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.
 

Not our way

Matthew 21:1-17

I'll be the first to admit it, Palm Sunday is kind of confusing.  

It is such spectacle, and we know what comes next so it feels strange to make a big thing of it.  We’re mixing all these 1^st century customs with 21^st century interpretations and generally make kind of a mess of things.  In fact, it feels like Jesus himself is messing with things.  He is doing these big symbolic and prophetic things, things that seem fraught with meaning, layers of impenetrable meaning, and he doesn’t feel compelled to explain any of it.

The way Matthew tells it, immediately after the triumphal entry, Jesus heads into the temple and overturns the tables of the moneychangers and yells at them, then he turns around and heals people, and children and grown ups are cheering and calling out and it all sounds very chaotic and uncontrolled, and it angers chief priests and scribes, and then Jesus tells them off and leaves town. 

So in one sweeping move we see Jesus go from parade to protest to provocation and it all kind of screams parable because his actions both reveal something about the way of fear and illumine something about the way of God but leave it all wide open to interpretation.  We know that pattern!  Having spent Lent with the parables, and knowing that is exactly what parables do, clear open space for God to speak into our lives, invite us to be disturbed and challenged and stirred, it almost feels like this is a parable acted out instead of told.  Once there was a Messiah, who told his followers to go and find a donkey and also a baby donkey, for a parade he was about to hold….  

What do you want us to see, Jesus?

If we are anyone in this living sort of parable, we almost always see ourselves as the people lining the streets, laying down our cloaks, taking up branches, celebrating the arrival of a savior, or curiously watching a spectacle, whichever the case may be, but most likely shouting along with the rest of them “Hosanna!’

And most of the time, most of us think of Hosanna as some kind of celebration word– like the word we will find again next week when we celebrate the resurrection. But Hosanna literally means “Save us.” Save us in the highest heaven, save us, O blessed, Son of David!  He is coming to save us!

And I wonder, as those lining the streets before Jesus’ arrival, what are the hosannas that we shout?

 There is so much in a hosanna, so many unspoken beliefs about ourselves and God and the world, and what or who needs saving, and what we need to be saved from and how it this saving should happen, or who is worth asking. 

In their hosannas the crowds are projecting onto Jesus everything they want Jesus to be – king, deliverer, conqueror, overthrower of oppressive Roman rule, redeemer, worthy of all glory, laud and honor, even if he is only riding on a donkey and not being drawn by a team of horses in an ornate carriage, even if he is wearing peasant garb instead of dressed in robes of royalty, even if his procession is made up of children and day workers and the sick and broken seeking healing and ordinary passers by, instead of dignitaries flanked by guards in polished silver, even if the authorities are hiding away plotting his death instead of rolling out the red carpet and setting out the feast to welcome him to town. 

They all see Jesus as they want him to be, and ignore all the inconsistencies before their eyes, and their hosannas are filled with who they think Jesus should be for them.

But then, it’s kind of always been this way with him, hasn’t it?

Messiahs are supposed to be heroic, brave and strong, obviously! and striking, and larger than life and not really in any way weak or ordinary or foolish. 

But Jesus was born in a smelly barn in a thrown-together moment of making-do, to a shamed girl and her frightened husband, and he was celebrated and welcomed by nobody sheepherders and suspect foreigners.

 

And now, this moment of triumph, this debut to all the world, is mirroring the first pronouncement and debut in its last-minute, rinky-dink wrongness, when angels sang to peasant shepherds on a hillside announcing that God is breaking in, that God has come to share this life with you and me, that something irreversible is about to take place.

But all along God is seeking to give up power and take on weakness. Real, raw, basic, dirty, complicated and dying humanity.  And so, in this moment that has the whole town in tumult, Jesus’ entrance on a donkey and it’s colt, the crowds are saying something true, about themselves and about the world and most importantly about Jesus – who he is and what he’s about.  But they don’t really know they are. 

This parade, protest and provocation, unfolding amidst all of their various hosannas, this too declares that God is breaking in, God has come to share this life with you and me, and something irreversible is about to take place.

