To listen to the sermon preached on Palm Sunday, April 17th at the 9:00 AM service, click here.
To listen to the sermon preached at the 10:45 AM service that day, click here.

St. Charles Episcopal Church - St. Charles, IL
Palm Sunday Year A - April 17, 2011
Matthew 21:1-11 - The Procession of the Palms
Isaiah 50:4-9; Psalm 31:9-16; Philippians 2:5-11 Matthew 26:14- 27:66
The Rev. Elizabeth G. Meade

"And so said all the disciples."
Did you even notice that verse in the Passion today? It's such a short one, it's easy to miss. That's the trouble with Holy Week, and all the other big Christian Feast Days: Easter, Pentecost, Christmas. We know the stories so well, we tend to listen less intently. We tend to say things like, "Oh, Good. This is the parable of the Good Samaritan ... I know this one." And then if we're human, we tend to drift off comfortably into a reverie of what we THINK the story means - perhaps reflecting on our childhood understandings of it. But when we lose the ability or the willingness to listen with fresh ears to these familiar passages, we stop being inspired by them. What a shame.

I offer this reflection today, then, hoping that it might shake us out of our expectations and perhaps allow us to see the Passion Story and Holy Week with fresh eyes. The sentence I picked at the beginning was: "And so said all the Disciples." The New International Version translates it: "And all the disciples said the same." The same what? What did the disciples all say? Listen again with fresh ears:
When they had sung the hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.
Then Jesus said to them, "You will all become deserters because of me this night; for it is written, `I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.'
Peter said to him, "Though all become deserters because of you, I will never desert you." And Jesus said to him, "Truly I tell you, this very night, before the cock crows, you will deny me three times." Peter said to him, "Even though I must die with you, I will not deny you."
And so said all the disciples. (Matt 26:31-35)

All the disciples said, "I will not deny you." Of course, we know how that worked out!

I want to jump back for a minute here though, because after all it is Palm Sunday, and it's early in Holy Week to be talking about Jesus' arrest, trial and crucifixion.

Let's look, first at what happened at the beginning of the service here today as we read the passage about Jesus' entrance on a donkey at the East Gate of Jerusalem. Everything seemed happy, optimistic: Jesus riding in on a donkey, people laying down their cloaks and palm branches and shouting, "Hosanna." It's feels like Jesus' red carpet moment. He was a celebrity. He had followers and he was popular. You can probably imagine, however, how this went over with the Roman authorities: popular movements that challenge the status quo don't go over well with authorities.
Think of Tiannamen Square, of Cairo's Tahir Square.
Think of MLK's march from Selma to Montgomery.

This Procession on a donkey WAS a challenge to the Roman occupation! Let's not be naive and romanticize it and say Jesus "happened" to show up there and all this spontaneously happened. It didn't. It was carefully and intentionally planned. Jesus, and any Jew educated in the law and the prophets - and certainly the high priests - would have known the passage in Zephaniah that describes how the how the Messiah they were waiting for would arrive in Jerusalem. In the 9th Chapter of Zeph, it says the Lord will come to clear the chariots away and chase the war horses out of Jerusalem. It ALSO says, that the Messiah, the Lord, would enter Jerusalem on a young donkey's back and come to proclaim PEACE. You think Jesus didn't know the significance of what he was doing? Of course he did!

But let me tell you about another parade: a parade that you may not know about. A parade that was happening on the other side of Jerusalem. A parade at the West Gate. John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg write about this in their book called "The Last Week" and it's fascinating. The Roman occupiers knew that the greatest chance of riots and unrest happening in Jerusalem would most likely before the big Jewish festivals, like Passover. So it was the habit of the Roman Governor, in this case, Pontius Pilate, to bring up fresh troops from the Roman coastal garrison at Cesarea. And when he would do this, he always made quite a show of it: a show of military might. There would be much pomp and ceremony; the Roman Governor himself would ride in triumphantly in through the West Gate surrounded by his soldiers. We've all seen these displays of military dominance: think of Hitler's parades. Or North Korea's parades. They are all designed to intimidate; they're designed to squelch any thoughts of rebellion.
So - Jesus at the East Gate riding in on a donkey - in peace.
And the Roman Army at the West Gate, marching in - in a show of military dominance.

What Borg and Crossan suggest is that we look at the symbology of these two parades: one to demonstrate military dominance, and one to suggest there is another way. Jesus by riding in on a young donkey, not on a great white stallion, is sending a message: that there is another way, God's way, and that Roman dominion isn't the answer. Think about it. It's the week before the Passover and we have these two parades entering Jerusalem: one by the East Gate and one by the West Gate. Jesus' entrance was, Borg suggests, a symbolic act of defiance. He chose his time carefully. These two parades in Jerusalem signaled a face off. The one by the West Gate: Ushering in the Reign of Caesar; the Roman Empire. The one by the East Gate: Ushering in the Reign of God. And the two were utterly incompatible.

But I started this reflection not with the Procession of Palms readings, but by that forgettable sentence in the passion reading, didn't I? The sentence that read: "And so said all the disciples." All the disciples promised they would never desert or deny Jesus; not just Peter. All of them. All of them pledged allegiance to Jesus.

We know what happens: Jesus was executed. A cross was a Roman way of death. Hanging people from it was their way of killing and making public examples out of revolutionaries. So the Romans considered Jesus a revolutionary. A revolutionary for demonstrating through his teaching and his actions that there was another way to live; that domination and violence isn't the way to live.

In the Passion, we see Jesus as offering himself up - to illustrate how awful domination and violence can be: How senseless it can get. Hanging from a cross with nails through your flesh until you suffocate and die is violence. Jesus said, "My Kingdom is not of this world." HE pointed to a kingdom that embodied love and compassion; that modeled God's love for God's whole creation. He said, "Come, follow me." Help me usher in a new way of being in the world. Help me tell the people of the world, our friends and our foes, that what God desires for us most is peace and joy, not violence and hatred. Come follow me and tell the whole world that this kingdom is possible! And all of his disciples, like Peter, all of his disciples promised that they would not desert him, that they would not deny him, that they would not abandon him. But they all fled. They all hid. Not one was ready to die on the Roman Cross to prove a point. Only Jesus was willing. Only Jesus was so committed to proclaiming God's Word to the world, that he was willing to die to make it known.

Which brings me to the question we are invited to ponder as we enter Holy Week: Which parade will you choose? Jesus offered himself in the form of a slave, of a bond servant, Philippians says, to show the world a new way: A new way to live; a new way to "be" in the world. He urged us to walk the way of compassion, of fairness, of love, of peace. He became for us a beacon of holiness - a light shining to the desires of the living God. He has asked us, you and me, to assist him in ushering in reign of God and to do away with the yoke of oppression and violence. He died trying to accomplish that. Which parade will you choose?

ALL the disciples said, "I will not deny you." Let it be so, in the name of the Father, the Crucified Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.