If not in the closeness with others, where? (Palm Sunday sermon, March 28, 2021)

 Scripture Reading: Luke 19:28-42

Through the Gospel, Jesus has slowly step by step been journeying from Galilee -- a kind of outback province, towards Jerusalem -- the great city where the temple and the temple priests, the king and the Roman governor are all to be found, holding sway and holding power over the people.

Along the way Jesus has been preaching and practising a kingdom of love shaped from the bottom up that he calls the kingdom of God.  He's gathered a small company of disciples.  He's also attracted a crowd of people curious and hopeful about what he may do next.

Before reading, it's helpful to remember that the story of his entry to Jerusalem is filled with all kinds of references to images, promises and hopes in the Hebrew Scriptures of what it will be like when God's Messiah king enters the holy city.

Jesus went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem... As he neared the city, he sent two of the disciples, saying to them, "Go the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there -- a young donkey -- that no one yet has ridden.  Untie it and bring it here, and if anyone asks you, "Why are you untying it?" tell them, "The Lord needs it."

They went [and found everything as he said, and did everything he told them to do .]  The brought the colt to Jesus, threw their cloaks on it, and put Jesus on it.  As he went along, people spread their cloaks on the road.

...The whole crowd began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the signs they had seen:

"Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!"

"Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!"

Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, "Teacher, rebuke your disciples!"

"I tell you," he replied, "if they were silent, the stones would cry out."

As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it, and said, "If you, even you, had only known what would bring you peace -- but now it is hidden from your eyes..."

Meditation

Where is God to be found, when faith is faint?  How does hope arise, when no day is better than the one before?  Where is love -- the kind of love that makes life possible and good -- when life is hard to bear?  

Do you ever feel the weight of questions like that?  I do, and my guess is that under the surface of old and new normal, many of our neighbours do as well.

Tuesday – the Tuesday before Palm Sunday – was a day like most others.  Given the pandemic, Japhia and I were both in the house all day – save for an early morning trip to her doctor’s clinic for her to receive a first dose of vaccine, and a neighbourhood walk I took in the early afternoon that included a stop at our local pharmacy for some meds for both of us. 

Given her chronic illness, the rest of the day was familiar.  She on the couch and in bed trying not to be sick, listening to a book on disk, and trying to take phone calls and texts.  Me in the study and around the house piecing together church work and house work and anything else that might be helpful.  Both of us in our own way silently wondering where God is to be found, when faith is faint, no day is better than the one before, and life is hard to bear.  Like so many others in the world.  Maybe like you too, at times.

Late afternoon we decided to nap.  It felt good to stretch out and decide just to sleep and escape.

I wonder why, though, it made the great difference that it did, all of a sudden, when one said, “Do you want to just roll over here?” and the other said “Okay”?  When one rolled over and snuggled a head into a waiting shoulder, and the other folded an arm up and over and around in a holding, protecting embrace?  Why suddenly and finally, no matter what distance and differences there are between us, what hurts of the past remain, what fears and anxieties about the future loom, the unmanageable seemed manageable, the unbearable bearable, and the unfaceable face-able.

Three things came to mind.

One, the opening and closing words of the New Creed of the United Church: “We are not alone; we live in God’s world… In life, in death, in life after death, we are not alone.  Thanks be to God.”

Two, the invitation stenciled in big letters on the wall of the narthex in our church – the very first thing people see as they come in the front door: “Let the love of God embrace you”

And three, that strange series of verses from Ecclesiastes 4:

Two are better than one;

they have a good return for their work.

When two lie down together, they keep warm;

but how can one keep warm alone?

Though one may be overpowered,

two can defend themselves.

A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.

In those verses, why – so all of a sudden, and from nowhere but the coming together and the closeness of the two – is there a third, and the three woven together?  Is it really, as some say, that God really is not so much above nor below nor within nor among us, as much as God is between us – to be found, almost conjured up, or maybe discovered in the relationship between person open to person?  At least, when the relationship between them is one of opened-ness?