But just maybe not like you think.

If the crowds that day were designing a savior, he would ride into town and materialize an army – human or angelic, and bring vengeance and justice and take down their oppressors – preferably humiliating them in the process.  We have a pretty good idea what their hosannas were crying out for.

Even the religious leaders who asked him if he heard what the children were saying about him – they had their idea of what a savior should be, one who would behave with decorum, and not a hint of the kind of profanity that would desecrate the temple and then heal people willy-nilly and let everyone get so worked up and turned around.  Their salvation plan would unfold decently and in order.

And I must say, If I were God – a kind of risky game to play but go with me here – if I were God, I would NOT have done it this way either. This week would NOT begin with this strange, ridiculous parade and end with a cross. I would not have done it in such an ugly, tragic, cruel and base way.

My way would be cleaner and softer. I’d make the world a guest room with crisp sheets and a thick comforter and flowers in a vase and warm, homemade scones waiting on a tray.  And the world would just get it, just apologize, and forgive, and choose love, and come and have a nice warm bath and put on a big fluffy robe and tuck in for the night and I’d make the world a huge pancake brunch in the morning and we’d all start over the way things were meant to be.  That’s how I’d bring salvation.

If we were saving the world, let’s face it, we’d all do it differently.  We’d accost the world Robin Hood style, relieving the rich of their horded wealth and delivering it triumphantly to the poor so they could be fed and clothed and nobody would be hungry or in need. 

Or we’d convert the world to our own faith, or our own version of our own faith, so any arguing would simply cease in the pervasive daze of unconditional agreement and happy conformity.  Done, salvation.

If we were saving the world we would immediately cure cancer and wipe disease from the face of the earth through some miraculous ingenuity and global generosity, and everyone would have access to any medicine they needed at any time, and it would always work. Saved. You’re welcome.

Or we’d summon the world to our office and close the door and have a respectful, firm and informative conversation that would change the world’s mind and open the world’s eyes, and the world would leave enlightened and empowered and it would waste not, want not, reduce, reuse, recycle and start taking family vacations and stop taking mood-altering substances.

Or we’d put the world into a deep sleep and give the world a life-changing dream, everyone simultaneously, and the world would wake up and pile all their weapons on a big bonfire and sing cumbaya and roast marshmallows over its embers and give each other carpool rides home afterwards.  Salvation complete.

But not this way. I would bet not a one of us in this room would choose to ride a donkey straight through people’s wildly wrong expectations and competing agendas, into controversy and conflict, politics and power - not once calling any of them wrong or defending your reputation, intentions or very life, by the way - and submit to whatever comes of it.

All of the ways we would bring salvation pick whatever we find most disturbing and fearful in the world and try to escape us from it. 

But God’s way of salvation comes into all things, in weakness, to live with us and die for us. Who would’ve believed it? 

Did the angels in heaven join in the celebration the street that day? 

How silent was the shock of the cosmos when it led to the cross?

Way back at the beginning, when God spoke existence into being, God made all things to be in harmony, in perfect trust and interdependence, completely connected to our Creator in love.   All throughout scripture and history God continues to relentlessly draw us back into this connection, and then, in Jesus Christ, God crawls inside the human experience and shares it with us, to ensure that we are not alone, to expose every single thing that separates us from the love of God and connection with each other, and to illumine the core of it all, that we belong to God, whose love permeates and transcends all things.

Like it or not, the parade of Palms finds its response in the cross. 

And as the people gathered there to see Jesus and shouted out their cries for salvation  - in all their hope and anticipation, their fear and desperation, the needs they knew and the ones they avoided knowing, and all the expectations and assumptions that they waved before them when he rode by on his donkey, and everything that they wanted Jesus to be - God heard them, as God always hears them, and God answered.  

The answer is just not one we would choose.  

It is not our answer.  It is God’s answer to us.

