Sermon:
April 4, 2004
Palm Sunday
Sunday Night Alive  

Scripture:
Luke 18:35-43

Palm Sunday. It’s here. You know Palm Sunday. If you have ever been to a Palm Sunday service before, you know it’s the Sunday when everybody goes home waving their palm branches. It’s an exciting Sunday. It’s an exciting part of our story—the story that we just read about Jesus coming into Jerusalem, God’s holy city, a city that was full of potential yet needed so much of its own healing. And so the crowds gathered and there was an excitement in the air. When you read it, you can just feel it. And when you come to Palm Sunday, you can get swept up in it. 

If you’re like me, you wonder about this crowd that gathers, waving palm branches in the air as Jesus comes into the holy city. Who is this crowd and what is it that captured their attention? What has gotten them so excited? I mean, who are they? And what do they know about what’s happening? 

You know, that’s the funny thing about “they.” “They” always seem to know, right? I always wondered who “they” was—that invisible crowd, the faceless crowd, the majority that didn’t seem to have an identity. So who made up the crowd that day? And how can we be a part of the crowd if we don’t know who was in that first crowd? 

Well, the scripture that we just read doesn’t give us a whole lot of insight into exactly who made up that crowd. If you were just to read the Palm Sunday text, you may wonder who was the crowd who traveled with Jesus and got so excited on Sunday, but wasn’t anywhere to be found come Friday, and wasn’t around again the following Sunday. So who was this crowd? And what did they know that other people didn’t seem to know? What made them excited to wave their branches? 

Well, as is often the case in Bible study, sometimes you have to go to the story that’s either right before or right after something happens in order to get the bigger picture, so you have a sense of what’s going on. Remember, each Gospel is a story from beginning to end, and each story is put in place with the next. On Sundays when we pick one story out, sometimes we can miss what’s on either side and we miss important insight. 

On this Sunday, we don’t want to miss what happened just before the Palm Sunday story. Because if you get a glimpse of what happens just before Jesus goes to Jerusalem, you get a sense of who is in this crowd. You get a sense of why this is such a big deal. And maybe you’ll get a sense that you’re actually a part of that crowd, too. 

If you read Mark’s Gospel, we are talking about the story that happens immediately before Palm Sunday begins. It is the last story before Holy Week. Here we are, at the beginning of this Holy Week journey. We would do well to step back and see what happened just before so that we, too, may see the bigger picture and get a sense of what was about to happen. 

The story is the last one of the tenth chapter of Mark. Remember that Palm Sunday is the first story of the eleventh chapter of Mark, so this happens right before. It is the story of Bartimaeus. It is the last story before Jesus goes to Jerusalem. So listen to that story. 

They came to Jericho. As Jesus and his disciples, together with a large crowd, were leaving the city, a blind man, Bartimaeus, was sitting by the roadside, begging. When he heard it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout: “Jesus, son of David. Have mercy on me.” Then many rebuked him and told him to be quiet. But he shouted all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me.” Jesus stopped and said, “Call him.” So they called to the blind man, “Cheer up; on your feet, he is calling you.” Throwing his cloak aside, he jumped to his feet and came to Jesus. “What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked. The blind man said: “Rabbi, I want to see.” “Go,” said Jesus, “your faith has healed you.” Immediately, he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road. 

Do you want to know who was in the crowd that day? We know Bartimaeus was in the crowd. That last line says he followed Jesus. And chances are there were a whole lot of people like Bartimaeus who were in the crowd that day—people who had followed Jesus all along, who got picked up each step of the way. At each healing story, at each invitation, the crowd continued to grow. So if we pay attention to this Bartimaeus story, we can get a sense of what this Palm Sunday celebration is really about and how we can be a part of that great crowd. 

The story tells about Bartimaeus sitting at the side of the road. He had heard the excitement in the air. He heard that Jesus was coming through. This great healing presence that has been in the land, that he has heard so much about, was suddenly in his presence. And the first thing we learn is that he had sense enough to say, “I need some of that. I need some of that healing.” 

