[Propertalk] Palm-Passion Sunday

[robertpmorrison at charter.net]

We begin in the parish hall this Sunday and I preach after the Palm 
Gospel. Then we process in to the "regular" worship space. The Passion 
Gospel is moved right to the end of the liturgy so that's what everyone 
takes with them for the week's meditation.

Here's what I have in draft form.

Bob

THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY  	   THE SUNDAY OF THE 
PASSION: PALM SUNDAY – B
MARK 11:1-11						              PSALM 118:1-2, 19-29
ISAIAH 50:4-9a 							         1st APRIL, 2012
PHILIPPIANS 2:5-11                       	                 	                     		 
PSALM 31:9-16
MARK 14:1 – 15:47
	
	I have a friend who had a tattoo placed on his skin the other week. 
It’s to mark a significant event in his life. It’s both a sign as a 
reminder and a sign of celebration. It’s something really important, 
really momentous to him. He doesn’t want to forget. But he doesn’t want 
to take his eyes off the goal to which he’s headed either.

	I’ve never been one for tattoos. I accept that other people DO like 
them and get them, but to me, although they CAN be removed, they’re way 
too permanent. What if I made a mistake? What if I put on my body a word 
or a symbol which may have seemed good and right at the time, but five, 
ten or more years later looks somewhat gauche, somewhat juvenile – or, 
simply, a colossal mistake?

	But then, that’s the point. We become SO invested in something that we 
make a total commitment to it. We say, to ourselves and to others, I am 
really serious about this, I intend to live with it, come what may.

	Jesus did just that. No, He didn’t get a tattoo – not as far as I know. 
But He sent His representatives to fetch an unridden colt, an animal 
possibly as yet unbroken, so that He might ride in to Jerusalem.

	To someone so accustomed to walking, as did most of the pilgrims going 
in to the city for the Festival, riding in itself would have been a 
major differentiator. But it was a colt, a smallish animal, not 
something as full-sized or powerful and as brazen as the military horses 
ridden in the other city gates at the same time by the Roman military 
leaders. Jesus was making a statement. He was drawing attention to the 
old saying about the coming of God’s Messiah. Jesus was giving a clear, 
a permanent sign to His dearest friends as well as to the crowd, that 
what He was doing by contrasting His entry to that of the Romans; what 
He was doing by sparking their imaginations – this was something He 
wished them to carry with them in their imaginations to the end of their 
lives. This was to be something He prayed that they’d sit down, years 
later, and tell their children and their grandchildren that they’d 
actually been on the slopes up to Jerusalem when they saw Jesus with 
their own eyes and heard Him and heard the triumphant shouts of the 
crowd with their own ears. They were THERE and saw this deliberate sign 
of love, and commitment, and clarity of vision that could never be 
erased. The sign would stand for all time, right to this morning and as 
far into the future as we can imagine.

	The point of our celebration today is that Jesus never wavered from His 
commitment to follow where He believed God was leading Him. He never 
took His eyes off the fact that His whole life was about challenging 
those who would put up some sort of a barrier – whether physical, or 
mental, or emotional, or spiritual – any sort of a barrier which would 
keep one person, or one group, isolated from another.

	Three weeks ago, when the coast was pummeled with high winds and 
incessant rain and followed with very wet, heavy snow that came down and 
lay for about eighteen hours – three weeks ago when that happened my 
attention became fixed first on the rain and then on the snow. I watched 
tree limbs blow and bend. I heard them snap off. But, somehow, even in 
the light of day, when the snow was so brilliantly white and clean, I 
didn’t notice that the daffodils were already up, and strongly standing 
there – withstanding the seeming worst that the elements could fling at 
them.

	It wasn’t till the snow melted off, late in the afternoon, that I 
noticed their straight stems, their well-nourished leaves, and their 
penetratingly bright gold and orange flowers, looking so much like 
wonderful crowns. They’d been there all the time, a sign, a mark of the 
rejuvenation of life. Neither wind, nor rain, nor snow, nor dark of 
night could keep them from their appointed task of testifying to the way 
in which life is renewed, and hope cannot be overwhelmed.

	On that day two thousand years ago, Jesus set His face deliberately 
against the might of the Roman Empire, with all its pluses and minuses. 
Jesus pointed dramatically to His life lived to call everyone to come 
together and to share in the experience of living in God’s ecstasy. 
Jesus slashed all the barriers of physical appearance, and gender, and 
sexual orientation, and economic status, and ethnic background – Jesus 
drew EVERYONE together, and then took them into the Holy City at the 
most sacred moment in the year. Jesus triumphantly encouraged people to 
set aside whatever labels may have controlled and defined them, and 
brought them to such joy in imagining that God’s plans were being 
fulfilled in their presence. No longer were crutches, and mattresses, 
and all sorts of other aids to those who were dis-abled, their defining 
characteristics. Physically healed or not, they were all brought to this 
celebration of God’s Presence as a releasing from every form of slavery.

	It was a sign of Jesus’ fierceness of vision and of the people’s 
unimaginable joy.

	Yet we, who stand two thousand years after the fact, know all about the 
dark side. The crowd was not yet ready to see what this freedom meant. 
Like their ancestors, the complaining pilgrims in the Sinai after 
escaping Egypt, the members of the crowd were caught up in the 
superficial and couldn’t comprehend the depth of what Jesus did.

	Jesus’ bringing physical healing was and remains important. Yes, 
bringing people together to sit, to eat and to share with one another, 
was and IS very important. But the depth of what Jesus did came from 
taking a colt which had not yet been trained in any way. The colt was 
used to help to face the sacrificial horror of what would begin at the 
top of that long hill into the city. The colt, perhaps, stands more for 
us than the crowd – although we may see ourselves there also. In the 
untrained colt we should, perhaps look for ourselves as ready to be 
guided and used to show forth God’s Messiah in action.

	Jesus wishes to take us and to mold us into the devotional people we’re 
called to be. We’re to be people who have to be prepared to make the 
most difficult, perhaps the ultimate, sacrifice for the sake of others, 
that they may find some semblance of safety in the midst of the violence 
all around them.

	Yes, it’s always good to celebrate, but sometimes the colt-riding 
Jesus’ full significance is lost.

	This willingly sacrificial act of love can be hidden in the noise, and 
the happiness, and the confusion – both from the local Jewish and the 
Roman standpoints. It may just take the gradual receding of the 
surrounding elements, as we move from this room to the more somber 
Passion Sunday and on through this coming week, before we can actually 
see more fully the love of God that’s about to be played out. That was 
how it was for the first century disciples of Jesus.

	So, now Jesus would draw us in – to the noise, to the misunderstanding, 
to the violence, and the shame, and the pain that so often comes when 
justice confronts injustice; and love faces hate directly; and fear and 
distrust is such a part of the whole human scene.

	Jesus bears the indelible sign of His love on the back of that colt, 
and asks us to follow.




Robert P Morrison
Interim Vicar
The Episcopal Church of St Alban
PO Box 1556
Albany OR  97321   541-921-1076 (cell)