Rachel had flour in
her hair, on her clothes and all over her arms.
Passover was only a few days away and she had to bake the matzoh,
unleavened bread, for her large, extended family. Timing was crucial; the dough could not be
allowed to rise or it would have to be thrown out. So, when she heard the noise of the crowd
outside, she was annoyed. But in spite
of herself, she asked a passerby what the shouting was about. "It's Jesus," hs said, "He's
coming into the city".
"Who?" she asked, "Jesus?
Oh, you mean the prophet from Galilee.
That's just what we need... another prophet... someone else to tell us
to repent and grovel..." And Rachel
went back to her baking.
Isaac was etching
delicate details into a kiddush cup for a wealthy client when he heard
the noisy crowd. Like Rachel,
concentration and timing were crucial.
He had promised that the cup would be ready for Passover, but curiosity
got the better of him. Isaac's shop was
near the city wall, so he dashed up the nearby steps and peered out toward the
Mt. of Olives. As the crowd drew near
the gate, he recognized the figure on the donkey. "It's Jesus," he thought, "the
one they say works miracles and casts out demons". And he thought of his young daughter who
experienced severe seizures. "I
wonder if he could cure her." And
without thinking again of his client's kiddush cup, he dashed out to
meet the impromptu parade.
"Hosanna to
the Son of David! Blessed is he who
comes in the Name of the Lord!"
"What?" Jacob thought, "What is this blasphemous
racket?" Jacob put down the stylus
and rubbed his eyes. Copying Torah
scrolls by the light of dim oil lamps was tedious and gave Jacob headaches, but
it was what scribes did.
"Boy," Jacob said to a young apprentice in the corner,
"Run outside and find out what's going on." The boy ran out and quickly returned. "It's Jesus, sir; the prophet from
Galilee." "Prophet",
Jacob spat the word. "He's no
prophet. They say he eats with thieves
and talks to prostitutes. He's a madman
and that's for sure."
Deborah was
spinning fine linen. Her son was to
become a man this Passover when he read from the Torah scroll in the synagogue,
and she was making him a new cloak.
Their house was near the street that led out to the Lion Gate, the gate
that faced the Mt. of Olives. Deborah
heard the shouting and listened while it grew louder and nearer. She stopped spinning and listened, got up,
and went outside. The crowd came down
her street and she stepped back, so that she would not be crushed. "Hosanna, hosanna, hosanna!" they
shouted wildly. "This is the
messiah", shouted one man as he flung his garment before the donkey's
feet. But the man on the donkey had
about him an unearthly calm that Deborah had never before seen, a calm that
seemed to reach out and embrace her.
"Messiah," she thought.
"God's anointed... I wonder".
Prophet, miracle
worker, madman, messiah... all partly true and all partly false.
A prophet to be
sure. Jesus came to speak God's word,
and in his stories and discourses he spoke God's word more truly than anyone
ever has or ever will. But he was more
than a prophet. "In the beginning
was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God". Jesus not only spoke God's Word; Jesus
embodied God’s word in a unique way.
Miracle worker...
even granting for some exaggeration in the telling, the miracle stories in the
gospels cannot be dismissed. The Oxford
New Testament scholar, Austin Farrer, used to ask his students, "Just how
ignorant was the average first century Jew?" Men and women of the first century did not
know about television and nuclear power, but they knew that the blind usually
stayed blind, the crippled usually stayed crippled, and they certainly knew
that the dead stayed dead. But when
Jesus appeared, the blind saw visions, the crippled threw away their crutches,
and the dead came back from the grave.
"Go and tell John what you see and hear. The blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, and
the poor have good news preached to them".
Mad man... was
Jesus mad? By the standards of the
world, one could argue that Jesus was mad.
"Blessed are the poor, those who mourn..." The poor blessed? The grieving special objects of God's
favor? Jesus turned the world's wisdom
on his head. If you want to find God, he
said, go to the poor, the hungry, the homeless, not to the rich and
successful.