We have been talking a lot of about this journey through Lent, this journey from brokenness to wholeness. From today’s story we learn that the first thing we have to do is to be honest that we need some of that healing in our lives. We need to be brave like Bartimaeus who shouted out, “Son of David, have mercy on me.” 

Notice what happens immediately after that. The crowd says, “Hey, quiet down.” I think we all know that struggle of wanting to be honest about our hurt, wanting to be honest about our brokenness, wanting to be honest about our suffering, and being afraid that the crowd is going to hush us down. “Oh, don’t be talking about your struggle with your job. We appreciate your pain, but we’re trying to have a nice gathering. We’d really appreciate it if you didn’t talk about that here.” Or “Don’t talk about that struggle in your family with issues of depression or addiction. You know, that’s just not polite conversation. We’d appreciate it if you just kept that off to the side.” But Bartimaeus said, “No! Son of David, have mercy on me.” And he wouldn’t let the crowd quiet him. 

The first sense of wholeness on this journey, of being ready for the great celebration of Palm Sunday with all of its possibility for Holy Week, is to be honest about those places in our lives that need God’s healing and God’s touch and the love of community that will help us begin healing. And the other lesson for those of us in the crowd is that when there’s a Bartimaeus in our midst, do not quiet him. Allow God’s healing presence to be in our midst. 

It is important to catch what Bartimaeus is looking for, because Mark makes it really clear. There have been a lot of healings up to this stage. But this is a healing of sight, a healing about vision. And it’s the last healing before everything that happens during Holy Week—before Jesus goes to the temple, before he goes to the Upper Room with his disciples, before he’s arrested, before he goes to the cross. It is one last healing about vision, about being able to see. It’s as if Mark is suggesting that it is vision, it is sight, it is glimpsing the bigger picture, that is the last step to discipleship. 

So let’s not forget where Jesus is going. Jesus has turned his face toward Jerusalem. Jericho is the last city on the stop. It’s the last suburb before he gets to the heart of what he is going to do. It is like Jesus is passing through Ferndale and he’s just about to cross Eight Mile Road into Jerusalem, into a city that is so full of promise and yet so tragically broken. The vision of what is about to happen is absolutely important. Bartimaeus gets the vision and then he’s willing to go, willing to follow Jesus, knowing that going to Jerusalem was going to be dangerous, wasn’t going to be easy, and was going to demand more from him and more from that community than anything they had ever imagined. 

You see, Jesus had the bigger picture. He knew that to bring healing to the world, to bring healing to the community, there would have to be a cross. So on Palm Sunday, those who had come to celebrate knew the bigger picture. They had received their vision. They understood that healing would come, that Easter would be a possibility. But they were willing to take the journey that would include confrontation with those places in their lives and those places in their world that were broken and needed healing. Remember, Jesus’ rebuke at the temple is telling the temple it needs to be healed. And that time around the table with his disciples is reminding the disciples that they need to be healed, both individually and especially as a community. Each step of the way, Jesus is saying, “This cross moment that is about to happen is about healing from brokenness to wholeness.” So think about those places in our world this Easter that need to be healed. 

So often, we don’t see the bigger picture. We want healing to come, we want Palm Sunday to be full of excitement, and we want to arrive next Sunday at Easter and continue the excitement. But we haven’t seen the whole picture of that powerful moment of community and the heartbreaking moment of struggle and brokenness we call “the cross.” Healing is available to us if we walk with Jesus, if we see the bigger picture, if we ask for sight for those places in our lives that are really broken, those places in our community that are really suffering. 

I would like to share a couple of stories about people who got their sight, who got the bigger picture before it was too late. 

The first story begins on the night of August 8, 1943. A man by the name of Franz Jagerstatter sat in a Berlin prison cell, deep in prayer, at peace with God and at peace with himself. On a table in front of him was a piece of paper. And all he had to do was sign it, and all would be well. But you see, signing that paper would mean conscription into the Nazi army. 

