Sermon - Passion/Palm Sunday (4/5/2020)

Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 31:9-16; Philippians 2:5-11; Matthew 27:11-54

I know some of you are staying away from watching too much of the news these days, and I certainly don’t blame you. But if you have been watching, perhaps you’ve seen the pictures from New York at 7 p.m., at the shift change in the hospitals, when people staying home in their apartments start cheering for the medical staff leaving from, or just arriving at, the hospitals.  It is a beautiful scene, as people applaud and shout with praise and thanksgiving for people, men and women like themselves, doing heroic work to heal the sick and comfort the dying.  It’s the modern equivalent, I think, of the crowds cheering Jesus as he enters Jerusalem.  Praising others for doing God’s work, work that we perhaps cannot do ourselves but are so grateful that others can do and are doing.

And as much as I’m sure the doctors and nurses and the rest of the hospital staff appreciate the love and concern, it wouldn’t surprise me if some of them were thinking, Thanks, but what I really need are some masks.  For as much as I want to care for the sick, I also have hopes and dreams for my life, I have a family who I don’t want to infect.  Thanks and appreciation are nice, but what they really need are masks, and ventilators, and protective clothing, and time to rest.  Which might require us to not just cheer, but actually to do something.

It’s one thing to cheer and wave palm braches – yay, Jesus! – and it’s another thing, when the time comes to actually choose between Pilate’s way of power and God’s way of power, when our actions show where our ultimate loyalty really is.  As much as we yearn for God’s kingdom of deliverance and freedom, as much as we say we welcome it, I wonder how often we are more like the crowd of Good Friday than the crowd of Palm Sunday.

The order of Pilate’s kingdom is enforced by soldiers and police. It requires that now and then someone be made an example of – better that one person die than that the whole people perish. And when the weight of church and state falls on that poor schmuck, we tell ourselves he probably deserved it, and we join in the taunting and the humiliation, hoping it proves we’re one of the good ones, that we’ll be safe.  Except we’re not safe.  Not really.

God’s power, by contrast, is the power of non-coercive, self-giving, unconstrained love.  Which means God’s reign cannot be established the way the Empire’s reign is established – it cannot be established by sacrificing one person so others may live, it cannot be established by dividing the deserving insiders from the underserving others, it cannot be established by fear of retribution and punishment.  God cannot come among us with a show of force like Pilate entering Jerusalem on a horse of war.  God needs to get our attention, to win our loyalty, to change our hearts, in another way.

And God does so by consenting to our human ways of power.  God does not stop us from rejecting God, God does not prevent us from harming one another.  Instead, God enters fully into this world with all of its injustice, all its terrors, all of its pointless suffering and meaningless death.  God holds nothing back and experiences it all, with us.  God comes into this world to live a fully human live in the complete and full expectation that it would end this way – because that is what the powers of this world are like.

This is what Paul was talking about when he quoted the most ancient Christian hymn we know, writing to the Philippians perhaps 30 years after Jesus.  “Though Jesus was in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited.  Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness, accepting even death, death on a cross.”  Adam and Eve ate in the garden because they wanted to be like God; Pontius Pilate served an emperor who claimed to already be a god.  But God loved us enough to set aside divinity and come to be like us – accepting all of the human condition, including suffering, and fear, and loss, and meaningless death.

Sometimes it’s said that Jesus had to die on a cross in order to convince God that there is something in human beings worth loving.  I disagree.  I think Jesus had to die on a cross in order to convince us that there is something in God worthy of our worship:  that God is not powerful like human beings pretend to be powerful but that God loves us enough to suffer and die with us, and for us.

Like Pilate, confronted with the choice between the word of his wife’s dream about what justice requires and with an angry mob looking for a scapegoat, we often choose the way that seems easier for us at the moment, but leaves a neighbor to suffer alone.  Like Pilate, we might wash our hands of that responsibility.  (We should wash our hands, frequently, but not for that reason!)  I don’t think we could ever bear to recognize, let alone accept, our responsibility for one another, if we did not have faith that God loves us and forgives us even to the point of accepting crucifixion at human hands.

On Easter Sunday, God shows us who see with the eyes of faith that while the way of Pilate promises security but leads only to suffering and death, the way of Jesus passes through suffering and death but leads to unconditional love, forgiveness, reconciliation, justice, and community that not even death can destroy.

But for today, let us pray for the faith that allows us to be fully present to Jesus in his suffering and death, so that we can learn to trust God enough, to trust Jesus and his way enough, that we can then be present to our neighbors in their need and suffering.  Because when we do, the reign of God is truly here among us.