![Picture](/uploads/5/3/1/4/53145165/published/a-liturgyofthepalms-medium.jpg?1555516277)
Peter JB Carman
Emmanuel Friedens Church, Schenectady New York
Palm Sunday, April 14, 2019
Reading: Luke 19:28-40
I.
We gather today to remember a victory parade, conducted early. It’s a joyful day, and everybody likes a parade! But what kind of a parade? A controversial procession, at the time!
This morning we read one of the earliest detailed accounts of a people’s march, a march to assert their positive vision for the emancipation of humanity; to claim a new kind of peace; to assert the power of the Way of Justice over against the forces of all the Herods and Pilates and Caesars of the world.
We pray today! And as we pray, as we wave our palms with the ancient parade, as we remember, we acknowledge that it was and still is a hard march, a pilgrimage that will lead inexorably to a cross, and then more crosses, before it comes to the gates of God.
Luke's Gospel tells us that as they prepared to come down from the Mount of Olives, the crowd started to sing and shout, saying, "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of God! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!" For Jesus’ followers to name him "king" that day was a dangerous move. They were showing a courageous commitment by going public.
The other reform-minded religious leaders of that day, the group Luke refers to as “some of the Pharisees, who were in the crowd” probably wanted to be supportive. But when they heard the crowd ramp it up, they understood this was an incendiary moment. They pleaded with Jesus to tell his followers to stop their shouting. But he wouldn’t listen to them. The response of Jesus echoes to us down through the centuries. He answered, "I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out."
Whether we are ninety something or nine, you and I have all lived our entire lives in an era, a century, when the stones have had to shout out. It’s not new! One of my early memories of stones shouting is from 1976, when a few days after my 18th birthday, the television news and then newspapers reported that in Soweto, South Africa, the children and youth had taken to the streets to protest a national decree that made Afrikaans, the language that Bishop Desmond Tutu referred to as “the language of the oppressor”, the official medium for instruction in their schools. It didn’t go well that day, for the more than 20,000 marchers. Hundreds died at the hands of a brutal police response, and in the escalating violence that followed.
In the lovely light of hindsight, we can acknowledge that when nobody else was there to do it, the children themselves rose up one day to protest. The folk that were expected to keep silence-- the stones began to shout. With the advantage of historical perspective that includes the eventual overcoming of apartheid—even though the struggles for justice in South Africa continue-- we can say it was worth it. But, that day, the world didn’t have historical perspective. We who looked on, whether nearby or from afar, had no hindsight when it happened.
II.
The years before and since that day have been a time when Christianity has been deeply divided, and yet also has come to be sharply reshaped. We have matured into an awareness that we cannot, like the religious leaders of so many eras, pretend that Christianity has nothing to do with the suffering of ordinary people. We cannot pretend that the Palm Sunday procession has nothing to do with the oppression of Pontius Pilate’s regime. We can longer spiritualize the suffering of Jesus, pretend that the cross of Jesus has nothing to do with the reality of brutal control that has been the lot of much of humankind across the centuries including in our own time.
In Paul's letter to the church at Philippi, there is, included in the words of the letter, perhaps the oldest Christian hymn we know of. It is a song to help the faithful take on the costly path of this prince who changes all the expectations: "Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God did not count equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied himself....” What a strange sort of leader this Jesus was, who was willing to empty himself, identifying with the harsh situation of the enslaved. What a strange sort of Prince: “As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, "If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace. But now they are hidden from your eyes."
III.
You and I live in a time and place with struggles of our own, with silences too often left unbroken. You don’t have to go to Soweto to find it! Look around. Our natural desire is to avoid the hard subjects, steer clear of controversy, and to bring everyone together. And yet our world, our nation, our town, all continue to be deeply scarred by violence: marred by the readiness of some to manipulate others to hatred, by some taking advantage of others. The ancient words still echo: "I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out." And so… sometimes we march, sometimes we rail, sometimes we weep with Jesus.
Most of the time, the choices that confront us—silence on the one hand or witness to the way of Christ’s peace deep rooted in justice on the other —these are not in the large public realm, nor in the public eye, but in our day to day lives. Most of the time, our march, our testimony, comes in the form of very hands-on decisions to make, chances to take, words of love and truth to speak, however hesitantly or imperfectly. And we cannot immediately see positive results from what we do or say, who we are. Yet we continue in faith. It’s who we are.
To quote a few words we shared from Maya Angelou on this past Wednesday evening: In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats - maybe it's imperative that we encounter the defeats - but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. Human beings are more alike than unalike.*
IV.
We are a faith community that understands Christ as the Prince of Peace. And we know that’s not just as a nice title. We claim Jesus as the real and unlikely leader who still guides us toward a world in harmony with God and with each other. That isn’t the easy way to go! It isn’t necessarily the fast growth way to go. We are asking people to join an effort, a movement, a march, which can have a steep price tag personally. So be glad if a few feel the call! Be glad of the company when they come by twos and threes and ones and fours! This is the crew willing to throw down their robes and overcoats, for the Prince of Peace to ride on!
Little or huge, the march goes on, the drumbeat goes on, the challenge to seek the peace of Jerusalem and of Schenectady, of Capernaum and of Capetown. It goes on. In the favelas of Brazil, the parade cries out for clean water and an end to police brutality. In the streets of Hyderabad, India, it is women of Hindu, Muslim and Christian heritage, learning to transcend hate and mistrust by teaching each other to sew. On the edge of downtown Schenectady, New York, part of the processional is a joyful little church that believes in offering a poor person as much respect as the privileged, sends its members and their children on marches for the rights of lgbtq people. There’s this curious little community that acknowledges that we have a whole lot of self-education to do. It’s a church that chose to screw a big banner into the bricks outside, a banner that tells the world in Spanish and Arabic and English that we are ready to receive you. We’d love to visit.
You and I are a piece of the parade. It’s everywhere, this procession, we can find it in the most ordinary and most extraordinary things. We are little people, yes, but we are little people all over the place, little people who refuse anymore to be overwhelmed by violence and fear and poverty and defeat. Little people who are happy to insist on the path of Love.
We are walking with the Prince of Peace; we are marching in the light of God. And if we were to not do so, well, look, this is a matter of conviction. Should we be silenced or lapse into quietude, we believe that if need be, the rocks themselves will rock, the stones will sing it out. We are marching in the light of God. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is the one who comes in the name of God. Amen.
*Maya Angelou, the Art of Fiction No. 119, as quoted by Dan Piepenbring in The Paris Review, May 28, 2014
Illustration: Morgner, Wilhelm, 1891-1917. Entry of Christ into Jerusalem, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=54247 [retrieved April 17, 2019]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wilhelm_Morgner_001.jpg.
Notes from the Vanderbilt website: Wilhelm Morgner, a German Expressionist painter, trained for the clergy, although he quickly turned to painting as his calling. His close identification with Jesus Christ manifested itself in works that expressed his powerful understanding of the Passion, exemplified here by his color-saturated vision of the Entry into Jerusalem. Sadly, he died a young man, one of millions, on the fields of Flanders during World War I. Still, his discipline to his work left enough paintings to allow reflection upon the creative response to a deep faith and love of Jesus Christ.
Emmanuel Friedens Church, Schenectady New York
Palm Sunday, April 14, 2019
Reading: Luke 19:28-40
I.
We gather today to remember a victory parade, conducted early. It’s a joyful day, and everybody likes a parade! But what kind of a parade? A controversial procession, at the time!
This morning we read one of the earliest detailed accounts of a people’s march, a march to assert their positive vision for the emancipation of humanity; to claim a new kind of peace; to assert the power of the Way of Justice over against the forces of all the Herods and Pilates and Caesars of the world.
We pray today! And as we pray, as we wave our palms with the ancient parade, as we remember, we acknowledge that it was and still is a hard march, a pilgrimage that will lead inexorably to a cross, and then more crosses, before it comes to the gates of God.
Luke's Gospel tells us that as they prepared to come down from the Mount of Olives, the crowd started to sing and shout, saying, "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of God! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!" For Jesus’ followers to name him "king" that day was a dangerous move. They were showing a courageous commitment by going public.
The other reform-minded religious leaders of that day, the group Luke refers to as “some of the Pharisees, who were in the crowd” probably wanted to be supportive. But when they heard the crowd ramp it up, they understood this was an incendiary moment. They pleaded with Jesus to tell his followers to stop their shouting. But he wouldn’t listen to them. The response of Jesus echoes to us down through the centuries. He answered, "I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out."
Whether we are ninety something or nine, you and I have all lived our entire lives in an era, a century, when the stones have had to shout out. It’s not new! One of my early memories of stones shouting is from 1976, when a few days after my 18th birthday, the television news and then newspapers reported that in Soweto, South Africa, the children and youth had taken to the streets to protest a national decree that made Afrikaans, the language that Bishop Desmond Tutu referred to as “the language of the oppressor”, the official medium for instruction in their schools. It didn’t go well that day, for the more than 20,000 marchers. Hundreds died at the hands of a brutal police response, and in the escalating violence that followed.
In the lovely light of hindsight, we can acknowledge that when nobody else was there to do it, the children themselves rose up one day to protest. The folk that were expected to keep silence-- the stones began to shout. With the advantage of historical perspective that includes the eventual overcoming of apartheid—even though the struggles for justice in South Africa continue-- we can say it was worth it. But, that day, the world didn’t have historical perspective. We who looked on, whether nearby or from afar, had no hindsight when it happened.