Messiah... God's anointed... First century Judaism
expected a messiah but not this messiah.
They expected a messiah who would put their enemies to the sword, not
one who would tell them to love their enemies and do good to their
persecutors.
"Who do they
say that I am?" Jesus had asked his
disciples. Palm Sunday's spontaneous
parade makes the question acute.
"Who is this stupendous stranger?" There were many answers-- prophet, miracle
worker, mad man, messiah. "Hosanna to
the Son of David" the crowds shouted, but did they know what they were
saying? Did they mean it? The speed with which their ecstasy became
anger tells me that the adoring crowd of Palm Sun. was as fickle as crowds
always are.
But we are not here
to sit in judgment on the faithlessness of that crowd on the first Palm
Sun. For Jesus comes into our midst as
surely as he came into Jerusalem two thousand years ago, and the question still
has an edge to it: Who do you say that
he is? Who do I say that he is?
Jesus no longer
comes among us as he did on Palm Sunday.
He will not come down Maryland Parkway on the back of a donkey, surrounded
by an adoring throng shouting his praises.
He comes among us in unexpected ways.
Jesus usually comes
into my life through the lives of others.
During a summer I spent as a chaplain at large general hospital in
Birmingham, he came to me in the person of a laborer from the country whom I
initially dismissed as simple and uninteresting. "A typical north Jefferson county coal
miner", was how I described him to my supervisor, a description which earned
me a well-deserved rebuke. I was
challenged to find out what made this man unique, to find out where, if
anywhere, God was working in his life.
But then as I sat with him and listened to the story of how he struggled
with a chronic illness and a broken marriage, I realized that God was there not
in fullness but in emptiness. God was
there inviting me to experience mystery not in receiving but in giving. God was there inviting me to experience love
as I showed love to another person.
Where and when does
Jesus come into your life? In your
life's companion, your children, your friends and fellow workers. We know with certainty that he is present
wherever there is great need.
"Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these, you
have done it unto me".
Jesus does not play
fair; he never overwhelms us. He always
leaves open the possibility of refusal; he always comes to us in disguise and
we may not recognize him.
Ultimately, we can
only recognize Jesus if he opens our eyes.
"Unless the eye catch fire, it cannot see; unless the ear catch
fire, we cannot hear." (William Blake)
Many years ago I
was in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and walked with hundreds of other pilgrims from
the Mt. of Olives into Jerusalem. It
was, as Yogi Berra said, "just like deja
vu all over again". It was the
route that Jesus had walked, and the other pilgrims, many of them Palestinians,
were descendants of the crowd that had shouted, and thrown down their garments,
and waved palm branches. Now as then,
Palestine is occupied by a foreign power; Israeli soldiers and their Uzi
machine guns lined the route.
One thing was
missing on my Palm Sunday in Jerusalem:
a humble figure riding on a donkey.
Or was he missing?
One of the early
non-canonical gospels has Jesus saying, "Cleave the wood, and I am there;
lift up the stone, and I am there".
He was in that
crowd in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday just as surely as he had been two thousand
years ago. He was in the Palestinian
mother whose son had been shot by an Israeli soldier; he was there in the
seeking, questing pilgrims, from Africa, Asia, and Europe, who had brought
their prayers and dreams to Jerusalem, hoping for a miracle, a vision, some
clue that life has meaning, that God hears and cares for them. And he was even there in this pilgrim.
And he is among us
now, if we only have the eyes to see.
For he comes to us today, as he came among his own two thousand years
ago.
You come to us as
one unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake-side, you came to those who
knew you not. You speak to us the same word: "Follow me". And you set us to the tasks which you have to
fulfill for our time. You command. And if we obey you, whether we are wise or
simple, you will reveal yourself to us in the toils, the conflicts, the
sufferings which we will pass through in your fellowship, and as an unutterable
mystery, we shall learn in our own experience, who you are. Amen.
