Readings: Psalm
118:1-2, 19-24,26-27,29 Luke
19:28-40
We pray: Loving
God, open our hearts and minds to your word for us today – may we be
challenged, intrigued, encouraged and strengthened today and everyday. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
It was Palm
Sunday. On the road to Dunedin, Jesus preached
love and the crowd went wild with enthusiasm.
They played guitars and sang songs about love, waved balloons and
banners that said, Make Love not War, They are Us, Save the Planet. The march made the headlines in the papers; TV
cameras and cell phones recorded it and social media loved it (well mostly)
This was the
people’s hero, everyone said, a man who could change the world. Some day he would be Prime Minister!
When they arrived
in the city, he told them what love was all about.
Service, he
said.
Selling that
second car and giving the money for the child who needed an operation. Seeing all people as equal. Judging no one. Visiting folk in prison. Sharing food and shelter with those in need. ‘If
you have a spare room in your house, why not invite a homeless person to come
and live with you?’ he said.
‘Love is not about
words but actions.’
By the end of his
speech, most of the crowd had drifted away.
They called him a waster of their time, a looney, one of those
extremists and they crucified him with their anger and their disdain.
Joy Cowley[1]
follows up this slightly adapted psalm with these words:
We tend to see love as some kind of currency to be
earned, to be carefully spent, to be given away with caution. That is not love. Love is reckless, extravagant. It comes without price and it has no need
except to give itself away. Love is the outpouring
of God in us and through us.
Palm Sunday is an
incredibly awkward day. We really want
to sit in the celebration, the anticipation of what Jesus is bringing
about. The hosannas are for real, the
hope is growing, the journey of the Messiah is about to be realised. And we want to enjoy that bolt of pure
delight – it’s a rare occurrence these days – and we don’t want anything to
spoil it. So we take the moment, gladly.
And then we too
enter the gates and the voices slowly quieten for there is an aura of danger,
we see the authorities keeping an eye on this man, we feel the tension of those
who see him as dangerous, likely to upset their settled world. And within us, deep down, is the thought we
have tried really hard to restrain – that this servant model just won’t work,
it’s too hard, asks too much of us.
Our faith in the
promise of the Messiah is shaken by our realisation of the living it out. We recognise that the dream and the reality
are going to create some awkward moments for us and we fade to the back of the
crowd. For it asks too much of us.
Did anyone see
that posting about a gun owner in Auckland who is most reluctant to give up his
(get this) gold plated AK-47 citing it as one of his most precious pieces in
his large military collection. Asking
way too much of him, he says. If he hadn’t
already stunned me speechless that anyone would gold plate an assault rifle, he
did it with the next statement where he said: ‘while he never shoots the
gun as it would damage the gold, he is not open to making the gun inoperable
either, as this would decrease its value.’
I’m guessing there
might be others who would not be so reluctant to let off a few rounds and ruin
its value – oh and possibly a few lives along the way too?
Is it asking too
much of us to step outside the safe bounds of the palm waving procession and to
not just listen to but seek out the way that Christ’s word invite us into? Aware always that we will have times of
denial, of drifting past with our heads down and lingering on the edges of full
commitment, do we at least sometimes throw ourselves in boots and all to the ‘dangerous’
‘counter-cultural’ experience of sharing our love for others in the way Jesus
did.
I think we do, I
hope we do. For our faith, as we have
learned so abruptly this last month, cannot be held outside of the political,
social, economic realm that is our world.
We need to have a voice, sometimes as Joy Cowley put it, a ‘reckless,
extravagant’ voice into that which is hurting and harmful and horrific.
Jesus did not keep
himself apart from the world of hardnose politics and social deprivation and
economic hardship. In fact I read one
opinion that suggested Palm Sunday was the most political day of the church
year. Really?
He was killed on a
cross, they said, showing how much of a political event this was – if it was purely
a church matter he would have been stoned to death as was the practice of the
time. But the fact that Jesus was on the
cross meant that the civil authorities also saw Jesus as a menace. Jesus death
was of the world, it was the world that he upset, the world he was a threat
to. You were stoned not crucified for your
dangerous religious beliefs – the cross as the means of Jesus death points to
civil unrest, as quote: ‘.. rooted
in a political murder committed by security forces in occupied Jerusalem around
the year 30 AD…’
Jesus, as he
entered Jerusalem was faced with an impossible choice – if he entered into the
argument with the authorities it would mean conflict – he would need to take
coercive action. Or – it would mean doing
nothing because he came to found a kingdom of love and service - and coercion
and conflict cannot be part of that. So he
chose to, by the eyes of the world, be a total failure, to be as nothing,
trusting in his Father to respond with love and grace. He chose to show the
world that complete obedience to love, that awkward, humiliating servanthood for
the good of the world would, illogically, improbably, impossibly transform our
world, would give us a glimpse of a kingdom of love and service. God did respond. And so came a new way, a world of
resurrection, God with us, a path of peace and service and justice.
Kind our makes our
hedging about feel a little precious doesn’t it? Kind of encourages us to be love in action in
this world of injustice and discrimination and hate doesn’t it? Kind of strengthens us for the knockbacks and
the uncomfortable places and the dark alleys we might have to walk down doesn’t
it? I hope so.
Jesus offers the
way to peace. Jesus yearns for the
liberation of the oppressed, he weeps for the city and all who are in it, he
refuses to buy into the power struggles or to turn his back on what might seem
hopeless.
Love, reckless and
extravagant, walked into the city this day and love, reckless and extravagant,
was nailed to a cross for the world, that all might know the power of love,
even over death. The kingdom of God is like this – it is the outpouring of love,
reckless and extravagant, in us and through us.
We can do no less, for we have met the living Christ and nothing can
ever be the same again – and for this we say: thanks be to God. Amen.
Margaret Garland
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