Sermons

April 1, 2007

Rev. Scott Swanson

Palm Sunday - Luke 19:28-40

Most of you have probably heard my rant about hosting scripture, part of which involves paying attention to the text. I must confess that I did not read this text very carefully before I planned the service. I made the mistake of thinking I knew what it said. Now this is a common error which nearly every Christian makes. We do this all the time with Bible stories: we combine different versions into one story, so that there are always wise men and shepherds at Christmas, when in fact there should one or the other, but not both. Preachers, it seems, are not immune to this tendency. "Palm Sunday," I preumably thought to myself, “I know that story. That’s the story where the citizens of Jerusalem welcome Jesus into the city with shouts of ‘Hosanna!’ as they wave palms and branches they have cut from the trees. It is an ironic day, as we know that these are the fickle people who will turn on Jesus in less than a week and shout 'crucifyhim!' / Right? That’s the Palm Sunday story isn’t it? That’s the story I chose hymns and prayers around, so we’re singing hosanna all over the place…

And then on Friday evening I actually read Luke.

Did you hear it today? Not a hosanna to be heard anywhere. Not a palm or a branch in sight. How can you have Palm Sunday without palms for heaven’s sake?! There isn’t even a fickle crowd injecting irony into the day. "As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives (so he’s not even riding into Jerusalem yet), the whole multitude of the disciples began to began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power they had seen." (v.37) In Luke's telling of the story it is not the residents of Jerusalem, but his own followers who acclaim Jesus king.

Well this is extremely disappointing. I mean, here we're singing hosanna and waving branches and then reading the wrong gospel! How inconvenient! You can be sure I've made a note to myself the next time Luke’s version of the Palm Sunday story comes around to ignore it and replace it with a version of the story we have hymns and prayers for!

His followers call him "king," and in the same breath they sing of peace. To make it clear how radical this statement is, Luke makes a very interesting editorial move. Immediately before this story Luke has Jesus tell a parable about a king. The behaviour of this wicked tyrant more closely resembles what kings were like. Why does Jesus tell his followers this parable? Because, says Luke, “he was near Jerusalem (the seat of political power, where kings and kings representatives live, and the place which for Luke is the whole focus of Jesus' ministry) and because they supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately."

Kings are not nice people in Jesus’ time. In Jesus Luke offers us one who turns even the notion of kingship upside down, so that it is associated with peace, rather than violence. When Jesus' followers call him "king," it's not to say that they knew exactly what they were doing, that they correctly and completely understood Jesus' kingship. It’s not to say that they would not be tested later on and many would fail the test of standing by him. But in the moment, they got it right. They proclaimed Jesus for what he was: king of heaven's peace.

We still live in a world where most power is the province of the strong, the wealthy, the educated, and increasingly, the famous. Here are two stories of power from the news this week. One is a battle within the United States government, where both houses of government have voted to pull US troops out of Iraq and the President has said he will use his veto to keep them there. The other is a new budget from Ottawa that many pundits believe is designed to lay the groundwork for a federal election later this year. This is how the culture defines power.

Luke turns this idea of power on its head. The king of heaven's peace is the one who deserves praise. And it is "the whole multitude of the disciples" who give this praise. In spite of an absence of hosannas, and palms, and branches cut from trees, we still have a procession. And appropriately it is not compete strangers who welcome this king of heaven’s peace, but his disciples: the church. This one who will show us what God’s power looks like. This one who turns everything upside down. This one who accepts our praise, knowing that we too may fall asleep when the time of trial comes. This one, for whom if we, his followers, were silent, the stones themselves would shout out. For this is power not as the world sees it, but as God sees it. May we come more and more to see with God’s eyes and God's heart, that our worship of this one may be true, and our hosannas real. Amen.

Come Lord Jesus. Come and gather us in. Come. Amen.

For more information or to comment on this sermon, please email Rev. Scott Swanson.