Friday 7 April 2017

Reflection Opoho Church Sunday 9 April 2017 Lent 6: From Palms to Passion.

Readings:  Matthew 21: 1-11,  Matthew 27: excerpts from 11-54

‘The Gates of Jerusalem’
Prayer:  Open our hearts and minds, living God, to what it means for us to journey with you – speak to us of truth and endurance and love and hope this day and into this week we pray.  Amen.

As I pondered the readings for today, it struck me that the gates of Jerusalem saw Jesus pass through them in two very different processions.  The entry was full of hosannas and shouts of welcome and extravagant gestures of honour and adoration.  The exit was painful, dragging a cross, soon to die, surrounded by soldiers and exultant accusers and a crowd who had changed sides and bewildered, shell shocked followers. 
He came in those gates in triumph and went out cursed.
They laid coats and palms coming in and spit going out.
They called him the Messiah but that changed to criminal.
They yelled hosanna, later it turned to crucify.

Why?
It appears that Jesus disappointed the crowds!  He took a wrong turn – he wasn’t meant to turn to the temple, to the cross but rather to head for the political power and overturn it, free them from tyranny, set up a new and better rule.
Well, he did that but not quite in the way expected.  And when our expectation are not met, we can be quite angry, ready to accuse that which we had such high hopes for.  And so the crowd turned from hosanna to crucify him.

And he probably disappointed those who journeyed with him too – for all the teaching and the preparation, they weren’t prepared for this, this horror, this seeming giving up.  It wasn’t right, it wasn’t how you do it.  Like the story of Lazarus – the belief in the man they called Jesus didn’t quite make it past the gates of death.  A step too far.  Feel for his disciples, his family, his whanau.  The humiliation, the pain, the anguish, the inability to stand alongside would have trampled hearts already well broken.

I want to use the words of Malcolm Gordon here from a post he titled ‘Doing Palm Sunday Justice’[1] as he ponders the changeableness of we humans when faced with something that doesn’t work out as we might expect. 
There is this bizarre situation that develops where Jesus understands he will die, and that his death will be the way to salvation for his people. His followers reject that idea because they believe he is the Messiah and dying isn’t part of their plan, while his opponents reject his claim to being the Messiah and want to kill him for it, and in the end, everyone conspires to kill the one true Messiah! It makes my head hurt, and my heart ache.

And so the gates saw Jesus leaving the city knowing that he is following the will of his Father but journeying alone in the midst of the crowd, holding his pain and suffering and knowledge of what was to come between himself and God, deserted by those he had hoped would walk alongside him.. 

The gates spewed out the crowd of accusers, come so that their wrath might be satisfied, their disappointments placated.

The gates felt the passing of the heart broken, wandering along the edges oblivious of anything but that their hope, their love was to be crucified.

Between the coming in and the going out there is five days.
I wonder what those days are like for us.  It doesn’t do to just pick up the Sundays – palms and hosannas to empty tomb – there is quite a bit missing in the middle there.
And it is that missing bit that I want to encourage you to engage with this Easter time – five days of turmoil, of farewells, betrayals, anger, expectations, injustice, teachings, preparing, wine and bread, thorns, ridicule – and in the middle, this man Jesus – the Messiah.  Are we prepared to journey with him all the way to the cross.
I want to finish with a further piece from Malcolm – a poem I guess of expectation – ours and Jesus’.

O Jesus our king, riding into the capital city 
For the great show down with the powers of evil and corruption
You are known as a man of peace but you might want to think about that
For those you are up against are merciless and cruel
And the only place you’ll end up by turning the other cheek
Is high on a criminal’s cross.

O Jesus our king, riding into our hopes for redemption
Where is your sword and where is your army?
This ragtag rabble of rascals and rednecks from the sticks
aren’t going to fill any of your enemies with fear
Just say the word, and we’ll throw down our palm branches
And take up our spears, hidden away all these years.
Cast off the disguise of peace maker and we will rally to you in a heartbeat
O Jesus our king, beware my friend.
There are rumours that some who are close to you cannot be trusted
That some want to force the fight you seem eager to lose
And this talk of taking up your cross
Its making the troops nervous
Give us victory, fire us up, we’re ready to fight and kill and die
We are like a storm cloud ready to burst
A wave ready to swell up and then break
Just tell us which way we should surge
Make it soon, or there’s no telling what we’ll do.
O Jesus our king, you mock us
You refuse to claim the throne we offer 
You’ve taken hold of our hearts, 
But you have rejected our fists
And anyone can tell you that’s no way to rule
So we’ve no use for you, you peacemaking poet from up north
For the villains we face come with razor sharp swords
Take your stories and die, they’re no good to us
It’s going to take more to save us than your foolish love.
O Jesus our king, all the clamour and noise
For you to reign on high
For you to be cursed and die
Have all faded and gone, 
Like seed that springs up in the shallow soil
But you were still like sleep
In the midst of the storm

You were the point of persistent peace
While we all wanted war
Now our rage is all spent
We wonder

Are you?

Margaret Garland based on Malcom Gordon’s Doing Psalm Sunday Justice



[1] http://www.onevoice.org.nz/2017/04/05/doing-palm-sunday-justice/

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