Loading...Palm Sunday is the day we tell the story of Jesus riding a donkey into Jerusalem while everyone lays palm branches on the path like Jesus is their king. Then they crucify him. It’s a dramatic story with several twisted twists and the link to the scriptures is with this manuscript. Read Matthew 27 for all the details. What follows now is a sermon based upon the dramatic roller coaster of Our Lord’s Triumphant Donkey Ride, Passion and Death.
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There are so many things we are not allowed to do right now. Either it’s against the rules of the Center for Disease Control or it’s self-imposed. Either way we are restricted, limited, obligated, contained, quarantined. Isolation and separation are not our desire but we take on isolation and separation for a higher purpose.
Jesus, the Son of God takes on God's mission of the Incarnation, which is an earthly containment for a higher purpose. The ruler of all heaven and earth takes on the frailties of a respiratory system and a lymphatic system and all the other systems that make humans human and vulnerable.
Christ’s Word-Made-Fleshness turned out to be a low purpose, the lowest, that is to die for people who didn’t even know or care or even mocked him for such foolishness. His foolishness is our Salvation. The darkness which cannot be overcome is dramatically described in the events of Our Lord’s Passion. Jesus hands himself over to his friends who hand him over to the governing authorities who hand him over to the executioners who hand him over to death. He is restricted, limited, obligated, contained, quarantined, isolated and separated from life. Jesus is made to belong to death — a low place for a high purpose.
My friend Mary likes roller coasters, especially the roller coaster ride of Palm Sunday starting out high on Jesus’ triumphal entry and ending low with a breathtaking swoop into death. Indeed, there are many moments of the past three weeks that have taken away our breath with a swoop.
But I don’t ride roller coasters. Don’t need to. In my experience, every morning just getting out of bed on a non-pandemic-day is a guarantee that there will be a swoop of somekind. Every breath brings its own drama. And I think Jesus had made that pre-arranged donkey rental knowing exactly what kind of ride that would be. What kind of inner peace is required to board that ride?
This April marks the 25th Anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, a day that took my breath away along with the lives of 169 people. It was such a dark and terrible day with so many dark and terrible realities. How could someone park a truck of explosives in front of a daycare center inside a federal building? The actions of those who designed destruction deeply affected and afflicted my family. I even made this enormous scrapbook to chronicle the pain and the journey. But when I visit the memorial and see the Gates of Time standing at the reflecting pool and the children’s chalk drawings on the sidewalk outside the museum, I feel a peace that is unmatched. That peace I believe is the kind of inner peace it takes to board a ride that takes your heart through a dark darkness to a vast indescribable light.
There is a resurrection day ahead of us. I cannot say what it will look like. I can only trust the plan that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit established in the beginning of creation: everyone who belongs to God returns to God regardless of whether they ride the sudden swoop or take the long flat way. God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten son to the end that all who believe in him should not perish but have everlasting life. All aboard!
