Cheers
and Tears
© by the Reverend Dr. Byron
E. Shafer
(Rutgers, April 8, 2001; Palm
Sunday, Year C)
Psalm 118:1–2, 19–29 (OT, pp. 625, 626);
Luke 19:28–42 (NT, p. 85)
“Bittersweet”—that’s
the term I’ve long associated with Palm Sunday, a day swept by strong eddies
and crosscurrents of emotion, a day when celebrations swirl with foreboding,
when cheers echo back cries of "Crucify," when followers dizzily hail
a Messiah who, just five days hence, will be scarred, tortured, put to death.
For
the triumphal procession that we call to mind today will lead westward not just to
Jerusalem but through Jerusalem,
beyond that city’s farthermost enclosing wall, outside to the stark
outcropping of unquarried stone called Calvary, Golgotha—The Place of the
Skull.
Throughout
this week, which climaxes our 40-day Lenten journey, we’re asked to relive the
tortuous story of Jesus in Jerusalem, the story of Jesus’s passion and death. And what’s asked of us today,
specifically, is to find our place amidst the cheering, chanting disciples
who’re processing to that city with Jesus.
We’re asked to identify with them, to find our place amongst them, so
that the old, old Palm-Sunday story may remain ever-new, as we become part of it
and it becomes part of us.
So
journey with me in space eastward to the city of Jerusalem, and journey with me
in time backward to that ancient Sunday-before-Passover.
Jesus
has been conducting his three-year-long ministry outside of Jerusalem, for the
most part far to the north, in the Jewish hinterland of Galilee.
There,
early on, Jesus’s inner circle of traveling companions had come to include a
bunch of scruffy fisherfolk—Peter, Andrew, James, and John—and even a seedy
tax collector, named Matthew.
And
none of the rest of his apostles has a distinguished pedigree either.
So far as we know, all the others are peasants—a couple of them,
apparently, firebrands with insurrection on their minds.
After
having chosen these twelve to be his inner circle of followers, Jesus had then
gone on to create a great public scandal by adding to his entourage a different
group of marginal folk, this time a number of women unaccompanied by
husbands—including Joanna and Susanna and Mary, called Magdalene—men and
women unrelated and unmarried to each other, traveling around together through
the countryside.
Then,
after two years or so of this itinerant ministry in Galilee, Jesus and his
followers had turned southward, heading at a leisurely pace toward the Holy City
of Jerusalem.
And
during their extended journey, Jesus’s entourage had further expanded, adding
the likes of: a mute man to whom Jesus had restored speech; a crippled,
misshapen woman whom Jesus had healed after eighteen years of her being bent
over; a Samaritan leper, a man doubly marginal—marginal because of his
ethnicity and marginal because of his disease—yet a man whom Jesus had
restored to wholeness; a blind beggar to whom Jesus had given the gift of sight;
additional tax collectors, reviled though they are; and still more people
infamous for being sinners, like prostitutes.
What
a bizarre parade of pilgrims it is then that, on this Sunday morning, Jesus now
leads the last few miles to Jerusalem, along a path downtrodden for centuries by
caravans and conquering armies—Jesus and his joyous band, kicking up the dust
with every step and singing psalms all along their way to Jerusalem, where later
that week they will celebrate Passover and commemorate God’s liberation of
Israel from slavery in Egypt back in the days of Moses.
“O give thanks to the Lord, for God is good;
God’s steadfast love endures forever!…
This is the day that the Lord has made;
let us rejoice and be glad in it.”
(Ps. 118:1, 24)
First-century
Jerusalem is, of course, a far simpler time and place than our own.
There’s no Sunday morning Jerusalem
Times to blare the headline, "Jesus Leaves Jericho for Jerusalem."
The citizens of Jerusalem haven’t been titillated for weeks in advance
by puff pieces about "The Celebrity Christ,” one of society’s "25
Most Intriguing People," either in a People
magazine or on an Entertainment Weekly TV show. There’ve
been no paparazzi selling to a National
Enquirer exclusive photographs of Jesus’s feet being bathed in tears and
anointed with oil by an unnamed prostitute; no ancient Mark Shields and Paul
Gigot debating what the real political
intentions of Jesus may be; no first-century Gail Sheehy offering a
psychological profile of Jesus for a Vanity
Fair; no former-time Peter Jennings asking cult specialists to comment on
the Jesus Sect and the way it’s been breaking up families.
There’s been no public relations firm stoking the ardor of Jesus’s
fans by releasing a new CD of Jesus singing psalms at a synagogue and reciting
parables along the shores of Galilee; no antique Barbara Walters advertising an
upcoming exclusive tell-all interview with Jesus from her rooftop-garden; no
old-time CNN Sunday morning news show featuring a first-century Wolf Blitzer
quizzing Jesus, astride his donkey, about rumors he’s intending to disrupt
business in the Temple.
So,
at least as the Gospel of Luke narrates this Sunday morning scene, the crowds
assembled around Jerusalem for the Passover are unprepared for the bizarre sight
they now see: Jesus, riding on a borrowed burro and surrounded by a wildly
exuberant mob of followers—a triumphal entry of marginals and misfits singing
out,
“Blessed is the king who comes
in the name of the Lord!
