On Palms, Peace, & Performance Art | Mark 11:1-11 | 3.29.26

Grace and peace to you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

There were two marches on that Palm Sunday long ago.

One of them we remembered when the children led the choir down the aisle with their branches this morning.

But the other march you would not have celebrated.

You would have stood with your back pressed against the wall of your house, counting soldiers as they passed.

You would have tried very hard not to make eye contact with anyone on horseback because that parade was not a celebration.

That parade was a threat.

That was Pontius Pilate riding into Jerusalem from the west every year at Passover, at the head of a column of Roman cavalry, armor gleaming, weapons out.

It was the way the empire reminded and occupied people exactly who was in charge as all these pilgrims came to town for their festival.

The Romans had a word for the news they proclaimed to head of these processions, the heralds would go forward, and they called it Euvangelion, the good news.

The good news of Caesar, the son of God, the Prince of Peace.

And then on that same day, from the other side of town, on a young donkey that had never been ridden, came another procession.

Another son of God, another Prince of Peace, another Ewangelion, another gospel.

But before we read that gospel story, let's pray and ask God to bless our time and scripture this morning.

Pray with me.

Holy One, if we've heard this story before, the story of Jesus entering Jerusalem riding on a donkey, then help us to hear it again.

And if we've never heard this story before, if we've never heard the story of Palm Sunday or the cries of Save Us, then give us the wisdom to follow along.

Give all of us the wisdom to hear these words, to take them into our hearts, and to act on their truth.

We are listening.

Amen.

Now let's read about that second march together from Mark's telling of the story in chapter 11, verses 1 through 11.

Listen now for God's word for us today.

When they were approaching Jerusalem at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples and said to them, Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately as you enter it, you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden.

Untie it and bring it.

And if anyone says to you, Why are you doing this?

Just say this the Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.

They went away and found a colt tied near a door outside in the street, and as they were untying it, some of the bystanders said to them, What are you doing?

Untying that colt.

So they told them what Jesus had said, and they allowed them to take it.

Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it, and he sat on it.

Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields.

Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting, Hosanna, blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.

Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David.

Hosanna in the highest heaven.

Then Jesus entered Jerusalem and he went into the temple, and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.

This is the word of God for the people of God.

Thanks be to God.

On the western streets of Jerusalem, clay bowls rattle on tables, and water jars tremble as the earth begins to shake.

Parents quickly usher children inside from the streets, and this was the unwelcome ritual of Passover.

Pontius Pilate's arrival.

And you felt it before you saw it.

Hear the good news of Caesar, the heralds shout.

Son of God, the Prince of Peace.

Then come the swords and the shields, row after row of shining steel, followed by a mile-long column of cavalry.

And at the center sits Pilate, atop a massive war horse.

This is how Rome keeps the peace.

It's a calculated display of imperial muscle designed to remind and occupy people exactly who is in charge.

With backs pressed against stone walls, the people of Judea hold their breath.

They know the script.

It's happened before.

Someone gets a wild hare, and they try and kick the Romans out of the town during the holiday.

But this wasn't a parade, it was a warning.

And yet, while Pilate's horses are still stomping through the western gates, Jesus is on the other side of town, starting his parade with a petty theft.

He sends two disciples into the village with a script and instructions that sound less like a messianic prophecy and more like a bad improv setup.

Go find a cult, he says, and untie it.

And if someone asks why you're taking it, just say, the Lord needs it.

And then there they are, the bystanders, the owners, the people who live on that street.

They see these two strangers fumbling with the knot, trying to lead away a young donkey that doesn't belong to them, and they ask the most reasonable and pointed question in the whole of the gospel.

What are you doing?

It's not just a question about a donkey, it's a question about the script, because everyone knows how a king is supposed to enter a city.

A king enters on a war horse that he owns, surrounded by power, he bought.

But this is a borrowed animal, a cult that's never been ridden, which means it's skittish and unpredictable.

It's probably braying and digging its heels into the dust.

