Palm
Sunday is such an extraordinary day.
When I was at Christ Church, North Hills, we would always dramatize the
long Gospel for this day. Various people
would dress up and take parts. I was
always Pilate, or one of the priests who was denouncing Jesus. I remember one Sunday when Judas came running
down the aisle and threw the thirty pieces of silver at our feet and ran away
again. It was a great dramatization of
this terrible moment in Jesus’ life; betrayed by his disciples, convicted by
the religious authorities and put into the hands of Pontius Pilate, the Roman
Governor who was certain to have him killed.
All of this happens to Jesus after a
triumphal march into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey with the crowds throwing
palms at his feet in tribute. They all
thought that their days of limited freedom was over and that this great king on
a donkey was going to be the solution to all of their problems. That was certainly true, but not in the way
that they thought. Jesus was coming in
triumph. His triumph was to provide
salvation and resurrection to all of the people. This was much more than the desire of people
who had lived under Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian and Roman rule and had
little say about their lives. Jesus was
present to provide for them the kind of life that God had in mind for all of
humanity.
Palm Sunday is the beginning of Holy
Week, with Good Friday preceding the glory of Easter. We go through this story year by year looking
closely at the life of our Lord to again understand the passion that he endured
willingly so that we all can look forward to eternal life, even though death is
a certainty. Jesus certainly knew what
he was doing, and his disciples also knew what the outcome would be. When Jesus was preparing to go to Bethany to
raise Lazarus from the dead, Thomas said to the other disciples: “Let us go and
die with him.” Even though the disciples
all ran away from the cross, there is certainty that they knew what was going
to happen.
What Jesus brought to all of us is
compassion and mercy. Those are the
things that get us through life with all of its difficulties and moments of
crisis. I have watched how these two
beautiful qualities can lift spirits and provide comfort, even in the most
desperate times of life. That wonderful
old song for children: Jesus loves me,
yes, I know, for the bible tells me so is a great tribute to our Lord’s
life and his spirit. I was at a clergy
conference one year when our speaker was asked what was the most important
thing for us to understand about Jesus.
He sat down at the piano and played and asked us all to sing that simple
song. It was a moment to relish. He was teaching us about the beauty of love;
God and Jesus for all of us, and us for one another. It is hard to think of another quality that
reaches as far.
Love is what Jesus was doing not
only on Palm Sunday, but throughout his ministry. We have heard stories over the last month in
our scriptures about how Jesus took care of the people whom he met along the
way; the man born blind, the woman at the well and poor Lazarus dying in
Bethany. Every time that he encountered someone with pain or great need, his
attention focused on how to heal, how to comfort, how to express
compassion. All of the wonderful stories
that we continue to hear about our Lord tells us constantly this story.
Our response to this great gift
needs also to be to love. We are living
in a very difficult time in our history.
Bigotry, misogyny and other nasty traits seem to be expressed by people
everywhere who ought to know better.
There are many people who are hurting and who feel like they are
neglected and left behind. We all need
to care deeply about this and to make sure that those people who feel outcast
and alone are not left there. As we go
about our lives, we need to look around us and take the needs that we see
seriously and to offer our comfort and help to ease the stress, to raise hopes
and to help us all to get through the difficult moments. That is how we serve the Lord, who gave
himself completely for all of us.
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