Palm Sunday

Mark 11:1-11

As a public event, the Palm Sunday parade is a pretty big disappointment.

The people lay down their coats, wave palm branches in the air, shout “Hosanna!”, follow Jesus into Jerusalem, arrive at the temple – and then turn around and go home! It’s almost as if Jesus finishes the parade route, checks his watch and says, “Hey guys, it’s five o’clock. What do ya say we go back to Mary and Martha’s house and cook some burgers on the grill!?”

And there they go, back to Bethany, just over the other side of the hill from Jerusalem, where the parade started in the first place!

Now, let me ask you: What is missing from this picture?

And let me answer that for you: the people of the city are missing!

Where are the tens of thousands of people lining the parade route like they did when the New England Patriots returned home with their most recent Super Bowl trophy? Or the hundreds of thousands of women all over the country who participated in the Women’s March last January?

Where is the big turn out? Where is the big celebration? Where is the BIG climax?

The Gospel of Matthew tells us that the people of Jerusalem sort of looked at Jesus riding the donkey and leading the parade and simply muttered, “Who the heck is THIS?”

The Gospel of Luke reveals that the religious authorities of Jerusalem were not sure how to react to the parade except to run up to Jesus and whisper, “Tell your disciples to cut it out before they get the Romans all upset!”

It makes you wonder why we call it the triumphal entry.

What was so triumphant about a parade that no one cared about, and that, when it was over, the people seem to have simply turned around and retreated to Bethany to cook a few burgers on the grill?

Well, here’s the point. Jesus’ parade into the city was not in any sense a triumphal entry for the city of Jerusalem.

But it was indeed a triumphal entry for the ones who marched in the parade!

Years earlier, the prophet Zechariah had described this future event like this:

“Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your King comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he; humble and riding on a donkey…”

Do you see it? It is the daughter of Zion for whom the parade is triumphant…and not the whole family.

Daughters, of course, were in those days (and are in many cultures even today), the most expendable of people. Sons were highly valued. Sons increased the economic power of their families. Only sons could receive their father’s inheritance. Only sons could serve as priests. Only sons could occupy positions of power and authority. Only sons were allowed to sit on the councils or to enter the inner courts of the temple.

And yet, on this most amazing day, the daughters of Zion are rejoicing! And not only those daughters who are female – like Mary the mother of Jesus, and Mary Magdalene, and the sisters of Lazarus, and all the other women who followed Jesus. But all those others too, a crowd of people both female and male who were considered expendable.

Why, look at them marching along, holding their palm branch banners, and cheering wildly! There are those ignoble fishermen from Galilee! And there is Legion, that tormented soul who used to be homeless, living in a cemetery, possessed by powers far greater than himself. And look! Over there! There is the man who used to be blind, the guy left to beg at the outskirts of the city. And there is Zaccheus, that little shrimp of a tax collector hated by all. There are the lepers marching along, laughing with great joy, and right next to them the woman who Jesus healed from that terrible flow of blood! And here comes the good Samaritan man who would never dare go near Jerusalem by himself and along with him that woman Jesus met by the well!

Why, here come marching the daughters of Jerusalem – the weak, the poor, the powerless, the marginalized. The widow who couldn’t buy her prescription drugs because she was required to put her penny in the coffers of the temple; the once paralyzed man who’d given up on the future because he was beyond the reach of health care; the young woman who used to walk the streets and sell her body to support her children because her husband had put her away; and speaking of children, kids are everywhere – running to and fro, dashing in and out and among the marchers, gleefully waving palm branches.

And, as you picture the scene – the poor and the powerless marching with Jesus to Jerusalem – listen to their words.

“Hosanna! Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna!”

And these words are revolutionary indeed! They translate, SALVATION NOW! The reign of God has begun! It is time for the last to become first, for the downtrodden to be lifted up! And the palm branches themselves are signs of liberation!

