The Palm Sunday Sermon: Procession to peace

Over the past months, there has been a surge at the border. Multiple processions filing in. Caravans, looking for peace, fleeing their homes from violence and challenges in Central America, seeking asylum as they file northward hoping for something better.

And processions of military. Forces to hold the line, to “keep the peace.” Razor wire and tear gas. Arrests, detention, family separation; even children held in inhumane conditions. The armed personnel attempt to discourage anyone else from seeking peace in this place, for fear that the peace for those in this place will be disrupted by those who seek peace here.

And yesterday, yet another procession. A procession of Episcopalians, making stops as we journeyed to the border. Followers of the prince of peace, we eventually arrived at the border to celebrate the Eucharist. We had planned to celebrate with our brothers and sisters across the border fence, but security concerns prevented the diocese of Western Mexico from participating. We celebrated anyway, a procession recognizing the dignity of every human, all of us made in God’s image and worthy of peace without regard to borders or legal status.

Turning to the procession into Jerusalem we celebrate today, Biblical scholars Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan describe two processions into Jerusalem on that day so long ago as Passover began. On one side, Pilate, representative of the empire, marched in. It would have been a show of power and force; rows of soldiers and horses and armor. Rome kept the peace, but it was a peace that was kept by ensuring that there was no room for any dissent. As they marched in, they would have passed rows of crucifixions, examples made of those who dared to defy the Pax Romana, bodies still hanging and gasping for air.

Passover, the remembrance of Israel’s uprising against Pharoah, was an occasion for Rome to ensure that Israel did not have any fantasies about recreating their history with Egypt, putting Caesar in the place of Pharaoh. The entry procession of Pilate was both deterrent and prevention. There would be no exodus from Rome. Pilate was there to make sure of it.

On the other side of town, there was a procession of a different sort. Luke paints a picture of a procession made of people throwing their cloaks in the road. At its center was a simple man from Galilee. He rode not on a majestic war horse, but on a simple donkey. In Luke’s account, there aren’t any palm branches; there aren’t even any hosannas. Luke is ambiguous as to whether a crowd was present or just his disciples. But notably, they do shout for peace in heaven. That cry does not happen in the other gospels.

Today, you can find many accounts of the Pax Romana painted as a wholly wonderful thing- as a stable and tranquil time with only benefits for the inhabitants of the empire. But a lack of war, what some call negative peace, is not the same as the peace which passes understanding, the pax christi, the peace of Christ. What is peace, if it is not the lack of war? It is nearly the entire base of the Jesus movement, the kingdom of heaven on earth.

What is peace in today’s terms? I was looking for answers this week and discovered that over 50 years ago, Manchester University in Indiana began the first Peace Studies academic program. In the time since, over 300 universities now have Peace and Conflict studies programs or degrees. Peace studies do not look simply at how to prevent war. Instead, they work in interdisciplinary programs that include psychology, philosophy, theology, history, political science, sociology, anthropology, literature, and linguistics-- working to collaborate between all of these disciplines while creating not just another academic discipline but making something that can be applied usefully in the world around us to create and sustain positive peace.

One of those peace studies programs defines positive peace peace minimally as the presence of access to food and clean drinking water, education for women and children, security from physical harm, and other inviolable human rights— without which the lack of war cannot be sustained.

Peace, its conditions, how to create it, and how to sustain it: it’s complicated.

What kind of peace do you imagine Jesus and his disciples envisioned on that road into Jerusalem over 2000 years ago as Rome marched in with armies, through the outskirts of Jerusalem dotted with crosses hanging with the bodies of the enemies of Rome? What kind of peace do you, do we, imagine today, as we shout hosanna and wave our palms in hope?

Ringing in their ears I wonder about the teachings of Jesus, about turning swords into plowshares, where nations will not learn war any more. And the beatitudes, where the poor, the hungry, and those who weep are lifted up; while Luke goes out of his way to give woe to those who are rich, full, and laughing and did not wage peace.

There is something else unique to Luke’s gospel. As soon as the procession turns the corner, the entry into Jerusalem continues beyond what we have read this morning. Luke has Jesus move beyond the procession on the donkey, Jerusalem comes into full view, and Jesus weeps. He addresses Jerusalem in grief, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes!... You did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.”