What kind of lord needs a borrowed skittish donkey?

What kind of king has to ask permission to use the very things he created?

The bystanders watch as these sweaty strangers untie their property, and for a second the whole world hangs on that answer.

The Lord needs it.

It's an absurd answer, a vulnerable answer.

It suggests a God who doesn't take what he wants by force, but a God who needs our participation, who needs our colts and our cloaks and our leafy branches and our very lives to get the parade started.

And the bystanders let them go.

Maybe they're confused, maybe they're curious.

Maybe the buzz of the religious festival allows their generosity to get the best of them, but for whatever reason, they allow the knots to be untied and the parade to begin.

Not with the clatter of shields, but with the soft, uneven hoofbeats of a young animal that hasn't quite figured out how to carry the weight of the world yet.

And the children see it first.

They aren't hiding behind the walls now, they're running towards the dust.

They see a face that isn't hidden behind a helmet.

They see a king who is close enough to touch, who's on their level, his feet probably barely off the ground.

And as the coats hit the ground, the shouts of save us go up.

A people that remember Moses, that remember Egypt, that remember that God has a history of showing up on the most unconvenient and unimperial ways possible.

They shout, Hosanna, because they realize that maybe a Lord who needs a borrowed donkey is exactly the kind of Lord who has room for them.

The crowd lines the streets with their makeshift coat and branch carpet, tragically shouting, Hosanna, save us.

And I say tragically because of this, they raise their guttural cries to the most vulnerable king in history.

And knowingly or not, they are projecting their own dreams of victory onto him.

They may not say it out loud, but their hopes are for a Messiah who will make the Romans leave.

They want a Messiah who will play the game better than the Romans do.

They want a savior who will take the weapons of Caesar and turn them around to use them against their occupiers.

They don't realize that by shouting, save us, to this man on a borrowed donkey, they are asking him to become a version of Pilate.

They don't realize that they are begging for the kind of revolution that will eventually kill him, because they cannot yet imagine a God who saves by dying instead of by killing.

And of course, Jesus knew this too.

The fact of the matter is, as peaceful and as celebratory as we believe that day was, the timing of that parade that Jesus orchestrates would undoubtedly get him into trouble.

And surely Jesus knew that.

But was it good trouble?

Was it necessary trouble?

Was it the kind of trouble that is revelatory insofar as it reveals the truth about the state of a violent world and points to the very real possibility that it does not have to be this way?

And here is the strange and quiet and unsettling thing about Mark's telling of this story after this procession, after the good trouble, after the cloaks were muddied and the palm branches were trampled into the dust, you would at least expect a manifesto, a speech.

You would expect the flipping of tables to happen right away, the rallying of the troops, the start of the revolution that we were all promised.

But Jesus, Scripture says he went into the temple and he looked around at everything.

And because it was already late, he went home.

He didn't seize the throne, he didn't even hold a press conference.

He walked into Bethany, back to the quiet house, into the long shadows of the evening.

We are a people of the right now, aren't we?

I want it to happen immediately, yesterday, preferably.

We want the victory march to end in a coronation, not a commute.

We want the adrenaline of the crowd to lead us straight into the final transformation of the world, but Jesus gives us something much more difficult and much more necessary.

He gives us the space to see.

He goes into the temple, but not to burn it down, but to look, to really see it.

The way maybe no one who had been in there worshiping for centuries had really seen what was going on.

To see the fear and the greed and the compromise.

And then he rests.

Having seen clearly and knowing that when he returns to the temple the next day to turn over those tables, that the trouble he would make would not be trouble that was rash or impulsive or vengeful.

John Lewis called it good trouble.

But you cannot sustain good trouble on adrenaline alone.

You will burn out, you will give up, you will go looking for a new, flashier Messiah the moment the road gets steep.

Friends, the rhythm of the gospel isn't just go, go, go.

Action, action, action.

Party, party, party.

The rhythm of the gospel, the verbs there are act, look, rest, and return.