What happened on Palm Sunday is something like what happened with Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani schoolgirl shot by the Taliban for defying an order barring girls from receiving an education. Malala had not only kept going to school but spoke out publicly about the importance of education for women. So they shot her.

I think we all know the story from there, how Malala somehow survived the devastating head wound and after a long and painful recovery process devoted her life to giving voice to voiceless girls all over the world. She spoke out on television and through newspaper articles. She addressed legislatures and heads of state. And what a scene it was when this child the Taliban tried to silence strode into the great hall of the United Nations and addressed the gathered nations of the world on the importance of education for all.

And even though we all know the issue of women’s rights is far from settled in Pakistan or any other place in the world there is no doubt that the courageous faith of this young woman and thousands of people like her will one day win the war for freedom and justice and education – for ALL.

And here come the daughters of Zion, marching right into the jaws of power! And although they will change that day neither the oppressive Roman government nor the religious system that supports it, they – like Malala – are a symbol that a change is happening in the world. The kingdoms of this world are becoming the kingdom of our God, and of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever!

So the powerful question still being asked today, two thousand years later, is simply this:

“Will YOU come and join the parade?”

But before answering this question, we ought to consider who we will be joining.

Note, first of all, that these are all weak, frail, sinful, human beings. But they are all people whose lives have been touched by the transforming power of Jesus’ love. Some have experienced healings – of the body, of the mind, of the soul. Some have witnessed what they can only describe as miracles in their lives. Some have been called to do things they could not do on their own strength, but they were given strength and did them. Some were rescued from the damaging effects of sin when Jesus forgave them and gave them a new start. Some were saved from the mean destructiveness of other people who forced them to live on the margins of life. Some never knew love until the day Jesus stepped into their lives and loved them.

Not too long ago I had the joyous privilege of preaching at a revival service. And it was kind of a different experience for me because up in my native New England we don’t have revivals. We have ham and bean suppers instead!

But as I was preparing my sermon, it occurred to me that people do not live on ham and beans alone, but on every word that proceeds from God. And Jesus is the living Word. People cannot truly experience life without Jesus Christ. And the people who come to services like that, and to services like this one this morning, are coming with the hope that Jesus will somehow touch them. Their illnesses. Their family problems. Their skeletons in the closet. Their hopes. Their disappointments. Their wounds. Their injuries. Their weaknesses. Their losses. We come to worship services not to learn new theological truths, or to gain some intellectual hold on life, but to discover a real-life savior.

We come to be touched by the loving hand of Jesus. We come to encounter and to be encountered by the divine. We come to catch a glimpse of the Kingdom of God coming into our own lives and our world, changing us, changing humanity, and making us whole.

To join the parade of the daughters of Zion, you have to open your life to the healing touch of Jesus. For until you’ve tasted that love yourself, you cannot even fathom what comes next.

The second thing about the people we are joining is that they are folks who value each other to the extent that they become willing to band together, and march together, and share their strengths and resources.

Jim Wallis of the Sojourners Community has a wonderful book called “Faith Works”. The book starts with the story of his own life, growing up in a nice suburban Detroit neighborhood. Wallis remembers his dramatic childhood conversion when a visiting evangelist made all the kids sit in the front rows of the church. It seemed as if the man’s finger was pointing directly at him when he said, “If Jesus came back tonight, your mommy and daddy would be taken to heaven, and you would be left ALL BY YOURSELF!” Jim says that was sobering news when he realized that, as a six-year old boy, he would have a five-year old sister to support. That very night, at home, Jim Wallis asked his mother how he could be saved. He was ready to repent from all the degradation of his first six years.

“But to her everlasting credit,” he writes, “she didn’t talk to me about God’s wrath, but told me how much God loved me.” So he gave his life to Jesus. And that was the beginning of a faith journey that, years later, took him into new territory.

