Palm Sunday 2012

04/01/12 Palm Sunday 2012 Grace UMC

Palm Sunday is a bittersweet day in the life of the church.  On the one hand, it is a day when all kinds of people were out and giving praise to Jesus as He rode into Jerusalem on a donkey.  On the other, the crowd crying out "Hosanna" serves as a striking parallel to the crowds crying out, only a week later, “Crucify him!”  On days like this, I sometimes wrestle with finding the appropriate emotions.  Should I rejoice or should I grieve?  Should I laugh or should I weep?  Should I be glad because Christ seems like He is being accepted or should I mourn because the masses will reject Him in only a short time?  You might not have this problem, but Palm Sunday is difficult for me.

I want to highlight the very last part of our text for this morning where we have the Pharisees saying to Jesus, "Teacher, order your disciples to stop [making noise]." Jesus' response is very interesting. He says, "I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out."

According to the Bible, stones are pretty impressive. They can do all kinds of things. In fact, just about the only other time that stones get mentioned in the entire Gospel of Luke, it is when John the Baptist is speaking to the Pharisees and sharing with them a few choice words. He says, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham for our ancestor;' for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham." It almost seems that stones are kind of a second-string, a "B" team, the ones that God turns to, or at least can turn to, when the people of God miss it.

What Jesus is saying is that God's will will be done, regardless of whether or not it is we who do it. Jesus is coming into his kingdom, into the royal city. There will be rejoicing, and if the people who are there do not rejoice, the stones themselves will cry out. There will be shouts of praise, and if the people don't do it, like the Pharisees wish they wouldn't, the stones will shout.

What does this say about the Pharisees? It means that they have absolutely no idea what God is actually doing in their midst. It means that the way they view reality is so skewed that, in spite of all their learning, in spite of all their experience, in spite of all their credentials and the respect they have accumulated from the people, they are far from understanding what the right thing to do might be. In fact, they are so completely confused that they think that the right thing to do is actually the wrong thing to do. Not only this, but it turns out that Jesus considers the response that the people are making and that the Pharisees hate to be obvious. It is so clear that even the stones on the side of the road would know to do what the Pharisees cannot seem to understand. What does it say about the Pharisees if the stones understand something about God that they cannot?

And yet, we should not judge the Pharisees too harshly or else we might miss the ways that we are all too much like them. After all, the people who are shouting Hosanna today are shouting "Crucify Him" within a week. The appearances are good, but they might not be any more than skin deep. We need to remember that, when Jesus was entering Jerusalem, most of the people who are shouting his praise were shouting because they expected him to come and overthrow the Romans, to rescue them from political oppression. When they finally come to realize that Jesus has no intention of leading a political revolt that would simply change the government but leave the corruption of humanity fundamentally unchanged, that he is not satisfied merely by invading the city of David but fully intends to invade the hearts of humanity and overcome evil at its very source, they drop their support.

This idea is that the entry of Christ is supposed to be a celebration. When God comes, the people rejoice. It's how it should be. And if God comes and the people don't rejoice, creation rejoices, to the shame of the people. The way it stands in the story, the people cry out in joy, the people rejoice, and that rejoicing simply as such, stands in judgment over the antagonists, because the antagonists don't get it. It's the fact that some people get it that reveals that those who don't get it are in the wrong, that there is another way to do it, that they don't have all the information, that indeed the fact that they ought to rejoice is made clear by the fact that there is rejoicing going on. And then Jesus says, "If they were silent, the stones would cry out." If the people are silent, creation itself rejoices. When God comes and we do not rejoice, creation rejoices; and that rejoicing, that honest to goodness response to God becomes the word of judgment for us.

But what does the shouting of a stone sound like? Have you ever heard one? The fact of the matter is that God is far more active in our world today than his people are, doing work in our midst and around us while we are trying to get our act together. Given how much God is present in our world today that we seem to miss, it seems to me that the stones should be shouting out with some frequency. But would we recognize it if we heard it? Paul has these interesting words to share from his letter to the Romans. "I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now..."

