Arrival

Propers: Palm Sunday of the Passion, AD 2022 C

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

So you say you want a Savior?

A grim irony permeates our readings this morning, present even in our name for the day: Palm Sunday of the Passion.

Yes, friends, we begin with an ecstatic welcome, joy and hope and song, flinging cloaks before Him, spreading palm fronds on His way, all the while crying out, “Hosanna! Hosanna to the Son of David!” Yet by the time we’re halfway through the service, we’re all baying for His blood: “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” Now if that ain’t the most depressingly realistic human response to divinity I don’t know what could beat it.

Centuries we waited for this Man, for this God. Centuries we prayed and pined and prepared for the Messiah, for the Christ, to come in His glory. And as soon as He shows up, we hammer Him to a Cross. Because of course we do. Sounds about right, doesn’t it? Way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Ah, the tension, the irony—expectation vs reality. And yet, if it had gone another way, would we ever have heard of Jesus Christ at all?

The notion of a Messiah developed within Judaism when all else seemed lost. Everything they knew of God, everything pertaining to the Covenant at Sinai, had been wiped off the board by the Chaldeans of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. Remember the promise made to Abraham, yes? I’ll make of you a family, I’ll make that family a nation, and all the peoples of the earth shall be blessed through you.

Remember the fulfillment of that promise through Moses, who led Israel to freedom, who gave them a Law and a land. Then came the perpetual kingship promised to David, and the House of God on earth constructed under Solomon. Who could now doubt that Israel had been given a mission by God, to be His chosen priestly people?

But that all got wiped out: no more nation, no more Temple, no more king. No more Law of Moses; now came the law of Babylon, the Code of Hammurabi. It had all failed: the kings, the priests, all defeated, all destroyed. And yet—the people survived, as a people. They clung to the promises of God, to the stories of their forefathers. They clung to the Prophets, who proclaimed that God had gone with them into Exile, that here He was doing a new thing.

The land would be returned, they said, the Covenant renewed, the Temple rebuilt. And a new king would come! Not like the kings and priests of old, who failed one and all, but a new and cosmic Christ, an Anointed One come down from Heaven, come down from God: an angel, perhaps, or even scandalously the Lord Himself. And so they waited and they watched and they wondered. And they started a countdown, thanks to the Book of Daniel, a countdown to the Christ, lasting centuries. Or at least that was the interpretation.

Time passed. Empires rose and fell: Greeks, Persians, Romans. And the appointed hour at last drew nigh. There were many claimants, as one might expect, many would-be Messiahs both before and after Jesus; all largely forgotten now, because Rome had gotten pretty good at killing them off before they became a problem. Handy with a sword, those boys. So when Jesus shows up at the Passover—after three and a half years of going about causing a stir—you can almost hear the Romans tightening their grips upon the pommels of their swords.

If they have to kill Him to keep the peace, the fabled Pax Romana, they absolutely will. But they will avoid violence if possible, not for principle but for profit. Blood is bad for business, and the spice must flow. Messiahs were but a periodic nuisance. They preached a good game, gathered a following, took up the sword, and got crushed flat. It was like mowing the lawn.

So when Jesus shows up at the most volatile and potentially violent religious festival of the year—a celebration of deliverance from slavery, deliverance from foreign servitude—this could go one of two ways. He can back down, or He can die. But Jesus engages in a bit of classic theater. His brilliance shines forth in that whenever opponents gave Him two options, He always found a third way through.

He comes toward the city from the east, over the Mount of Olives and toward the Temple, just as God is prophesied to do, as the Messiah is expected to do. But He comes forth riding on a donkey. See, in the ancient world, when a king approached a city and his intentions were unknown, he would ride on a horse to indicate hostility or on a donkey proclaiming his peace. And this is enough to keep the pot from boiling over, to prevent a war in Jesus’ name.

But it doesn’t do anything to dispel expectations: for in riding on a donkey, He comes in peace, it’s true. But He also comes as a King. He also comes as the Christ.

This expectation that the Messiah ought to be a warrior-messiah is what drives the entire drama of Holy Week. We want Jesus to fight. Judas wants Jesus to fight. The zealots want Jesus to fight. Even the Romans know what to do if He does. But that isn’t why He’s come. He hasn’t come to pick up the sword and send all the sinners to hell. He has come to bring us peace, to trample down death by death, and to descend Himself deep into Hades, there to defeat all the powers which enslave us: the devil, the world, and the flesh; sin and death and hell.

He’s not the Messiah we wanted. But He is the Messiah we need. And thank God for that.

Today, my friends, is Palm Sunday of the Passion. Today it both ends and begins. Walk with us now, from the palms through the Table to the Cross and the Tomb. Come and witnesses the Resurrection of our Lord, His Passover from death to life. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, the Lamb who stands as though slain—for our Holy Week has now begun.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.