Sermon:
April 13, 2003
Palm Sunday
Sunday Night Alive! 

Scripture:
Luke 19:28-40

It’s Palm Sunday. Entry into Jerusalem. Pilgrims have come from miles around, from all the way across the known world. It’s Passover. It’s likely that Jesus has been planning this day for months.

In the Old Testament, when a prophet’s message was not being received, they would take dramatic action and make a visible statement. Two hundred twenty seven years ago, a group of men boarded a ship in Boston Harbor and began throwing tea overboard. We remember it as the Boston Tea Party. However it exactly transpired, the event is in our corporate memory. So much so that today when a group desires to make a statement that will be heard, they reenact it in some way, and we know what they’re saying. 

Here Jesus sends two disciples to get a colt. Centuries before, the Old Testament prophet Zechariah told of a coming ruler of God’s people when he wrote: 

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, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
                        (Zech 9:9) 

It’s hard to believe today that the donkey was a royal animal. In Old Testament times, the king who came riding a donkey came in a spirit of peace. One who came riding a horse, came in a spirit of war. So Jesus was making a statement. 

Like a victory procession from the days of Zechariah, Jesus came riding into Jerusalem. Any Jew raised and steeped in the tradition of the scriptures would immediately understand the statement being made. But just to make sure, Luke tells us that the disciples (many more than twelve) began to sing and shout the songs of the Passover, the Hillel (Psalm 113-118), the victory prayer of God. 

            “Praise the Lord, O servants of the Lord, praise the name of the Lord.”
            “O give thanks to the Lord for he is good; his steadfast love endures forever.”

Jesus left no room for misunderstanding what was happening that day. Each action was ripe with meaning. The servant king of Israel, the one the prophets had said would come to free God’s people and lead them back to righteousness, had come! God’s Kingdom was breaking forth in their midst. Its time was now! 

Of course, all this made the religious leaders nervous. “Jesus, Jesus, we know the people like you. Go ahead, play out your little pantomime, but do it quietly! It’s Passover. With all these crowds, the Romans are on edge the way it is. This could turn out bad for all of us.” 

But Jesus doesn’t give the answer they want. 

We’re all familiar with this story, but in Luke’s gospel something is missing. We’ve come to celebrate “Palm Sunday,” but Luke doesn’t say a thing about palms or waving palm branches. If it wasn’t for the other Gospel writers (Matthew, Mark and John), rather than Palm Sunday we might be calling this the “Big Entrance Day.” Come to think of it, maybe that would help us to see the significance of what is really happening. 

While Luke doesn’t give us palms, he does give us something that the others fail to record: Jesus’ response to the religious leaders. “I tell you, if the voices of these people were silent, the stones themselves would shout out!”  

You might be saying: “It’s a nice image, but what’s so important about this?” In this one response, Luke points to the extent and significance of what is happening. It’s a contrast between palms and stones. 

Many of us were brought up with the image of children running along the road, laying down branches for Jesus and the colt to walk on. In our minds, we see people waving as the procession moves along. Their joy speaks of a hope that “maybe this is it; maybe this is the ‘Year of the Lord!’” 

It wasn’t too long ago that the folks at the University of Kansas were hoping this was the year. Thousands of people dressed in blue and white with caps that read “Jayhawks” were cheering and waving their pom-poms. “This might be the year, it’s time to celebrate!” Just a few weeks ago we sat glued to our televisions. We cheered, held our breath, maybe jumped out of our seats. It seems so long ago now. Folks in Lawrence walked away from that game saying, “Well, maybe next year.” 

It’s the difference between palms and rocks. The joy of palms lasts a short time. 

The weather is changing. Pretty soon the leaves will be budding. Those leaves of spring are beautiful, exciting and green. They’re fresh. But if you cut the branch, those leaves are not long-enduring things. They’re fun to play with when you first cut them, but leave them out in the yard a day or two, and it’s a different story. 

Palm branches are simply temporary. Today we’re going to take them home with us. Some won’t make it out the sanctuary door. Some will stay for weeks in the car, pushed up under the seat. Others will be left on the kitchen counter, until the next cleaning. A few will find a place on the wall to hang and dry out, to fade in peace. A reminder that “Maybe next year…” 

Our attention, too, is a temporary thing. Ask any schoolteacher. McKenzie and Aiden can be completely enthralled with a book or a simple ribbon they’ve discovered, when boom, they’re off to something else. They can be running across the room to give you a hug, see something out of the corner of their eye, and they’re gone before their body can even catch up. 

For Jesus, it wasn’t a week before the very ones who had waved their branches, who had spread their cloaks on the ground, were yelling: “Crucify him. Crucify him.” Yet Jesus talks about how the stones, the very foundation of the earth, recognized what was going on. Palestine is a rocky place. While lush in areas, the majority of the country is rocky wilderness. The stones of Israel had seen war after war. There had been deceit, treachery, and man killing his brother for thousands and thousands of years. People came and went. Voices and movements rose up only to fade away. But the stones, which have seen it all….they knew. 

If the people who are here and then gone do not sing, Jesus says, the very stones will take their place, proclaiming what is happening: God’s Kingdom, the New Age which was promised, has arrived in me! It’s a reality that permeates even the stones. 

Palms are dropped and forgotten. Branches dry out. And when the promised Kingdom doesn’t seem to turn out as we expect, we turn and walk away. Like a statue on a pedestal in Baghdad, the very objects of celebration are cast aside in condemnation. In just a few short days, those who waved those leaves are going to shout: “Crucify him, crucify him!” And let there be no illusion. Jesus will die. 

Maybe it is that way, too, with us. Maybe we, too, wave and shout: “Jesus did you see me? Did you see I waved?” But when Jesus calls us to pick up our cross—to bear another’s pain—when the kingdom turns out not to be the paradise of perfection we imagined but rather filled with God’s imperfect people, we too don’t get it. In the end, we too just walk away. 

Jesus said of us, “Father forgive them.” Jesus is going to die this week. The true king has come. His entrance has been made. Let’s not forget that it’s when the party in the streets comes to an end that we hear God’s real cheering section. 

Thanks be to God. Amen.