Blessed Is the One Who Comes in the Name of the Lord

Blessed Is the One Who Comes In the Name of the Lord 

Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29, Mark 11:1-11

Today we have an embarrassment of riches. The resources of the church are overflowing, and it will be hard to limit ourselves enough to be able to make any sense of this day at all. 

This is Palm Sunday. In the early years of my life in the Catholic Church there were great liturgical traditions that were linked to this day in the church year. There were festive processionals. There was glorious music, especially in the pre-Vatican 2 Latin liturgies, reserved just for this day. It required the choirs to rehearse a lot, to handle all of the special music for Palm Sunday and the rest of Holy Week. And then, Easter had to be bigger still. 

In recent years, many protestant congregations have mixed Palm Sunday with the Good Friday texts, calling it Palm/Passion Sunday, because so few in the congregations are able or willing to participate in Holy Week observances. When I was an installed pastor I would alternate, one year Palm Sunday, one year Passion Sunday. 

The issue is this. Within the church year, Sunday is always a celebration of Easter. If you give up chocolate for Lent, technically, you can eat chocolate on Sunday, because Sunday is not part of Lent. You know there are forty days of Lent, but if you count the days between Ash Wednesday and Easter, it is more than 40, that is because Sunday does not count as Lent. It is true, but I digress. Palm Sunday is a challenge because of how it exposes the fickle sentiments of human in crowds acting in public life. On Palm Sunday the people are singing the praises “Blessed is He Who Comes in the Name of the Lord”, by Friday morning the same crowds are screaming “Crucify Him!” Public acclaim is fickle, and endorses the most shallow of our vanities. There is likely no worse way to evaluate performance and value than by public acclaim or Nielsen ratings.  

Today, we add to the treasure of worship resources, by celebrating the Confirmation of four of the church youths into full membership. They have spent a lot of time and energy preparing for the opportunity to confirm the promises made for them at their baptism, and claim the faith as their own. The Palm Sunday date adds a certain sense of gravitas to the celebration. We welcome them into the church, and welcome them into a sober awareness of the challenges that they are accepting by choosing to be members of the church, and servants of the living God.  

So I will speak directly to those who are about to claim this faith tradition as their own, and those of you who wrestle with your own faith in an ongoing way - might listen in. 

I pray that God will give you the wisdom to sort out what honors the God of Creation, from what simply flatters the people of the church, even if it is your own church. They are only rarely the same. A church that wants to be honored usually does not know God very well. 

I hope that you will come to appreciate that your understanding of a good and generous God, will continue to put you in awkward situations with some people you like. Some people believe God is mean and vengeful, and cannot or will not understand how you can possibly see God differently than they do. 

I hope we have prepared you to stick up for the poor, and the different, who are scapegoated so that the community can avoid responsibility for systemic failures, and avoid the messiness of respecting others who are different from themselves. It happens a lot you know. We worry about unruly African-Americans and immigrants, even as white men with bombs and rapid-fire rifles commit mass murders. 

I pray that you will continue to bless those who are differently abled, and have any sort of disadvantage. It is the God we know, who enables us to be a friend to many whom your neighbors cannot bear to even look at. 

In all of this, I hope that you have found a variety of ways to pray. I hope you have discovered that life is hard, and unfair, and most importantly, God “gets it.” God goes with you into the most difficult situations of your life. You are never alone. You are never alone. 

I pray that you have found that the resources of the historic church are more than museum pieces, but are actual tools that will help you to craft a life that makes the world better, because God cares, and works through you. 

I pray that you know - when your heart is breaking, God suffers with you. And the best news of all, God is willing and able to restore you and make your heart bigger and stronger and able to love again. 

This church you join is a fellowship of souls who know God best, through the life, teachings and active presence of Jesus of Nazareth. That Jesus, you got to love that Jesus. Without Jesus, I know I would never have gotten past all the talk about angry gods. Without Jesus I would never have been able to say I loved God, because otherwise God seems too remote and too scary. 

So we confirm you today, and hope that through lessons, and the conversations with mentors, you get it. We love God and take that seriously. As you love God, you will mentor others, maybe even in a church far away from here. That church might not look like this. It might not worship the same way, but if you find the presence of the good and caring God there, then it can be a place for you. 

So the God we know and love, is the creative spirit that brought all of creation to life, and wondrously, made each of us spectacularly unique. We are gifted to be in relationship with this God. A relationship that permits us to alternately love God, and call God hateful names from the depths of the private hells that our lives will cause us to pass through. God never turns God’s eyes away from the troubles we see. 

The ancient psalmist, a Jewish mystic and poet, wrote: 

O give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his steadfast love endures forever! Let Israel say, "His steadfast love endures forever."

Open to me the gates of righteousness, that I may enter through them and give thanks to the LORD.

The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.

This is the Lord's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.

This is the day that the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.   

This God we love is maddeningly beyond our understanding. God resists our efforts to be reduced to what we can control, or even predict. What saves us, is that through Jesus we believe that God cares, God knows, and God remains faithful. Let all of us say, “His steadfast love endures forever.” “His steadfast love endures forever.” Amen.