Jim Wallis’ world – like many of ours – was one in which everybody’s dad had a job, dinner was on the table every evening, and only bad people that his family didn’t know ever went to jail. They weren’t rich, but he’d never really met anyone who was poor. But increasingly, he was hearing and seeing things on the news that troubled him. Things about another part of Detroit he’d never visited. Things about unemployed fathers, hungry families, racial discrimination. Jim had never even seen a black face except for the pictures that visiting missionaries displayed about their work in Africa. And he started asking questions like, “Why was life so different in ‘white Detroit’ than it was in ‘black Detroit’?” “Why were so many people in the inner city without good jobs or decent houses?” “Why were there hungry people in the United States of America?” “Why were so many young black men in jail?”

And then questions of another sort. “What does the Christian Faith say about the racial attitudes in our country?” Why do we in the white churches have no contact with the people in black churches?

These questions of the heart, Jim Wallis says, are an entryway into our own spirituality. They beckon us to deeper places. And the deeper places to which they brought Jim Wallis are the inner cities, the poorest neighborhoods, the most marginalized people in our society. Today, Jim likes to say that he lives in Washington D.C. But its not the Washington we know. Its Columbia Heights, about twenty blocks from the White House, where children often go to bed at night to the sound of gunfire, and experience violence, drugs, and despair as their daily norm. For more than twenty years, Jim and a handful of others have operated the Sojourners Neighborhood Center which tries to help and empower the kids and their families in Jesus’ name. Jim Wallis made an intentional decision to leave his own familiar surroundings to go and become a partner with others who live in a different world than white suburbia. Today, there is no greater Christian advocate for the poor and dispossessed of our society than Jim Wallis.

Now listen to what I’m saying. If you are going to come and join the parade of Jesus’ people, you’re going to have to come and join Jesus’ people. You can’t do it from the golf course. You can’t do it from in front of your TV. You can’t even do it from the air conditioned comfort of this beautiful sanctuary.

You can only do it when you leave where you’re comfortable and go and stand with others in the midst of the realities in which they live.

What did Galilean fishermen know about prostitutes? What did Roman educated tax collectors know about homeless mentally ill people who howled out of the cemeteries at night? What did blind men know about people whose lives were tortured by the terrible things they’d seen in life? What did middle class folks know about lepers?

And yet, there they are. Marching together to Jerusalem. And not only marching with each other, but for each other, too.

If you’re going to join the parade, you’re going to have to become partners and stand with people who are not at all like you. Except in one way. They are loved by God, and are targets of the love of Jesus.

And one final thing about the people in this parade. They understand that the struggle is not against other people as it is so often cast in Christian groups today. No, the struggle is against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. That’s how St. Paul described it in his letter to the Ephesians.

The gift of salvation is more than a personal experience of God’s grace, as important as that experience is. And it is more than a sharing of grace with others as just described through the story of Jim Wallis. These two elements are vitally important, but the salvation God offers cannot be complete without the transformation of the unjust worldly systems, and structures, and economies, and institutions that oppress and impoverish the people God loves.

Salvation is not just personal, not just relational. Salvation also requires the remaking of society according to the will of God. And we’ve obviously got a lot of work to do in ours!

So will you do it? Will you join the daughters of Zion marching through the world today? This morning, I urge you to make three decisions. First, a decision to open your life each day to the transforming touch of Jesus. You will never know what life is intended to be until you let the Lord become the center of your life. Second, make a decision to move yourself into relationship with people whose lives you don’t understand, and stand and march with them in Jesus’ name even as they stand and march with you! Jesus calls his people to be on the side of the poor, the rejected, the broken and dispossessed. Most of those people – quite frankly – don’t live in our neighborhood. One of the most important decisions a Christian can make is to get out of the house more often.

And finally, make a decision to take on the powers-that-be! There are powerful forces that lay behind the causes of crime, and poverty, and homelessness, and racial bigotry. Society itself must be transformed! And only the daughters of Zion can do it!

For the parade continues even to this day. It has broken out of Jerusalem and found the streets of every city and nation. People of faith, marching together, singing a song that goes something like this:

“Hosanna! Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna!