Sunday with a Splash (and a Slash):
As he was now
approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives,
The whole multitude of
the disciples began to praise God
Joyfully with a loud
voice . . .
“Blessed is the king
who comes in the name of the Lord!”
(Sunday, Day One of Holy
Week, Luke 19:37-38a)
Then they all shouted
together,
“Away with this
fellow! Release Barabbas for us!”
Pilate, wanting to
release Jesus addressed them again, but they kept
shouting,
“Crucify, crucify him!”
(Friday, Day Six of Holy
Week, Luke 23:18-21)
A sermon by Siegfried S.
Johnson on Passion/Palm Sunday, April 1, 2007
First United Methodist
Church, 605 West 6th, Mountain Home, Arkansas
72653
In
2001, six years ago, Disney World celebrated Walt
Disney’s100th birthday. I remember it well,
both of our daughters then living in Orlando and working
at Disney. Naturally Sherry and I spent a few days
vacationing there, joining the year long birthday
celebration of Disney’s birthday. One of the highlights
was the Snow Globe parade down Main Street USA in
Disney’s Magic Kingdom. Each day people begin to gather
early to get an advantageous spot from which to admire
the many Disney characters set in Snow Globes. The
idea of the parade was to freeze unique
moments from Disney history, each complete with the
background music associated with the heroes and villains
of Disney’s rich imagination. It was truly a sight to
see.
And the children!
They beamed with joy and
were filled with laughter, mesmerized at the
extravaganza (the adults no less so). Christian, our
then three year old granddaughter, was among the
thousands of children absorbed into the parade –grabbed
by Pluto to join in a jolly dance step, joining hands
with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to become part of a
ring of joy, offering her ear for Cinderella to stoop
and whisper a word of magic in her ear. It was a
magical experience, without question.
Palm
Sunday is, likewise, a magical experience for the
church. With this morning’s enthusiastic Parade, our
church has begun Holy Week, “a
festal procession with branches” as we read
earlier from Psalm 118. Palm Sunday was a joyful
Parade, and has become a moment frozen in time, a Snow
Globe moment for Christians, firmly set in the worship
of churches around the globe.
In the
Holy Land this morning there was a festive walk led by
church leaders in Jerusalem, leading thousands of
pilgrims to retrace the steps of Jesus down the path
from the top of the Mount of Olives, through the Kidron
Valley, and up to the Old City. Our own pilgrim group
was there only last week – beginning at Bethphage on the
eastern slope of the Mount of Olives, where we
worshipped with a reading and singing at the Greek
Orthodox Church of Bethphage, remembering the stories of
Mary and Martha and Lazarus from Bethany, just down the
slope from where we stood. We gathered at the top of
the Mount of Olives and began our own walk down the path
toward Jerusalem. If our 90 was quite a parade, you can
imagine how the thousands of pilgrims will look this
morning as they make their way down the western slope of
the Mount of Olives and into the gates of the Holy
City.
It’s a
rather steep downhill walk, and some of the locals make
money offering donkey rides. “Jerusalem
Taxis” they called them. None of us took
advantage of the donkey ride, but Jesus had arranged for
a very special donkey ride that day, rendering the Palm
Sunday parade not merely magical, but fulfillment of Old
Testament prophecy — Jesus seated on a donkey,
fulfilling the prophecy of Zechariah, “Behold,
your king comes to
you, triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding
on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”
A
moment frozen in time, yet celebrated by the church.
This morning, as the thousands approach the gates of the
Holy City, there will be singing, especially as the
pilgrims mark that the Eastern Gate, the Golden Gate, is
yet sealed, awaiting the Messiah. They will sing the 24th
Psalm, “Lift up your
heads, O ye gates! And be lifted up, O ancient doors!
That the King of Glory may come in. Who is the King of
Glory? The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord, mighty in
battle. Lift up your heads O ye gates! And be lifted
up ye everlasting doors, that the King of Glory may come
in. Who is this King of Glory? The Lord of hosts, he
is the King of Glory!”
