Liturgy of the Palms: Matthew 21:1-11; At the Eucharist: Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 31:9-16; Philippians 2:5-11; Matthew 27:11-54
If you happened to jog through Lincoln Park earlier in the week, you would have seen something a little out-of-the-ordinary – or out of time, at least. Canons erupting, men in porkpie hats, women in hoop skirts? In April, 150 years ago, the American Civil War began, so right behind the Chicago History Museum up here, and all over the country, groups of re-enactors got together to pitch tents, drink chicory coffee, and, most importantly, to stage mock battles. You might wonder why anybody would do this – why people would spend their free time dressing up in old-fashioned clothing, eating hard-tack, and reliving an unhappy and tragic event, like a battle. Well, the Tribune reported the words of one re-enactor, who insisted that we, as a country, “have lost sight of what the Civil War was all about … great honor, courage, bravery ….” He and his friends re-enact because, again, in his words, “[The Civil War is] a part of American history and we have to keep that alive.”
The re-enactors kind of gave me a jolt this week, not because they were discharging firearms, but because their actions and ours seem to eerily coincide. More than any other time in the year, Holy Week is when we re-enact, explicitly, the days leading up to Jesus’ death. And if you want drama, forget Gettysburg – today we’ve got the highs of the liturgy of the palms and the lows of the passion narrative. We’ve got Jesus’ arrest, trial, and crucifixion, and for the next six days we’ll keep replaying all of the things that happened to him in the last week of his life: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and all the way through Thursday when he’ll have one final meal with his friends, and Friday when Jesus will die. We’ll be there for all it.
We’re in good company, too, with all of this re-enacting. It’s exactly what Jesus is doing when we see him today, riding into Jerusalem on a little colt. The tip-off is in the hollers of the crowd as they throw their jackets and some tree branches on the road in front of him. Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven! This is a psalm the people are shouting, and it’s not just any old psalm. It’s Psalm 118, which is the last part of the Hallel, a group of psalms that Jewish people in Jesus’ time and Jewish people to this day say during major festivals like Passover. Jesus is actually enacting the story that happens in the psalm: a new king arrives at the temple and is greeted by the people inside with eagerness and desire, because they want to be saved. Their prayers are answered when the king strides through the temple gate, walking in step with Jesus years later as he ambles into town on the back of a donkey.
It goes even further than this, though. Jesus has a reason to be in Jerusalem. He’s there to confront the powers that oppose him, and to preach God’s kingdom. But something else happens, right? Passover. Jesus is in Jerusalem for Passover, to keep the feast, just as he’s always done. The Last Supper, the final meal with his friends, the thing that we re-enact on Maundy Thursday, is a Passover meal, with Jesus presiding. And Passover is the great re-enactment of the defining moment in the history of Israel, the passage from bondage to liberation that lies at the center of who God is for the Jewish people. Jesus and his friends would have spent the night recalling the story of the Exodus, with this intention, quoted from later Passover texts: “In every generation let each person look on himself as if he came forth from Egypt. It was not only our ancestors that [God] redeemed, but us as well did he redeem along with them.” So Jesus falls in line with time as he enters Jerusalem; he falls in line with time as he observes Passover – and the preacher Barbara Brown Taylor notes that he falls in line with time as he and his friends sing at the end of their seder meal. Because they must have sung the same Hallel, the song Jewish people sing at festivals, the song that the crowd shouted at Jesus as he approached the city gates on Palm Sunday.
So there are layers and layers of memory going on here, especially when you get to us. You have the Hallel, and Jesus entering into Jerusalem as the king does in the Psalm, as well as Jesus singing the Hallel at the end of the Passover meal. And you have the Passover itself, the great festival of remembering that Jesus and his friends were commanded to keep, where Jesus told the story of deliverance from slavery right when he was preparing to deliver us from sin, to be our Passover. Then you have Jesus’ own command, which you’ve heard before, and which you’re going to hear again in six or seven minutes: “do this for the remembrance of me.” And so not only during Holy Week, but every week we get wrapped up in this repeating circle of events, this repeating cycle of storytelling, these repetitious actions that we believe make a difference for how we live and how we live with God.
What kind of a difference, though? How is our re-enacting anything more than following a command? Or keeping a family tradition, or acknowledging a precedent? How is what we do different than what the Civil War re-enactors are doing as they try to raise awareness about American History? Are we just waving palms around in order to get a feel for what a palm was like in the first century? Are we just bringing the crucifixion to the front of our minds so we can be mentally prepared for Easter?
The re-enactors may have more to teach us than we think. Because if you’ve ever known a Civil War re-enactor, you know that the guy I quoted from the Tribune wasn’t telling the whole truth. Sure, they want to preserve battlefields and build historical consciousness. But that’s not why you camp out in costume in a city park. You camp out in costume because you want to be there. Meaning, you want to be living in April, 1861, if only for a day. You want to physically participate in something you otherwise have no access to. Civil War re-enactors have a Passion for something that didn’t happen to them. But we have a Passion for something that did happen to us, and that keeps happening to us. In Jesus, as participants – as sharers – in his body, we passed through the sea; in Jesus we ride into the city while the people who would later kill us sing our praises; we keep the feast of bread and wine where the whole history of God’s creation is prayed out loud, again and again; and in Jesus we suffer, and we die … and then we discover that something else is more powerful than suffering. Something is more powerful than death. Just under the surface of everything, just waiting to overtake everything in any given instance is the power of resurrection, the power of new life that is Easter’s answer to Holy Week. The power of new life that is God’s answer to everything that wants to kill us. The defining moment in our ongoing history, that we re-enact again and again and again, just by being alive is this: resurrection, resurrection, resurrection – year after year after year, minute after minute, after minute.
This week, as we re-enact the events leading up to Jesus’ death, as we actively remember the highs and lows of his last week in Jerusalem, we’ll find ourselves falling in line with time in a way we don’t usually experience. What you’ll be participating in is Jesus’ own life; what you stand to discover is your own life; and the thing that’s yours to claim, is new life: the power of God living in you, now and always.
Sermon preached by the Reverend Danielle Thompson on Sunday, April 17 at St. Chrysostom's Episcopal Church in Chicago, IL at 8:00 AM and 11:00 AM.
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