The Sunday of the Passion--Palm Sunday Year C

The Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday-Year C March 23, 2013 I can’t help but wonder: what’s the appeal of Palm Sunday? We usually have pretty large crowds on Palm Sunday (second only to Easter Sunday itself). So what’s the appeal? We are people of the Gulf Coast, so if there’s no Mardi Gras, then any parade will do? We like the pageantry and the party favors that we get to take home in the palm fronds? What’s the appeal of Palm Sunday? It starts off triumphant and ends in defeat. It starts with us crying out “Hosanna to the King” and ends with us crying out “Crucify him”. Why do we show up in full force on this strange day, year after year after year? I’m reminded of a song that was iconic of my childhood, a song that was made popular because of its presence in the movie Footloose. The song is “I need a hero” by Bonnie Tyler, and it gets to the heart of why I think we come to Palm Sunday. Tyler sings, “Where have all the good men gone and where are all the gods./ Where’s the streetwise Hercules to fight the rising odds?/ Isn’t there a white knight upon a fiery steed? Late at night I toss and I turn and I dream of what I need./ I need a hero, I’m holding out for a hero ‘til the end of the night./ He’s gotta be strong and he’s gotta be fast and he’s gotta be fresh from the fight./ I need a hero./ I’m holding out for a hero ‘til the morning light./ He’s gotta be sure and he’s gotta be soon and he’s gotta be larger than life. (Larger than life.) And we get that don’t we? Like Bonnie Tyler, we think we need a hero, and it looks like we’re going to get one today by the way we start off. Jesus rides triumphantly into Jerusalem amidst cheering crowds who proclaim him to be the new hero of Israel. We see our own deep longing mirrored in the crowds, and on Palm Sunday, we too try to make Jesus into a hero—one who rises up in the midst of conflict and who, through strength, courage, determination, and force, will come out victorious and triumphant. But that is not what we get in Palm Sunday and Holy Week. In his book Abiding that I have been reading this Lent, Ben Quash talks about how Jesus is not a hero, because a hero must always overcome conflict with conflict. He writes, “St. Augustine of Hippo, in The City of God, asserts that there is something more profoundly encoded in the universe that is more foundational, more primary, more ultimate than conflict. It is peace….Before all violence, lack or competition, there was (says Augustine) fullness or plentitude. In our epistle reading for today, Paul tells us and the people of Phillipi that Jesus discovers, uncovers, or taps into this fullness or this plentitude in a way that for us seems counter-productive and even non-heroic. Jesus taps into this fullness by self-emptying and by obedience. He gives himself away in and through deep trust in God’s love and in deep trust of the ultimate supremacy of peace over conflict. Today, Jesus is decidedly non-heroic because he empties himself and then acts out of a profound trust in the “deep and abiding power of peace.” So we don’t get a hero today, but we get something so much more. We get one who shows us the way. I know we all like to think that we could be heroes if it came down to it, but that is not the call of the Christian life. The call of the Christian life is to be imitators of Christ, who is the opposite of a hero. Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “And in this, Jesus is an exemplar for the rest of us. ‘Let the same mind be in you,’ Paul writes, apparently believing that this is within our reach. On Palm Sunday, we do not witness the singular death of a singular child of God. Instead, we witness the kind of self-emptying that we too are capable of. The verbs of our lives can flow from the same Christ mind, this same way of seeing ourselves in relationship to God and to the world. Sooner or later we too will be called to be obedient to death. In the meantime, we are as free as Jesus decide how we will spend our energy: on self-protection or self-donation, on saving ourselves (and our religious institutions) or giving ourselves away?” (Feasting on the Word 173). Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death-- even death on a cross.