*****

Today is Palm Sunday.  It’s usually a pretty fun day in worship.  Palm strips shared around and waved; some strewn all around the sanctuary.  A procession.  Happy music.  As much of a memory as we can muster of the festive mood of that first Palm Sunday.

This year, though, things are different.  Maybe giving us a chance to focus more closely than usual just on Jesus in the midst of all the hubbub – the still centre at the heart of the storm.  And on what he intends – and manages, to reveal about God in it.

Can we imagine Jesus just as he’s about to begin his entry to the city, as he did a few days later just before he began the process of his arrest, trial and crucifixion, taking time to pray his own version of the Serenity Prayer?  “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.  Thy will, not mine, be done.”

He cannot control the crowd, and how they will express their hopes and their needs.  Nor can he control the temple authorities and how they will handle the challenge to their control of the people.  Nor the Romans and how they will respond to the possibility of disorder.  Nor can he even control his disciples, and how they will respond to the tests facing them. 

Jesus has to let all of that and all of them go.  Let them all do what they need to do.  And focus instead on two things he can control – on where he will enter the city, and how?

And in the choices he makes, what does he act out and show us about God?  About where God is, when faith is faint?  About how hope arises, when no day is better than the one before?  About how the kind of love that makes life possible and good for all is known, when life is hard to bear?

Where he enters is by the back door.  To those who knew the layout of the city of Jerusalem and its customs – to the tellers and first hearers of this story, it is clear that Jesus enters the city at the other end from which the Roman governor, the Jewish king, or anyone else who wants to assert their authority over the people comes in.  He comes into the city not by the usual parade route, not where anyone important comes in to be feted, but through a back gate.  Through the equivalent to a servants’ entrance.

And the way he comes in?  On a donkey.  Not on a war horse, or any other kind of horse that will assert his superiority and his place above others.  Nor does he walk in a bold and commanding way at the head of a parade like a conquering hero at the head of a great company to take command and take charge of what lies before him.

He comes riding on a donkey.  Which slows him down when you think about it.  Makes it easy for ordinary people – even the halt and the lame – to walk along with him and surround him ahead and behind.  Lets them come close, as the poor and the outcast always have done wherever he’s been – close enough to reach out and touch him and be touched by him, without fear of being trampled by a horse in the process.  The choice of a donkey puts him on their level – brings him up close and personal with the unwanted people whom God especially loves – able for him to see them, and them to see him, eye to eye and face to face.

Does it seem maybe that Jesus isn’t claiming to be God in the way we and the world often imagine God, and that he feels no desire either to act nor be worshipped like that kind of God? 

Does it seem perhaps that the God he knows who is able to mend the world and everyone in it, is not so much the God above and beyond us, as much as it is the God who comes to life in the relationships we allow between us – in the openness and connectedness we allow ourselves to have with one another, and especially with the poor and the weak, the sick and the sorrowful, the outcast and imprisoned, the unwanted and the broken all around us?

Because where, for all of us, is God to be found when faith is faint? 

How does hope arise for any of us, or anyone around us, when one day is no better than the one before?

Where is the love that makes life possible and good for all, if not in the kind of close-ness and opened-ness between us and others, that lets God come to life?

See the Crocus Be the Crocus (for Fifth Sunday in Lent, March 21/21)

Reading:  Jeremiah 31:27-34  

 

Jeremiah is known as the Weeping Prophet.  He lived in the time of Israel’s Great Dismantling and Defeat.  All the sins of the nation’s past are coming home to roost, and unlike others who still hope for the best, Jeremiah sees only total destruction coming.  And he is right.  He is a sensitive soul who feels within himself the anguish that God feels, and the pain flows freely in his words and his tears through the first 29 chapters of the book of his prophetic reflections. 