II.
The years before and since that day have been a time when Christianity has been deeply divided, and yet also has come to be sharply reshaped. We have matured into an awareness that we cannot, like the religious leaders of so many eras, pretend that Christianity has nothing to do with the suffering of ordinary people. We cannot pretend that the Palm Sunday procession has nothing to do with the oppression of Pontius Pilate’s regime. We can longer spiritualize the suffering of Jesus, pretend that the cross of Jesus has nothing to do with the reality of brutal control that has been the lot of much of humankind across the centuries including in our own time.
In Paul's letter to the church at Philippi, there is, included in the words of the letter, perhaps the oldest Christian hymn we know of. It is a song to help the faithful take on the costly path of this prince who changes all the expectations: "Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God did not count equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied himself....” What a strange sort of leader this Jesus was, who was willing to empty himself, identifying with the harsh situation of the enslaved. What a strange sort of Prince: “As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, "If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace. But now they are hidden from your eyes."
III.
You and I live in a time and place with struggles of our own, with silences too often left unbroken. You don’t have to go to Soweto to find it! Look around. Our natural desire is to avoid the hard subjects, steer clear of controversy, and to bring everyone together. And yet our world, our nation, our town, all continue to be deeply scarred by violence: marred by the readiness of some to manipulate others to hatred, by some taking advantage of others. The ancient words still echo: "I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out." And so… sometimes we march, sometimes we rail, sometimes we weep with Jesus.
Most of the time, the choices that confront us—silence on the one hand or witness to the way of Christ’s peace deep rooted in justice on the other —these are not in the large public realm, nor in the public eye, but in our day to day lives. Most of the time, our march, our testimony, comes in the form of very hands-on decisions to make, chances to take, words of love and truth to speak, however hesitantly or imperfectly. And we cannot immediately see positive results from what we do or say, who we are. Yet we continue in faith. It’s who we are.
To quote a few words we shared from Maya Angelou on this past Wednesday evening: In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats - maybe it's imperative that we encounter the defeats - but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. Human beings are more alike than unalike.*
IV.
We are a faith community that understands Christ as the Prince of Peace. And we know that’s not just as a nice title. We claim Jesus as the real and unlikely leader who still guides us toward a world in harmony with God and with each other. That isn’t the easy way to go! It isn’t necessarily the fast growth way to go. We are asking people to join an effort, a movement, a march, which can have a steep price tag personally. So be glad if a few feel the call! Be glad of the company when they come by twos and threes and ones and fours! This is the crew willing to throw down their robes and overcoats, for the Prince of Peace to ride on!
Little or huge, the march goes on, the drumbeat goes on, the challenge to seek the peace of Jerusalem and of Schenectady, of Capernaum and of Capetown. It goes on. In the favelas of Brazil, the parade cries out for clean water and an end to police brutality. In the streets of Hyderabad, India, it is women of Hindu, Muslim and Christian heritage, learning to transcend hate and mistrust by teaching each other to sew. On the edge of downtown Schenectady, New York, part of the processional is a joyful little church that believes in offering a poor person as much respect as the privileged, sends its members and their children on marches for the rights of lgbtq people. There’s this curious little community that acknowledges that we have a whole lot of self-education to do. It’s a church that chose to screw a big banner into the bricks outside, a banner that tells the world in Spanish and Arabic and English that we are ready to receive you. We’d love to visit.
You and I are a piece of the parade. It’s everywhere, this procession, we can find it in the most ordinary and most extraordinary things. We are little people, yes, but we are little people all over the place, little people who refuse anymore to be overwhelmed by violence and fear and poverty and defeat. Little people who are happy to insist on the path of Love.
We are walking with the Prince of Peace; we are marching in the light of God. And if we were to not do so, well, look, this is a matter of conviction. Should we be silenced or lapse into quietude, we believe that if need be, the rocks themselves will rock, the stones will sing it out. We are marching in the light of God. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is the one who comes in the name of God. Amen.
*Maya Angelou, the Art of Fiction No. 119, as quoted by Dan Piepenbring in The Paris Review, May 28, 2014
Illustration: Morgner, Wilhelm, 1891-1917. Entry of Christ into Jerusalem, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=54247 [retrieved April 17, 2019]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wilhelm_Morgner_001.jpg.
Notes from the Vanderbilt website: Wilhelm Morgner, a German Expressionist painter, trained for the clergy, although he quickly turned to painting as his calling. His close identification with Jesus Christ manifested itself in works that expressed his powerful understanding of the Passion, exemplified here by his color-saturated vision of the Entry into Jerusalem. Sadly, he died a young man, one of millions, on the fields of Flanders during World War I. Still, his discipline to his work left enough paintings to allow reflection upon the creative response to a deep faith and love of Jesus Christ.