Imagine
this Jerusalem Parade. Imagine the children! Surely
the children beamed, laughing with joy as they saw their
parents filled with excitement and heard them shouting,
“Blessed is the king
who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna to the Son
of David. Hosanna in the highest heaven.”
Surely the children must have been gleeful participants,
dancing with their parents to this long-awaited tune of
hope. So magical was this day that it was forever
frozen into Christian tradition. Two thousand years
later the church yet observes Palm Sunday with a
heightened sense of drama. That’s why this morning we
opened with a parade celebrating the coming of the king,
choir and children processing into the sanctuary, waving
palm branches.
Truth
is, every church needs to know how to have a good
Parade! And what better day for a church parade than
Palm Sunday? Palm
Sunday is a Sunday with a Splash!
Yet, as
my sermon title indicates, Palm Sunday is also a
Sunday with a Slash.
Parade
Slash Pain.
Palms
Slash Passion.
Before Holy Week is over, palms of victory
fade into distant memory as the passion, sorrow, and
sacrifice of the Savior comes full into view. The
parade will be followed by pain. Our church will, in
worship and liturgy, mark that shift by observing Holy
Week remembrances – the Passover Seder to recall Christ
as the fulfillment of the sacrificial lamb of the Old
Testament, and Maundy Thursday to remember betrayal and
agony and death, stripping bare the sanctuary of all
color and symbol, of any festive remembrance of this
day.
Once
this Sunday was known only as Palm Sunday. Now we’ve
added a Slash, in order better to appreciate the awful
events of Holy Week. Too many Christians, insofar as
their worship experience suggests, skip from one Sunday
to the next. You see, if we leap from Palm Sunday to
Easter Sunday, we only experience the Parade environment
of Jesus’ final week on earth.
Palm Sunday is a parade
into the Holy City. Easter is a parade into heaven.
It’s all too much Parade. Let us then acknowledge, in
worship and liturgy, that between the Parades, was
suffering. The shouts of
Hosanna
became the whispers of scheming and plotting to take
Jesus’ life. The happy crowds became a vile mob.
Laughter and joy turned to tears and intense sorrow.
Holy Week is not all celebration, not all Splash. The
Slash between the Palms and the Passion remind us that
Holy Week was a week of betrayal, sin, and blood.
Palm
Sunday is, to me, one of the most confusing days in the
church’s calendar. Was it Good news? Or, was it Bad
news? Palm Sunday is celebration, to be sure, but
knowing the end of the story renders the celebration
somehow hollow. As wonderful as Palm Sunday is,
there’s a certain emptiness that persists in the
church. If this is
all there is, we have not much.
We need
Easter. That’s the celebration our hearts most crave.
But we cannot have resurrection until we have death. So
today we hear the jubilant Hosannas of Palm Sunday, and
it whets our appetite to rush to our destination, to
Easter, the ultimate victory of Christ over the grave.
But let’s pause this week to sing the more solemn songs
of passion, songs like:
Go
To Dark Gethsemane, ye that feel the tempter’s power;
your redeemers conflict see, watch with him one bitter
hour.
Turn not from his griefs away, learn of Jesus Christ to
Pray.
Songs
like:
O
Sacred Head Now Wounded, with grief and shame weighed
down,
now scornfully surrounded with thorns thine only crown.
How pale thou art with anguish, with sore abuse and
scorn!
How does that visage languish, which once was bright as
morn.
What thou my Lord, has suffered, was all for sinner’s
gain,
mine, mine was the transgression, but thine the deadly
pain.
There’s
much in this Holy Week for our instruction, much we will
miss if we blaze by, ears drowned with the music of
celebration. I encourage you to take advantage of
special opportunities for worship this week, to remember
that the Palms gave way to Passion, the Parade to Pain –
to remember that the Glory of God is witnessed in both.