 

Then in chapters 30-33 there is a shift.  These chapters come late in Jeremiah’s life, when he and the rest of the upper levels of Israelite society have been taken to live in exile in Assyria.  Everyone else now thinks that because of their nation’s unresolved sins over generations and centuries, they have lost their land and lost favour with God forever.  Of all people, though, Jeremiah now offers words of promise and hope in the four chapters we call his Book of Consolation.

 

“The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will plant the house of Israel and the house of Judah with human offspring and the offspring of animals.  Just as I watched over then to uproot and tear down, and to overthrow, destroy and bring disaster, so I will watch over them to build and to plant,” declares the Lord.  “In those days people will no longer say.

            ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes,

            and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’

Instead, everyone will be held accountable for their own sin; whoever eats sour grapes – their own teeth will be set on edge.”

 

“The time is coming,” declares the Lord,

“when I will make a new covenant

with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.

It will not be like the covenant I made with their forebears,

when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt,

because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,”

declares the Lord.

 

“This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel

after that time,” declares the Lord.

“I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.

I will be their God, and they will be my people.

No longer will any one each their neighbour,

or anyone their brother or sister, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’

because they all will know me, from the least of them to the greatest,”

declares the Lord.

“For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”

 

Meditation 

A number of years ago my son Aaron and I were in Boston for a few days.  It was a baseball road trip to see the Jays play the Red Sox at Fenway. 

We arrived the day before the game to do a little sightseeing in downtown Boston.  Leaving the motel, I let Aaron take the wheel so I could navigate.  Sometime before, I had lived in Boston for a year to go to school, and had visited since.  So, between the memory of the city in my head and the map I held in my hand, I figured me telling him where to go was the better way for us to get to where we wanted.

What I didn’t count on was the total reconstruction that year of the downtown Boston roadways.   

Everything was torn up, blocked off, re-routed.  New roads were being constructed.  Old roads were no longer roads.  Detours upon detours everywhere.

Frantically I tried to connect the routes we were being forced onto, with the roadways on the map.  It was hard to keep up with the changes.   

I figured if I just kept focused on the map, I could anticipate and sketch out a new route as we went.  The map would help me find a way for us through the mess of a maze that the city street system now was.

It didn’t work, though.  The detours, the changes, the unexpected turns and blockages came too fast.  I couldn’t keep up.  I wanted Aaron to find a place to stop so I could figure something out.

He just kept driving, though.  He asked which way in general was Faneuil Hall, where we wanted to get to.  I pointed and said, “Kinda over there.”

He told me, as sternly as he allowed himself, to put the map away.  And then for the next few minutes he just drove.  This way and that.  Fast and sure.  Sometimes, in what the map would have said was the wrong direction.  But he was unrattled by the maze he was negotiating, and in a matter of minutes he had us in front of Faneuil Hall looking for a place to park.

I was amazed.  I had no idea how we got there.  I couldn’t retrace the route we had taken if I tried.

“Once I knew where we wanted to get to, dad, I knew where we were, and it was easy to know how to get there.”  He’s always had that kind of internal compass.

The past year has been kind of like that.  The world and our life in it have been under reconstruction.  The old maps and guidebooks just haven’t been very helpful or relevant.  Almost everything has become a maze of detours, blockages, bumpy roads, and confusing directions. 

And it’s the people with good internal moral compasses who have been the most helpful to us as leaders.  People like Drs. Anthony Fauci and Bonnie Henry, and others like them have become like rock stars because of the way they so seamlessly embody commitment to good, strong science and equally good, strong care for people in need and compassion with those who are suffering.  They speak, we listen, and we feel at least a little bit better, encouraged, and ready to commit to the cause ourselves because of their informed and moral leadership.  They seem to have a good internal moral compass, and they help to activate ours.

And on other levels, in our neighbourhoods and communities, among friends and family, it’s been people who just seem to know the loving thing to do, who help us all get through.  And there’s so many of them, who through the past year just naturally seemed to find ways to reach out, to care, to drop off little gifts, to embody concern for others, to offer a word or a gesture of encouragement or gratitude.  People who when they could no longer volunteer, or help others, or do good for the world in one way because it was stopped for the pandemic, found another way to do it, because instead of just holding on to the map of how we used to do it, they have a heart that when it knows what actually needs to be done, helps them find a way to do it.

