Palm Sunday

Time For All Ages - Holy Ground – Palm Sunday Communion

Today is Palm Sunday, and Palm Sunday is a mystery.

The mystery of Palm Sunday is older than Christianity. It’s older than Jesus. It’s complicated, and there are many ways to know the mystery and understand it, so every year we look at it from a different angle, explore it a little bit more.

This year I thought we’d explore the mystery of Palm Sunday by talking about Superman.

Do you all have favorite super heroes? Yeah? Me too. I think my favorite super hero is Batman, but on Palm Sunday we should talk about Superman. Now…Superman has what kind of powers? What can Superman do? He can fly? He can turn back time? He can heal people and save people? That’s right, all of those things. But, Superman has another name, doesn’t he? What’s Superman’s other name? Clark Kent. And, who is Clark Kent, what’s he like?….That’s right, Clark Kent is just an average guy. And the thing is, Superman just wouldn’t be Superman if he weren’t also Clark Kent.

The reason Superman feels so good and so true to us is that he lived for a long time as a regular human being. He had parents and he worked on a farm and he had to do homework and chores. When he grew up he knew he was special, and he knew he was powerful, but he loved human beings by then, and he understood our troubles – he understood that we can be kind and loving and brave and artistic and funny, and that we also struggle with greed and hunger and heartbreak and our fears about just how short our lives on earth really are. If he hadn’t lived as a human for so long, and if he didn’t keep his everyday job of being goofy Clark Kent, he wouldn’t know so much about us, and he wouldn’t be able to help us in so many wonderful ways.

Some people believe that Jesus of Nazareth was God, and part of the mystery we celebrate on Palm Sunday is that he chose to live on earth with us as a regular man – he chose to be Clark Kent, and not just Superman. In the Ancient Roman Empire this was a really new and crazy thing for a God to do! Roman and Greek gods were apart from human beings, above human beings – they were all supermen and wonderwomen. But in Jesus God came and lived as a human being and felt all the good things about us and understood all the bad things about us, and was willing to live a short life, and a sad life, just so he could really get to know and love us, and so that we could get to know and love him, and that is part of the mystery.

On Palm Sunday we tell the story of Jesus riding into Jerusalem just before the grand holiday of Passover. He rode in on a donkey, very humble, not Superman, but Clark Kent. He rode in surrounded by other peasants, wearing peasant clothing. But some people recognized him, and they cut down tree branches and placed them on the road in front of Jesus and his donkey, and they took off their cloaks and put those down on the road, too, as though Jesus was a king - a king of kings. Would some kids come forward and help me take some tree branches and put them in the aisle as though a king were coming up the road to our altar table and we didn’t want him to get any mud on his feet?…..

Jesus had a message that he delivered over and over again, and it was this: I am human and I love God, and God is in me. If I am human, and God is in me, and you are human like I am, then God must be in you, too, if only you will live a life where you love your neighbor as yourself. There’s one catch, and that is, EVERYONE is your neighbor, even people you don’t like very much, even people who need a lot of help, or are sick, or funny-looking to you.

Jesus’ favorite way to deliver this message was to eat food. He would have liked First Universalist because we’re always eating food! Jesus liked to sit down to table with people other people wouldn’t sit down to table with - women who had divorced their husbands, and people who were really sick and smelled bad, and tax collectors who worked for the Roman empire, and he liked to eat a lot and drink wine. He was human and he was hungry, and he knew a lot of other people were hungry a lot of the time, too, and he loved to feed people – that was his favorite way to say to people: I am human and I love God, and God is inside of me. If I am human and God is in me, and you are human like I am, then God must be in you, too, if only you will live a life where you love your neighbor as yourself. And this eating and drinking and feeding other people is part of the mystery, too.

So, today we celebrate together in Jesus’ favorite way, by breaking bread together and eating it at the same time, and thinking that God is in us, and we are a part of God, and that is called communion. That is standing for a moment on holy ground. That is knowing that we are all Superman, and we are all Clark Kent. And you can take communion even if you don’t believe in God, because the great Bishop “Gregory of Nyssa said that, ‘the image is not in part of our nature, nor is the divine gift in any single person….any particular [person] is limited,’ the gift [is] given to all, equally. It took a whole community to reflect the image of God.” Which in my mind is a fancy way of saying that it takes those of us who believe in God and those of us who do not believe in God, all in community, to make the world complete. And that is part of the mystery as well.