We think we know what we need.  So when we pray, we lift up all our own ideas about what we think will save us, and we address them all to who we think Jesus should be, waving them around in God’s face, and even telling God, from time to time, what would work best, in our humble opinion.

And God gently takes all of that into Godself, and then does salvation God’s way instead.  God’s answer exposes the way of fear within all our Hosannas – all the ways we wish to “be saved” that would help us to feel secure or strong, protect us from our insecurities and our losses, keep us from suffering or sorrow.  It exposes all the ways we try to make Jesus who we think Jesus should be.

And then God’s answer illumines the way of God – which is, from the beginning, to, in every possible way, continue to draw us into the love of God – to join us in suffering and take it into God’s very self, so that nothing might separate us from the love of God.

So whatever our hosannas may be, however pure or selfish their intention, however well spoken or wordless, God takes them in, and bears within Godself all life and death itself, for us.

 And I, for one, feel a brief moment of wanting to stop God – like, wait, God, isn’t there another way?  I can think of all sorts of better ways, why this?

 But God, who came to share EVERYTHING with us, shares even this sentiment, a few days after this scene, when Jesus, sweating blood he’s so freaked out and shaken up about what’s coming, prays his own hosanna, his own “save me from this hour” begging that there be another way. 

And then he surrenders again to the way of God, and finds the strength to move into the days ahead in complete connection to the source of his being, to the love that claims us and transcends even death.

Instead of all the strong and sexy and sterile ways we’d bring salvation, all pain-free and perfect, and completely outside our experience as human beings, God chose to do it this way: vulnerable, weak, messy, and foolish, letting what breaks us break God too, so that nothing, ever, can separate us from God’s love which is the source and conclusion of our being.

So today our palms represent our hosannas, our “save us”es, and we’ve got all kinds: honest hosannas and defiant hosannas, hopeful hosannas and desperate hosannas, deluded hosannas and tentative hosannas.  

And they are all welcome, they are all part of the story; God has invited us to wave before Jesus our hearts on our sleeves.  Our own schemes and hopes for salvation, while perhaps misguided, reflect our need and our hunger and our longing - for healing and wholeness, for reconciliation and forgiveness, for things to be made right, for God’s way to reign.  

So God, who came to share our humanity, hears our hosannas.

And also, like the crowd gathered there that day, when we gather in our brokenness and belovedness, lifting up our own hosannas to our own versions of Jesus, we nevertheless say something true to, and about, the real Jesus. 

We say something maybe without realizing it, and even when it doesn’t feel like it, and even when we don’t believe it, and even when we KNOW we will turn our back on it at one point or another.  

When we stand here with our palms and dare to lift our own hosannas, then, like the crowds in Jerusalem and the angels over Bethlehem, we too announce to each other and to the world that God is breaking in, that God has come to share this life with you and me, that something irreversible is about to take place.  

So, come, sisters and brothers, and lift up your cries for salvation to the Lord our God, Hosanna! Blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord. 

Hosanna in the Highest Heaven!

Amen.

Prayer exercise for Holy Week: 

Take home a palm and this week let it represent your own hosannas.  

God comes not how we think God should come, thank God, but how we most need God to come. Let the palm represent for you that tension, 

How might God expose the hold the way of fear has on you, and illumine the freedom the way of God has for you? 

How will God meet you anew this week, and draw you deeper into God’s love?  

If you would like, use a sharpie to to write on the palm anything you would like to remember during the week.

Palms and Prayers and not the way we'd do it

Luke 19:28-40 
& (Luke 11:1-13)

I fessed up to a couple of people this week that I feel really really silly on Palm Sunday. I feel silly leading the parade, embarrassed waving my palm – not quite unabashed enough to wave it with flourish and devil-may-care attitude, but not wanting to just timidly tip it back and forth.  I feel some pressure to lead this thing, and it makes me begin to wonder what we are even celebrating at all.  Ironically, the people I confessed this to said they didn’t really feel silly doing it; it’s just what we do on Palm Sunday.

