April 13, 2025 – Palm Sunday
Mark 11.1-14, 20-26
Livin’ On a Thin Line
Palm Sunday
This morning we’re going to look at Jesus’ final week of life. The gospels don’t all agree with one another on the details, but I think this is emblematic of the fact that there are so many different ways of understanding each story, which only adds to the complexity of Jesus’ experiences in those last days.
On Sunday the streets of Jerusalem were filled with people shouting. “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest!” We can almost hear those two thousand year old Hosannas ringing in our ears this morning. I wonder though if we might hear them differently if we translated the word Hosanna from Hebrew to English – the word is actually a phrase first found in the 118th psalm: “Save us, we beseech you, O Lord – save us!” This is what the Hebrew Hosanna means in English. What did those Palm Sunday crowds who lined the streets waving their palm branches and spreading their garments on the road like a red carpet welcome, what did they want to be saved from? “Hosanna – save us, we beseech you, Jesus!” In the language of the church it might be their sins – what else are we saved from, especially during Lent, if not our sinfulness? But then again who goes to a parade thinking about the sorry state of their souls? You and I almost always read Palm Sunday’s triumphal entry as a story about the people of Jerusalem coming out to welcome Jesus as the object of their worship, as he is ours. And this could be one understanding. But their Hosannas are followed by, “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!” Remember, the city of Jerusalem was under Roman occupation. If the people were shouting about the restoration of the kingdom of David, one of their most revered rulers, could it be that their welcome was less a spiritual one and more a political one? Then the hosannas would make a lot more sense, wouldn’t they? Save us, we beseech you, O Lord – save us from the Roman occupation. Save us from our oppressors – save us from those who unjustly rule over us. This could have been the reason for their exuberance that day – and as well, it could have been their excitement about seeing this Jesus, this miracle worker and teacher and healer up close and in person. Were they welcoming someone they hoped would prove to be their political savior or their spiritual Messiah? Maybe they thought Jesus would be both. Or maybe, like the Christian Nationalism of our own day, they couldn’t tell the difference between the two.
On Monday, Jesus went to the Jerusalem temple, and in a memorable encounter, overturned the tables of the money-changers. “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations,” he said, ‘but you have made it into a den of robbers.” And we probably have our own mental image of Jesus striding into the temple, flipping the tables, coins flying everywhere, and the pigeons and other animals being bought and sold chirping and screeching and squealing off in all directions. It makes for a memorable tableau. But what is that enigmatic little story just before the one about the temple, the episode that left disciples scratching their heads in curiosity and confusion? Diane read it for us this morning: on their way to the temple, Jesus and the disciples passed by a fig tree, and Jesus, maybe he was hungry, who knows, checked to see if the tree held any fruit. But “It was not the season for figs.” And Jesus, seemingly impetuously, cursed it: “May no one ever eat from you again!” I can just hear the disciples as Jesus strode away: “What was that all about?” Was it a premonition of his cursing the money changers? Was it a fit of pique? The poor tree didn’t do anything wrong – it wasn’t the season for figs – Jesus of all people should have known that. Mark never tells us, although he does relate the story of walking by the dead and withered tree the next day and turns it into a parable of prayer and faithfulness. But Jesus had done that many times before without killing any trees. The disciples are right for scratching their heads in perplexity. And, perhaps, they were beginning to wonder if he was OK.
On Tuesday, most biblical writers believe, Jesus spoke at the Mount of Olives. You’ll probably remember some of this speech from the first Sunday of every Advent when the lectionary points us toward these visions of doom and destruction.
“When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines… brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child, and children will rise against parents, and have them put to death, and you will be hated by all because of my name.”
It is a startling and frightful vision. Is Jesus projecting his own inner turmoil? Is he anticipating his own destruction? Again, the writers never really tell us. They leave a lot for us to figure out for ourselves.
