Sermon Archive

As most of you know, I've recently been learning how to be a good grandfather! For just two days ago, our little Max turned two months old.

Well, one of the things this grandparent-in-training has been doing is brushing up on all those good old 17th- and 18-th century Mother Goose nursery rhymes that I learned from my grandparents, and that they learned from theirs.

You know, grandson-kind-of-rhymes like:

"Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man,
Bake me a cake as fast as you can;
Pat it and prick it, and mark it with B,
Put it in the oven for baby and me."

Or:

"Little Jack Horner sat in a corner,
Eating a Christmas pie;
He put in his thumb, and pulled out a plum,
And said, 'What a good boy am I!'"

Or:

"Little boy blue, come blow your horn,
The sheep's in the meadow, the cow's in the corn;
But where is the boy who looks after the sheep?
He's under the haystack fast asleep.
Will you wake him? No, not I,
For if I do, he'll be sure to cry."

Now, nursery rhyme scholars—yes, there really are such people!—nursery rhyme scholars believe that the old Mother Goose rhymes are filled with social commentary on their times and with political commentary on events in English history.

Perhaps it was precisely because of its rather explicit s+p commentary that one of the lesser-known Mother G. rhymes sprang to my mind as I was starting work on my Palm Sunday sermon.

It's the rhyme called "Hark! Hark!." Do any of you know it? It goes like this:

"Hark! Hark! The dogs do bark,"—any of you recognize it yet?
"Hark! Hark! The dogs do bark,
The beggars are coming to town;
Some in rags, some in tags,
And some in velvet gowns."

The image in this nursery rhyme—of beggars dressed in rags and tags, in clothes tattered and torn, with hanging, dangling ends and pieces—this image has given rise to the English word "ragtag," meaning: the lowest social classes; those considered to be of no consequence; the rabble; the riffraff.

Well, according to this morning's Second Lesson from the Gospel of Luke, Palm Sunday is all about a parade of the ragtag: "Hark! Hark! The dogs do bark, the beggars are coming to town." For Jesus and his followers are entering Jerusalem.

According to Luke, Jesus and those with him had been on the road journeying from Galilee toward Jerusalem for some time. Jesus's journey had begun in chapter 9, and his band of pilgrims finally reach Jerusalem here in chapter 19, almost half the gospel later.

Now, who would have been with Jesus? Early in Jesus's ministry, his inner circle of traveling companions had come to include a bunch of scruffy fisherfolk—Peter, Andrew, James, John—and also a seedy tax collector—one Levi, alias Matthew.

And none of the rest of the 12 had a distinguished pedigree either. So far as we know, all the rest were peasants—a couple of them, apparently, firebrands with revolution on their minds.

So Jesus started out with a not very promising bunch of ragtag. Later in Jesus's ministry, he had created great public scandal by adding to his entourage another group of marginal people, this time a number of women unaccompanied by husbands—including Joanna and Susanna and Mary, called Magdalene.

Then, on the long journey to Jerusalem, Jesus's entourage had further expanded by adding the likes of: a mute man to whom Jesus had restored speech; a crippled, misshapen woman whom Jesus had healed after she'd been bent over for 18 years; a Samaritan leper—a man doubly marginal, by virtue of both his ethnicity and his disease—a man whom Jesus had restored to wholeness; a blind beggar to whom Jesus had given the gift of sight; and more tax collectors; and an array of other known sinners, like prostitutes.

What a bizarre parade of pilgrims it was that entered Jerusalem with Jesus that first Palm Sunday: Jesus, riding on a borrowed burro, and surrounded by a wildly exuberant mob of marginals + misfits. Jesus—the king of the ragtag, the sovereign of fisherfolk and tax collectors, of women and Samaritans, of those crippled and blind, of demoniacs and harlots, of the poor and the destitute.

And, according to Luke, as Jesus rode along, his disciples threw garments on the road in front of him, just as the supporters of Israel's King Jehu had done for him centuries before.

But the garments thrown as a carpet before Jesus were not expensive cloaks of royal purple, but tattered shawls and dusty, sweat-stained rags.

Hail to Jesus, the sovereign of sinners, the monarch of outcasts, the king of the sick, the poor, and the oppressed. Hail to the one who has shared hardships, relieved suffering, and accepted those whom others would not, offering them the gift of hope and of God's love.

This parade of a soon-to-be-crucified "king" and his ragtag band is one for which all of us gathered here today should cheerand weep — cheer and weep.

We should cheer, because all of us need to celebrate the amazing love of God made available to us through Jesus, and made visible to us in Jesus's Palm Sunday parade.

The standard cheer for this day is, of course, "Hosanna!", a wonderfully ambiguous Hebrew word with 2 possible meanings. First, and most literally, it can mean "Save us now!" But second, it can also mean, "We give praise!"

Let all of us today raise one kind or the other of "Hosanna!" in the certainty that God's love is directed at persons like those in Jesus's ragtag parade, at persons like ourselves.

Perhaps many of us are among those reckoned by society, the church, or even ourselves as of little or no worth—whether because of our race, our ethnicity, our occupation, our class, our physical condition, or our sexual orientation; and yet, like those in the parade, some of us in that situation have experienced through Jesus the love and affirmation of our Creator, the wholly inclusive God, a love and affirmation that empowers us to affirm our great worth!

If so, then today these of us will, of course, shout, "Hosanna! Praise to our Liberator, Christ!"

But perhaps some of us have not yet experienced through Jesus the love and affirmation of our Creator, the wholly inclusive God. Perhaps some of us have not yet found the power, in the face of low esteem, to affirm our great worth!

If so, then today as we all experience Jesus's entrance into the city, let these among us also greet him with shouts of "Hosanna! Save us now, O Liberator, Christ!"

Let all of us today raise one or the other cheer of "Hosanna!" in the certainty that God's love is directed at persons like those in Jesus's ragtag parade, at persons like ourselves.

Perhaps many of us are among those who have a keen sense of our own sinfulness; and yet some of us in that situation have experienced through Jesus the warm embrace of our saving and forgiving God, an embrace of grace that enables us to reaffirm our worth!

If so, then today these of us will, of course, shout, "Hosanna! Praise to our Savior, Christ!"

But perhaps some of us in that situation have not yet experienced through Jesus the warm embrace of our saving and forgiving God, the embrace that would enable us to reaffirm our worth!

If so, then today as we all experience Jesus's entrance into the city, let these among us also greet him with shouts of "Hosanna! Save us now, O Savior, Christ!"

Some of us have had an illness or an infirmity and have experienced, perhaps through the skill of doctors and nurses, the touch of Jesus, the touch of our healing God, a touch that has restored us to wholeness and well-being.

If so, then today these of us will, of course, shout, "Hosanna! Praise to our Healer, Christ!"

But perhaps some of us have not yet experienced through Jesus the healing touch of our God, a touch that would restore us to wholeness and well-being.

If so, then today as we all experience Jesus's entrance into the city, let these among us also greet him with shouts of "Hosanna! Save us now, O Healing Christ!"

Let all of us today raise one or the other cheer of "Hosanna!" in the certainty that God's love is directed at persons like those in Jesus's ragtag parade, at persons like ourselves.

Let us cheer today in praise and petition. But let us also weep, weep in anticipation of what lies in the day's ahead. You see, today we celebrate the parade of one who is soon to be crucified.

The powers and principalities of the world will not much longer tolerate this sovereign of sinners, this monarch of outcasts, this king of the sick and the poor and the oppressed.

This Friday the king of the ragtag will be put to death. So with tears as well as cheers, let us join Jesus's ragtag parade and walk the road to Calvary.

Let us pray: