Palm Sunday 2010

How quickly the crowd turns. How quickly we move from the triumphal entry to the crucifixion. We telescope into one day in this Palm Sunday/Passion Sunday liturgy a week of events. But really the time from Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and to his death on the cross in the narratives of the gospels is but a week’s time. How quickly things can turn.


Obama signed Health Care Reform Legislation into law this week, what everyone is calling an historical piece of legislation. 600 people wanted to view the signing and he used 22 pens to sign his name so that he had enough to give away to the most important people who helped bring this achievement about. I actually donated some money the other night and will get a T-Shirt that says Heath Reform on it. And I get to co-sign the legislation with him and my name along with thousands of others will be archived somewhere for posterity’s sake. It is a jubilant moment for the President and for many who have waited for this moment for decades.

At many times throughout the year this legislation looked doomed and Obama’s presidency even seemed like a failure, so much was riding on this one achievement. And now how quickly the tables have turned and he is now the one who succeeded in a long line of democratic presidents who have tried and failed. Polls now show a majority of people in favor of the legislation and glad it passed. But the threats from the other side about how short lived this victory will be continue. Efforts are already underway to repeal and replace. Who knows how quickly the voters will turn and what will happen in the November election.

Life is a roller coaster of victories and defeats. On a personal level we move from some major accomplishment one day to a serious blunder the next. We might get praise from many for something we have done really well, and feel good about ourselves for a moment, only to find ourselves criticized the next day for something else we did. Sometimes it is different people who support and undermine us; sometimes it is the same people. One day a friend might be all for you and the next you are in a fight with them. This happened often with my dear wife, and I do it all the time to my son. One day I praise him for his grades and creativity and intelligence, and the next I am yelling at him for being irresponsible about some chore he failed to do.

In the face of this I know I experience some tremendous mood swings. Sometimes one of the hardest things to maintain, in the shifting sands of our personal relationships, is a continuing sense of our identity, our own worth. Who am I? What is at the core of me? What is it that I value, that hold dear? What are my deepest convictions in the face of some much change around me. One of the hardest things is hanging on to a sense of our identity when doing the exact same thing and being the exact same person gets drastically different reactions all the time, praise one minute, criticism the next. This is at the heart of abusive relationships, when the mechanism of control is to keep you guessing, at your very core, about who you are as a human being.

In our corporate life we know all too well the drastic swings in public opinion, often driven by the media. Our perceptions of what is popular, what is “in” and what is “out” constantly change. Politicians live and die by opinion polls. And just like the crowd in this Passion narrative, we have witnessed in our own day mass movements that seem to suddenly rise from nowhere. Individual wills and personal differences give way to a mass mentality that drives whole nations of people to do good or evil. Some are amazing stories of spontaneous democratic revolutions like the students in Tiananmen Square in China in 1989 that were faced down by the military. The Velvet Revolution was the peaceful transition of power, begun also in 1989 by students, which led to the defeat of the Communist Party and the establishment of the Czech Republic. These are two positive examples.

But then there are the horrors of genocide in Rwanda, when suddenly in 1994 a whole people turned against another and at least 800,000 people were killed in a maniacal cry for ethnic cleansing. Sarajevo, once the city of brotherly love and the host of the international community for the Olympics in 1984, only 10 years later was in ruins, devastated and destroyed by civil war and ethnic rivalries. We watched in our own county the swing of public mood through the attacks of 911, to the invasions of other sovereign nations, to the sense of betrayal when no Weapons of Mass Destruction were found in Iraq. We naïvely entered triumphantly into Iraq and Afghanistan having no idea of the mass reaction we would unleashed against us.

How do we live our lives on an even keel in the midst of this kind of change, one minute on top of the world, and the next failing miserably? How can we know ourselves at all, if we allow the constantly shifting world around us to be the measure of who we are? We live in an ambiguous world at best. It is hard to tell whether things are getting better or worse, whether there really is a loving and good God behind the fleeting moments of joy, amid the pervasive suffering we experience. It seems impossible to really be sure about who we are given the examples of both good and evil that fill our history as a human race.

