I appreciate the diversity of this congregation. Not just the kind of diversity so representative of Manhattan's Upper West Side, but the kind referred to in the prayer of confession. We have seasoned veterans of the spiritual journey as we live in the Christian Church, and we have a growing number of people described by the ubiquitous word "seekers," woman and men willing to admit to themselves that the things we buy with money, be they experiences or possessions, rarely if ever satisfy our deepest desires.
People sometimes call the church to ask questions before they take the risk of attending. They are usually seekers. Seasoned veterans know that if what they find here is not what they are comfortable with, they can leave. For seekers it can be daunting to enter a space that is unfamiliar to participate in something that could be outside their comfort zone.
What I tell the callers is that we are a Christian Church, that is, we believe that if you want to know what God is like and how to live your life, the best place to look is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. I explain that we welcome people into the full life of the church without regard to race, national origin, sexual orientation, marital condition, or economic status. I go on to say we sing hymns in our worship service, too often holdovers from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but occasionally something more contemporary. We offer prayers, including unison prayers offered by the congregation and in this church written by the pastor. We read from the Bible, and someone given the privilege of a theological education connects what we have read with life as we are trying to live it here and now. We celebrate the Sacrament of Holy Communion on the second Sunday of every month and on special occasions like Christmas Eve, the Thursday before Easter, on Easter Sunday and Pentecost.
I tell the callers that we don't talk much about money in this church, for two reasons. First, I believe the Church exists to meet the needs of those who attend its services instead of those attending services meeting the needs of the church. And second, those who went before us in this congregation had the foresight to hold onto enough real estate that the church has a decent income without relying entirely on the generosity of its members and friends. I say all this because for the last several months we have been having new people with us just about every Sunday, and I want them, and everybody else, to feel welcome here.
As you know, this is Palm Sunday, the beginning of what we call Holy Week in the Christian Church. The verses I read from Mark's Gospel recount the event we remember today. All four Gospels describe Jesus' entrance into Jerusalem at the time of Passover, when the city would have been full of pilgrims. The four Gospels agree on the central elements of the event, and they differ understandably on the details. They agree that Jesus, the young teacher who ran afoul of the religious authorities of his day, decided to live out his mission of revealing God's love by going where his adversaries held their seat of power, leaving the results in the hands of God, whom he called Abba, Father—or Mother, to broaden that term.
As you could deduce from the Gospel account, Jesus' entrance into Jerusalem was not a spectacular event. Jerusalem had seen its share of grand parades. Alexander the Great had entered Jerusalem as a conquering hero in the distant past, and he had entered with prancing horses, marching soldiers, and rolling chariots. In contrast Jesus entered the city on the back of a swaying, blinking donkey. It's a mistake to make Palm Sunday a little Easter. It wasn't that at all.
Two images stay in my mind as I read and re-read Mark's account of Jesus' entrance into Jerusalem. First there is the crowd. Mark says simply, "Many people" spread clothing and branches in front of Jesus. Matthew calls them "a large crowd." Jesephus, the secular historian, says that hundreds of thousands of people attended the Passover celebrations in Jerusalem. Only a fraction of them would have witnessed the ragtag band of pilgrims walking in front of and behind the traveling teacher from Nazareth and Galilee as he made his way into the city.
But they were there—and we are here. It seems to me that among the peoples of the world it is, and has been, a fraction that responds to that inner impulse, that hunger for God, that can be pressingly insistent for some people and easy to ignore for others. I remember when I was in high school asking one of my teachers, a young Phys. Ed. teacher who had been very good to me, why he went to church when most of his friends didn't. He said, "I just find my heart going in that direction, and it doesn't make sense to say No." His answer has made more and more sense to me as I have grown older.
On that dusty roadway leading into Jerusalem there was a crowd—however small or large; there was a gathering of people. And they were shouting, "Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!"
