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?
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