St. David's United Church

St. David’s United Church
Rev. Dan Chambers
March 29th, 2010
Palm Sunday
Luke 19:28-40

Did He Know?

As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying,
“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!
Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!”
Luke 19:36-38

If you’ve been around the church for a few years, you’re familiar with Palm Sunday. You may have associations with hymns traditionally sung this one time of year, or scenes from your childhood of people waving palms, or scenes from paintings or movies or plays of Jesus riding the donkey into the city of Jerusalem. It’s an image people in the church know so well we don’t need to look below the picture to read the caption. People waving their palms and shouting “Hosanna!” to the Prince of Peace who rides into a dangerous and uncertain future. It’s a Kodak moment.
Every time I see the picture or lift up my palm on this Sunday, a question stirs within me: Did he know? As I hear the story told each year, I reconstruct the scene in my mind and try to see the look on Jesus’ face as he entered the city. Crowds pushing to see him, calling out, waving branches, throwing down their cloaks in a gesture of great respect. As the donkey steps closer to the threatening walls of a city controlled by Pilate and the Roman army, I search the face of Jesus to see if anything might betray his knowledge of what was to unfold. Did he know he was heading for the cross? Did he know he was a dead man walking?
Just between you and me, I sometimes wonder if Jesus lacked some good common sense. The wisdom of the world since the caveman, the common sense we all grew up with that says, “Safety first.” “Be prudent.” “Don’t get involved.” Or, as my mother or teachers used to say, “Be careful! You’re going to break your neck!” We’re taught to protect ourselves, to save our own neck.
It’s good advice. It makes good sense. I trust this wisdom because it’s the advice given by people I respect and, frankly, it follows my own bodily instinct for survival.
What I don’t understand is Jesus. The One is a mystery to me, and perhaps the only thing I can learn from him is astonishment. Prudence is easy to understand. It’s rational. Logical. The prophet, on the other hand, evades easy explanation. And so in my mind’s eye I peer into the Passover festival in Jerusalem around 30 AD, when the city erupted with activity. A Roman census showed almost 250,000 lambs were sacrificed in the week long ritual. The Jewish law required at least ten men to be present for the
sacrifice of one lamb. This means there were approximately two and half million Jews in Jerusalem for Passover. Every adult male who lived within twenty miles was required to come to Jerusalem, but Jewish men and women made the pilgrimage from all over the world. The flood of people to the city and the common rage Jews felt for the Roman occupying forces made this holy city a tinderbox of violence. Every year, extra forces of Roman foot soldiers were brought in. Herod and Pilate were ordered to keep everything under control. Any whiff of an uprising was to be immediately quelled. Jesus could not have chosen a more tense, dramatic moment for this peaceful ride into a city on the verge of violence.
Had Jesus been prudent, he would have stayed home. Or headed to the hills to pray. Or suggested a fishing trip to his disciples. Why didn’t he simply make a pastoral visit to the sick in Galilee? Or, if he insisted to be in Jerusalem, why didn’t he sneak in quietly through the back door, cloaked in the dark of night as the city slept? That I could understand. How easy it would have been to blend into a massive crowd of a couple million. It could have saved his hide.
He had to know people would be watching for him, this trouble maker from Nazareth who had trammeled Sabbath laws and disregarded purification rituals, like washing before meals. They would have known about this guy who had stirred crowds, upset scribes and insulted Pharisees. Even his own townspeople tried to stone him for blasphemy. When Jesus spoke about the Kingdom of God and allowed the Spirit of God to move through him, it seemed he had a nasty habit of offending people.

