| Scriptures: | Philippians 2:5-11 Mark 11:1-11 |
Well, we're back with our old friend Mark - the gospel writer we've been following throughout most of Lent -- as the lectionary passages turn us toward Holy Week. Most churches tend not to use the Mark 11 version of the Palm Sunday events. It's pretty bare-bones. You can almost hear Jack Webb in the background intoning, "Just the facts, maam." Susan Andrews calls Mark's Jesus "an enigma - quiet, pensive, tense, withdrawn - a most unkingly monarch riding on a colt, a rich symbol of royalty." You can sense the pain hovering around Jesus as he anticipates what will happen at the end of the week. Oh sure, the crowd is shouting "Hosanna!...Hosanna in the highest heaven!" now. But where will they be when the accusations and the flogging start? More significantly, where will his friends be - those he should be relying upon for support and comfort? What kinds of choices will they make? Mark reports it very simply and starkly: "Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything [and probably, also, at everyone], as it was very late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve."
The mime that will be presented at the conclusion of our Maundy Thursday service this Thursday depicts the main characters in this drama who fail Jesus: the disciples being told to pray who fall asleep, Peter who denies him three times, Judas who thinks he is setting up a revolution against Rome but who is appalled by what his betrayal costs. Each one of them has choices to make. And some of them even get second chances. We'll come back to that.
We're all familiar with the idea of "fair-weather friends" - those who enjoy being around you when you're rolling sevens and elevens and hitting royal flushes on the video poker machine, but who fade away into the woodwork when craps start coming up and the roulette wheel keeps going to "0" and double "00". And it doesn't just have to be about winning and losing, either. There are those who are ready to bail out on you when you experience a fall from grace - whether or not it is your fault. There is a part of us that likes to revel in the cutting down of those public officials or religious celebrities who are shown to have feet of clay - think Clark County Commissioner Mary Kincaid-Chauncey or City Council member Lynette Boggs McDonald here…..or the problems caused to the image of religion with the sexual peccadilloes of evangelical preachers like Jimmy Swaggart or Ted Haggard. But no matter what their mis-deeds may have been, what I'm wanting us to focus on here is who they are as human beings and what happens to those who have been comrades and colleagues and compatriots when the accusations are made or the sentences are passed or someone has served their time and come home. Who is there to remain steadfast and be supportive of them as human beings in the midst of these travails?
Now, obviously, I am not trying to compare Mary Kincaid-Chauncey, Lynette Boggs McDonald, Jimmy Swaggart, or Ted Haggard with Jesus - far from it. But the concept is the same. Jesus is about to become a common criminal - in fact, is about to be sentenced to the worst punishment the people of that time could dream up. Once again, we look at these events through the prism of our historical and biblical knowledge, understanding that Jesus is going to come out on the right side. But for those people in that time Jesus was little better - in fact a whole lot worse - than those four contemporary people I've used as illustrations. And so Peter - and the rest - had choices that they had to make.
Ah, Peter. Our favorite whipping boy. The one who in so many ways is the most real, the most human. And therefore the one with whom we can best identify. Tell me, do any of you really, in your heart of hearts, identify with Judas? It may be chic and all too PC to say that I am like Judas, still finding ways to betray my Lord. But it strikes me as a bit like hair-shirts and flagellation: "look at me, I'm the biggest sinner of them all!" No, no matter how much we feel as though we are not living up to what Jesus would want of us, complete and utter betrayal just isn't what we are all about.
But denial - now that's another story. Here's the way Andrew Foster Connors describes some of the possibilities for denial:
"It should not be hard for us to remember all the times we have stood at a distance, quietly watching corporate bottom lines climbing alongside the numbers of people living in poverty, listening to councils argue while the sons and daughters of the unprivileged are sent off to war. It should not be hard to acknowledge all the times we have run away from the problems of our cities while other people's children are crucified in school systems or broken homes. It is not hard to find our place with Peter, hiding somewhere while our Savior hangs on a cross."
