Celebrating with Our Eyes Open

Celebrating with Eyes Open  

Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29

Matthew 21:1-11

Today marks the beginning of Holy Week. We call it Holy Week because it contains the events of Jesus in Jerusalem during the time up to and including; the passion, crucifixion, death and burial, and resurrection from the dead. This is the very core of our identity as followers of Jesus the Christ. 

Palm Sunday is an enigma. For people like me who prefer simple logical progressions, Palm Sunday is a detour. The mood of the Temple authorities toward Jesus had taken a turn towards the dark side. We have already noted through the Lenten scriptures, how Jesus of Nazareth fits the profile of a violent revolutionary who threatens the precarious balance of power between the Roman occupation, the puppet Jewish King - Herod and Sons, and the Temple Council. 

There is no greater proof of the validity of the Council’s concern than the historical record. In 70 CE, 30 to 40 years after the death of Jesus, Rome responded to an uprising by destroying the Temple and causing the Jews to scatter and abandon Jerusalem. While they misinterpreted the role of Jesus of Nazareth, the evidence is clear, the status quo relied on control of the population. 

Palm Sunday does not fit the straight forward progression. Jesus and his band of merry men arrive in Bethpage at the base of the Mount of Olives. They acquire a donkey for Jesus to ride. There is a humorous side to this. Matthew follows the same outline in discussing the life of Jesus as was played out in the gospel of Mark. In many places where Mark says there was one person healed, Matthew has two. Here he says Jesus rode both the donkey and the foal. 

It is no accident that a donkey was chosen. The gentiles would mock the Jews as being a lower or working class people. While an important gentile would ride a horse, only a Jew would make an entrance on a domestic animal. So Jesus fulfills the scripture, arriving on a donkey, but he also works in and through the cultural bias alive in the land at the time. 

I am sure that the crowd gathered rather slowly. The procession that takes place in Jerusalem today starts at the church at Bethpage, at the base of the south side of the Mount of Olives. The road leads up to the top. Today it is a narrow residential street with plenty of traffic, even our tour bus went up the hill to the Church of the Pater Noster. 

The walk down the west side of the Mount of Olives, directly facing the Temple Mount in the walled “Old City”, is a narrow, stone path. There is very limited vehicular traffic on any given day down this portion of the ceremonial path. Today the march ends at the Garden of Gethsemane and the Church of All Nations. The Kidron Valley, between the Mount of Olives and the city, now contains the equivalent of an Interstate Highway, so it is no longer a part of the procession.

I imagine that the location helped feed the growing crowd - as the gathering would be visible for miles, as they made their way down the west side of the Mount of Olives. People who had gathered in Jerusalem for the Passover at the end of the week would be very interested in any diversion. When they heard it was the talked about prophet Jesus of Nazareth, the crowd would swell with the faithful and the curious. The whole thing took on a party atmosphere. 

They called Jesus the son of David. Being a part of the family of David is a requirement for being the rightful Messiah. David was the second King of the Jews. He was the leader of Judah, the south portion of the land for seven years after the death of Saul, before uniting the entire land. When he joined north and south together, he selected Jerusalem to be the capital. It was near the line between north and south, and it had never been the capital of either the north or the south. It was conveniently only 4 miles from David’s hometown of Bethlehem. 

So David selected Jerusalem as his capital. It became a holy city when he brought the Ark of the Covenant to the city. Later, his son Solomon, built the glorious First Temple on the prominent Temple Mount, with a commanding view of the countryside, and the natural safety of being situated on the side of a cliff, limiting ways in which it can be attacked. 

Jesus made his entry clearly within the view of the Temple Mount. The Palm Sunday procession, with all the shouting, echoed up the walls of the canyon, and the priests and scribes had a clear view of the arrival of the prophet. And their anxiety builds. 

The shouts of the crowd make a book end to balance the shouts of the crowd later in the week, imploring Pontius Pilate to “Crucify him!” The fickle nature of crowds is exposed by this sharp contrast, only days apart. Public opinion can be swayed pretty easily, at least in those days. It should be clear that when Pilate places the label “King of the Jews” on the cross of Jesus, he forever links the faithful and the political. For us, Jesus expresses the fundamental sanctity of all creation.  

So here we are. It is Palm Sunday. We wave our palms to welcome the arrival of our Lord and Savior, knowing full well that some in the crowd are just caught up in the moment. Some in the crowd do not have a genuine understanding of how Jesus represents the love of God, and represents the perfect way into eternal life with God. 

We live in a world where many profess to be Christians, but seem only to be attached to the cultural and sentimental values of the faith. The call to live with God’s love and forgiveness, the command to love our neighbors and our enemies, these are often lost in the translation. We are not judging others, but acknowledging that faithfulness requires that we do more than follow the crowd. 

We celebrate Palm Sunday with our eyes open. We know where we are headed. We know that being faithful does not mean that we get a “Get Out of Jail Free” card. We face all of the challenges and heartaches that everyone else goes through. We simply do not face our troubles alone. We count on the love of God, supported by the faith community, so that we can persevere no matter what pain and evil comes our way. 

We pray that the love of God strengthen our faith as we move through our own challenges. We pray that this year, as we walk through Holy Week, we are blessed with new understanding, greater appreciation of God’s love. We pray that the light of God’s truth within us, be enough to comfort and support those around us, who feel the call to faith, even while they are growing an understanding of what that might mean.