Palm Sunday
The Rev. Nigel Taber-Hamilton, Rector
The end of St. John's Gospel says: "there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written." In a sense this can also be said of Holy Week - if I were to try and comment on the Passion Narrative - which contains the last eight days of Jesus' life - we'd probably be here until Easter Day itself.
So I'm going to focus on this day - Palm Sunday - and repeat a little of what I said last year. Last year I described for you how Jesus' Palm Sunday procession was really a counter-procession - a declaration of the way God works, though peace, which directly opposed Pilate's Military parade from his coastal Provincial headquarters at Caesarea Maritima to the Western Gate, directly opposite the Lion's Gate where Jesus entered.
Empires prefer to work through threat of force rather than its use - as we have discovered after five years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, real warfare is expensive! Better to use excessive, brutal force against civilians - better to use fear and intimidation through such things as public executions - better to use them as warnings than actual war.
The actual exercise of this sort of force is, after all, so much more effective than mere words: "This is what we'll do to you if you rebel" is the eternal message Empires send. The threat they bring is Eternal War, of which the death of a few choice civilians is simply a down payment.
God's message is also much more effective when its lived rather than simply spoken. That was Jesus' counter-message to Pilate's armored column. He chose not just to speak in favor of, but to march for peace - to ride the symbol of regal peace, a donkey; to enter the regal gate, the Lion's gate, into Jerusalem, a name which means the City of "the Heritage of Peace".
So War and Peace enter the city of the "heritage of peace" from different sides.
Our procession - for if we are here today then we can only claim one of these two processions - our procession has only one message - the message of all faithful people of good will: "we come in peace with open hands and hearts".
Why am I repeating this? Because it has become easy in our day and time somehow to overlook this central core of Jesus' message: "we Christians come in peace with open hands and hearts".
What does that active peace-making look like? Well, for some of us, today, it means standing on street corners and walking in demonstrations on the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq - but really, that's only the most superficial level of peacemaking. Jesus' ride into Jerusalem would have been meaningless if it was his first act. It was only because it was the culmination of a life of peace, a life working actively for justice, a life of compassion for the lowest and the lost, that the Palm procession had any meaning.
For us, public displays really only carry meaning when they're build on the bedrock of a holy life. So what does peacemaking mean for Christians?
- Peacemaking means acting daily to counter the actual and symbolic acts of violence that permeate our culture and our world with actual and symbolic acts of peace-making;
- It means not allowing the language of violence to go unchallenged - no quiet acquiescence, no pretending that we don't need to be bold, resolute and vocal. It's too easy, out of an entirely reasonable desire for a quiet life or the hope that we will not offend (because one of the biggest sins for Episcopalians is that we might offend someone by our bad manners!) it's too easy to remain silent.
Peacemaking clearly has its costs - doesn't anything that's worth doing? As German theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer so eloquently said, there is no such thing as "cheap grace". Part of what Holy Week is about is witnessing the cost of peacemaking - the cost of discipleship.
So on this day, please be aware of what the Day of Palms was really about, what the stakes were for Jesus - faithfulness to God's eternal struggle for Justice and peace - and what the stakes are for us, if we claim to be this King's followers.
On this day there are two things I want to ask you: first, who do you think is in that Palm procession? I have to believe that every one of the people we have met this Lent is in that procession - Nicodemus the politician, the outcast woman at the Well, the man born blind, and the dead Lazarus are all there. And notice that each one of them is a walking, talking metaphor for those who our culture, like theirs, views in some way as outside of "normal", polite community: the politicos, the outcasts, the handicapped, and the dead - they're all there, following the King of Peace in through the regal gate. Each one of them because they have had their hearts transformed for good and for God by this strange man riding an ass.
Which brings me to the second, more important question: are you in that procession too? Has your life - is your life - so built "on the foundation of the prophets and the apostles, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone" that your presence would be more than just for show?
That's the question for Holy Week. Amen.
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