily jumped forward 600 years to join this crowd and walk this week with Jesus, we get to hear these events with their ancestors in mind.  And certainly, it’s possible that, standing there on their spread-out cloaks with their own palms waving in the air, they were recollecting the same stories we are working our way through. If we think back to Lisa’s sermon last week,we will recall that the kingdom of David and Solomon had crumbled, their homeland was destroyed by the Babylonians, and the people are in exile, waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

Today’s prophetic message from Isaiah comes to them fifty years in, give or take, when they’ve pretty much settled into their lives in Babylon. Some families in ongoing despair and suffering, others are getting comfortable in the empire. Into that accommodation and apathy, that acquiescing to the status quo of exile, here comes the prophetic promise of a savior who will deliver them from captivity. 
 
And with a scripture we normally read at Christmas time, we hear of the One from the root of Jesse who shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
and who is ushering in a kingdom of peace so counterintuitive to the natural order of things that fear is nonexistent – lambs and wolves hanging out, calves and cubs cuddling, children and snakes all safe together.  “No one will be hurt on God’s holy mountain” it promises. “Just as water fills the sea, the whole earth will be full of people who know and love the Lord.”
 
So maybe that day with their palms in hand they remembered the prophet’s promise to their ancestors 600 years before. And maybe, just like we do on Christmas, they’re declaring that Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s salvation, and maybe, also like us, they’ve decided what that salvation looks like so they’re making Jesus into who they think Jesus should be for them. Whether we think Jesus should keep us safe and prevent bad things from happening, take away our pain, strong-arm our enemies, or make us into supernaturally good people, however our version of God’s plan goes or our view of salvation looks, they had their version too, and figured he would fulfill it.

And like his very first journey on a donkey in the womb of his young mother Mary, when the world had no idea know what was coming, once again, he will take the cosmos by surprise.  Because beyond everything we think salvation should be, God’s way of love flips things upside down and inside out, it is unrelenting and quiet, foolish and strange. Jesus wasn’t there to lead the revolution at all, he was there to die. The things the people projected onto him were not going to happen. And just a few days later this whole crowd will join in collective chanting again. This time, instead of ‘Hosanna!’ They’ll chant ‘Crucify Him!’ without even a bit of irony or self-awareness. 

But the prophetic beauty and power of this moment is that, even though they’ve got messed up motives and confused ideas and false assumptions, what they are saying is completely true, part of the fabric of all things most true. Jesus does save us. Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the lord. 

So I return to that fellow in the bucket hat at the protest last week, bobbing his palm up and down in time to the music. He didn’t bring a sign that said one thing; he used his foliage to affirm everything, to say ‘here, here!’ to it all, a bouncing exclamation point to every the messages surrounding him on cardboard, to all the stop doing this, bring back that, cruel and mocking jokes, heartfelt pleas, clever slogans and desperate longings, held by people joining together and projecting our desires, despairs, and prognostications into the air alongside one another, all of us shouting all our various Hosannas and Save uses into the atmosphere. 
 
Who were we aiming them all at? I guess we were aiming them at each other, at the collective consciousness, the universe, the far away government on the other side of the ocean. Perhaps at all those people in all those other time zones who did this before us, like some kind of call and delayed response. 
But mainly, to be honest, we were aiming them at the passing cars. If they honked and gave us the hang-loose hand out their window, the cheering got louder. We got a response! They agree! They’re with us! It was like facebook “likes” and Instagram hearts in real life -the literal thumbs up right to our faces, a feel-good echo chamber of our shared discontentment and frustrations, elevated by peppy music and comforting companionship.  And that is not a bad thing – making our voices heard matters, and it felt good. And then it pittered out, and eventually we tossed our signs in the back seat of the car to be recycled later and wandered off to a noodle house for lunch.
 
But it made me realize that as heartening as that was, it only goes so far what I was really craving was thisrally. The one where the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee when God incarnate meanders on a donkey through the middle of people’s expectations and projections to bring us the salvation we need, and not the salvation we think we want.  
Because if our salvation is up to us, to shout it back and forth to each other, to cajole and persuade other selfish, broken human beings to do the right thing, we have no hope. Left to our own devices, we’ll just grasp onto stability enough, a sufficient status quo of empire apathy that lets us turn away from our human siblings, slowly destroy this beloved planet, and perpetuate cruel injustice and dismissive division with maybe a veneer of civility.
We’ll wave our Yes at whatever makes us feel heard and seen, and fear will keep being our driving force. We’ll keep hating our enemies, and flapping our competing signs and propping up our conflicting causes and getting a thrill from the responses we solicit and calling it progress. We’ll elect good people, and bad people, and good people again, and if we get our way, life will go on pretty much the same with a few tweaks, while the threat of death looms as large as it ever has.  We need something from outside ourselves to do the saving.
 
Palm Sunday can feel a bit weird and superfluous, like a mini-Easter. Hooray! Jesus is the coming King! But really, Palm Sunday the culmination of Lent. It's the false finale that draws out all our counterfeit redemptions.  We wave our palms and shout our hosannas and save uses, thinking This is it! It’s going to happen like we want it to! and take all our self-deception and salvation projections—all we think we want and need, who we think God should be for us and what we think God should do for us—and we aim it right at Christ. We load all our misguided intentions, our self-centered solutions, and our sureness of what will save us, onto his shoulders, while he rides by us, perched atop that little donkey.  And Jesus welcomes them into himself, absorbs all of them, and carries these sins to the cross. There our cries for salvation will be answered, just not how we think they should be. 

There God incarnate submits completely to the human experience of suffering and death, so that nothing can separate us from God’s love. God has come, God is here, God loves this world and everyone in it far more than any of us do, and despite us, God is redeeming it all. As Lisa and the prophets reminded us last week, “we live in hope, because we know that God will act. We don’t know the why, nor the how, nor the when. We cannot predict God’s miracles, but we live in the certainty of God’s redeeming power.”
 
However, our hosannas get shouted, or whatever our palm branches represent for us today: God is breaking in, that God has come to share this life with you and me, and something irreversible is about to take place.  
Salvation is what God does and will keep on doing until it is complete. We don’t compel it, and we can’t thwart it. God is saving the world. So, bring your needs and longings and ask away. The Holy Spirit will translate our prayers, and God will bring the saving that we need. 
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the Highest.
Amen.
 

Saving / Being Saved

Mark 11:1-11 

I was raised with a high anthropology – which is to say, a view of human beings that puts a lot of power in our hands. I could choose whether or not to “accept” Jesus into my life, and evidently, my word was powerful enough to keep Jesus out of my life.  If people were not “following” God, their lives would be worse, and their afterlife doom, but it’s our choice. Human beings, in this view, hold an enormous amount of power. When it comes down to it, more than God, actually. Because we can tie God’s hands. We can keep God from acting, just by our inaction! Oh well. God would’ve saved us, but we said no thanks, and there was nothing God could do about it. God seems unable to override human beings’ refusal to accept God’s saving, or humans’ basic ignorance that that decision was ever in their hands to begin with. If we don’t say Save us! Which is what Hosanna! means, then God just won’t do it. 

But maybe you didn’t grow up like that. Maybe your underlying messages of human idolatry were not about eternity but about now. Maybe your hosannas were pointed inward, toward your own outstanding self. And the work of saving -whether that’s your own self, the world, or maybe even others, was your work to do. If we don’t do it, it won’t get done. Maybe Jesus didn’t factor in, except as a motivator or an example, and God’s role was simply to serve as an ethical ideal on which to base all the world-saving work we humans need to get busy with.  This is also a dangerously high anthropology, that is, this also seems to think human beings are far more capable and in control than we really are. 

But the bible has a pretty low anthropology. In the bible people are portrayed as mostly having no idea what we’re doing.  In the gospels, the disciples, who walked side by side with God incarnate, still had no clue what was happening most of the time. Even when Jesus told them, over and over again, how it was all going to go down, they still didn’t get it.  

And when the crowds naively celebrate Jesus’ coming into Jerusalem on a donkey, they laid down cloaks and branches heavy with misunderstandings and expectations. Their version of Hosanna! Save us! assumed they were welcoming into town the one who was coming to overthrow the oppressive Roman empire occupying their land. Here comes power to speak truth to power and overthrow power and give power back to the powerless!  Hosanna!

A high Christology believes Jesus is capable of saving.  So the palm Sunday crowds were ahead of us there. Because saving is what Jesus does; Jesus saves. Not our belief in Jesus, not our patterning our lives after Jesus, but Jesus, himself, saves the world, whether we believe in him or not, whether we follow him or not. The crowds were wrong about him and what he was there to do. But so what?  God does what God will do anyway. 

When Jesus rode into Jerusalem, he didn’t fit the people’s ideas of him; and all throughout the next week he resolutely refused to live into their expectations. He kept on undermining their hopes of glory and power with vulnerability and weakness, and then he let himself be killed, which was a killer to their dreams and plans.  

When we cry “save us” what we usually mean is, we want to not feel so much pain, or we want to be freed from the consequences of our choices, we want bad people not to be in charge of things, or we want to be spared from some impending tragedy or have security – even eternally. What we usually mean by “save us!” is “give us more control!” or at least make things turn out how we would like them to.  We use God as a means to our own end, a tool in our own self-development project or societal change platform. Our telos, or ultimate goal toward which our life is pointed, is usually our own comfort and well-being, the safety or security of those we love. 

When we cry Hosanna! Save us, Lord! we do NOT usually mean save us from our delusions, save us from our self-centeredness, save us from our mistrust of others and fear of vulnerability, save us from pride and thinking we have more control than we do, or save us from forgetting that you are God, and we aren’t, and denying that those we most dislike are also your beloved children. We’re not usually asking to be saved from our idolatry or ego. We’re certainly not asking to be humbled and brought low like Christ himself; we’re usually asking to be propped up and protected.

But that’s ok.  When we point our longings and fears toward God, God knows what we need hears our hearts, even if we can’t name what salvation is or imagine what it could look like, God brings it anyway, because this is who God is and what God does, regardless of who we are and what we do. 

And even when the people who cheered his arrival on Sunday turned around and cheered his demise on Friday, it didn’t alter God’s course.  We think death ends everything and is the strongest power of all, but in Christ God moves in and through death to bring new life. Because God brings life and salvation to the world.  This is what God does. And nothing, no matter what, can stop God from saving the world. 

So, first, here this good news, which comes as a blow to our high anthropology: You are not powerful enough to stop what God is doing.  And what you do will not save the world. You’re not really in control of much of anything. None of us are. It’s part of being human. And you are too important to God to let go of.  And so is this world. God’s YES is always bigger than our human Nos, or I don’t knows.  All this means your most excellent actions, most generous sacrifices, highest deeds of goodness cannot bring God nearer or give you any security at all.  And, your most horrible mistakes, most self-centered spitefulness, and worst deeds of cruelty, cannot make God retreat further or disqualify you from God’s love.  

We are making some terrible mistakes in the world. We are hurting each other badly. Our selfishness and division have very real and heartbreaking impact. Choices we make have appalling consequences and contribute to horrific suffering. And trapped inside of time, we can’t undo what we’ve done.  Nevertheless, nothing, nothing can stop God’s love and redemption. Nevertheless, Jesus saves.

We can participate in that salvation with awareness and gratitude, choosing to align our lives with the inbreaking Kingdom of God and seeking live as we were created to live, connected to God and others. Or we can participate in that salvation with naivete and ignorance, or even live our one life with deliberate malice. But make no mistake, we participate. One way or another, we are part of God’s redemption story. God will do what God is doing – in us and through us, or despite us and without our approval. God uses anything and everything to move the world toward healing and hope. God’s presence inhabits every moment. God’s voice cannot be banished or silenced, God’s work cannot be hindered or obstructed. Love prevails. Most often in unexpected and ordinary ways; most often through weakness. We can watch for it or not. We can recognize it or not. We can receive it willingly, or resist it pointlessly. But the love of God has claimed this whole story, Christ has come into this world, and turned it all inside out, and nothing can stop God.

Every year we read this text in one gospel voice or another, and every single year, we just breeze past and generally ignore a certain character that, in Mark, takes up over half the passage. This is, of course, the donkey. When Jesus tells a couple disciples to go untie a random colt from a random doorstep and bring it to him, and he gives them words for if someone asks them what they’re doing, it happens just like he says it will.  What this shows us is this: They may not have any idea of the big picture, or even what’s about to unfold, even though Jesus keeps trying to tell them that he’s here in Jerusalem to die. But in this small moment with a random donkey, they DO glimpse the Divinity of Christ, and they get this small taste of their own participation in something bigger. With this act of trust and courage, their actions join what God doing in the world. They go into this strange parade having been guided and having obeyed. 

God is always up to something way bigger than we can see or understand. Even though our participation is often misguided, driven by our own agenda for what being saved would feel like, nevertheless, God uses our actual experiences to bring love and healing into the world. Nevertheless, we are part of a story that reaches beyond us and yet encompasses our lives entirely. God’s healing comes into our most vulnerable and broken places, not because we are impressive and powerful but because we are not.  Jesus, in vulnerability joins us, and invites us into our own brokenness alongside one another to share in God’s redemption where it comes, where it is needed. 

This next week is going to suck for the disciples. And not just this next week, which ends in Jesus’ death, not to mention the death of all their beliefs and dreams and plans. Life is going to be overwhelming and disorienting for them for some time to come.  

So, the week begins here, in this moment of participating, with this donkey, and this goofy parade, where a whole crowd of people says the most true thing in the universe, even though none of them have any idea what they are actually saying or what it really means:

Hosanna, blessed is the one who comes to save. 

Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!

Hosanna in the highest heaven!’

 Amen.

Praise in the Mourning

Luke 19:28-40

 Yesterday we had a funeral, for our beloved Jen. And shortly afterwards, our dear Dennis died.  Oh friends, it feels like too much to bear.  Death feels so close, so terrible.  And here we are on Palm Sunday reenacting this joyous moment when Jesus is cheered as a savior, and king. And it feels a little disjoined to celebrate, almost like pretending.  

But even though nobody else knew it, Jesus went into this parade knowing he would die. So there is something here today for us.
 
Luke helps us out here.  In Luke’s telling of this story, there are not even palm branches, and the crowd is not shouting. There may be onlookers watching and thinking the whole thing is bizarre, and some joining in by laying out cloaks, observing curiously, so this is the Jesus I have been hearing about.  But the noise is coming from Jesus’ own followers, disciples and others who had heard his teachings, experienced his miracles, followed his message, were going through the streets and gathering on along the edges to join in their voices, testifying to who they have heard and experienced Jesus to be.  They were sharing about their experience of God’s faithfulness in their lives through their encounter with Christ.  
 