In other words, inaction in the face of all the places where there is hurt in our many worlds is the contemporary form of Peter's denial -- the actions of fair-weather friends. And what about the disciples who fall asleep when Jesus sends them to pray? They, too, are letting their own comfort, their own desire to get away from the dis-ease that is now barreling their way because of their connection with this common criminal, come before their ability for each of them to be the faithful friend that Jesus needs.
Most likely they are all there with that crowd shouting their "Hosannas" - Peter and James and John…and Judas…..although you would never know it from Mark's spare account of this ride into Jerusalem. Jesus had sent two of them to obtain the colt (or "donkey", as we usually think of it), and this they did evidently willingly, even though they must have wondered what it was all about. And then they joined with the crowd, and it was a heady time; it was an easy thing to be comrades with this acclaimed fellow. But Jesus knew how short-lived this experience would be. The defections - the desertion - the betrayal - were right around the corner.
Palm Sunday is also known as Passion Sunday - more so in Roman Catholic and Anglican traditions than in ours - because it marks the beginning of Jesus' Passion: his supreme sacrifice for us. And so it gives us our opportunity to take out our faith and look at it - to look at it under the direction of what the cross has come to mean for us.
We can do this because there are other characters in the drama who also make choices that are different from those of the disciples - choices of courage and faithfulness: the woman who anoints Jesus with a costly jar of oil, Simon of Cyrene who carried Jesus' cross, the centurion who confesses that Jesus is the son of God, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of Jesus, and Salome who watch and wait at their own peril so that they can give Jesus the burial he deserves, and Joseph of Arimathea - a member of the council - who, at some risk to himself, goes "boldly to Pilate" to ask for the body of Jesus. Passion Sunday gives us that opportunity to witness to a faith that holds through times of difficulty and fear - a faith that does not run away from Jesus in his moment of greatest need, that does not deny him, that does not betray him. We, too, can remember similar times - times when we stood up for someone or something because it was the right thing to do; times when we paid a price for the courage of our convictions; times when we stepped up for a stranger in need, defended what was just, and embraced a hurting, vulnerable human being.
Choices - that's what it's all about. But here's the good news: our choices - especially those of denial and desertion - don't have to be forever. We are given second chances. Peter discovered what a devastating decision he had made, and ultimately he found the courage to witness to the world in the name of the crucified one and to become the rock on which the church of Jesus the Christ would be founded. The disciples did not let desertion be the last word - they became a band who would make the love of God be known throughout the world.
When confronted by the cross it often feels as though we have but two choices: to exercise our courage or to run in fear. However, these choices don't have to be mutually exclusive. We can know the fear but it need not control us. Palm Sunday - Passion Sunday - is a time for celebrating faith that does not fail under the weight of the cross.
For the other part of this good news is the promise that we now come to here at the end of Lent - the promise that Jesus will not defect from his love for us. He does not defect from his promises. He sticks with Peter even when he knows Peter will abandon him. He sticks with the disciples even when he knows they will turn and run. His love for them - his love for us - stays constant even when he knows they are not up to the task that he has set before them. And in so discovering that love we find that we are up to the task. The weightiness of the cross becomes like a helium-filled balloon rising to the sky when filled with the faith that comes on the wings of that love for us.
The disciples - and us - are heading into Jerusalem, toward that Upper Room where they will gather for the Passover Feast, as we will gather also this coming Thursday, and as we gather now around this table which recalls that time together. Here at this table Jesus is offering more than his body and blood - he is offering the promise of love that enables us to lift up the crosses in our own lives. Paul teaches us how to experience that love: "If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being of full accord and of one mind." Being "of one mind" means having the mind of Christ, who lifts the weight of the cross from us and gives us our second chances. And when that mind is in us we will proclaim along with Paul, no matter what crosses lay before us:
Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
Amen.
Dave Pomeroy
First Congregational Church/United Church of Christ
Las Vegas, NV
April 5, 2009