April 8, 2001
Rev. Eugene Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
PALM SUNDAY & CONFIRMATION SUNDAY
Luke
19:29-40
Philip Brooks,
famous preacher and composer of “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” spoke of Jesus
Christ as “both Sovereign and Intruder.” I like that - sovereign and
intruder. Seems a particularly appropriate description on Palm Sunday. With
branches and songs we welcome him as Sovereign, as the One who brings what we
need: sight, healing, forgiveness, acceptance, love, meaning and purpose in
life. With open arms and hearts we welcome him and all that he brings with
him. Ah, but as soon as we welcome him, we make the disturbing discovery that
he also brings with him demands, challenges, changes, an invitation to a new
life which can be pretty disruptive of our old and comfortable life. He becomes
an intruder, leading us down a path we are not sure we want to travel. Jesus as
both Sovereign and Intruder. This morning two young people joined our church
and stated their desire to follow in the way of this Jesus. Just what have they
gotten themselves into?
Weird
celebration, this Palm Sunday. Surely Jesus can do better than this. Our hopes
for him are so high. Or could it be that this is his best…his very best?
Seward Hiltner, a theologian and pastoral counselor, used to tell about the
state-run mental hospital where truly hopeless cases were relegated to a back
ward. The psychiatrists and other medical staff avoided this ward, making only
the bare minimum of calls and basically writing off these patients as
unsalvageable. Then a women’s group from a local church began visiting patients
in the hospital. No one bothered to tell them that the patients in the back
ward were abandoned cases, so they visited them regularly, bringing flowers,
fresh baked cookies, prayer, cheerfulness, a measure of mercy. Before long,
some of the hopeless patients began to respond, a few of them even becoming
healthy enough to move to other wards of the hospital. Yes, at one level just a
church group doing what church groups do. And yet, in their mercy, their
compassion, their refusal to write off the barren and the broken among us,
weren’t these church women also witnessing to something else - a different
order, a different reality, breaking in - intruding - and summoning us all to a
new way of life?
Jesus was crazy
riding into Jerusalem on a beast of burden - taking on the religious and
political authorities with nothing, nothing more than the promise of a new
world. And Rome knew how to deal with crazy people like him. Those of you
going on the mission trip - I suspect many of your friends think you are equally
crazy. Going off on spring break, not with swimsuits, disc-players, and sun tan
lotion, but with hammers and paint brushes and a good supply of toilet cleanser
I’m sure you have many reasons for going, but finally, it all comes down to a
response to a call to serve, to take seriously the barren and broken among us.
Why you must be crazy as. . . Jesus. Be careful. For when you begin taking
seriously that crazy man riding along on a colt, begin taking seriously his
words about a new kind of world - a world where all are welcome at God’s table -
you just might be changed. And so might we all.
Jesus didn’t
stand a chance when he rode into Jerusalem on that Sunday long ago. He picked a
fight with the authorities in the Temple, he caused disruption, he refused to
keep silent. By Sunday night everyone knew he had a cross in his future. They
would shut him up once and for all. There would be no more talk of a bright new
world, a world of dignity, hope, justice and possibility for all God’s
children. And shut him up they did. Or did they? Who really won that Palm
Sunday confrontation?
I think of the
church women in that mental hospital, caring equally for everyone, refusing to
write anyone off; I look out on thirty five high school youth and their
advisors who are about to dedicate their entire spring break to mission. And
whispered on the spring wind, I hear the voice of an Intruder - an Intruder who
insists that amid all the struggle, anguish, denial and forgetfulness of life we
still can dare to have a wild and soaring anticipation; can still dare to
envision a new way, glimpse a new world. Open your eyes, people. The signs are
all around us.
He seemed so
silly, so weak, his cause so hopeless. Getting rid of him was easy enough. And
yet, much to their shock and surprise, not even their cross could stop that
crazy king; heck, we now know, some 2000 years later, it didn’t even slow him
down.