And there is not even Hosanna! In Luke.  Instead, Luke puts into the mouths of Jesus’ followers the words sung out at Christ’s birth by angels to a hillside full of stunned shepherds, “Blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord, Glory to God in the Highest heaven!”  Luke reminds us that this whole story begins in upset expectations and God’s weird way of saving us. God comes in weakness and vulnerability, determined to share this life from the inside, rather than rescue us out of it. 
 
God’s way is so not about saving us from suffering, that a few days after this palm parade scene, Jesus, so freaked out and shaken up about what’s coming that he’s sweating blood, prays his own prayer asking God, begging God, to be saved from suffering and spared death. Then, from the cross as he is dying, Jesus accuses God of forsaking him.  And in that moment, the experience of godforsakenness gets plunged right into the heart of God. 
 
We need a savior.  We don’t need our own notions of success and safety reinforced, our own sense of good and bad legitimated. We don’t need salvation as a good idea to believe in.  And we don’t need Jesus as a fine example, or a wise teacher, or an inspiration for revolution. We are too far gone for all that. We need a complete overhaul, the death of death itself.
We need evil and sin eradicated from us. We need to be broken free from death’s rule, to be cleansed, to be released from sin’s grip on our minds and hearts, freed from the terror of dying that keeps us from risking and loving and hoping and living. 
 
Death is too great, too destructive. It’s all around us and inside us. Sin has polluted everything, and there is no escaping it.  And to be clear – what I mean by sin is serving death – estrangement from God and each other, denying our own humanity and degrading others’ humanity, violating the fundamental belonging and order of creation by behaving as though we are not made in God’s image, and God is not God.
 
Death gets played out in everyday unkindnesses and horrific atrocities. Even right now as we are sitting here, people not unlike you and me, are slaughtering other people, believing lies so completely that they stop seeing the people in front of them as people, beyond even enemy or threat, turning them into nonentities, nothings, obstacles.  And in the process these people are succumbing to evil beyond imagination, losing their own humanity as well. 
 
But it doesn’t even have to be that extreme. We take away each other’s humanity all the time and turn each other into objects – objects of derision and scorn, or objects of idolization, objects of our pity, or objects of our own self-betterment. Objects blocking our way. We crucify each other and ourselves in little ways all the time. We blame and punish, cut off relationship and hold onto resentment.  We love imperfectly and hurt those we love.  We so easily and so frequently forget our identity as beloved children of God who irrevocably belong to God and to all others. We trade that precious reality away for ease or peace of mind, for the illusion of contentment or safety, for getting more done in our day.  
 
And God knows this. God listens past our strategies for salvation to the need at the very heart of us - for healing and wholeness, for reconciliation and forgiveness, for things to be made right, for death not to win, for life to prevail, which is what God is all about. The Holy Spirit hears our pain and our longing, and intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.  
 
God has come, God is saving the world, these are fact and there is nothing more worthy of recognition and praise than this.  So even though the cheering followers had their own ideas of what was happening, nevertheless and accidentally, they joined the song of heavenly angels and the rejoicing earth itself, announcing the good news of great joy for all the world. The enormity and significance of what is about to happen will not go unspoken. If human beings didn’t do it, the rocks themselves would have cried out.  
But it means God-with-us is going to die.  Death is part of God’s story now, just like it is each of ours.  And all these things we bear: sorrow, shame, regret, hopelessness, despair, impossibility – these are God’s story now and God bears them all the way into death. With us. For us.  As far as the east is from the west so far have you separated our sins from us…
 
So we are invited today to praise God.  Praising God reminds us what is really real. It grounds us in the truth. When we simply lift our heads and acknowledge God in our midst, share with each other how we are experiencing God-with-us, let wonder and awe overtake us so that we are moved to lay down our coats, and raise our voices in gratitude, hope and longing to our God, it returns us to what is true. God is with us, is right in our midst, holding our pain, and redeeming this world from within.  
 
We are a congregation in mourning.  That’s who we are right now.  That makes us awake, more open, more aware of the world’s pain, more attuned to the suffering of others. It also makes us a little raw and tender, in need of gentleness and care, more rest than we think we might need, extra space to grieve and adjust.  But here is where Jesus meets us. In our suffering, in other’s suffering, in godforsakenness.
 
Next week is Easter, and we will celebrate that that death does not get the final word.  We will rejoice in resurrection– even while we are all dying, and grieving death, we will proclaim that in Jesus Christ, death is not the end.  So together we will continue to ask God for healing and hope, with all the honesty and longing of our hearts, and we will share joy and wonder defiantly and without hesitation, as we await the salvation of our God. 

Amen.
 

Joining the crowd

Daily Devotion - April 5

I will send a brief message each day (except Mondays) while we are pausing gathering in person.
- Kara

Happy Palm Sunday!