Jesus' words to the Pharisees strongly imply that it is entirely possible that stones can have a deeper understanding of who God is and what to do when God comes near than we human beings sometimes do. We hear earlier in the Gospel of Luke that all of our boasts to a strong heritage, that our families have been members of this church for generations, that we come to church every Sunday, that we participate in a class every week, or anything else, do not matter as much as we might wish they did, because God can raise up people like that even from the stones. So if the stones can do so many of the things that we can and should do, why are we the ones that seem to be in the center of this heavenly drama, why is it that the gospel is that God loves us humans and not that God loves the stones? Why is it that when God came into our world of space and time, he came as a human being and not as a stone? Simply and for no other reason than because he loves us. Why does God not abandon us when we are unfaithful and not follow through with raising up people of faith from the stones? Because this love is so strong that it will not let us go, but continues to pursue us.

So, what does that mean for us today? Does God come into our midst, does God meet with us, does God do these things, is there anything today even somewhat analogous to what we celebrate on Palm Sunday? Is God coming here? Because if he isn't, and if he doesn't, then Palm Sunday doesn't mean a lot for us today. All it is, is a remembrance of what happened once upon a time. But, if it does happen, if Jesus indeed does come here to Spencer, to this church, among these people, and if God does those things and we do not rejoice, then creation rejoices, to our shame.

Are we prepared to listen, are we prepared to hear, are we prepared to believe that God really moves? I've met a lot of folks in this church, and I've gotten to know several of you fairly well, and I know that many of you have had profound encounters with God in the past, that you can remember a time when God was so real to you that you would do anything to follow. And unfortunately, when I hear stories like that, what seems to be conspicuously unsaid, is that it's been a while since that has happened; that it's not something that happens everyday. And I can't help but wonder, if we do not feel the joy that comes with the presence of God, does it mean that God is not here? Or does it mean that we've stopped finding joy in God's presence? Or does it mean that we've become blind and deaf to the presence of God, that God could be here and we wouldn't even know it?

So the question is, how can we listen, how can we hear? To be honest, to understand this, if we look in the New Testament, we realize it is not simply a matter of pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, it isn't simply a matter of taking initiative, "Now, I'm going to listen to God," because if we do that we tend to fall on our faces, just simply making a decision on our part does not necessarily solve our problems. We read in the New Testament several stories of blind men, and we read about one who cries out, "Have mercy on me, Son of David." Have mercy on me, come to me, heal me for I cannot heal myself; cannot pull myself up, cannot manufacture my own sight. Something has to happen from outside of me to make it happen.

And so, let us rejoice. God is here. God has triumphantly entered, has triumphantly invaded, into our place, into our town of Spencer. By the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ is here now. We're going to celebrate communion. Gathered together as one body, with one bread and one cup. United in Christ, bound together by the blood of Christ, made brothers and sisters of Christ, fellow heirs of Christ. And if you can't rejoice today, if you think about the presence of God coming in here, into your heart, into your pew, and sitting along side of you, and if the very presence of God here and now does not get you excited, pray. Ask God to fill your heart with joy, to fill your life with wonder, to remind you every day of the things you once knew, of those times when God transformed your life, when God reached in and all of a sudden you realized that the gospel meant more than just words on a page, that it transforms hearts, it transforms lives, to remind you every day of those moments and to remind you that there is nothing to stop God from doing those same kinds of things today. Whatever you do, though, do not say, "O Lord, I'll get it right tomorrow, I'll get my act together tomorrow, or even today." Or "By golly I'm going to do what I can to get my act together now." Instead say, "Lord, save, Lord speak. Lord enter my heart because until you do, my heart will remain like stone.

So as we come before the table, as you come forward to receive, remember that when you celebrate communion, it's not a declaration that you've lived the last week or the last month totally devoted to God, it's not a declaration of how faithful you have been or even "This is how faithful I will be." When we come and we partake of the bread and the cup, we are saying "Lord I am in need, and I am in need of you in the same way as I am in need of the basic necessities of food and drink. I need you to come into me I need you to sustain me, I need you for whatever you will give. So as you come forward today, if you are rejoicing in the Lord, say, "Lord, come and reign. Reign more fully and more completely, take this joy and fan its flame into a raging bonfire, that it may be seen by all that your word and your glory may go forth." And if you have a hard time rejoicing this morning, come and say "Lord, take that fire that I used to have, that used to drive me, and relight it. And care for it, and kindle it and make it grow." Let us pray

AMEN