04/05/2020
I'm missing you all and wanted to offer a sermon for Palm Sunday, so here it is. I'll add a couple of hymns in the comments. Please feel free to add your prayers to the comments and don't forget to pray the Lord's Prayer today.
- Rev. Valerie
Today we follow Jesus down to Jerusalem. Today it is adoring crowds and a triumphal entry, hosannas ringing in the air. But Jesus knows what coming. With hindsight, so do we. He knows what’s coming and he’s going anyway. The Romans are riled. Jesus has been turning the world upside down. Just as he will turn tables over later in the week. He’s been giving answers the Romans don’t like any better than the Pharisees do. Jesus comes into Jerusalem followed not just by the disciples and the adoring crowd, but by this thing he’s been doing, This way he’s been changing the world.
He knows the cost of what he’s been doing. The cost of this love he’s been pouring out. The cost of ushering in a new way for the world to be. He knows that the Romans just don’t understand that he’s not looking to take their power for himself, but to move the world away from systems of power entirely. He’s got a long week ahead and he knows it, even if the disciples and the crowds don’t yet. He knows crucifixion is coming. And he’s going into Jerusalem anyway.
We’ve had more than one long week, this month prior to Palm Sunday, haven’t we? Stuck in rooms going stir crazy, or in shelters crammed to close to everyone else, or outside without even soap and water for protection. The heartbreaking reality that we can no longer gather in person for Open Cathedral or the Gathering. Some services we all rely on either scaled back or shut down, no one around to share their leftovers, or some change, or buy a Street Sheet. We’ve got more than one long week ahead yet, too. Fear and loneliness follow so many of us through our days and nights, and I wonder if Jesus was lonely, too. With the crowds misunderstanding what he was there to do? With the disciples not getting it either, when they all abandon him? Like Jesus we’ve got the powers that be clinging to power, moving sluggishly and costing lives by their inaction.
And, unlike Jesus, we didn’t choose this. It’s not an on purpose risk like Jesus took to bring a world of God’s desiring into being. But make no mistake. That doesn’t mean that God is absent in this time, dire as it is, and it doesn’t mean we have to drag the same old way that things have been with us into the new time that is coming on the other side of this. Just because we didn’t choose this, doesn’t mean we can’t make something of it when the worst is past.
While our national leadership lays in ineffective ruins, our hospitals nave not abandoned us. It may be that we’ve flattened the curve just enough here in the City for that that can stay true. While the City government dithers, I’ve been heartened to be in touch with so many the usual folks on the ground who are still doing all they can – Mother Brown’s still feeding as long as they’re able, the folks at Miracle Messages turning their attention to distilling hand sanitizer, the Coalition collecting and distributing tents, they and Faith In Action and so many others doing everything anyone can think of to get the Mayor to hurry up and get people inside. No, many programs are not running as usual, but we are not abandoned. Just as the women stayed with Jesus, there are those who are standing by our community.
Like Jesus, we might just have the power to move the world, too. Jesus is not just followed into Jerusalem by the adoring crowds, not just by his disciples, not just by his knowledge of what is to come. He’s followed in by God. He knows it and, whatever else he may be feeling, it gives him the strength to carry on. To carry through. He goes ahead and turns over tables and calls the powers that be to account. He calls people then and now to act like we believe in the new world God is offering us. The justice and peace God has craved for so long. To hold fast to he new world he’s trying to usher in. God is with him and that makes him able to do the right and fearful and lonely things he must do. And so can we.
We feel alone but we are not. It is sinful that the nation and the City are abandoning the most vulnerable during this terrible time, but God is not. There isn’t a person in this congregation whom God has not carried through more than their share of hard times. We know first hand that God is there. The people who loved you before this all started still do. The allies we have are still around. And God is right there beside you, too, just like always. Following you through this time just as God followed Jesus through that terrible week, and even to the cross. Even when Jesus could not feel God there and cried out in abandonment, he was never truly alone. God was with him and God is with us. And that new world Jesus gave everything to bring into being? It’s with us, too. Already, not yet, following us through these days and waiting for us on the other side of this pandemic if we follow in the footsteps of he who blessed the meek and the lowly, fed the hungry, cured the sick, and called the powers that be to account. Jesus started it and we can move it along. God is here and a better world is coming. Easter is coming. It might take longer than anyone of us wants. I don’t want to pretend we don’t have some hard times ahead. But it’s on the way. For now, rest the best you can in that sure and certain knowledge, keep your hands clean the best you can, and know that you are not alone. When the worst is past, know we have Jesus’ work to carry on and that God is already in that future, waiting for us there.
Amen