We gathered today in worship, each from our own home.  (We had palms made from cardboard, paper, legos, green gloves ("palms!"), other plants, felt, paper...!)
This fourth week of online worship, my family felt the longing to be with you in person. ("I don't want to do online church!")  But in seeing everyone's faces on screen, I was surprised by how joyful I felt.  I am thankful to gather as church, however that looks. We belong to each other.

Lisa shared about Palm Sunday - and how we continue to celebrate the crowds' misunderstandings of who Jesus is, and of what we need from him.  "Hosanna!" means "Save us!"  And we have definite ideas of what that saving should look like, and what we should be saved from.

Yet, she said, it's kind of lovely that even thought we know what's coming - Jesus' death, Jesus' resurrection, the fact that God does not save us from suffering but enters right in, that God doesn't come in power, but in weakness, alongside us - we still join our voices with the naive crowds, and shout "Save us!" right along with them.

God hears our cries - even when we are not asking for what is best for us, or what is real, or what will truly save us.  God hears beyond our strategies to the needs underneath.  And even when we go right along with the crowds - hoarding toilet paper and beans - God still meet us with what we really need.

It reminds me of this poem, by C.S. Lewis:

Prayer
He whom I bow to knows only to whom I bow
when I attempt the ineffable Name, murmuring Thou,
and dream of Pheidian fancies, and embrace in heart
symbols (I know) which cannot be the thing Thou art.

Thus always, taken at their word,
all prayers blaspheme,
worshipping with frail images,
a folklore dream.

And all, in their praying self-deceived address
the coinage of their own unquiet thoughts, unless Thou,
in magnetic mercy, to Thyself divert
our arrows, aimed unskillfully, beyond desert,
and all are idolaters,
crying unheard to a deaf idol,
if Thou take them at their word.

Take not, Oh Lord, our literal sense.
Lord, in Thy great unbroken speech
our limping metaphors translate.

C.S. Lewis, Poems


CONNECTING RITUAL:

Let's return to the Evening Prayer, from the New Zealand Prayerbook.  Perhaps, tonight before we go to bed, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we might pray this prayer, and so join our hearts:

Evening Prayer

Lord it is night.
The night is for stillness.
Let us be still in the presence of God.

It is night after a long day.
What has been done has been done;
what has not been done has not been done.
Let it be.

The night is dark.
Let our fears of the darkness
of the world and of our own lives
rest in you.

The night is quiet.
Let the quietness of your peace enfold us,
all dear to us, and all who have no peace.

The night heralds the dawn.
Let us look expectantly to a new day,
new joys, new possibilities.
In your name we pray.
Amen.

(New Zealand Prayerbook)


Last week, we read through the Gospel of John.  If you did not finish it last week, why not read it through this week? We will be using chapter 20 next Sunday, for Easter.

This Unsafe Life

Luke 19:28-44

 (This scripture text includes the four verses following the typical Palm Sunday pericope)

Last week, a mile from where Andy and I sat sipping rum punch and looking at the beauty of the ocean, a professional snorkel cruise guide and her husband got caught in riptide and drowned.  Vacationers gathered on the balcony of the Sheraton to watch the helicopter retrieve their bodies from the water.

If a trained person whose life work is to be in the ocean can drown just like that, why should any of us dare risk going in?  

This weekend, in an act that is almost unfathomable, on the third floor of the Mall of America a stranger picked up a 5-year-old child and threw him over railing to the marble floor below.  

How are we to live a human life? 

How can we exist in a world where this kind of senseless, evil thing could happen?  

Forget the ocean, the mall is too dangerous.  Plane crashes, car accidents…death is a real possibility, for all of us, at any moment. Maybe we are safer if we never leave our own homes, where the risks contract to carbon monoxide or lead poisoning, break-ins, tornadoes, falls, identity theft or grease fires?

It feels these days like fear is lurking around every corner.  At every moment there is something to be afraid of.  Every choice we make feels weighty and risky.  And total destruction at the hands of enemies doesn’t have to mean bodily. It can be done with a a WiFi connection and that poisonous cocktail of good intentions and no mercy.  

The earth itself is simultaneously erupting in earthquakes, forest fires, and mid-April thunder snow, hovering perpetually on the brink of catastrophe.  Hate is breeding, governments are crumbling, and people are starving, and when they flee to seek a new home, we turn them away as threats to our safety. The stock market is shakey, and politics feel alarming nearly every second.

And on top of sudden illness, we’re vulnerable to random violence, freak accidents and bad decisions. Human beings are just so weak and susceptible to all of it.  

So, let’s be real here: Fear is a very sincere and ever-available option to us. 

And fear helps us. Fear is not a bad thing; it’s a warning thing. It keeps us alive, (for a little while, at least). 

But avoiding death is an abysmal way to live.  

With our heads down and our arms raised in self-protection against the risks this life dishes out at every turn, we lock ourselves into a tedious, fear-driven half-life that makes us unable to recognize God in front of us, or our neighbor beside us, or to share deeply in anything truly good – like love, hope or joy.