This is the only biblical story that we feel compelled – across virtually all denominations and in all places, I might add – to reenact as an entire congregation.  This day, across the nation in churches big and small, countless whole congregations are doing some version of this procession and singing some form of Hosanna to kick off their worship.  It’s only natural, apparently.  We are in this story.  We are the crowd, we see ourselves in them, somehow.  So much so, that many of us do not find it embarrassing to wave those palms – it’s just what we do.

But why? We don’t reenact other crowd scenes.  We don’t cross a fake red sea or pretend to pass baskets of loaves and fishes when we tell the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand. We don’t emulate the same mob we’re copying today, when their yelling becomes “Crucify Him!” in a couple of days.  It’s not like reenacting crowd scenes is something we do in church on a regular basis.

There is something about this moment – the celebration as Jesus passes – each person reacting and interacting with the possibility Jesus represents, before it all goes dark and gloomy, that we can step into.  And it’s more than just the simplistic celebration of it.

In this scene they are saying something true, about themselves and about the world and most importantly about Jesus – who he is and what he’s about.  But they don’t really know they are.  In their minds they are saying one thing-  here comes the guy that’s going to overthrow Rome! Hooray for the promised one who is coming in power to deliver us from our oppressors!  

The words they use are the same the angels sing to peasant shepherds on a hillside announcing that God is breaking in, that God has come to share this life with you and me, that something irreversible is about to take place- “Glory to God in the highest heaven and peace on earth!”

And then the crowd projects onto Jesus everything they want Jesus to be – king, deliverer, conqueror, redeemer, worthy of all glory, laud and honor, even if he is only riding on a donkey and not being drawn by a team of horses in an ornate carriage,

even if he is wearing peasant garb instead of dressed in robes of royalty, even if his procession is made up of children and day workers and the sick and broken seeking healing, instead of dignitaries flanked by guards in polished silver, even if the authorities are hiding away plotting his death instead of rolling out the red carpet and setting out the feast to welcome him to town.  They see Jesus as they want him to be, and ignore all the inconsistencies before their eyes.

But then, it’s kind of always been this way with him, hasn’t it? Messiahs are supposed to be heroic, brave and strong and striking and larger than life and not really in any way weak or ordinary or foolish.  But he was born in a smelly barn in a thrown-together moment of making-do, to a shamed girl and her frightened husband, and he was celebrated and welcomed by nobody shepherds and suspect foreigners.  And now, this moment of triumph, this debut to all the world, is mirroring the first announcement and debut in its last-minute, rinky-dink wrongness. 

But all along God is seeking to give up power and take on humanity. Real, raw, basic, dirty, complicated and dying humanity.  And so this moment declares that God is breaking in, God has come to share this life with you and me, and something irreversible is about to take place. But just maybe not like you think.

If they were designing a savior, he would ride into town and materialize an army – human or angelic, and bring vengeance and justice and take down their oppressors – preferably humiliating them in the process.

Even the religious leaders who told him to silence his disciples – if they were doing this thing – which they would never be caught dead doing – they would have a bit more decorum, and they’d step way back from the line of blasphemy and idiocy and handle themselves more properly, devoutly.  So Jesus, get your people in line.

And I must say, If I were God – a kind of risky game to play but go with me here – if I were God, I would NOT have done it this way either. There would NOT have been a ridiculous parade at the beginning and a cross at the end of this week. I would not have done it in such an ugly, tragic, cruel and base way.

It would be cleaner and softer. I’d make the world a guest room with crisp sheets and a thick comforter and flowers in a vase and warm, homemade scones waiting on a tray.  And the world would just get it, just apologize and forgive and choose love, and come and have a nice warm bath and put on a big fluffy robe and tuck in for the night and I’d make a huge pancake brunch in the morning.  That’s how I’d bring salvation.

If we were saving the world, let’s face it, we’d all do it differently.  We’d accost the world Robin Hood style, relieving the rich of their horded wealth and delivering it triumphantly to the poor so they could be fed and clothed and nobody would be hungry or in need. 

