Today, we started our service outside, palm fronds in hand, hearing the gospel reading of Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem. It’s the start of Holy Week. It the beginning before the end. It’s what came before the after…
We know what that feels like. There’s a moment when everything changes. One minute you’re two single people, deciding to build a life together. And then it happens. With a few words, you are tied together in a covenant relationship. With those two little words, “I do,” everything changes. I remind the couple that I do premarital counseling with that there is nothing in the wedding ceremony that asks people if they are in love. Instead, the question is, “Will you love this person… no matter what… for better – for worse…?”
Or the moment your family grows with children. One moment you are looking out for your own best needs, and suddenly, there’s a child – that never comes with an instruction manual. And if the second one comes, the manual you wrote with the first one often won’t work… you have to start over again.
Or think about a day of momentous change. FDR called December 7, 1941, a day that would live in infamy. Many of us remember our own unforgettable day… September 11, 2001 was a beautiful Fall day… until it wasn’t. And the world never looked the same again.
That’s what Palm Sunday ushers in. This is the week when everything will change. For three years, Jesus has been roaming the Palestinian countryside, preaching a new message of God’s love and grace. But on this day, Jesus comes home. Not to Nazareth where he grew up, or Bethlehem where he was born, but to the city dedicated to God, a city of power and majesty even when occupied by foreign intruders – Jesus comes home to Jerusalem.
It was from here that Herod sent the magi to find the infant king so that he could "worship" him, too. Fortunately, the wise men figured out that Herod's kind of worship was not going to do anybody any good and went home another way. Yes, Jesus is coming home ‑‑ like a king or local hero with a big "welcome home" parade. But Jesus isn't the kind of king we expect, and pretty soon, Jerusalem will be spinning on its ear.
The traditional idea of a Jewish messiah was a man who would restore Israel to power. He would reign over his people, giving back all that they had taken from oppressive dictators. His people had lived under foreign rule for too long. They thought they needed a mighty warrior, who would ride into town with majesty and power and command his people with a sword. He would be the one to restore the glory and honor of the Hebrew people. He would give the oppressors their due.
But Jesus doesn't ride into town on a white horse. No, he comes into town on a borrowed colt, maybe even a donkey, much like his mother rode on her defining journey. But Jesus is no ordinary king. He is different, the son of God, and he will redefine what kingship is all about.
Already this "triumphant entry" is a contradiction in terms. And yet the people poured out of their homes and businesses to join in a parade they did not even understand. "Who is this?" the people asked. And the ones who knew of him replied in the words of Psalm 118, "Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!" Did they really understand what they are saying?
And even as they were led by God to know Jesus, even as they called him Savior, Messiah, and Lord, their assurance in him was short-lived,-- for in few days they were among the ones calling for his death. Palm Sunday is the calm before the storm. For the crowd gets stirred up and they call for the death of the one they had hailed as Lord a few days earlier. And we can hardly believe it when God, who loved and created them and called them to this place, let them go on with their insane and contemptible behavior.
How can we look at the Palm Sunday scripture without remembering the rest of the story? Betrayal, arrest, torture, death, then resurrection. We often lose sight of how that story is continually replayed in our lives. Holy Week helps us to keep all the parts of the story together. Coupled with the joyous entry into Jerusalem comes the betrayal and denial of the disciples. Likewise, we cannot separate the broken body that died on the cross from the sacrificial nature of the gift. Resurrection seemed improbable and unbelievable but was the ultimate and inevitable outcome.
We call this week "Holy Week," and see before us the final events of Jesus' life. We look at the big picture, see the evidence of God's promise of redemption as it played out in Jesus' life. But Holy Week also helps us to see how those events impact our own lives as we deal with the problems of daily living. After all, when was the last time you needed the message of resurrection in your life?