What motivated him to enter Jerusalem in broad daylight, arranging a parade as if to make sure the city authorities didn’t miss his entrance in the buzz and swarm of people? It’s as if he stepped right up to the mayor and the city council and said, “Hi guys! I’m here.” Careful, Jesus. You could break your neck.
Because we know how the story ends, we can’t help but see the cross on the dark horizon as Jesus entered the city under a banner of palms. As Jesus approached Jerusalem, did he see the shadow of the cross? Had he been given a telepathic playbook that described in detail what happened next? Well, first the arrest, the beating, then the cross. Did he have a clue?
What about the empty cave – did he know about that? Did he know that the cross was not the end of the story? As he rode ridiculously and gently and triumphantly into the city on the donkey, did he know that in about seven days he would rise from the grave and alter the consciousness of humanity forever? This is clearly one understanding of the mission and ministry of Jesus. It says he know about the cross and he didn’t chicken out. He knew about the resurrections, and that’s what carried him through.
But if Jesus started this parade knowing about the cross and the empty tomb, then the passion of Christ is primarily an act of the will. He knew what was going to happen, and it was just a matter of having the stomach to see it through. The passion of Christ then becomes primarily a story of courage. By sheer strength of will, Jesus allowed himself to suffer in order to save.
However, this interpretation leaves me behind in several places, I’ll name two. First, if Jesus had foreknowledge of his suffering and resurrection, then he certainly is not very human. How many of us make decisions and act knowing that everything will turn out supremely well? If we had that certitude, then whatever decision might await us would seem incredibly straightforward, would it not? Knowing the answer to the test makes even the hardest test passable.
But this, of course, is not how we live our lives. We decide and act without any guarantees that everything will be fine in the end. Even when we secure ourselves in the counsel of prudence, life never promises safety and success. Everything we do is suspended over the abyss of uncertainty. I don’t think it was any different for Jesus, if he, too, was at all human.
Second, Jesus was more than an example of courage and a disciplined will. We can find those qualities in a gladiator or a firefighter or an athlete of the Paralympics. I look to Jesus as an example of faith, of an unfailing trust in God even in the face of the unknown.
As I peer into that Jerusalem scene, this, then, is how I imagine Palm Sunday:
Between the two heads in front of me, I catch a glimpse of his face. This year, this Palm Sunday, the look on his face tells me he didn’t know. Suppose Jesus didn’t know, as he entered Jerusalem, what would happen next. No playbook. No cross. No clue about the resurrection. No facts. Just faith. The faith that had made him a rabbi, a healer, a prophet, a light that shines in our every darkness. The faith that has shown us a new way to see, a new water to quench our thirst, a life that feels abundant.
As Jesus enters Jerusalem, look at his face. Not a man of will. Not the samurai who is about to plunge a sword into his stomach in an act of hara-kiri. A man who trusts in God, whose faith hasn’t anything to do with controlling events or manipulating the plans. Just the opposite. It’s a posture toward the unknown, a posture of open heart, open mind, open eyes and arms and hands. It’s a posture open to the vulnerability of love. It’s a way of welcoming the unknown that allows us to welcome afresh the known, the ordinary, the routine. If Lent has stripped us from all but our faith, we watch Jesus enter Holy Week with nothing but a trust in God
glowing in his dark eyes.
So I watch him go by, the crowd falling in behind him. And I wonder, will I follow? Holy Week is a time to follow, not because we know the end of the story, but because the steps Jesus takes today, this week, to the garden, to the supper, to the trial, to the cross are steps of radical trust. Steps we are invited to take with him. Steps he cannot take for us, on our behalf. This week I ask myself, will I bother to show up?
When we follow this path, open to the unknown, trusting in the steadfast love of God no matter what, we might find that even the ordinary routine of life becomes tinged with grace. We might be given the heart and eyes to see that ordinary miracles quietly burst around us. When we trust in God, even the most difficult chore can be an avenue to the sacred.
The author, Anne Lamott, recalls this description from her minister (and I paraphrase); “God doesn’t give us a blueprint of the future. We can’t even see a mile down the road. It’s as if we’re walking in the dark, and the only place there’s a pool of light is right where we’re standing and a little in front of us so if we look carefully we can see where to take the next step. But we can’t see a block down the road. There’s only enough light to see this step, and then this, and then this, and that’s how we travel through life. That’s what it means to trust in God.”
Each of us has our own Jerusalem, our own challenges that threaten our spiritual well-being or even our physical survival. It’s too dark to look down the road for an answer. All we can do is take the next step, and trust there’ll be enough light to take the next one after that.
Jesus rode gently and boldly into Jerusalem and continued on a path that seemed to invite trouble. He didn’t go to the temple to pray or to make a sacrifice. He went to the temple and made a mess of things. In the tradition of prophets before him, he did the unthinkable and challenged the very order of things. He turned over tables, made a mess of things, chased people away while shouting at them for extortion. John’s gospel even puts a whip in Jesus’ hand to convey that this man wasn’t meek and mild. He may have ridden into the city as a sign of peace, but he came to confront injustice. Defiantly he enters the city in broad daylight orchestrating a parade. Defiantly he challenges the most sacred of Jewish tradition, temple sacrifice and the authority of religious leaders. It would be as if an enraged Catholic priest entered the Vatican, smashing statues and raiding the gift shop, screaming protest at the pope for his attempt to protect the Roman Catholic Church at the expense of abused children. Even a non-Catholic would be shocked at the behaviour, but no one would be surprised should the Catholic priest be arrested.
Jesus didn’t seem to care if he was arrested. He didn’t seem to care about saving his own neck. He was a prophetic revolutionary, attacking the jugular vein of established religion and offering in its place an untried, uncertain freedom in the undying love of God. The law offered an illusion of social security. Jesus offered the uncertainty of freedom. The law of Rome and the order of temple politics suffocated many. Jesus offered liberation. Terrifying liberation that requires a radical trust in the One in whom we live and move and have our being.
Common sense didn’t take Jesus to Jerusalem on a donkey’s back in broad daylight with the vultures circling overhead. Sheer strength of will did not keep him on his palm-strewn path. An unswerving trust brought him all the way, all the way home, safe, in the palm of God.
He turns now, checking over his shoulder as if to ask if we, too, will follow. As if to invite us to practice this radical trust that keeps us on the path, safe in the palm of God, even in the shadow of our own cross.
Amen.