Instead of being alive, our goal is to be safe.

But safety is a terrible life-goal.  

When we have it, it is momentary and fleeting, and it can be taken away in a second by an unlimited variety of things or people, whether accidentally, maliciously, or even with the best of intentions.  But mostly, safety is an illusion and we only ever think we have it.  So we spend our life pursuing something that we will never attain or keep.  

In all our evolved consciousness, we’ve somehow reached a state of masterful delusion that equates the pursuit of peace with the pursuit of safety.  

Peace and safety are not the same thing.  

In fact, they might even be considered opposites. 

Peace is the resonance of the true connection of all things- belonging to God and each other.

Safety is the guarding from risk and harm.

If the point of human life is to be both physically and emotionally safe, you will never have peace.  

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in the midst of the horrors of Nazi Germany, wrote:

“There is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared. It is itself the great venture and can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to want to protect oneself. Peace means giving oneself completely to God's commandment. Wanting no security, but in faith and obedience laying the destiny of the nations in the hand of almighty God. Not trying to direct it for selfish purposes. Battles are won not with weapons, but with God. They are won when the way leads to the cross.”  (from his speech in Fano, Denmark, quoted in Renate Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Brief Life). 

There is no such thing as peace that comes with safety.

Jesus knew this. 

He knew he was going to die in Jerusalem. 

He went anyway. 

On Palm Sunday we wave our palm branches and shout “Hosanna!” to welcome in the savior of the world.  But I recently learned that some churches have historically also reenacted the rest of what this same crowd shouts a week later, “Crucify Him!”  

I get a pit in my throat imagining all of us shouting that together. 

It feels unseemly, dark, a little too real, perhaps.  

It testifies to the fact that it takes almost nothing for praise to turn to condemnation, for a crowd to become a mob.  

God-with-us came into our fear, into our risk, into the randomness and the violence and the isolation and the blame.  God came into this unsafe life to bring peace -  the resonance of the true connection of all things - belonging to God and each other.

Instead of waving palm branches and shouting Hosanna, when Luke tells the story of this day the people repeat the same thing the angels sang when God first came to be with us, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!  Glory in the highest heaven!”

The crowd doesn’t know they are saying the same thing that was proclaimed at his birth, but the angels do. The stones do.  The very cosmos can hear the literary echo from the time of God’s arrival among us.  From the moment he drew his first baby breath, God’s choice to come into this human life meant coming under the sentence of death.  

God came to make himself unsafe alongside us.  

God brings peace by taking on all that is unsafe.

Peace on earth! The angelic choir proclaims to the shepherds when God arrives.  But the script shifts slightly in the mouths of the cheering crowd, Peace in heaven! the people shout at their peasant king. Keep the peace up there.  Down here, we’d rather have safety.

Glory to God in the highest heaven! The angels sang. 

Order them to stop, teacher!, some religious leaders say urgently to Jesus when the crowd takes up the song. This is the time of their visitation from God!  Their experience of peace is right at hand! And the leaders ask him to shush the people because what they are doing feels a little bit dangerous. 

Jesus answers, If they didn’t say it the stones themselves would.  

Glory to God!  This is the truth that cannot not be said.  It has been said in a myriad of ways since the beginning of time.  There are stones that do speak of God’s glory.  I’ve stood in the hushed magnificence of the stunning Chartes cathedral where stacked and intricately carved stones have preached to pilgrims for nearly a thousand years of the glory of God.  

The island my family visited last week is still being formed of stone; it bursts molten hot from the earth’s core.  When it runs down into the cool ocean water it explodes into brand new sand, forming new land where there was none five months ago.  As the Psalmist sang, The earth itself proclaims the glory of the Lord!  

Jerusalem was supposed to be a place where the stones spoke of God’s glory, the city on a hill, a shining symbol of peace.  The temple of stones within the city was built to be the place where people draw near to God. But Jerusalem has become a symbol of oppression and corruption, stark poverty and opulent wealth on daily display amidst the distraction and commerce of religion.  Tomorrow, he will overturn the tables of the moneychangers in the temple. But right now he is weeping for what should have been. ‘If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! 

It is right in front of you and you are missing it.

This is not the first time Jesus has cried about Jerusalem.  A few weeks ago we saw him weep, when he predicted this very moment: 

I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed away from Jerusalem.” Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” ’ (Luke 13:33-35)

And now here they are, just as he said they would be, echoing the Angels’ songs, taking the words out of the mouths of stones.

The Prince of Peace rides among us in a mock military parade, on a borrowed donkey instead of a noble steed, and when he arrives in the city, instead of claiming it in power, he cries over it.  He weeps for the people who don’t recognize the things that make for peace.  The violence they live by will be the violence they die by, total destruction at the hands of their enemies, not one stone left on another.  In their pursuit of safety and security, they do not recognize the time of their visitation by God.  

I recently heard it said, “At every moment we have a choice between safety and love.”  