In Mark's account, Jesus neither accepts nor rejects the crowd's adulation. He just keeps on riding. As it says elsewhere, "He set his face steadfastly toward Jerusalem." He wasn't impressed by the crowd. He wasn't swayed by the crowd. He wasn't flattered by the crowd. He just kept on riding. Ride on, King Jesus!
He must have known about the nature of crowds. I think back to the motion picture The Queen with that memorable performance by Helen Mirren. At the beginning of the period covered in the film, 1997 when Princess Diana died, Tony Blair was riding a wave of popularity and Queen Elizabeth II was struggling for approval. When The Queen was being shown in theaters in 2006, Tony Blair was being vilified and Queen Elizabeth was doing rather well. Just this past week she got a lot of coverage when the Obamas visited Buckingham Palace. Crowds can be fickle, and popularity can be a sometime thing.
Some sort of crowd welcomed Jesus as he entered the city of Jerusalem to celebrate Passover and to face his adversaries. Four days later a crowd was calling for his execution and thirsting for his blood. When he was put to death the next day, there were only a handful of people standing by.
When I hear the Palm Sunday story, I picture the crowd. And I wonder where I would have been that day, and later in the week. Would I have been there when they crucified my Lord? What about you?
The other image that stayed in my mind as I thought about the Palm Sunday story was that of Jesus when the little parade was over. Mark says that after the Hosannas, Jesus entered the Temple and looked around at everything. Then we went out....
What did Jesus see when he entered the Temple and looked around at everything. What did he notice? How many of us had parents or grandparents or aunts or uncles or teachers or preachers who told us we needed to behave because God could see everything and God was watching us? If you've heard me preach, you know that I'm not big on guilt or shame. There's been enough of that in the Church. No one has to carry guilt or shame without relief. Like the pilgrim in Pilgrim's Progress, I unloaded my burden a long time ago. When I picture Jesus entering the Temple and looking around at everything, I picture him seeing through the lens of love.
Especially this week it's important to remember that love, love in the Biblical sense of caring, is not weak and sentimental. That kind of love knows how to say No, and knows how to be tough when toughness is appropriate. That kind of love knows how to set boundaries and make them stick. It knows about holding loved ones accountable. It knows about discipline, especially self-discipline. That kind of love knows the pain of not jumping in to fix people who could be fixing themselves. Love knows about sacrifice, about a Cross.
Jesus entered the Temple and looked around at everything. What did he see? This past week one of my callers asked if we had a dress code at Rutgers Church. I told her that people over a certain age tend to dress up a little more than people under a certain age. What age? Pick a number, whatever seems good to you. I remember when seminary students were sent back from their weekend field education placements for wearing blue or yellow shirts. White shirts only was the rule back then. Thank God we've moved past that kind of narrowness.
I think if Jesus were to come in here today and look all around, he might want to look at our check books rather than our clothing to see what our priorities are. He might want to look at our Blackberries or calendars to see how we allocate our time. He would notice if we made him feel welcome as a stranger from another culture.
A few years ago I attended Sunday mass at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Cardinal Lustiger was the celebrant, and he was something of a celebrity in that city, even though he was an unpretentious man. The well-connected pillars of the congregation were seated in the front of the cathedral, and when Cardinal Lustiger processed down the center aisle, he greeted personally only three people: a homeless woman with her possessions in bags, an elderly man in a wheelchair, and a little child in the arms of an immigrant mother.
I suspect Jesus would go out of his way to greet those pushed aside in many churches and would want us to extend them a special welcome. I'm sure he would speak with the women and men who have lost their jobs, with the survivors of people killed in inexplicable gun violence, with people battling addiction, with people hoping to have their committed relationships recognized as marriages by the state and by churches.
As a spectacle, the Palm Sunday parade wasn't very impressive. But what it led up to, Jesus' death and resurrection, continues to deepen our understanding of God and show us the way to satisfying the deepest longings of our hearts.
Welcome to Holy Week, the revelation of God's unconditional, inclusive, affirming love.