PALM SUNDAY, March 20, 2005
The Rev. Wray MacKay

Hosanna to the Son of David! 
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! 
Hosanna in the highest heaven!

Parades.
Who of us doesn’t like a parade.
Macy Day parades; Rose Bowl parades; Memorial Day parades.
Yet one parade stands out in my New York memory.
The ticker tape parade for Nelson Mandela
after he was released from prison in South Africa.
Mandela came to New York City to celebrate and to thank
those who supported him during his long fight against apartheid.
What was different about this parade was that,
though it took place in the usual place in the heart of Wall Street,
the people of the city who turned out to greeted him
were the poor, the homeless, those on the fringe.
They were all there.
They were all there to thank him for giving them hope.
And as Mandela moved through the streets,
the people the people began to sing a South African Hymn:
a song of freedom and liberation.
And then the people began to dance,
a very stylized dance,
raising their arms to say that they were with him.

That parade was close -- very close -- to the image that I have of today.
People waving their palms,
spreading their cloaks on the ground before Jesus,
cutting down branches from the trees and spreading them on the road.
And who were these people?
Surely a ragtag bunch.
Perhaps the leper Jesus cleansed, and the paralytic who took up his bed,
and Lazarus who was raised  by Jesus,
and the blind beggar who followed Jesus all the way from Jericho, perhaps even Zachaeus the tax collector
with whom Jesus dined in Jericho. 
And surely fishermen, other tax collectors, Samaritans,
the woman with the hemorrhage,
all waving their palms with abandon and shouting
Hosanna to you, Jesus. Hosanna to the Son of David.
These are the people who laid out, perhaps their only cloaks,
later seeing the donkey’s footprint, remembering that Jesus was there.
Their last hope was riding on a borrowed donkey. 

Their last hope?  What was that!
Prosperity?  A Jewish king?  The overthrow of Rome?
A featherbed and a roasted chicken?
Well, Jesus challenged all their hopes for a Messiah
He came on a simple donkey, though that I think
endeared him to the crowd that crowded him

And then, instead of offering sacrifice,
in a portion of Matthew’s
that follows immediately what we read this morning,
Jesus lashed out at a Temple that would not serve the poor!
And after that, more blind and lame came to him
IN the temple and were cured.
And children ran about IN the Tempe continuing the parade cry,
            Hosanna to the Son of David -- IN the temple.
Suddenly that solemn place became the center of healing and song.

And the chief priests and scribes were put out of joint, they were outraged,
they were angry and challenged Jesus,
Do you hear what they are saying?
And Jesus, Oh yes, but have you never read
         Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies,
         you have prepared praise for yourself?
And they were shut up, and Jesus left Jerusalem.
Quite a story.
Quite enough for one day, thank you.

But watch out.
There’s more to come -- a lot more.
You know there should be a warning printed in our bulletin
            a warning to any of us trying faithfully
            to observe Palm...or Passion...Sunday.
In tones reminiscent of those reminders we find in an airplane,
                        warning of us of turbulence to come
            or of the need to tighten our seatbelts,
            our notice should read:
                        Caution:
this service contains a drastic and sudden shift of mood.
                        Hold on.  Be prepared!

We started with the blessing of the palms.
Hosanna to the Son of David! 
But then, after the procession,
we immediately began to get even ominous hints.
Perhaps much as an airline passenger might feel some minor turbulence.
Hints of what is to come.
Isaiah, bending over backwards to confirm his trust in God,
            enduring the body blows, the insults, the spitting
            even the beard pulling!
            and setting his face like a flint in the face of contention.

And the Psalmist speaking of a God who forsakes
And the hopeful-ominous lesson about and having the mind of Christ
            who emptied himself and took the form of a slave
            and humbled himself and became obedient unto death.
Yes, with the prophecy of Isaiah and theology of Paul
and the anguish of the psalmist,
the glad Hosanna of the Palms is already a fading memory.

And then comes the Passion , the story of the suffering.
The heart of the gospels, where the narratives of the four evangelists
            most nearly write in parallel.
Here are the words that speak to the seasoned worshipper,
the one who comes every Sunday
who has "kept" a good Lent...
and to the newcomer
the one who comes only on the great days like today
who has not yet folded into a personal rhythm,
the breaking of the bread and the fellowship.
Both alike are pulled closer together
by the simple act of hearing together
the events of our salvation.
It is as if we are all, as it were,
watching over the shoulder of an alert and steely-eyed
witness to those events.