It is Sabbath and resistance together.

It is the discipline of stopping when the world tells you to keep running.

It is the holy courage to walk away from the Hosanna High, to go back to the ordinary, messy place where you sleep and eat and pray, so that when you return in the morning, you are not acting out of your own desperate need to win.

You are acting out of the clear-eyed, quiet, and terrifying love of God.

So, church, what do you see when you look around at everything in the world today?

In the places you run, in your communities, in your churches.

What do you see?

Not what the politicians tell you to see, or the pundits or the influencers, although they're all pointing at something.

But what do you see when you look?

What do you see when you stop the parade and take a beat?

Perhaps through our own eyes, we might see many places where we think necessary violence might save us.

Through war in some other country, through political policy, through my own self-hatred or through the suppression of others, we think that if we do some sort of violence, maybe we can fix it.

We will wave our messianic branches at those who promise the defeat of our enemies, and who traffic in the fomenting of outrage and indignation.

And yet, perhaps, beloved, if we look at the world through the lens of the one who came to us, we might see those very same things, those same people and places and events, as opportunities for healing and restoration, opportunities to end cycles of violence and bring unexpected peace.

Perhaps this Holy Week, each day, maybe we can set aside some time for prayer, for reading the scripture for that day, for reflecting on what is going on in our world and in our community, in our hearts, and on Thursday evening at our communion service, or the following day at noon with other Presbyterian neighbors singing and praying our way toward that great and painful paradox of Good Friday, where we are heading.

What sort of Messiah do we expect to save us?

And how might Jesus be upending those expectations we put on him?

Are we open to following our Lord into uncomfortable places where hard conversations happen and where human pain and God's loving redemption might meet?

Because it will not be easy and it won't be fun.

And if we're only seeking to avoid our own pain and to comfort our own bruised egos, we will surely miss it.

We will miss the holy places and holy moments in our lives where God sees our expectations and yet refuses to meet them.

Where God instead lays God's self before us, embodied in service and in care and even in death, inviting us even deeper into the very life of God that we see so clearly in the person of Jesus.

And let's be honest, friends, uh, if we're here today and we've held these branches, we've been a part of that crowd, we are standing on the side of that road, shouting at the top of our lungs, not because we've got it all figured out, but because we are so, so tired of being afraid.

We shout Hosanna, which means save us.

And in our hearts, we mean save us by force.

Save us by winning.

Save us the way empires save people, by making sure the right people lose.

We are drawn to that kind of power like moths to a flame, and we have the burn marks to prove it.

In our history as humans, we have waved our branches at every political messiah, every economic savior, every strong man who promised us safety in exchange for our very souls.

And it makes sense that we do that.

We do it because we're afraid of the dark.

And Pilate offers a promise to turn on the lights, even if he burns the house down to do it.

And every single time history tells us he does.

The story ends the same way with a God made in our own image, a God who hates exactly who we hate, who justifies our fear, a God who finally, finally makes us feel safe and secure.

But Jesus?

Jesus rides into the middle of our delusions on a borrowed, dusty, unremarkable cult.

And he doesn't give us the throne we want.

He doesn't give us an enemy to conquer.

Instead, he gives us the one thing we forgot to ask for because we were too busy looking for a fight.

He gives us himself.

He gives us a love that refused to pick up a sword, even when every instinct in his body and even one of his disciples decided that that was a good thing to do.

And every voice in the crowd was screaming for it.

He gives us a kingdom that cannot be killed precisely because it was never built on the killing of anyone else.

So this week put down the branch.

Stop trying to cast him in our own image.

Let Jesus be who he actually is, not the Jesus we want to fix our world, not the Jesus who takes our side and crushes our enemies, not the Jesus of some imagined revelation swooping in on a white horse, but the Jesus about whom the gospels were written.

The Jesus who dies, who enters the silence, who faces betrayal, who walks the long, lonely, holy road so that he might finally truly raise us from the dead.

Yet thanks be to God, he is the savior we have.

Amen.