Riding a donkey through that crowd that day, to the city of disappointed hopes, Jesus chose love. When he goes to the cross at the end of this week he chooses love. 

When he came into this world as a vulnerable baby he chose love.  

At every moment he was on this earth, Jesus chose love over safety. 

He did this for us. 

For our peace.  For our true connection to God, each other, and the world.

Death is all around us.  We’re flailing to keep our head above water every day, it seems, nearly drowning in the very words looming over us in these banners at this moment– injustice, fear, sin, division, shame and crisis. 

Every day we deal in death and the threat of death.  

Every day we bow to fear. 

Every day we strive to make ourselves, our children, our communities, our nation, our freeways, our computers, our borders, our bank accounts and our futures, safe from any evil. 

Every day we exchange costly love for the mirage of security.  

But peace and safety can’t co-exist.  

The resonance of true relationship is incompatible with protecting oneself from risk and harm.  

Jesus knows this.  Riding into Jerusalem that day, Jesus is preparing himself to take on the violent act of crucifixion to bring peace.  

Evil can’t be beaten by evil.  It can only be defeated by an ultimate act of love. 

Love is eternal and permanent.  It swallows evil.  

When everything else, as strong or as scary as it has been for its moment on this earth, disappears, as it will, what remains forever is love. 

When death itself is past, love endures.  

By surrendering any claim on his life and safety, God submits himself to evil, and in so doing, evil itself is consumed and beaten by love.  

You and I cannot extricate ourselves from the crowd or the mob. 

We arethe ones who say Hosanna! and also Crucify him!  

We are the shepherds receiving the good news of God’s arrival among us, and the soldiers nailing this same God to the cross.  

We are the ones who are harmed and the ones who bring harm. 

We are caught in sin, and we participate in evil, and no matter what we do or don't do, we will one day die. 

In the knowledge of that, we are often weak and worried, predisposed to fear and eager to pursue the illusion of safety.  

We are terrified to go after peace, and accept it's risky command to love other people and God.  What a dangerous way to live! 

But God has come under the sentence of death alongside us to overcome death for us.  

God is here alongside us even now.  

And we are made from love, for love. 

Love is our calling and our purpose and our end.  

If we are to recognize the times of our visitations from God, to recognize the moments where love rises up, and peace is tasted, and joy is felt, and hope floods through us, and the real connection of all things is glimpsed and shared in, then this is what it means: That despite the dangers, we “give ourselves completely to God’s commandment.” We lay ourselves, our loved ones, “and the destiny of the nations, in the hands of almighty God,” who comes willingly into our death to bring life. 

This earth is an unsafe place. 

Living is an unsafe activity.  

But we are not alone. And this is not the end.  

The way of peace leads to the cross.

Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.

Glory to God in the Highest heaven. Peace on earth, and good will to all.

Amen.

Telling the truth by accident

Mark 11:1-11

Yesterday we threw a funeral for Norma Shannon. It was like that too, throwing a funeral. She was 93 when she died, and there was joy in the midst of the sorrow.  Death took Norma, as it will take all of us, and even though it was sad, it felt like life gave death a run for its money yesterday. I think every one of us left there a little more grateful to be alive, a little more aware of what a gift it all is.

Earlier this week I told Andy that I first had a funeral sermon to write for Norma and then I’d be working on one for Palm Sunday, and he answered, “so you’ll write a funeral sermon for Jesus too, then.”

I’ve never thought about Palm Sunday like that before, but this might be why it’s a strange one for me. Because in the midst of this celebration of the crowds who think things are just getting started, we know death is coming for Jesus. And he knows it too. He’s been trying to tell his disciples for some time, but they wont listen.

This is a bit of political theater that will be played out for all to see – and God chose to do this; it’s an important part of the story, so we treat it that way, but it’s not clear to us just what is going on because even though we know where this parade is leading, we’re not so far off from the crowds themselves.

Seemingly since the beginning of time, we’ve thought the world was ending. We’ve wanted to be saved from whatever it was we were in, and we’ve pretty consistently created God in our image much of the time, demanding to be saved the way we think we should from the things we think should be saved from. And so you and I take up our metaphorical palm branches when it suits us as well, and stand alongside the crowd, many of whom were thinking Jesus was there to save them from the Roman Empire, to make Israel great again, wanting him to be all these things that he wasn’t, and crying Save us, which is what hosanna means, Save us holy one! and then by the end of the week yelling Crucify him!

And it is at least in part, I think, due to feeling ripped off that Jesus wasn’t all the things they had projected onto him, he wasn’t strong and invincible and ready to lead a revolution after all, and disappointment turns easily to anger, and maybe even a craving for revenge, for making us hope and then letting us down.  

But Jesus was never what they thought he should be – if they’d been paying attention at any point in his life, that is maybe the most consistent theme in all he did and said – the Kingdom of God is not like the kindgoms of this world, and he was never interested in strength and power; instead of courting the elite he hung out with the overlooked and his kind of salvation looked like freeing people from the things that kept them cut off from their neighbor and restoring people to their humanity as beloved children of God, and calling them to go and do likewise.