Please come forward and break bread together and when everyone is back in their seats I’ll say a prayer before we eat…..

Today we pray as the followers of Jesus prayed in ancient Christian days…

[Mother, Father God]

Show yourself to those in need.

Heal the sick.

Fill the hungry,

Give freedom to our prisoners.

Console the fainthearted.

[And may we, filled with your spirit, do the same.]

Amen.

Palm Sunday Homily - The Mystery of the Hour

A man who was awake with the power and the hunger and the hope of God rode into town as real heroes do, humbly, with a plan but no pretense, on the back of a donkey, head bowed.

We might think he did not proclaim himself because he was afraid, or because it was still time for stealth and cunning. The truth is closer to this: He did not proclaim himself, because he did not have to. The stories of who he was ran before him like wildfire, lighting a new flame in the eyes of a people long suffering. There ran before him the story of a young man claiming and claimed by God Himself. The people already knew he had walked on water, healed the sick in Gennesaret, cast out demons, fed thousands with just a few loaves and fishes, blessed the children, and caused blind men to see. Here surely was the son of David, come to free men, women and children from the oppression of the Roman rule. Here he was, humble and resolute, on his way into Jerusalem and the final confrontation with Roman authority. Here he was, the fulfillment of the prophecies of old. Let us lay our cloaks at his feet, as we did in the time of the great Solomon. Let us make way for his passing.

In a time of ruthlessness a man awake with the power and the hunger and the hope of God rode into town for the last time. The sure knowledge that his ruthlessness and might would match that of the oppressors ran through his people. Surely he would strike down those who had been so cruel for so long. The time for revolution had come, for God to strike down the blasphemy that was Caesar and reestablish His own kingdom on earth.

But Jesus did not fight. That was not his great act of bringing the kingdom to earth. He died. He died the death of a traitor to the empire, which most assuredly he was, but it was not the death of a king, nor certainly, the way of a god. He rode into town, wreaked havoc in the outer Temple, and ate his last meal like a priest instead of a general, bestowing blessings rather than battle plans.

Bruce Springstein says that when a country has lost its moral core, when a very few powerful people are “drinking a whole lot of their own Kool-aide and everyone else is footing the bill” , that’s when the storytellers must speak. The story Jesus told as he moved over and under the palms, as he disrupted the Temple, as he gathered to him the people who would continue his ministry long after he was gone, as he broke bread and blessed sadness with hope was this: Truth is something you do, not something you proclaim. There is a spark of what is true within you, and acting on it is the only way out of the oppression in which you live. You cannot hope that any leader will do that for you, you cannot hide out in the Temple and hope that the right prayers will convince God to do it for you, and you cannot create peace with more violence – you cannot heal wounds by making more people bleed.

In a time of ruthlessness, whether it is in our personal lives, our life of faith, or the life of our country, someone must stop playing the game. One person must change the rules. Herd animals that we are, eventually, everyone else will have to follow. Rebecca Ann Parker tells us that the most common Last Supper scene depicted in ancient Christian art is the moment in which Jesus has stated, “One of you will betray me” and every man and woman at the table is wondering, “Is it I?” This was the reminder that we are all of us capable, at every turn, of choosing to deny the truth, that holy spark, both within and without. But is was also the reminder, as Parker tells us, “that [we] have the POWER to choose between faithfulness and apostasy, between God and Cesar.” In a time of ruthlessness, regret and resentment we are empowered to choose open-heartedness, open-handedness, hope and even laughter. At any time we may forgive, we may heal, even under the yoke of that which we think we cannot bear.

The greatest of great men rode into town on a donkey, humble, head bowed, and died so that his life would last an eternity in the hearts and deeds of his people. This is the mystery that Palm Sunday proclaims. This is the sadness we celebrate, and the hard road we, too, must choose: To do the one thing, our own one truth, that sings inside of us, though it makes no sense to the larger culture, and though it will probably cost us our image of ourselves or let down the expectations of those around us. Choose faithfulness to yourself and your god and your truth, despite the ruthlessness of the age, and then you, too, will be part of the mystery, and the story that saves.

ibid. pg 166

The Gospel of Matthew 14:22-36, 15:29-39, 19:13-15,20:29-34, 21:1-11

From interview on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. March 19, 2009. http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/index.jhtml?episodeId=220601