On Wednesday – well, we don’t really know much about Wednesday. But the church, eager to fill a void, has decided this must be the day Judas agreed to betray Jesus for 30 pieces of silver; in fact the church has even come up with a name for it – Wednesday is called “Spy Day.” But the evidence for this happening on Wednesday is somewhere between flimsy and nonexistent, so we’ll let Wednesday take care of itself.
On Thursday, Donna Schaper describes in the UCC Lent Devotional how many church folks will say that Maundy Thursday is one of their favorite services of the year, or if not, then a close second to Christmas Eve. Some of it probably has to do with candles, she muses, some of it the familiar readings of the Last Supper, some of it probably the sense of deep solemnity the evening bears. One of my former parishioners still sends me an email every year on Maundy Thursday saying he will forever remember the service’s closing words from John’s gospel, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” Among the candles, communion, the solemn hymns and anthems, the familiar if disturbing story of fellowship and betrayal, and Jesus’ closest friends falling away one by one, still the night holds a special place in our hearts, and even if it is a hard story to hear and recreate, it speaks to us in a place that is reached by few other occasions. And I think this another instance of the thread we have seen running through the stories of Jesus’ final days. There are multiple ways of understanding the night of the Last Supper, just as there are multiple ways of understanding everything else that occurred that week. Is Thursday about table fellowship and sharing a communal meal? Is it about Jesus’ words of institution, Do this in remembrance of me? Is it about Judas’ betrayal? Is it about Jesus’ arrest? Is it about Peter’s denial? Elaine Pagels, Professor of Religion at Princeton University, whose new book Miracles and Wonder looks at the seminal events of Jesus’ life, has an answer for these wonderings. Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes and Yes. Yes, it is about all these things, even the contradictory ones.
This is the thread, the thin line, that runs through Holy Week. Is Jesus’ triumphal entry a religious celebration or a political rally? Yes. Is the point of Holy Monday the irrational killing of the fruitless fig tree or the only slightly more rational overturning of the tables in the temple, the money-changers, the sellers and the buyers alike? Yes to both. What about those crazy visions from the Mount of Olives that would challenge the finale of Game of Thrones for its violence and destruction? Was that a fever dream, a literal prediction of the disciples’ future or the result of Jesus’ anxiety of a fate which was growing clearer by the day? Yes, yes and yes. Is Maundy Thursday a day of triumph or tragedy? For this matter, was Good Friday about the death of Jesus or the cross’s victory over death? Yes and Yes, Yes and Yes.
Each of these stories is an invitation, an invitation to walk with Jesus ourselves and take the pulse of the moment. How does each of these episodes in the closing days of Jesus’ life touch us? How do they speak to us? What is our visceral, immediate reaction? What is our studied reflective reaction? It will be different for you than it is for someone else, and this is how it should be. One of the legacies of Jesus’ last days during Holy Week is to put us into the stories and ask where and how we connect to them. If you lived under an oppressive and mercurial government, who would you most welcome on Palm Sunday, a spiritual hero or a liberator who would overthrow a corrupt regime? Which would outrage you more, what Jesus did to the innocent fig tree or what the money-changers were doing to their customers in the temple? Would you walk away from the supper table worried about Judas’s betrayal or whistling “The Old Rugged Cross?” Remember, after they left the supper, Jesus and the disciples went up to the Mount of Olives and sang a hymn.
I think the gospel writers want to avoid providing us with simple answers to these questions. I think they want us to figure it out for ourselves, because there is no one right answer or interpretation for everyone. The only right answer, the only proper interpretation, is in the way each moment in Jesus’ last week speaks to you, and to me. This is that thin line we walk: it could be either, it could be both, it could be all of them. And it could change for us. Maybe this year I’m standing at the cross on Good Friday wondering how God could have abandoned us and next year I’m standing in the same spot certain that this moment is the triumph of life over death, even when to all appearances it looks to be the victory of death over life.
Holy Week will not straighten all of this out for us. But I do hope it invites us to wonder where these stories intersect with our own, and what God is doing with us as we prepare for the resurrection of Easter Day.