Or we’d convert the world to our own faith, or our own version of our own faith, so any arguing would cease in the pervasive daze of agreement and happy conformity.  Done, salvation.

If we were saving the world we would immediately cure cancer and wipe disease from the face of the earth through some miraculous ingenuity and generosity, and everyone would have access to any medicine they needed at any time, and it would always work. Saved. You’re welcome.

Or we’d summon the world to our office and close the door and have a respectful, firm and informative conversation that would change the world’s mind and open the world’s eyes, and the world would leave enlightened and empowered and it would waste not, want not, reduce, reuse, recycle and start taking family vacations and stop taking mood-altering substances.

Or we’d put the world into a deep sleep and give the world a life-changing dream, everyone simultaneously, and the world would wake up and pile all their weapons on a big bonfire and sing cumbaya and roast marshmallows over its embers and give each other carpool rides home afterwards.  Salvation complete.

But not this way. This is embarrassing. And horrifying.

I would bet not a one of us in this room would choose to ride a donkey straight through people’s wildly wrong expectations and competing agendas, into controversy and conflict, politics and power - not once calling any of them wrong or defending your reputation, intentions or very life, by the way - and submit to whatever comes of it.

How does God do salvation? Way back at the beginning, when God spoke existence into being, and in the relentless attempt to be close to humanity, to crawl inside the experience and share it with us, to ensure that we are not alone, to break down whatever keeps us from being who God created to be, this is the plan God chose to go to- to live with us and die for us.  Who would’ve believed it? Did the angels in heaven join in the celebration the street that day? How silent was the shock of the cosmos when it led to the cross?

Like it or not, the parade of Palms finds its response in the cross.  And as the people gathered there to see him and shouted out their praise  - in all their hope and anticipation, their fear and desperation, their need and all the expectations and assumptions that they waved before them when he rode by on his donkey, God heard them, as God has always hears them, and God answered.  The answer is just not one we would choose.  It is not our answer.  It is God’s answer to us.

And this is not unlike prayer, actually, which has been our focus throughout all of Lent.  And it occurs to me now, that maybe when we pray, we lift up all our own ideas about what we think will save us and we wave them around in God’s face, and we even tell God, from time to time, what would work best, in our humble opinion.  And God takes all of that into Godself, and does it God’s way instead.

I will enter right into your prayers, I will take them all deep into myself, I will let them crush me.  And God takes those prayers, whatever they may be, however pure or selfish their intention, however well spoken or wordless, and bears within Godself all life and death itself, for us.

 And I, for one, feel a brief moment of wanting to stop God – like, wait, God, not that, ok? Isn’t there another way?  I can think of all sorts of better ways, why this?

And God, who came to share EVERYTHING with us, shares even this sentiment, a few days after this scene, when Jesus, sweating blood he’s so freaked out and shaken up about what’s coming, prays his own prayer begging that there be another way.  Because instead of all the strong and sexy and sterile ways we’d bring salvation, all pain-free and perfect and completely outside our experience as human beings, God chose to do it this way: vulnerable, weak, messy, and foolish, letting what breaks us break God too.

So today our palms are our prayers. We pray because God has invited us to  - to wave before Jesus our hearts on our sleeves.  And our own schemes and hopes for salvation, while perhaps misguided, reflect our need and our hunger and our longing - for healing and wholeness, for reconciliation and forgiveness, for things to be made right. And God hears our prayers.

And also, like the crowd gathered there that day, when we pray, we say something true, sometimes without realizing it, even when it doesn’t feel like it, even when we don’t believe it, even when we KNOW we will turn our back on it at one point or another.  When we bring our prayers to God we say something true even despite our own betrayal and shame, our own doubt and fear, our own apathy and selfishness.  We stand here with our palms and our prayers and we actually say something true: that God is breaking in, that God has come to share this life with you and me, that something irreversible is about to take place- 

So, Glory to God in the highest heaven, peace on earth and blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord.

Amen.

(This message was adapted and updated, and is the newer version is posted at "Not Our Way" March 29, 2015)