Hope is mixed with despair and grief. Jesus mourns, because the chosen people in the holy city of Jerusalem have lost their way towards peace, towards the kingdom of God. They have made their peace with Rome and lost sight of true peace, and cannot see God in their midst. Then he descends into the temple and cleanses it of the money changers- a sign that Israel has co opted with empire, with the pax romana. The cleansing is an act of sedition the powers and principalities will not tolerate, and it is an act that will cost him his life. He is willing to die this way to gain the peace that will come three days later, a peace that is offered to the world.

We all lose our way towards peace. We all choose the way of Rome at some time, in some way. It is easier. It requires less imagination; less risk. How can we be more present as a part of peace?

This day, and this week, the liturgy will do the work to help us to remember. We have two collects today that ask God to help us explicitly to find that peace: “Grant that we may walk in the way of the cross and find in it the way of life and peace;” and “Grant that we may walk in the way of his suffering and also share in his resurrection.” Holy Week is our guide; it is the lens to find our peace that passes understanding walking in the way of Jesus.

On this day we turn from our Hosannas to our shouts of crucify; we struggle with our hope for peace and our desire for a Pax Romana, for the use of power to get what we want that leaves others hanging. We are both the crowd that welcomes Jesus and the crowd that calls for his crucifixion. It is a day for hope, and for despair.

What is peace? How do we find it for this human family that is so ready to crucify but so hungry for a different way? How do we find it in our own lives with ourselves and others in situations when true peace seems elusive?

Walk the way of the cross this week, and remember that we do not find it alone.

The Prince of Peace has already found it for us.

The Rev. Canon Jeff Martinhauk
Palm Sunday, April 14, 2019
St. Paul’s Cathedral, San Diego
Luke 19:28-40

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Sources Consulted:
Feasting on the Word, Year C, Vol. 2. Ed. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor. Louisville, Kentucky: John Knox Press, 2010.
https://cep.calvinseminary.edu/sermon-starters/palm-sunday-c-2/?type=the_lectionary_gospel
https://www.radford.edu/content/cehd/home/peace-studies/defined.html
https://kroc.nd.edu/about-us/what-is-peace-studies/
http://www.frederickbuechner.com/blog/2016/4/7/the-things-that-make-for-peace?rq=The%20things%20that%20make%20for%20peace

The Sunday Sermon: Mercifully grant that we may walk....

The collect for the second half of this service troubles me. It says in part, “Mercifully grant that we may walk in the way of his suffering, and also share in his resurrection.”

I don’t know how that strikes you, but I don’t like it much. It may be just me and my own history with the Church, but it seems to imply to me that in order to share in the joy of the resurrection, I should ask God to send me a commensurate amount of personal suffering, as if this was some kind of zero-sum game. I absolutely object to that kind of theology.

I’ve been struggling to see if the rest of this day, this Palm Sunday, can help with that at all.

We start with the exuberant entry into Jerusalem, with Jesus coming into town in this unusual procession on a donkey and a colt. And the roads were surrounded with people shouting with joy waiting to greet him- “Save us Son of David!” They paved the way for him with meager cloaks and branches of trees, the only offerings they had. It is a crowd greeting a different kind of savior.

The picture we get is a subtle, or not so subtle, jab at a procession of the proclaimed kings of the time. Scholars imagine Pilate leading the Roman Calvary into Jerusalem on the other side of town, a contrasting image of empire from the kingdom of Jesus and his followers imagined in the procession of the palms.

Of course, it wouldn’t be too long before that same crowd shouting “Hosanna” would turn and shout “crucify,” more closely mirroring the procession of empire.

And so we have done today as we do every year on Palm Sunday.

The crowd faltered in their hope when they learned that the king they greeted with Hosannas would not overthrow the injustice of Pilate and Rome with force. They couldn’t imagine a different way, not only a different ruler who did things their way, but a different kingdom that worked completely outside the rules of their imagination.

Ancient Israel before them became a community of hope, in the words of scholar Peter Steinke, “by refusing to allow the exile to be the epitome of their destiny. They confidently trusted that God would in his own time mend the brokenness. They had no FDIC assurances, no natural endowment for rosy expectations, no hope that the law of averages had to play their number eventually- just ’My hope is in you’ (Ps 39:7)”. Full disclosure- I will draw on Steinke’s work a lot from here out so if you want references please check the blog later this week.

