From the Wilderness into Jerusalem

Palm Sunday is a spiritually confusing day — filled with joy and excitement, but also carrying the warning of dark things to come.  How can we honor both of those today …?

From the Wilderness into Jerusalem

Mark 11:1-11; Philippians 2:5-11

Palm Sunday is a complicated day; it is an emotionally and spiritually confusing day, because it brings us several messages at one time.

First is the message that it is possible to celebrate even in the midst of trouble and danger.

By the time Jesus came to Jerusalem he had made enemies of the religious leaders of his time. He had gathered crowds, healed the sick and disabled, and flaunted some of the sacred Jewish laws about Sabbath and eating. He had every reason to know – as did his disciples – that things would likely not go very well for him in Jerusalem.

Nonetheless, he entered the city in a way that brought out the crowds, and that invited people to cheer and shout and wave. He heard himself – perhaps for the only time – being hailed as a king, as a ruler, as a descendent of David. He heard the “Hosanna’s” and saw the cloaks strewn and the branches waved.

It would be easy to be critical of all this, and to insist that hard times demand somber moods, not celebrative ones. But we are reminded by this story – which is told in all four of the gospels – we are reminded that sometimes we need to cheer and shout and celebrate, even if there may be dark shadows on the horizon.

There is, I think, something about those dark shadows that intensifies our experiences of joy. People facing crises – whether health problems, hurricanes and floods, or civil unrest – people facing crises often report that the come to appreciate and celebrate the joys in their lives with particular savor, including the small everyday things that they would otherwise forget to be thankful for.

The other side of that message is this: our celebrations do not solve or remove the problems that are lurking in the shadows. The danger to Jesus was not removed, nor even diminished, by the joyful entry into the city. It is likely, in fact, that he was in more danger, since the religious officials could surely not ignore the hubbub that the procession caused.

I invite you to notice that this version of the story from the gospel of Mark gives us a subtle preview of the troubles that are lurking. “Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.” [Mark 11:11] We can imagine what he must have been thinking about the temple, because the next day he would return and overturn the tables of the money changers and merchants that he saw there. We can imagine his feeling that it is already late, because we know that his life has only a few days left. We can imagine his going to Bethany, where his friends Mary and Martha and Lazarus lived, and perhaps realizing that this will be his last time with them.

We would like to think, of course, that happy thoughts can drive out worrisome thoughts, and that happy events can neutralize tragic ones. But we are reminded on Palm Sunday that happy and worrisome come together in our lives, and do not line up politely to take turns. We are reminded that happy and tragic events are interwoven in subtle and complicated ways, ways that may be not be clear to us until we reflect back on them. We are reminded that our lives are formed by all of our experiences, and that the dark ones are as formative as the light ones.

There is another message for us in this Palm Sunday story, one that is highlighted in Mark’s telling. If you look closely at the text, you notice a curious thing: the majority of this narrative is not about Jesus, but about the colt and the disciples who were sent to get it. (To be empirical about it, there are 7 verses about the colt, 3 about the procession, and one about what happens next.) We tend to focus on the procession, like television camera crews do, because it is where the movement and the crowds seem to be. But there would have been no procession if the two disciples had not done their work first, if they had not listened to Jesus and followed his instructions.

What’s surprising about that is that Mark’s gospel usually does follow the action, and cut quickly from one scene to another. Of the four gospels, Mark is the shortest, and the one that always has the action happening “immediately.” But uncharacteristically, we get lots of details in this passage: Jesus gives instructions, tells them what is going to happen, the disciples follow the directions, and they have exactly the experience that Jesus had described.

Some readers simply chuckle at Mark’s inconsistency, but I am inclined to wonder why he wrote the passage in this way. What his version does, I think, is to focus our attention on the mundane, everyday chores that must be done before the great events of our lives can take place. The disciples were not asked to preach, nor to prepare lesson plans; they were not asked to proclaim Jesus’ coming. They were just asked to go get the colt.

The Oak Ridge Boys have a wonderful gospel style song that begins “Nobody wants to play rhythm guitar behind Jesus; everybody wants to be the lead singer in the band.” And that probably describes most of us. We would like to do something heroic and dramatic to demonstrate our faith. We would like to do something heroic and dramatic to demonstrate our intelligence, our skill, maybe even our popularity. But what discipleship requires is not usually heroism and drama (though it occasionally is); it is usually attention to the mundane, everyday parts of our lives.

We are not, most of us, called upon to testify to our faith in front of cameras or courts, but we are called upon to illustrate our faith in front of our family members, our friends, and the people we encounter in our work and in our community. We are not called upon to build cathedrals, but we are called upon to maintain and nourish the communities we are part of. We are not called upon to negotiate treaties between mighty powers, but we are called upon to live in peace with our neighbors.

Our theme during this Lenten season has been “Into the Wilderness.” I said at the outset that we were not talking about “wilderness” in the sense of the sweet mysteries of God’s earthy creation, but in the sense of an isolated, desolated place. Whatever sent us into that wilderness, this Palm Sunday calls us back into Jerusalem, back into the company of our neighbors, back into the world that is made complicated by human relationships.

But as we do that, we cannot help but notice that we nonetheless bring the wilderness back with us. We have been changed by our isolation, changed by the experience of encountering God, changed by the journey we have taken. I believe that we return, with Jesus, to Jerusalem as people whose faith has more depth, more nuance, and more complexity. We return with a faith that does not entirely protect us from evil and despair, but which does provide a community to accompany us through those dark places. We return with a faith that is strong enough to walk through the coming passion, and hopeful enough to receive the joy of the coming Resurrection. Our journey is not over, but our path now winds through a new landscape – one that holds both sorrow and joy, both celebration and consternation. It is the landscape of real life, and our journey into the wilderness has strengthened us for what is to come.

Amen.