At the core of this lack of certainty is a deep fear that life is meaningless, and more personally, that our life has no meaning. I know this is a struggle for all of us who have faced death personally or have come in direct contact with the suffering of the world. It is overwhelming. We ask, “Why? How could it be?” in a cry that goes to the depth of our being. As Christ stood there before the crowd, and then on the cross he too wondered if God had forsaken him, he too cried deep and universal cry. He sweated blood in the garden. He too wondered if his life was not a failure, and if all of that had gone before was not in vain, ending, as it was about to, in death.

Trying to protect ourselves from the truth we fear, we hide behind all sorts of defenses. We hang on to prejudices in the face of overwhelming evidence. We create scapegoats and blame others for our suffering. We lash out violently at times to protect ourselves from having to face our worse fears. We recognize this kind of behavior all too well in our personal lives and the course of the history of nations. And Pilot and others waited for Jesus to do the same. Where are your armies Jesus? Where are the masses who will join you to violently overthrow the Romans? Where is your God who will intervene and come and rescue you from the cross? But Jesus says, “My Kingdom is not of this world. My truth is not the truth you fear. I know something else.”

The book of James says this: “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.” James also says in this passage to “Consider to pure joy,” when we face trials of many kinds, because perseverance is working in us a mature and complete faith. He explains also in the passage that we might get mixed up about our value, thinking, for example, that if we were poor God somehow had not blessed us, or if we were rich God had somehow shown us more favor. Rather James turns the tables on the rich and powerful saying they will pass away, and he exalts the poor and suffering. He calls on us to see things from God’s perspective. James says, “Don't be deceived, my dear ones. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. He chose to give us birth through the word of truth that we might be a kind of first fruits of all he created.”

Through Christ we are first fruits of a new creation. God in Christ has revealed to us this truth. It is possible to know that we are beloved children of a loving God. This unchanging truth is at the core of who we are, no matter what happens to us. No matter how the world changes around us, supports us or turns against us. No matter whether things seem to be getting better one day or we are overwhelmed the next by nature’s destruction or the seemingly bottomless evil of people. This gift has been given to us from above, beyond anything else by which we are tempted to measure ourselves. This gift of forgiveness and acceptance and welcome by our God transforms us, reconciles us and brings us a peace beyond understanding. This is the meaning of our lives. It is the hope we have to offer to the world. We are in service to this Good News, and our hope is that all can one day know that they too are beloved children of God, and the world can be transformed by this revelation.

This is the truth that Christ ultimately knew about himself, when he says, “Father, I put myself in your hands,” and this same assurance he offers to us. In our Philippians passage for today, Paul says, “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. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

Oscar Wilde who wrote the children’s stories, The Selfish Giant and the Happy Prince, tremendous stories all about sacrificial love, famously said, “All art is quite useless.” I really like this phrase. The artist cannot measure the value of his or her work based on the success or fame it will bring. The artist cannot be dependent on the fickle nature of taste and trends and what is and isn’t acceptable at the moment. Art cannot be used for propaganda for some momentary political gain. It cannot even ultimately be measured by the change it may produce in people’s hearts, or the way it will influence the progress of the world. The artist creates from some deeper motivation; more akin to the “pure joy” that James says is to characterize the Christian life as we persevere through it all. From my Presbyterian roots I give you the Westminster Confession’s opening line: “The chief end of humanity is to glorify God and enjoy God forever.” When I think of this I think of wildflowers on high mountain tundra, blooming in incredible splendor for whom? For what? I believe there is in them the same that is in us, a simple desire to glorify God, the pure enjoyment of simply being beautiful to God.

We as Christians certainly hope for the redemption of the world, we long for the new creation, for that day when all the good gifts from above will be shared by everyone. We long for the coming of the Kingdom of God when all will know that they are beloved children of God. But on this day - when the jubilant entry of our King of Kings is quickly overthrown and we see the Lord and Savior of all dead upon a cross - on this day, let us find within ourselves that deeper motivation, that gift from above, that gives us assurance, that even in this darkest hour, our lives still have meaning, and we can continue to proclaim, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son . . .”