Palm/Passion Sunday
Mark 11:1-11; Isaiah 50: 4-9a; Philippians 2:5-11; Mark 14:1-15:47
What if you knew what was going to happen before it happened? The concept of premonition, fore knowledge, predicting the future, has provided an interesting plot to many a novel, play, film. Most of us prefer to live our lives with as much fore knowledge as possible. We read the play synopsis (if not the whole play) before we go to see it. Most of us rarely see a movie anymore without knowing at least the outline of the plot if not many of the details of the story. We see the previews which usually contain all the good scenes from the movie even if not necessarily in the order they occur in the actual film, and then there are the TV highlights, “In tonight’s episode Josephine tells Frazier about Bartelmay which results in a hostile take over of the entire artichoke industry by Pam, adon’t miss episode.”
More importantly, we ask the doctor for the prognosis before we start the treatment or have the surgery. We watch reruns of movies and programs, attend plays that we have seen performed before, listen to music, sing songs and hymns, that we are so familiar with that we have them memorized. Scholars suggest that we enjoy hearing or seeing such repetition because we believe that somewhere within the familiar lies a key to better understanding ourselves or our relationship to others. There feels to be a ring of truth in that observation as I plan to see another performance of a Shakespeare play but I am not so sure of that motivation in my son’s obsession with watching the Simpsons over and over and over. So here we are at Passion Sunday. Our Gospel lessons for today are two long chapters from the Gospel of Mark, the longest reading we ever hear in the course of the Christian year at church. The purpose is to provide a complete overview of the faith journey that lies before us. Even more than a synopsis, this is the story, the whole story that informs all that will happen for the next seven days, a familiar story that we hear repeated every year at this time, although it usually contains at least a verse or two that we may not have noticed before. This is a story that we should be able to claim we have encountered again and again, but the actual fact is that unless we have been religiously faithful year after year to Holy Week, attending the Thursday and Friday services as well as Easter, which studies show at best only 10% of a typical congregation does, the story is probably only recalled from our Sunday school years assuming our parents saw to it that we attended Sunday school.
So this is the story that the church retells at this time of the year, and millions hear the story again and again. Hearing this story has many different meanings, but I suspect for many what this story usually means is that it is time to reconnect with God before summer arrives. Easter attendance will demonstrate the truth of this priority. Many will set the priority of worship for next Sunday. But Holy Week is a more difficult walk of faith. Our worldly priorities and demands, business, school, sports and our social calendar keep God somewhat removed until the Easter moment. The good news of the stories end is what we want to hear most anyway. To know what is going to happen before it happens, to predict how the whole thing ends. This does not always require a crystal ball. There are those who have the ability to see the reality of the world around us more clearly than the rest of us. They read the signs and draw the right conclusions. That is essentially what we desire in a financial advisor, it is the skill that distinguishes the diplomat from the politician, it is the mark of the prophet.
Jesus knew, knew what the future held, not because he was God controlling the future with preset programming for all human behavior, but Jesus knew because he had become so fully human that he could discern the complexities and nuances of each moment. He could grasp the wholeness of life in the particular instant. Jesus knew. Jesus knew that the cheering crowds could too quickly become jeering. He knew that his entry to cheers and hosannas provided no guarantee to the future. Jesus knew that an encounter with a nameless woman with a jar of perfume provided a glimpse of the too human struggle between those who view everything by its bottom line, measured in terms of dollars and cents, how to best use the money for this moment. A struggle between those with little or no vision for the future and those who see in some things that which transcends the moment, a bottle of perfume becomes an eternal symbol of caring generosity. Jesus knew. Jesus knew that his encounter with this disciples in the breaking of bread and the fellowship of the table, a last supper with his disciples, was a moment that would not be fully understood until years later. And then it would only be known fully to the eyes of faith. Jesus knew that the cup he wanted to be passed from himself that night could ultimately not be passed without betraying the very center of his relationship to His Father. So Jesus knew that he would have to stay the course, endure the arrest, the false charges, the beatings and abuse, and ultimately face death itself.
But this is only a story, removed from our lives by centuries. Palms are no longer objects of celebration and exclamation any more than a ticker tape parade is possible in the digital computer age. Times change, we meet our heroes through the media, and we do not expect them to endure. We embrace our heroes for the moment, whether they are firefighters killed by a terrorist act or young soldier victims of a foreign war, our modern heroes are often nameless figures who we embrace because they bring to us a warm feeling of optimism or make us feel a sense of pride in something of the human spirit or character. These are heroes, worthy of our respect and honor, but they are not the saviors of our world, they are at best symbols, signs that point out our need for something more, something eternal.
Jesus knew a world filled with heroes and symbols, and he lifted up examples of those who exhibited qualities that might have been missed, examples of a good Samaritan or a generous tax collector, Jesus knew the world needs heroes, but even more important, Jesus knew the world needed a messiah, a savior. The world needs, we need, to know that God has come to us. This is not always easy for us to recognize, palms and pageants, rituals and religion are our feeble attempts to make this real, but the fact is that God’s presence will only be known through the journey of faith. A man encountered a fortuneteller who claimed to be the most accurate fortuneteller in the world. The man was fascinated by this possibility. He said he had only one real question about his future and that was “How will my life end?” The fortuneteller gazed into the crystal ball and then announced, “Your life will end when you die.” The man nodded and then said, “Yes, but will I be happy.” “Ah,” said the fortuneteller, “that has nothing to do with the future but what you do in the present.”
Our relationship with God is not something to be decided in the future. Grace and love are not something we hope to know some day. Jesus came not as a future guarantee but as a present reality. How we live, what we do, is not determined by what we hope will happen but by what we know has happened. Christ died for our sins. The journey of Holy week is a walk not into the unknown future but into the Gospel’s fulfillment. Christ has come to us, God entered the world. There was no waiting to see if we could pray hard enough or do enough good works, Christ came, rode into Jerusalem and our lives. We hear the story this morning not of Jesus revealing God’s presence in the ancient world but as the Christ present in our world. The bread and wine we share is a sign of not a past event but of the very real presence of God in this moment, with us at this time.
Today is a day of the passion, passion as in a story of suffering. We know stories of suffering, our papers are filled with stories of the suffering of war weary Iraqis, and the sufferings of American military families. We all have our stories of suffering, illness, accident, struggles. Today we do not begin but continue our life long journey of the passion. The walk of faith that Jesus knew he and we must take, sometimes over and over. But faith knows what will happen, God walks with us. No crystal ball is needed. No mystic prediction. Jesus traveled this way before, and he journeys it again. Only this time he walks it with us.
Amen.