I mention this because spring is coming.  And this year, it brings with it the hope sometime soon of re-opening a lot of what has been shuttered and locked down over the past year.

It won’t be an easy or an altogether happy re-opening.  For instance, when we do regather at church, some of our friends and members of our spiritual family will be missing. When we drive downtown, we’ll notice some businesses gone. When we walk through our neighbourhood, we’ll meet – or maybe not meet anymore – families who have suffered deep losses that won’t be easy for them to recover from. Maybe we ourselves will emerge from the pandemic with emotional setbacks and spiritual scars that also will be hard to heal. And, when we read the news, we’ll see that we’re still in the same old normal more than we thought we’d be – with the rich still getting richer and the poor getting poorer with every crisis we face, and with all the other bad news, misdirection, abuse of power, injustice and on and on that the old road maps and guidebooks lead us into.

Thank God, though, that by the grace of God still at work in the world and in humanity, there will be people who offer the kind of leadership and the kinds of lives that will inspire and encourage.  People who in the big and little ways they follow their internal moral compass, will help activate that same holy presence and purpose in others.

Karen took a picture in our church parking lot a few weeks ago.  It was a picture of a few bright green crocus shoots coming up through the hard-packed gravel, just inches from a snowbank still remaining from the winter.

Thank God that new life and hope still come like that.  That love and compassion still poke up their heads.  That the promise of a good world for all still struggles to come into being, no matter how hard the world is, and how cold the reception.

 

Ten? Two? The important question is not how many.

The Journey So Far

Through Lent we have been lighting candles to help us find our way towards Good Friday and Easter -- the holy mystery of death and new life, of self-giving and resurrection by God.

Candle 1: God's commitment to all life on Earth, in the covenant God makes with Noah never to send another cataclysmic wave upon Earth because of human wickedness.

Candle 2:  God's plan to work from below rather than from above -- within history and through people, helping us to be the solution rather than just the problem.  God promises Abram and Sarai a family, and a place for them to live and become a blessing for the good of all life on Earth.

Today, candle 3: the Ten Commandments that God gives to the people through Moses, on their way to the promised land -- laws that spell out what real human living, that's good for Earth, looks like.

Many boil the ten down to two, though -- the Two Great Commandments to love God with everything about you, and love your neighbour as yourself.  It's what one member of our Worship Committee (whose thoughts will be sprinkled through the text below) calls a good "how-to guide to be a kind, respectful, lawful person -- keeping God in the forefront.  But to me," she says, "the work of God through Jesus through the stories of his teaching, lessons and acts seems more relevant.  You know, like WWJD -- What Would Jesus Do."

Jesus himself says the two really say it all.  Because what's more challenging, self-questioning, all-inclusive, and self-giving than love?

But at the same time, what's more open to self-serving interpretation and accommodation than a simple command to love?  When we apply it to our own actions and behaviour and what's expected of us, it's easy to make it fit with whatever what's comfortable and familiar.  And when we apply it to others, to make it broader, more challenging and more rigid -- geared towards what we feel we want or need from the other.

Maybe it's good to have Ten Commandments to guide us, and fill in the blanks a bit.  

Reading -- Exodus 20:1-20

In Deuteronomy 6, we read this direction from God about the commandments:

These commandments I give you, God says, are to be upon your hearts.  Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home, when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.  Tie them as symbols in your hands, and bind them on your foreheads.  Write them on the doorframes of your houses and of your gates.

And now … the Ten Commandments, as found in Exodus 20:1-20:

God spoke, and these were his words: I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, where you were slaves.

 

Worship no god but me. 

Do not make for yourselves images of anything in heaven or on earth or in the water under the earth.  Do not bow down to any idol or worship it, because I am the Lord your God and I tolerate no rivals. I bring punishment on those who hate me, and on their descendants down to the third and fourth generation. But I show my love to thousands of generations of those who love me and obey my laws.

