The Lord’s Need and Ours
Palm Sunday, March 16, 2008
Matthew 21: portions of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem
Elena Delgado, preaching
Some US cities have postponed their annual St. Patrick’s Day parade today, rescheduled the celebration because it conflicts with Palm Sunday services. Here in Buffalo, final preparations are being made for the parade to travel in front of the church. May this fact startle the reading and hearing of another parade – a parade, not for a saint, but for a peculiar savior. Let us pray: Through these human words, may your holy Word be heard. Amen.
Every year on this Sunday, the church throughout the world recalls through word, song and drama the events of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, the capital city of Jewish life and identity. I preached on this text last Palm Sunday, April 1st to be exact. Though not a full year since then, we are not the same as a year ago last Palm Sunday. Take a moment to remember how you are different. What has changed in your life, the world since then? (PAUSE)
While some parts of our lives have not changed, can we agree that much has? You and I are not the same. This Palm Sunday, Jesus enters these changed lives of ours: he comes into a different city this year, a different congregation, country, a different world. He comes not bound by time nor the turning of calendar pages. So we hear this Jesus-story as though for the first time. As I heard it this year, my attention is caught by Jesus’ response to anyone who asks why the disciples are untying the donkey. “If anyone says anything to you, just say this, ‘The Lord needs it.’”
Jesus is no stranger to Jerusalem. He has walked there before, he is familiar with its many gates, all access in the city. But today, as he approaches, he needs to come a different way, by a new means – purposeful yet unassuming, focused though humble, symbolic and heavy with meaning, yet understood by children: atop a lowly pack animal. Living this peculiar, God-shaped life, Jesus knew that the way into the broken, ever-changing lives of women and men, into the world’s institutions and culture, would look inherently foolish, ridiculous.
“Blessed are the meek,” he said, “for they will inherit the earth.” The world says, “This is crazy – open your eyes. We know that the powerful acquire the wealth of the world.”
“You have heard it said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.’” The world cries, “This is no way to stop terrorists.”
“If you gain the whole world but forfeit your life, what good is that to you?” “Well, that’s not going to get the economy moving again,” shouts the world.
Jesus’ words and actions were threatening as often as they were life-giving. The God-shaped Man needs a new way into our broken world. He’ll take the foolish-to-the world, the suffering way, if he must. In the process, the Lord makes known his need – his need of us, with all our brokenness, all our fear to accompany him into the heart of darkness, the cross – drawn there by the heart of God.
But do we need a God who needs us? One that asks nothing of us except, perhaps to be unloosed from all that keeps us tethered to the familiar, the secure, the safe? Do we, does the world, need a God that seeks our freedom from all that binds us? Can’t we do without Immanuel, God-with-us, God-for us? Wouldn’t a spectator God, one standing on the sidewalk watching the parade go by, work just as well?
Here’s the rub of today Palm/Passion Sunday: the Lord needs a different way into our lives and that way is the hard way, the suffering way. That we need a God such as this is part of the tension, too. Dietrich Bonhoeffer met a God he had never known while confined in Hitler’s prison. “God allows himself to be edged out of the world and onto the cross,” Bonhoeffer said, “and that is the way, the only way, in which God can be with us and help us . . . only a suffering God can help.” Only a God who will break can know our brokenness, only a wounded healer can make us whole
Martin Luther King, Jr. said that “everybody can be great because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve . . . you don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve.” For a congregation whose members have not only a college degree but several and advanced diplomas, in a congregation where subject/verb agreement is very important, and while most of us don’t know the second theory of thermodynamics (though I’m certain a few here do), we certainly know a lot about many, many things. Yet we still need one thing, King counsels: “A heart full of grace, a soul generated by love.”
This is the God we are invited to see today, to join this week: a God whose heart is full of grace, to experience, in this strange man on a donkey, a soul generated by love. If you watch any part of the parade today, I hope you enjoy it. As you do, I ask this of you: look for the humble, the unassuming among the crowd, the ones on the farthest edges of the festivities. Does your God ask anything of you in relation to them? Does God need you for some unique, special task in regards to their life? Do you need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love? Do you need a God who suffers with you, for you?
The parade outside will be starting soon, as the Jesus-parade ends for us. We move from palms and praise into the week called Holy, a week of spectacle and passion. Ever since Jesus expressed his need for a new way to enter the city, ever since the Lord showed in word and action his fidelity to the deepest truth he knew, ever since God sought a radical way of entering our broken lives through a Lord full of grace, nothing has ever been quite the same again since. Amen