Jesus is heading toward the cross, but the week begins in this parade. This parade where people lay down coats and take up branches and shout things that may have all sorts of mixed up motives and false assumptions, but even so, were true.

That’s the ironic beauty of this moment, for those who knew, who could see the real truth: What they are saying is completely true, more true than they will ever realize, part of the fabric of all things most true.

Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the lord.

Blessed is the one who saves us; save us please!

In the midst of crazy noise these days where, despite all the other big stories going on in the world, all the human suffering and pain, the places we need saving, our national politics seem to be drowning out everything else.  We are surrounded, it seems, by fear and posturing, shouting and shaming, refusals to admit wrong and the unyielding need to be right, and it feels really big; things feel pressing, ugly, fearful and overwhelming, and I, for one, find myself crying out to God, “Save us please!”

In a world of power and posturing, here is our “king” riding on poverty’s animal straight through the middle of our expectations, nevertheless taking in all the Hosannas, all the save uses that the people raise up, welcoming them to himself.  And when he reaches the temple he glances around and leaves.  Because that is not where this is all leading – it’s not for the center of power or the seat of religion, the place where the movers and the shakers go, where the decisions are made and the plans are unfolded.

It’s leading to the cross.  Where the cries for salvation will be answered for real, and not at all in the ways we all think they should be.

Because beyond everything we think power and might and right salvation should be, this is the way of God. God’s way of love is unrelenting and quiet, foolish and strange. It doesn’t look like how this world looks. It looks like something else entirely.

Whether we think Jesus should sweep in and fix everything, protect our sense of safety and keep bad things from happening, strong-arm our enemies, or make us supernaturally good people, however our version of God’s plan goes or our view of salvation looks, that doesn’t stop God from 1- hearing us, and welcoming into Godself our misguided but very real cries for salvation, and 2- drawing us into the real Kingdom of God, even while breaking down all we thought it was about.

Nothing can stop or change the trajectory of God’s Kingdom. God is bent on loving us no matter what, bent on salvation of the world, bent on bringing humanity close to the heart of God and blessing the whole world with life as God intends it to be in wholeness and harmony. We think enemies should be destroyed or at least silenced, and power should be wielded to make things feel stable so we can build ourselves up and avoid bad things, most especially death, but God instead submitted completely to suffering and death, so that nothing can separate us from God’s love. God has come, God is here, God is holding it all. That is what is really real.

So God chooses this moment of sheer praise and celebration to begin this whole week.  And one invitation in this for you and me is this: praising God reminds us what is really real. When stop whatever it is we are caught up in fearing and believing and doing, and simply lift our heads and acknowledge God in our midst, showing up and suprising us like a peasant on a donkey, when we can stop walking and lay down our coats and pick up our branches, that is, whatever we have at hand at the moment, make it into a tool of worship, even ridiculously so, even with confusion or mixed motives, if we stop and praise God, it reminds us again what is true.

In order for Jesus to proceed into the week ahead, in order for any of them to, something had to be made clear right at the outset. And even if they didn’t know at the time what they were saying, they were going to say it anyway because it is the truest thing –God has come. God is here. Right here Among us. Blessed be the one who comes in the name of the Lord!

Stopping to praise God reminds us what is true. Praising God reminds us what is really real.

In a few minutes we will gather around Marty and give thanks to God for God’s calling on Marty’s life. And because death is coming for every one of us at some point, we will say outloud together that Marty is dying, and you guys, I feel really sad about that. I feel so sad.

But we will also say that God is still God, and that God is with us, and God is with Marty. And in these coming weeks we will be saying, Save us! and meaning all sorts of things by it, and God will hear it anyway, and God will save us because this is what God does and who God is. 

And there is more beauty and hope and love and joy that God wants to impart into Marty’s life, and into all of our lives, as we share them with each other, so we will not be afraid.  And even when we are, a little, still, we will walk with Marty.  Because this is where Jesus is. 

Jesus walks this way with us. Jesus went this way before us in this prophetic parade; this confusing, strange spectacle, where truth was spoken right into illusion, right through delusions, and what was happening was bigger and truer than any of them could have realized at the time.  And so we trust that by facing instead of fearing death, we are also part of something that is bigger and truer than we can realize.

Next week is Easter, and we will celebrate that that death does not get the final word.  We will sing and pray and rejoice in resurrection– even while we are all dying, we will proclaim that in Jesus Christ, death is not the end.  The life and love of God, that we are made for and called into, has already begun and will never, ever end.

So as children of God, claimed by this promise, let us lift up our voices in praise. Let’s stop and acknowledge God with us, right in our midst, and find again our true home in the One who holds it all, who has come to share it all with us, and who never leaves or forsakes us, but instead faces death with us and leads us in life everlasting.  

Hosanna! Blessed is the One who comes!

Amen.