March 16, 2008

Palm Sunday
Matthew 21:1-11
Philippians 2

DOTZERO

A man born blind sees for the first time and his sighted neighbors don't recoHow do you feel about Palm Sunday? Many of us are just never quite sure. Usually we start with a parade of sorts and then not much later on this week we arrive at the cross. Palms and parades... to passion, suffering, and death.

In many recent years here we've done parades - and will again - mini-parades, at least - starting out there [in the narthex], walking in here to music, led by children with these palms and rhythm instruments and Hosanna! songs. A lot of churches do Palm Sunday that way or even more so. My friend Rod Anderson used to get his picture in the paper every year riding a real, live donkey around the St Andrew parking lot on Palm Sunday.

I don't know if he still does that, and I haven't tried it, but one year we planned to parade outside and around the church. We were still in our very first building, old St Huberts (where the concert will be this afternoon) - and around that church it's all level ground, with sidewalks on three sides, so, easy walking! I planned that Sunday several weeks ahead but didn't tell anyone, wanted it to be a surprise, and it was! I didn't figure on the change in April weather, heavy overcast, brisk chilly winds, and plenty of rain the day before, and of course the grass hadn't started growing yet where the sidewalks ends behind the church. Imagine what that did to nice dress shoes and high heels! Well, let me just say that no one seemed to be nearly as joyful and enthusiastic as on the first Palm Sunday!

In many of our churches it's called Passion Sunday now in order not to miss the story between today and Easter. Not that crucifixion has entirely been forgotten, but Good Friday has dropped from many radars. In some Protestant and evangelical churches it's never been observed, and even for Catholics and Lutherans it's no longer well-attended. The story of the cross and its significance seem far less prominent. Well, we like winners, don't we?

Last year, two prominent New Testament theologians published The Last Week: A Day-by-Day Account of Jesus' Final Week. Now, I confess I haven't read the book but I did read their article in Christian Century. And they picture for us an interesting historical contrast. [1]

At the beginning of that last week in Jesus' life, two processions entered Jerusalem at about the same time. It was the beginning of the week of Passover, and the city, as always at this time of the year, was tense. The Jewish people were remembering and celebrating their freedom from the Egyptian empire even as they were chafing under the iron fist of the Roman empire. Two large and very lethal riots had taken place precisely at the time of Passover in previous years.

So this week, every year, the Roman governor rode up to Jerusalem from his imperial capital on the coast, the city of Caesarea. See it in the movie of your mind: Pontius Pilate in parade-dress uniform, mounted on a stallion at the head of the imperial infantry, troops brandishing their weapons, double-timing from the west into the city to reinforce the Roman garrison.

Jesus entered the city from the east in another procession. Pilate rode a war horse. Jesus came on a donkey. The New Testament makes it clear that Jesus, too, planned this entrance in advance. The contrast, though, is also clear: Jesus versus Pilate, the nonviolence of the kingdom of God versus the power and dominance of empire. Two arrivals, two parades, two points of entry - and, say these writers Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, our Christian season of Lent is about our repenting for being in the wrong parade. This day and this week are about Jesus' invitation to us to leave the wrong parade and join the alternative of faith that leads to the cross.

Jesus proclaimed God's rule through sacrifice; Pontius Pilate enforced Roman rule through the power of empire - a collision of two kingdoms. And which one eventually succeeded? We are inclined to say, God must have, since, look, there's Easter!

But we cannot get to Easter without the reality and significance of Good Friday. We cannot leapfrog from Palm Sunday to the resurrection, skip the washing of the disciples' feet and Jesus' thirst upon the cross, go quickly to his ascension into glory, because, in the words of St. Paul, "Strength is made perfect in weakness" - God's strength... and ours, too.

That's something Lutherans call the theology of the cross, which (at least this season) is the final key ingredient building the molecules of Lutheran DNA we've been describing during this Lenten preaching series. The cross, fundamental to who we are as a Christian community - that God is most revealed to us (and for us) not in parades and glory but in suffering, humiliation, defeat, and death.

Yes, God is sovereign, eternal, and invincible. Yes, there is resurrection, and Easter is not an after-thought. Easter is our comfort at the point of death and death is all around us. But before we get there, God has been already there in weakness and in death. "God comes in the most unlooked-for ways, in the most unexpected places - " [2] instead of intimidating winners high in the saddle in the procession from the west, comes from the east, comes seated on a beast of burden. Strength made perfect in weakness.

And if true for God and God's own Son, for his disciples, too - a certain realism and humility about ourselves. We've been wrong before; we all have, and we know it. We've all been too impressed from time to time by the trappings of success so obvious the in empire. We've been marching in the wrong parade, been swayed by rulers telling us to get on board; we've heard ourselves crying one thing on Palm Sunday and something else again on Friday.

That's the paradox and the temptation of Palm Sunday - we love the parades, cheering crowds, great songs, and the sense that now, finally, we just can't lose. But should it rather be Passion Sunday, passion in the sense of heart-throb, God's heart passionate for us, suffering for love, unwilling to let us go, willing to sacrifice everything to get us back. Where we mark the starting point of faith determines where our hearts and souls find home.

There's a town (or at least a spot on the map) on Interstate 70 west of Denver, a place called Dotsero, named by whatever railroad first laid track in that area. They pegged Dotsero, called it that, in order to have a starting point, a Dot Zero, for mileage. All railroads in that part of the United States are measured from Dotsero, Colorado. [3]

There's nothing spiritually wrong with using Palm Sunday as your Dot Zero. But when you're lost or scared or unsure of your way with God, when you suspect that what you've built or where you work is a house of cards, when you're part of an economy or an empire that relies on privilege and expansion, entitled to consume whatever's in its way, you need a good fixed point, and I believe that point is the cross, for there it is that we see - even more than in Easter, in fact - we see in the cross God's passionate commitment to this sad, frail world.

"He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, and... he humbled himself and became obedient to death." That is the story of this week. It begins in glory and it ends in glory, but Holy Week for us is measured from Dot Zero, a cross on a hill called Calvary on Friday afternoon. And from that point, all life begins.

Nate Castens
Chanhassen, Minnesota

[1] "Jesus final week: Collision course," Marcus Borg & John Dominic Crossan, Christian Century, March 20, 2007. Their book is as titled, HarperSanFrancisco, 2007.

[2] Kelly A. Fryer, Reclaiming the "L" Word, Augsburg Fortress 2003, p. 44

[3] Thanks to Ann MacIlravie and Paul Erbes for this info