There is so much to comprehend this day.
There is so much to wrap our minds and hearts about.
We cannot do it.
Even if we had only the Palm Sunday story.
Even if we had only the Passion.
We cannot do it.
We cannot comprehend the song and the sorrow.
So, I focus on just one part: the choice of our lives.

The Passion.
For better or worse we know the story.
And it is that story that gives us our fundamental choice - our life-choice.
Do we walk this week -
            do we even try to walk this week -
            with the star of the parade?
            using the gifts we are given, the liturgical remembering?
And if we try, or if we want to try,
            what does it mean anyway?
We have our choices.
And our choices reflect our power.
Please stop and think with me a moment.
We have our choices, and our choices reflect our power.

Pilate had power - political power.
And he created choices that left him powerless,
            caught in the web of his power.
We can create choices for our lives that leave us powerless, too.

Caiaphas had power - religious power.
And he gathered forces around that power.
And those forces killed.
We can use the forces of our power to hurt, too.

Peter had power - leadership power.
And he boasted of more than he could deliver.
And he betrayed his love.
And he wept bitterly.
We can fool ourselves into thinking we can do more than we are able.
And we can weep, too.
Judas had power - the power of insider information - which he sold -
            which he bastardized at his altar of ideology, or greed,
                        or what have you.
And he saw in an instant what he had done with his power
            and went and hanged himself.
We can sell ourselves, too, which is our own death.

But there are others.
There is the woman who washed Jesus' feet with her tears.
And Mary and Martha.  And Lazarus.
And Mary Magdalen, and Mary the mother of James and Joseph
            and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.
And Nicodemus [yes Nicodemus of the night visit]
and Joseph of Arimathea.
And Simon of Cyrene.
And the thieves on the other crosses.
And John.  And Mary.
Yes, and ultimately all the rest of the men and women
            who made up the disciples.
And others.

And us.  Yes us.
These all -- we all -- in one way or another, made choices.
Choices -- to hand around this man, this faded star of yesterday's parade,
            and exercise a different kind of power.
            Or go home.
Not choices to understand it all.
We cannot even approach that kind of understanding.
Or even choices to know now the joy I hope is there
Just choices to hang in
You know, I do not like pain any more than the next person.
I do not often choose suffering
But this day, with the memory of this parade still ringing in my ears,
            I think I want to exercise my choice,
            to discover a different kind of power in my life,
            and once again choose to hang in there just a bit,
            to hope against hope that hanging in there will make a difference
                        in me -- in the way-down-deepest-inside part of me
                        that wants so much, so achingly much, not to die -- but
                        to live - to live - to live!

And knows that to live -- is to hang in there - just a little bit longer.
I think I can do that.
I think you can do that.
I think we can do that together.
And I think it makes all the difference.
There are all chances this week to step into the place reserved for me
            right beside Jesus.
With Jesus kneeling at my feet as they are washed,
            and perhkaps as I do what Jesus commande and wash another’s feet.
With Jesus as my host as I am fed the bread and wine of the first Eucharist.
With Jesus as we witness his agony and death
            and stand before, or touch or kiss the cross of life.
Only then can we stand with him in full joy
            as his dying becomes his living.
Only then can we take his hand and dance for joy
            that his death was not the end of the story
            but the incredible beginning of the rest of our life.

There is a prayer for Palm Sunday and Holy Week
            that Thomas Merton wrote.
I’ve used it before because it catches some of this hunger for life
            this desire to be with Jesus at this most awful time
            and the ambiguity that surrounds all the choices that lead to that life.

It goes like this:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.  I do not see the road ahead of me.  I cannot know for certain where it will end.  Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.  But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.  And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.  I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.  And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it.  Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.  I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.  Amen.
I pray for that faith, that trust, that casts out fear.
I  pray for that faith, that trust,
            that carries us through Holy Week to life.
We've been jolted today.
We have been jolted into remembering that
            we are all members of the community of the gambler.
            The gambler Jesus Christ
                        who gambled that his death would win us life.

Through word and action we have experienced the foolishness
            of betting on triumph alone.
So we have become part of the life and the death
crying hosanna the very stones are witness to,
            even as, down in the dirt at the foot of the cross,
            a step away from death,
we have the chance, with Jesus himself
            to put all our chips
on life. Amen.