Sunday 29 March 2015 - Palm Sunday

Theme: Jesus enters Jerusalem / Hosanna! / Jesus the peaceful king

Sentence: Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest! (Matthew 21:9)

Collect:

Jesus, when you rode into Jerusalem
the people waved palms
with shouts of acclamation.
Grant that when the shouting dies
we may still walk beside you even to a cross. Amen.

Readings: I find the Lectionary confusing for this day. That is because - in my understanding - some church traditions provide for celebrating 'Palm Sunday' as well as 'Passion Sunday' and thus our lectionary, following the RCL, provides readings for a 'Liturgy of the Palms' (without OT, Epistle) and for a 'Liturgy of the Passion' (with readings, including a very long gospel reading, focused on telling the whole story of Christ's suffering in the last days of his life). The reality, in my experience, is that many Anglican parishes celebrate Palm Sunday on Palm Sunday and thus look forward to working with readings focused on Palm Sunday.

Below I retain the psalm and gospel reading from the first RCL column of the lectionary, the epistle from the second column, and the OT reading from the two year cycle in NZPB (p. 581).

Zechariah 9:9-10
Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29
Philippians 2:5-11
Mark 11:1-11

Comments:

Zechariah 9:9-10

Zechariah amazingly looks ahead to a day when Zion's king will come to Jerusalem 'humble and riding on a donkey.' This king will be one who 'command(s) peace to the nations'. But if he has foreseen with great detail the events of the first Palm Sunday it also is true that the way those events are recounted in the gospels are shaped by the gospel writers' knowledge of this text.

Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29

These verses capture a number of aspects of our celebration on Palm Sunday: giving thanks (1), Jesus entering Jerusalem through one of the gates in its walls (19-20), the shouts of acclamation the crowd made on that day (26) and the use of 'branches' in the 'festal procession' on that day (27b).

But note also that this psalm mentions a keynote image for all early Christian understanding of Jesus Christ: the rejected stone who becomes the chief cornerstone (22).

Then there is the greeting which forms part of our NZPB liturgy: 'This is the day that the Lord has made ...' (24).

Philippians 2:5-11

These verses have catalysed a stream of academic articles and monographs because in these verses we find some of the most profound and also subtle christology (study of who Christ is) in the whole of the New Testament. In this comment I move past those christological issues and simply focus on the reason why we choose this reading in relation to Palm Sunday.

Our general understanding of the event in which Jesus rides into Jerusalem with acclamation as king is that he is a kind of 'anti-king': his ride is on a colt or young horse, a sign of peace and humility, rather than on a magnificent mature steed of the kind a victorious-in-battle king would ride in a triumphal procession on return to his royal city.

So this reading in which Jesus is described as the one who empties himself of divine privilege and power in order to become one of us, before being exalted to the highest place, fits well as a theological background to the specific display of humility (with exaltation) we see on Palm Sunday.

In both epistle (see 2:1-4) and in the gospel reading the question of the example of Jesus and what that means for us as we live our lives is our question as we apply these readings to our lives.

Mark 11:1-11

Comments above have a bearing on this reading and our understanding of it!

The sequence of events told in this story are familiar to us, perhaps from a lifetime of celebrating Palm Sunday. Jesus draws near to Jerusalem (1), disciples are sent ahead to fetch a colt (not a donkey, interestingly, according to Mark, verses 1b-7a), Jesus mounts the colt and rides it towards Jerusalem (7b, 11a), the crowd - their interest piqued by the exchange with the disciples when they picked up the colt - offer homage to Jesus as he rides, spreading their cloaks on the ground or 'leafy branches that they had cut in the fields' (8), shouting in acclamation words drawn from Psalm 118 (9-10).

Note, however, a detail which we may have gotten wrong as we celebrate according to our customs rather than according to the strict detail of Scripture: none of the gospel writers tell us that the palm branches were waved as part of the shouts of acclamation. Luke does not mention the branches at all. Matthew following Mark describes the branches as being laid on the road on which Jesus travelled. John is the only one to explicitly mention 'palm trees' and he does not describe what happens to the branches except that they were taken out to meet Jesus. (Nevertheless I think it fine to have a procession and wave branches!)

If Jesus comes as an 'anti-king' (see comments on Philippians 2:5-11) then he nevertheless comes as a kind of king and thus this event is a political event. 'Political' because the event effects the order and organisation of the polis or city of Jerusalem. It begins a sequence of events in this week of Jesus' life which draw attention to him from authorities already inclined to concern about his impact on the people of Israel. Mark ends his story with Jesus going into the temple and looking around it. The next political event will be the protest in the temple the next day.

In other words, Jesus who has been teaching through word and deed that the kingdom of God is near now arrives in Jerusalem in a manner which draws attention to himself as the king of the kingdom. A different kind of king (to, say, Herod or Caesar) but then the kingdom of God as taught by Jesus is a different kind of kingdom to Herod's 'kingdom' (limited rule permitted by Rome).

For us as preachers this week we have the familiar challenge of preaching on the familiar and the novel challenge of preaching the gospel on Sunday 29 March 2015 which is a completely new day in the ongoing story of Jesus and our world. What is going on today which this story speaks to?

There is no shortage of political events in our world to which this biblical political event speaks: ISIS, Syrian and Iraqi refugees (and NZ (un)willingness to receive them?), Yemen in turmoil, a by election in Northland, government use of spying agencies, organising and distributing aid to Vanuatu, and thinking of weath disasters, climate change and the possibility that a global political response could influence this change.

Try to keep within the allotted time limit for the day :)