Franz’s family begged him to sign it. His priest and bishop prayed that he would sign it. Everything in the world, every crowd that gathered around him, said, “The choice is simple. Just sign the piece of paper.” But Franz Jagerstatter had sight. He saw the bigger picture. He knew that tough decisions and sacrifices would have to be made if healing was indeed to come to our world. Franz didn’t sign the paper. 

The next day, August 9, 1943, Franz Jagerstatter became one of the martyrs of our Christian faith. He said that to stand on the law and love of Christ, to see the bigger picture, would mean being honest about the brokenness of the world he confronted, and being honest about the blindness that had fallen on much of the world. He had sight. He saw the bigger picture. The vision right in front of him said to simply sign the paper, but he knew that something bigger was happening and he was invited into that story. 

The second story of healing hits a little closer to home. This one is written by a gentleman by the name of Thomas Lynch. Thomas is a writer, poet and an undertaker from Milford, Michigan. In his recent book, Bodies in Motion and at Rest, he tells his own story of healing from brokenness to wholeness and about one day again being able to celebrate with palms waving about the possibilities of healing for his life and his family. You see, Thomas had gone through a long, dark struggle with alcoholism. And finally, after many attempts to get well and be healed, he finally just gave it over to God, got involved in a 12-step program, and brought healing to his life. But by the time he was sober and could see again, problems were beginning with his teenage son, a freshman in high school. 

Things really began to change for his son. First his grades began to slip. Then his son began to distance himself more and more, spending more time in his room, more time alone. Then he began to sense the smell of alcohol more and more on the breath of his teenage son. And about this moment, he writes: 

By midwinter, things had gone from bad to worse. I tried my best to ignore the obvious—his lackluster grades, the long hours in his room, the distance he kept, the smell of alcohol that was always on him. One night he came home besotted and muddy. He had passed out in the park, in a puddle. How he kept from drowning, how he crawled home, remains a mystery. The next morning I took him to a treatment center. 

My son said that if I made him go, he’d kill himself. There was a calm in his voice that said he wasn’t bluffing. I said he was killing himself already. I said I’d buried lots of boys for lots of fathers. I said if I was going to be like those poor, hollow men, standing in the funeral home with my darling son in a casket while neighbors and friends and family gathered to say they wished there was something they could say or do, I told him, if he was going to die either way, at least he wouldn’t die because of my denial, my ignorance, my unwillingness to deal with the way things were. He would not die because of my blindness. 

I said if he killed himself I would miss him terribly, I would never forget him and always love him and I’d hate to outlive him, but I’d survive. And I’d call someone before I’d drink about it.

Thomas had been down the dark road from brokenness to wholeness. And because of that, he had sight of the bigger picture. And when everything around him said, “Oh, don’t push this,” he allowed the sight that had been given to him, the glimpse at a life of more wholeness, to offer that gift of sight to somebody else. 

Bartimaeus was a beggar who sat at the side of the road. Like so many on the journey from brokenness to wholeness, we often find ourselves sidelined by life’s journey, not sure how to move from one place to another. And then suddenly we get the sense that there’s a new spirit in the air, that there’s something passing through town and we don’t want to miss it. We want to grab hold of it. So we cry out and ask for vision—to see the bigger picture and how to be honest about our brokenness, how to follow Jesus, not just from Palm Sunday to Easter, but through the Upper Room, the cross, and then the glimpse of hope at the empty tomb. 

It is Palm Sunday. If you’re getting a sense of God’s bigger picture—that healing is available to all of us—then it is a reason to grab your palm and celebrate. Grab hold of the gift that God has offered us. Come into this holiest of weeks prepared to get a new glimpse of the healing that is possible. And so, if you’re like me and you stand at the edge of this week ready for all of the possibilities that this journey might offer, I invite you to grab a palm at the end of tonight’s service and sing like you’ve never sung before. Yes, we know the road ahead includes the cross. But with the eyes to see, we know that on the other side is new life offered to each of us in Christ. 

So that’s my invitation this evening. We stand at the edge of the holiest of weeks. My prayer for all of us, both individually and as a community, is that we may get the glimpse of God’s bigger picture and that we may be invited into this beautiful journey from brokenness to wholeness, both for ourselves and for our world.