But of course the whole history of salvation is written with stories of forgetting that hope God continued to offer his creation.

And here we are today: in a world that wants assurances, that wants certainty, that has lost hope. We turn from Hosanna to Crucify at the drop of a pin. We move from caring about refugees to turning them away to bombing; we move from marching for peace to calling for vindication on our political enemies; we move from wanting justice to wanting revenge. We, this human race, all of us, are caught up in this struggle between these two processions- the procession of the palms and the procession of the empire.

And that, I think, is ironically, the good news here. God came anyway.

This messiness, this bifurcation, this… humanity-- this human condition-- is so beloved by God, that even when God came incarnate in Jesus, and even after being greeted joyfully with Hosannas, and even when this very human crowd turned on him, this God loved us enough- loves us enough- to stay through it. This God is so in love with the human condition that he was willing to receive the raw end of the deal-- which isn’t the way of the procession of empire at all.

But the thing is, that isn’t a “personal guilt trip” at all. This isn’t the Mel Gibson message. This isn’t a “you should feel horrible because your bad decisions killed Jesus” thing. This is a love message. This is a message to break the cycle of the procession of empire in the life of humanity, don’t you see? It’s from a God who is so deeply in love with all of humanity that this very God is willing to give of God’s own self, suffering to ensure that we have access to a different way than the procession of Empire, of Pharaoh, of Caesar. It is a God who comes to draw us closer, to remind us of open arms, no matter what it costs God’s own self!

Because in that procession of the Palms, in those Hosannas, in that king and savior, “We have a roll-up-your-sleeves hope. We have a destiny to make a difference. We are part of a large story where the ending is our beginning, where the future changes the present...We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come." (Steinke p 87).

The Jesus movement is not "about me" - about some soul-extraction moment after death where your souls gets to go to Hawaii. No, it is a new creation of God’s kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven that is a "startling reversal where the hungry will eat, the sound of weeping will cease, the premature dying of children will end, people who have no place to call home will not be pushed around, and vineyards will produce a surplus of grapes... 'The wolf and the lamb will feed together and the lion will eat straw like the ox.' “ (Steinke p. 83).

That kingdom of God on earth is a rejection of the procession of the empire. That only happens when we get through the other side of the passion and the new creation comes to fruition. And it all starts with the Hosannas on this Palm Sunday morning, and seeing the depth of the love given freely for us even when we shout “Crucify.”

And that love is not just for you and for me. That love is given for all of creation. So, let's go back to the collect: Mercifully grant that we may walk in the way of his suffering, and also share in his resurrection.” Perhaps the opportunity to enter into suffering that we are given is to join in the journey of the passion of the savior in hearing the groans of all creation under the procession of empire, to listen for the shouts of crucify-- not only in our own voices but in the world all around us-- to deepen our love for all of humanity and creation, and to move towards a new hope made possible in the gift of Jesus Christ.

Because it is in this week, in this Jesus that we have hope, and a “destiny to make a difference.” “We have a roll-up-your-sleeves hope. We are part of a large story where the ending is our beginning, where the future changes the present."... "We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come." (Steinke p. 87).

The Rev. Jeff Martinhauk
9 April 2017

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Steinke, Peter L. A Door Set Open: Grounding Change in Mission and Hope. Herndon, VA: Alban, 2010. p. 79-92.

Palm Sunday

On Sunday, we processed around the neighborhood with enthusiasm, with the SuperSonic Samba dancers.  The drums were so loud we set off car alarms!  We also got a great story in the Union Tribune,  with photos by the UT photographer.

People posted videos and photos  on Facebook and of course, we have our own gallery of photographs on Flickr.  Double click on any photo there for a closer view or to download!

The Sunday Sermon: Marching on Jerusalem

Preached immediately after the Palm Procession around the neighborhood

Well, that was grand! Nothing like a good, loud parade to wake up the neighborhood on a Sunday morning! I imagine more than one neighbor heard the Supersonic Samba dancers and wondered, what on earth is that? And well they might.

Our Palm Sunday celebration offers a wonderful combination of ancient Christian tradition, local color, and joyful celebration. But it is much more than that.

