Palm Sunday/The Sixth Sunday in Lent, 03/16/2008

Sermon on Matthew 21:6-11, by David Hoster

The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting,

"Hosanna to the Son of David!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!"

When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, "Who is this?" The crowds were saying, "This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee." (NRSV)

Jesus cut a very lonely figure as he rode into town on that donkey two thousand years ago.

Yes, his advance men had turned out a swooning crowd worthy of Obama, but then apocalyptic interest ran high in those days and people flooded into the streets whenever it was time to check out a new candidate for the long-promised Messiah. The enthusiasm of their cheering and palm-waving, however, concealed shallow commitment. When Jesus stopped looking like a winner, nobody would speak up for him. Even his most trusted insiders would abandon him in a few short days.

So it's not hard to imagine a lonely Jesus, atop the donkey, moved to extend his searching gaze beyond the crowd, looking to see if he has a friend anywhere in the city. Across the rooftops, he sees the Temple of Jerusalem, the beating heart of God's Chosen People. Yet within this holy place, God's own clergy actively plan the elimination of anybody who tries to go outside channels and speak for God directly. The institution of his own religion will not stand with Jesus.

Swinging his mind's eye elsewhere, he might picture a gathering of Zealot terrorists in a secret place plotting acts of violence on behalf of his father. Scarcely interested in loving their enemies, these people have clearly parted company with Jesus. Nor will the wise teachers of Israel ever support a man of political action like Jesus. Even common worshippers, beset and bewildered by the violence of their times, were lost to him, overwhelmed by the demands of day to day survival.

The view from the top of that donkey must have been ironic indeed, for Jesus really was the promised Messiah, the Savior of the nation populated by all these divided, fearful, brash, angry, mistrusting, overburdened people so cut off from him and from each other. His isolation mirrored their isolation, making him appear completely unprepared to be a unifier. What positive appeal to their good will could he possibly make that would draw them together in even the most rudimentary way?

Yet God-who in human experience is almost always the God of ironies-was about to use the fearful rejection of God's own Messiah to restore spiritual union to the community of God's people. As we have seen so often in scripture, God runs straight at the problem that everybody else has backed away from. Rejection of God would force many people out of the dark shadows where they had chosen to conceal themselves from their own desires and motives.

The man on the donkey was about to become a lightning rod. He would attract to himself all the fury pumped out by the fear and loathing, the selfishness and negligence of a shattered community. By forcing these people to come straight at him with their worst, Jesus offered them a mirror-etched in the very flesh of their Messiah- that would reveal in excruciatingly honest detail exactly what they had become and how they had chose self above all they held holy in common.

The malevolence of those who posed as religious leaders would be exposed. So, too, the self-serving fears of Jesus' own disciples, as well as the negligence of those Chosen People who stood aside to let their own God be killed or even joined crowds whipped up by the authorities to call for his blood. So, too, the people so deeply sunk in self that they cannot even recognize God when they see him.

How could such a raw exposure of people's inadequacy lead to union and renewal? To those schooled in union through compromise or the primacy of doctrinal agreement or the simple art of getting along, it looks impossible. Yet to those who understand that people can only truly join with others once they've been honest with themselves, there is a glimmer of hope.

A couple of weeks ago, James Thomas presented a wonderful Lent program on confession. We looked at the way ancient Israel prized confession as the means of restoring the penitent to his or her place of health in the community. Too often, we Christians don't picture confession in quite the same way because we view it more as the instrument of restoring our personal, one-on-one relationship with God. We do it for ourselves while Israel did it for their community because we see salvation as personal while they always saw salvation as union with the Chosen People of God.

The crucifixion, therefore, was a gigantic, relentless opportunity for soul-searching confession. The sins that were etched into the body of the crucified Christ were sins of willful isolation, rejection and abandonment, turning not only against God but also against the very community made holy by God's love and attention. Confession would thus lead not only to reunion with God but, more immediately, with the community. The Messiah's work would be done.

What, then, would the view from the donkey reveal to Jesus if he were to extend his gaze not only across town but across continents and into the future, examining those people who call themselves by his own name? Think carefully, because this is not a simple question. If we are a community of people who call ourselves corporately the body of Christ, what might it mean to Jesus that we are so often unconcerned with sins against the community of his own body but vastly more concerned with sins that threaten to deny us personal salvation in heaven. I know I'm exaggerating a little, but confession for Christians often does lead toward getting into heaven, where in the time of Jesus it meant getting back into community. I wonder if Jesus might not think that's a tinge selfish, and feel distanced from us the same as all those others on Palm Sunday.

What would it mean, then, to be guided by the man on the donkey and take more seriously the sins against the body of Christ in preference to the sins that would keep our bodies out of heaven? What sins that we think are trivial might then rise up and seize our attention when we see them etched on the body of our savior? What sins that we think are so serious might seem less so?

Here's the heart of it. For the most part, we don't even think sins against community are sins at all, but accommodations to reality or, at worst, personality quirks. Sins against community like, for instance, not taking enough time or energy or mental bandwidth for the people we're supposed to love; or molding our friends into people who will endorse and not challenge us while at the same time distancing ourselves from people we can't so readily control; or devoting ourselves wholeheartedly in seemingly great innocence to our own responsibilities and concerns; or indulging in subtle sins of judgment that allow us to feel smugly superior to those different from ourselves; or putting the absolutely primary, central scriptural law of relationship-that we love our neighbor as ourselves-into third or fourth or fifth place in our hierarchy of priorities.

We are obsessed in our culture with sexual sins because they reveal deep, inner urges that would keep us out of eternal bliss, yet we fail to take seriously the way we habitually put our best energies into work and responsibilities at the expense of bonds with family and brothers and sisters in Christ. Would that cheer Jesus as he rides into Jerusalem? Or, perhaps, would it make him think that here are yet more folks it's time to die for in order to wake up from their sleepwalking? We strain the gnats of sexual sins so few of us actually commit but we are blind to our persistent daily reality, the elephant of our isolation from God's precious souls.

Getting into heaven is a mere byproduct of our mission on earth. Our mission on earth is to be the community of people who carry out in our relationships all the teachings and the full vision of Jesus. Living the Sermon on the Mount is what matters. Second isn't close.

So in a few short days, we too may well contribute, mostly by sins of omission, to the death of Jesus on the cross. Will that wake us up? Will that lead us to honesty and confession and restoration to community? It will if we recognize that we crucify Christ daily.

Yet perhaps, as Jesus' eyes sweep to our part of town is it possible that he could see something a tiny bit different. Maybe for just a glimmer of a moment he might glimpse us exchanging peace with one another. Maybe, from atop the donkey, he could catch sight of us confessing and removing any obstacles that lie between us, fully embracing one another as a prelude to entering the communion of his body and blood. That would give him hope that he has some friends and is not alone in the terrible city of his crucifixion. If he sees the body of Christ forming in even the most tentative way, he will momentarily see past the cross to the resurrection and the reason for his great sacrifice. So too can we.

I invite you, therefore, to stand together and, in violation of the proper order of the liturgy, greet one another in peace.

The peace of the Lord be always with you.

David Hoster

E-Mail: david.w.hoster@gmail.com

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