Do not use my name incorrectly or falsely, for I, the Lord your God, will punish anyone who misuses my name.

Observe the Sabbath and keep it holy. You have six days in which to do your work, but the seventh day is a day of rest dedicated to me. On that day no one is to work—neither you, your children, your slaves, your animals, nor the foreigners who live in your country. In six days, I, the Lord, made the earth, the sky, the seas, and everything in them, but on the seventh day I rested. That is why I, the Lord, blessed the Sabbath and made it holy.

Respect your father and your mother, so that you may live a long time in the land that I am giving you.

Do not commit murder.

Do not commit adultery.

Do not steal.

Do not accuse anyone falsely.

Do not desire another man's house; do not desire his wife, his slaves, his cattle, his donkeys, or anything else that he owns.

 

 When the people heard the thunder and the trumpet blast and saw the lightning and the smoking mountain, they trembled with fear and stood a long way off. They said to Moses, “If you speak to us, we will listen; but we are afraid that if God speaks to us, we will die.” 

 

Moses replied, “Don't be afraid; God has only come to test you [i.e., to purify and sift you, to show who you really are] and put the fear of the Lord upon you, so that you will not sin.”

 

Meditation

Do you remember the direction by God to “write the commandments on the doorframes of your homes and of your gates”?  It makes me think of what we’ve done with the COVID Commandments – the Big Four of them.  I’m sure you know them, have them inscribed in your hearts, and have impressed them upon your children.

Wash your hands.  Wear a mask.  Keep a 2-metre distance.  If you show any symptoms of infection by the virus, have been in contact with anyone who has or may have it, or have travelled, go home and stay home.

We know the commandments so well because we have posted them on the door-frames and in the entrances of all our stores and public buildings and other places of public gathering.  They inform us and shape our ways of being together, every time we come in and out.  They help us be prepared for good ways of being community together.

And that’s the point of it.  The point of masks and hand-washing and distancing and staying home if there’s a chance we might have the virus, is not just to safeguard our own health and well-being, and our own survival of the pandemic.  Nor is it all just for the sake of political correctness and getting a gold star of approval.

Really, it’s for the health and well-being of others around us, of others who will be in contact with us, of others who have reason to be wary of us and of what we may be carrying.  Keeping the COVID Commandments is about acting for the good of others – even if it’s just for their peace of mind when they’re around us.  It’s about surrendering to, and giving ourselves to do what is needed for the well-being of all.

That’s what the Ten Commandments are about as well.

I used to think sometimes that keeping the Ten Commandments was about getting God to like me, and approve me, so I would prove myself worthy of heaven.  And that because I didn’t keep all the commandments – or maybe any of them really, when you see how Jesus interprets them – God was angry with me, and Jesus had to come to Earth to pay the price God needed paid before I could be let in.

But the Ten Commandments aren’t about getting into heaven.  They aren’t about pleasing God and making God like us.  They aren’t about qualifying for life after death with God.

The Ten Commandments are what it takes to make life on Earth good and the way it’s meant to be, right now.  The Commandments are what must be chosen to live together as we are meant to.  They are instruction in opening and surrendering ourselves to God and to others, which Jesus shows as the only way of being truly human – any other way we might try and might try justifying, being only illusion and temptation.

It’s challenging, though – not least of all because even with love of God and others spelled out in ten simple steps, there are still always questions … like the ones offered by members of the Worship Committee. 

Like about the first 2 commandments to worship only God and not allow any idols to attract our attention.  “These first two are not difficult to live out,” one person says.  But another asks “what are the ‘other gods’ that could come before God?  Distractions in our life, like work?  Crises in the media, that grab our attention and our focus?”  Sometimes it may be a real question of what is our ultimate authority, and our real priority in life.