At the most obvious level, today we re-enact a critical moment in Scripture, the arrival of Jesus in Jerusalem for the Passover festival, on a day that turned out to be one of the last days of his life. We wave palms and sing hymns in procession, because that's what the Gospels tell us the crowd did on that first Palm Sunday, although, if you were paying close attention to the Gospel, you'll have noticed that Luke doesn't mention palms in his account; he says people threw their cloaks on the ground to form a kind of red carpet for Jesus.

The palm procession marks the start of a week when we re-tell much of the narrative around the end of Jesus's life on earth: the footwashing, the institution of the Eucharist, and the Passion itself. By so doing we place ourselves in the company of Jesus and the disciples, experiencing these ancient stories as present realities, reminding ourselves and each other that sacred time is different from ordinary time, because these sacred events continue to exert great power in our lives.

But it's not just about reconstructing Scripture. We don't process on Palm Sunday for ourselves alone. This liturgy gives us permission, indeed it compels us, to take our faith out onto the streets.

Whenever we take church outside this building we are witnessing to the fact that there is a group of people in this community who share a faith, who believe that some things are better done together than separately, who are not afraid to be seen in public in the company of a cross.

Our witness stands against much of the surrounding culture.

Think of how politicians play on our fears to divide us, to build walls and shut out those who are different from us.

Think of how the marketplace preys on our insecurities, insisting that only by owning this car or wearing that garment will we measure up to the world's expectations.

Think of the pressure to conceal vulnerability, to be a winner, to be self-sufficient.

And now think of the people who followed Jesus into Jerusalem on that sunny morning: people who had been shut out because of their demons or handicaps or moral failures; people who didn't have the resources to look respectable; people who knew their need for the compassionate love of God: victims, losers, the lonely and the lost. These are our neighbors. These are the people with whom we march, in defiance of the world's illusions of success and strength.

When we witness in the world to the unlikely story of Jesus' death and resurrection, we reject the world's expectations and we offer hope to the many who feel like they will never measure up.

Those who walked to the wall yesterday for the bi-national Eucharist witnessed to the sacrilege of building barriers between communities, between peoples, between neighbors. We should be about creating connections, not erecting barricades. Yesterday's actions protested the bigotry and heartlessness of those who call for such division.

And now we turn to the other business of the day, making the wrenching shift from palms to passion, from the exuberance of Hosanna to the horror of crucifixion. It's a shocking transformation.

The journey that we will undertake this week offers another kind of witness to the world.

As we meditate on the suffering of Jesus in the Passion story we catch a glimpse of the suffering of God's children all over the globe: the starving multitudes in South Sudan; the Palestinians cut off from services and medical resources on the West Bank; the Syrian refugees drowning in the Mediterranean; the abandoned children on the streets of Tijuana; the homeless veterans tormented by PTSD in their Balboa Park encampments. We see the suffering of the world and we are moved to do something about it.

When we participate in Thursday's footwashing ceremonies, here, or at the diocesan center, or at City Hall, we fulfill our promise to serve others and to respect the dignity of every human being. On holy Saturday, when we listen in the dark to the great stories of our salvation history at the Easter Vigil, we will recall how God acts repeatedly throughout human history to bring us back from the wilderness of our own obstinacy and pride, and we will reaffirm the covenant that binds us together into one body, for better or worse.

Luke tells us that the crowds took off their cloaks and laid them on the ground for Jesus. In contrast to the soldiers, who wore their cloaks as a part of the uniform of violent oppression, those who followed Jesus were willing to expose themselves to the April chill of Jerusalem for the sake of honoring the one who came in the name of the Lord. What do you wrap around yourself that you need to discard today? What protective mechanisms might each of us sacrifice in the name of Jesus? As we move now from the excitement of the triumphal entry to the darkness of betrayal, arrest, and death, can we remove the protective cloaks from around our hearts and offer them to our Lord?

Today we shout "Hosanna", and we also shout "Crucify him." We come face to face with our own fickleness, our capacity for cruelty and injustice, that we see amply demonstrated in the world around us; but we also see the possibility of another way, a way of vulnerability and peace, a way that can change the world. Today God invites us to continue the march of the Jesus movement on the centers of power and corruption in our world, to stand united in love against those who would divide us with hateful rhetoric, to stay with Jesus all the way to the Cross in the confidence that he has already won the victory. Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.

Palm Sunday 2016
The Very Rev Penelope Bridges