In 1994, on a muggy Sunday morning, a small Alabama community was changed forever. One minute it was calm, maybe too calm. The congregation was preparing for a Palm Sunday celebration, a musical and dramatic replay of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem. The children and choir arrived early to practice. The service begins. And in a matter of seconds, that congregation was literally turned upside down. A tornado struck the building, leaving only a shell of the building they all knew.
Amidst the rubble, congregation members lay dying, people were crying, and a young pastor looked frantically for her daughter. Kelly Clem recalled the terror of that day. "When it was over, I looked up and saw the sky ‑‑ clear, with a patch of blue. Everything was hushed, calm. No rain, no wind, no thunder, no voices." Her five-year-old daughter lay trapped in the rubble, and as the rescue workers found Hannah and took her to the hospital, Kelly said that she could not imagine ever worshipping God again.
But looking down, she saw that she still wore the white and purple vestments of the day, and at that moment was reminded of who she was and what she had to do. And as she walked and climbed around what was left of the church, talking to members, praying, and crying with them, she felt the presence of God with her.
Hannah's death came as a great blow to Kelly and her husband Dale. As the days passed and funerals were held in the community for those who had died, Kelly wondered how she could go on. She could not envision a future, not even a few days away. As far as she was concerned, Goshen UMC didn’t exist anymore. Everything she thought she knew about her congregation was now in question. It wasn’t just a question of where they would worship. The real question was, “where would they get the strength to go on?”
But then the telephone began to ring. And one after another, the people expressed their need to hold the next week's Easter service at the site of their destroyed church. These were the people who had lost loved ones ‑‑ many of them were injured themselves. But instead of focusing inward on their own pain and loss, they were thinking about what happened to Jesus on the cross and understood – maybe for the first time what the disciples endured, and because of it, they longed for Easter to come. They needed to know without a doubt that Jesus' words were true when he said to his disciples, "You are not alone for I am with you always, even to the end of the age."
In today’s epistle lesson, we hear Paul reminding the Philippians about the depth of Jesus’ sacrifice – the sacrifice that we each might face in our lifetimes.
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. (Phil 2:5-8)
Jesus didn’t just come down to earth to have our common experience. He came to model behaviors, yes, but more importantly, an ethos – which we are called to take up for ourselves. For each of us, that looks different. More and more, I am reminded that it’s our response to God’s love for us that actively defines who we are. We love because Jesus first loved us.
As she prepared to bury the congregation’s dead and worked with her congregation to decide on what to do about Easter Sunday, Kelly Clem heard Paul's words from the 8th chapter of Romans often recited in the funeral liturgy: "Nothing can separate us from the love of God..." And she realized - these were the words of Easter. So with broken hearts and battered hope, the congregation and many supporters joined on Easter morning with the battered remains of their church building in the background reminded of the miracle that took place 2000 years before, and in their lives that week.
The storm often comes when we least expect it. It comes out of the calm of our lives when we were ready to celebrate ‑‑ or to rest ‑‑ or do something else besides pick up the pieces. Illness, financial worries, career crisis, death, global pandemic ... there are so many things that upset the balance of our lives and make us wonder, maybe just for a split second, if we have the strength or courage to go on.
And yet, like the people of Goshen UMC and survivors of all descriptions, our faith is stirred to remember that Jesus' triumphant entry into Jerusalem only seemed to end in death. The real ending is being written out every day as we remember the power of Easter morning and experience the resurrected Christ in our lives as we live and serve those we love and those we do not know.
It’s been almost 30 years since that tragic Palm Sunday tornado, but the church community has not only survived but thrived. By the next Easter, the congregation had broken ground for a new sanctuary, this time designed in the shape of a butterfly, a universal symbol of resurrection. And as the people carried cups and shovels full of dirt from the church site to the new one, mixing the old and new dirt together, Kelly was reminded of something her husband Dale said in the aftermath of their great tragedy, "You don't need faith for the things you understand, but for the things you don't."
That’s an excellent reminder as we begin our Holy Week journey together.
Amen.
Peace, Deb
(c) Deb Luther Teagan, March 2021
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