 

The third commandment – against using God’s name falsely – came under special scrutiny.  “In this time of pandemic with its social distancing, isolation, uncertainty, and anxiety,” one person wrote, “I suspect that #3 - You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the LORD -- is taking quite a beating.  A lot of people blame God when things go wrong."  Maybe just the flip side of giving thanks to God when you come out on top? 

More than one person commented on how challenging the fourth commandment is these days.  Keeping sabbath is hard when “every day in this pandemic seems the same as the next, and it’s hard to keep track of which day is actually Sunday.” 

Someone else wrote, “the days tend to blur and boundaries are difficult to establish.  When I eat dinner, I am eating at the same place I am teaching lessons and marking.  Students email around the clock.  I need more divisions in my schedule.  So, what I do is carve out time free of computers screens and phones, to find some fresh air and either sunshine or stars, where I can honour the quietness.  That, to me, is holy time – never an entire day, but a small piece of every day.”

And the fifth commandment?  Honour your father and mother?  We can’t help but think of what it says about our having allowed our long-term care homes to deteriorate and become unsafe and unhealthy places.  But then, there’s also the fact that “these days, ‘Honour your father and your mother’ could be interpreted as ‘leave them alone’ because one could be a-symptomatic and infect your own parents. How does one deal with knowing you’re the cause of their suffering and possibly death?” 

And, in another line of thought, someone else wrote, “When I think of the older people in our community, I associate them with people who truly know what community means. They are often the people who cook and deliver meals to families who suffer a loss or are celebrating a birth. They are often the people who, when retired, volunteer their time to drive people to medical appointments or help at the Grimsby Benevolent Fund. They are often the people who offer steady and consistent leadership both in official organizations and also amongst more casual gatherings… We cannot just honour these people by cleaning up our LTC situation. We honour the elderly by checking in on those who are at home, especially those who are alone. We also honour them by continuing the community efforts that they have supported and by being true participating members of our own communities.” 

And then numbers six, eight and ten about not killing others, not stealing from others, and not coveting for yourself what others have.  “We already have cases where people don’t want to wait …their turn: they covet the vaccine others are getting – number ten.  Some folks have taken a vaccination in another country, or jumped the provincial line with fake I.D., or just plain took ‘extra’ vials from clinics – number eight.  Number six could come into play because someone who should have had one of those stolen vaccines could end up catching Covid-19 and dying.”  Or, because who have the means to be first and at the head of the vaccination line don’t think about others with less means, but greater need to be first and ahead of them. 

But then, one of our members also comments on how many ways we use the image of stealing, and how they’re not all bad.  "It's okay for someone to steal your heart, or a hockey player to steal the puck from an opponent, or a baseball player to steal a base.  In these scenarios, stealing is acceptable.  In fact, it's even viewed positively.  Does that mean there is good stealing and bad stealing?  For a homeless parent who resorts to stealing in order to feed his child, whether during the pandemic or any other time, is this good stealing or bad stealing?  Is stealing to help someone else bad?  The Golden Rule says to "love your neighbour as thyself."  Is stealing food so your neighbour has something to eat bad or good?  If we are to follow the 10 Commandments verbatim then, no, we shouldn't steal for any reason, but should we not help out our fellow man?"

Not simple, are they? 

Yet, God stands by them.  And tells us to stand under them.

These commandments I give you, God says, are to be upon your hearts.

More than just words on stone tablets to be recited, they’re to be internalized and lived out.

Impress them on your children.

Talk about them when you sit at home, when you walk along the road,

when you lie down and when you get up.

Yes, don’t just teach them and have them memorized.  Talk about them.  Work together on what they mean in different situations.  Make them a subject of community conversation.

Tie them as symbols in your hands, and bind them on your foreheads. 

Write them on the doorframes of your houses and of your gates.

Have them always close at hand, and close to mind.  Let them be your gateway, your way in to good life wherever you go, day by day.  Let them be the way you are guided beyond your self, to become a real human being, in surrendering and giving your life to what makes life good for all.

Thanks be to God, for not leaving us alone.