Peace in heaven,
and glory in the highest!” (Luke
19:38)
[How amazingly like the heavenly host who sang of peace at Jesus’s birth these
earthly followers sound!]
Jesus—the king of the fisherfolk and tax collectors, the sovereign of women and Samaritans, the monarch of the crippled and blind, of demoniacs and harlots, of the poor and the destitute—many of whom are throwing down garments on the road in front of Jesus, imitating the supporters of old King Jehu, who’d strewn his way with garments many centuries before. (II Kings 9:13)
But
Jesus seems such an ordinary man, and he’s riding such a common beast, and the
garments being thrown as a carpet before him aren’t expensive cloaks woven of
royal purple, but tattered tunics and dusty, sweat-stained shawls.
“Blessed
is Jesus, the sovereign of sinners, the monarch of outcasts, the king of the
sick, the poor, and the oppressed. Blessed
is the one who has shared our hardships, relieved our suffering, and accepted
us, whom others will not accept, offering us, too, the gift of hope, the gift of
God’s love.” Such is what
Jesus’s followers are shouting out, so that the stones along the road have no
need to!
As Jesus’s procession crests the Mount of Olives, catches its first glimpse of Jerusalem, and begins its descent to the Kidron Valley, Jesus brings his young donkey to a halt and pauses to survey the Temple and its courtyards, outspread in their entirety before him. He stops, and looks, and weeps, offering this lament: “If you, [O Jerusalem], had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.” (Luke 19:42)
The
time of Jesus’s entry is a moment of fragile possibility.
If only the people would see Jesus for what he truly is, a sovereign who
comes offering not the start of strife and conflict, of which so many living
under the Roman yolk are dreaming, but
a sovereign who comes offering the gift of love and wholeness to the diseased,
the dispossessed, the disenfranchised.
Life
is filled with moments when we can see what might have been.
And this is such a moment for Jesus.
His “triumphal entry” lives but an instant and then produces a stream
of tears, as Jesus recognizes that the people of Jerusalem, the people of the
city whose very name means peace, do not want the kind of peace Jesus has come
to offer. And the cheers give rise
to tears.
Jesus’s weeping over the city as he first sees it evokes echoes of the motherly lament we heard him offer a few weeks ago: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” (Luke 13:34)
The
coming of God’s reign on earth offers good news for the poor, a place at the
table for outcasts, sight for the blind, an end to subjugation for women, the
responsible handling of wealth and property, a reevaluation of what constitutes
holiness. Two ways are set before
Jerusalem and the world: the way of repentance and peace taught by Jesus, or the
way of disobedience and destruction. And
Jerusalem and the world choose not Jesus’s way, the way of repentance and
forgiveness of sin, but the other.
Jesus’s
lament over Jerusalem arises from his vision of what could have been and from
his grief over the loss of that vision. Jesus’s
lament expresses his love and profound caring for the city, his hope, which must
painfully release the object of his hope, and his mixed feelings of sorrow and
anger. Jesus, filled with passion
and compassion, weeps.
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. Come Friday, five days hence, Jesus will be put to death.
So
here’s a question we who are followers of Jesus are to ask ourselves today and
each and every Palm Sunday, as we process alongside Jesus at the beginning of
Holy Week, cheering wildly and then watching in astonishment as Jesus pauses to
weep—here’s a question we are to ask ourselves today: Where will we be found
come Friday? Will we still be found
at Jesus’s side?
Or
will we perhaps become so frustrated by the apparent weakness in this world of
Jesus’s kind of peacemaking and love and by the apparent victory of violence
and bloodshed in places like Afghanistan, and Indonesia, and the Sudan, and
Israel, and the West Bank, and San Diego—will we perhaps become so frustrated
that by Friday we, like Peter, will be found among those denying we’ve ever
really been followers of Jesus?Or could we even become so frustrated that by
Friday we, like Judas, will be found among those betraying Jesus?
Or
will we instead, even then, on Good Friday—like Mary Magdalene—still be
found alongside Jesus, still be found standing watch at the cross, still be
found standing convinced of the power of his love?
Yes,
Palm Sunday is a day that’s swept with strong eddies and crosscurrents of
emotion, a day when celebrations swirl with foreboding, when our cheers echo
back Friday’s cries of "Crucify."
For
by Friday, the cloak-strewn road will have led right through Jerusalem and
beyond it to Calvary, to Golgotha—to The Place of the Skull.
What
part will we play as the rest of this week’s drama unfolds?
And what impact will the rest of this drama have on our lives?
Dear
companions in today’s "cheering, chanting, dizzy crowd," please join
me here on Thursday evening at 7:00 p.m. for our reenactment of Christ’s last
supper with his followers, and then again on Friday between noon and 2:00 p.m.
to stand watch together at Christ’s cross.
Be present with Christ not only today for the cheers, but through the
rest of this week for the tears.
Let us pray:
O
God, may we walk with Jesus with cheers on our lips and tears in our eyes all
the way to the cross and beyond.
And Gentle, Suffering Messiah, may we be found at Your side throughout this week. May we be found supping at Your table and kneeling at Your cross, that we may taste of Your grace and behold the cost of Your love. Amen.
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