Palm Sunday: Where do you stand?
Video of sermon: https://www.facebook.com/138797592802860/videos/235932621119861
Clare L. Hickman
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Ferndale
April 5, 2020—Palm Sunday
Often, when I preach Palm Sunday, I am convicted by the idea that we are both of the crowds who traditionally show up on this day: we are the crowd that meets Jesus as king and redeemer, shouting Hosanna and looking eagerly toward the salvation he brings … and we are also the crowd that gathers, several days later, to shout “Crucify.”
This year, though, I have chosen to leave the Passion story until Good Friday. You’ll need to come back Friday evening to enter into that part of the story, to walk that part of the journey. Because today, I want us to stop and really think about the entrance to Jerusalem. I mean, every year we process and we wave our palms joyfully; that’s the part we take in the story. But if I look a little closer, who am I, really? If I’m being honest, how do I actually act, when the representative of God’s kingdom comes riding into the center of our political and religious life? When he proclaims both judgment and redemption, where do I find myself?
Am I jumping up beside Jesus, trying desperately to balance on the back of both a donkey and colt? Am I indeed part of the crowd who lines the streets to welcome the coming messiah? Am I lurking at the edges, ready to run if the soldiers show up? Am I elsewhere, worried about the turmoil this will bring? Am I perhaps holding top secret meetings, planning ways to put an end to this disruptive element in our city?
These are not always comfortable questions to explore. I’d rather just assume I was there with branches in hand, filled with joy and hope. But that satisfying illusion was brought up just a little short this past week, as I prepped for the bishop’s Lenten study group. In reading Jim Wallis’ book, America’s Original Sin, I found myself uncomfortably convicted by Martin Luther King Jr’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” He wrote it in response to a group of respectable mainline religious leaders: people, frankly, a lot like me. And they had written this open letter to King, imploring him to seek what they called “unity:” describing the civil rights movement as “unwise and untimely,” accusing the protesters of “provoking hatred and violence,” and appealing “to both our white and Negro citizenry to observe the principles of law and order and common sense.”[i]
This was several months before the March on Washington and the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham; several years before the march in Selma when protestors and police clashed so brutally; and five years before King was assassinated (52 years ago yesterday). What these good church leaders were reacting to was bus boycotts, sit-ins at segregated lunch counters, the integration of schools, and the work of freedom riders for all of this and voting rights too.
All of these things. All of these things that demanded this country face into our betrayal of the idea that “all men (sic) are created equal.” And as Wallis points out, these things also force Christians to face into the challenge that God created ALL humanity in God’s own image; and that in Christ, the hierarchies of gender, class and race have been broken down.
These are values I would claim to stake my life upon. And I’m guessing they’re values that those good clergymen also claimed. And yet … I am painfully aware that the challenges of the Civil Rights movement to the structures of economic, political and social power in this country, those challenges felt extremely threatening. The times were exceedingly tumultuous. They were uncomfortable, even when one accepted the fundamental values. Because man, there was so much being upended, so much disruption, and an incredible amount of having to admit things you’d been ignoring!
So … I’m horrified by the letter my fellow clergy wrote to Dr. King. But if I’m honest, I also kind of get it. Which makes it a powerful reminder, to those of us in power, that our natural place in the story of the Passion is not with the cheering crowds. It’s with the authorities: the ones who were so threatened by the Jesus movement that they did whatever they needed to do, in order to get rid of him.
That is not the role I want in this story.
Which means I will need to do the work. I need to live with the discomfort of breaking myself out of that role. Need to learn how to tolerate the disruption that is caused by the approaching Kingdom of God, and the way it calls for the belovedness of all people. Need to face the pain of admitting ways in which I have protected my own comfort and security, while allowing the suffering and oppression of God’s children.
In short, as Wallis notes: it needs to begin with confession. With learning, and reading, and listening, and recognizing the harm done to the poor and the despised and the oppressed. This is very difficult work. But the good news is that my absolution is guaranteed. In God’s grace, as soon as I have admitted my fault, no matter how heavy it is, no matter how guilty, or vulnerable, or defensive it makes me feel … no matter what: I am forgiven; I am surrounded by God’s grace; and I am filled with gratitude. THIS is the power that will inspire and propel me to live into my repentance: to change my ways of thinking and being, to be transformed, so that the kingdom of God might be more visible in this world!
This radical trust in the reality of absolution and repentance is what makes it possible for us to cheer the arrival of Jesus in Jerusalem. It’s what enables us to greet the upheaval of “The First shall be last” as good news for everyone. It’s what makes us brave enough to claim the redemption that Jesus brings, even when it threatens to change EVERYTHING. It’s what makes us willing to accept that we are sinners, and we all fall terribly short, but we are all nonetheless welcomed into this movement.
Because it will save us all, if we are courageous enough. If we can trust enough. If we are honest enough, to admit:
That we could really be anywhere on that day. That part of us wants to be balanced up on the colt and the donkey, calling everyone to new life. That part of us wants to stand and cheer “Hosannah!” until we’re hoarse. And part of us wants to quietly put an end to all this disruption and bring order back to the streets of Jerusalem.
And all of these parts of us (all of these parts of society) can be redeemed. Every last bit of it can be forgiven. Can be healed. Can be saved.
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. Amen.
[i] Jim Wallis, America’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America, p.109