Rector's Reflection—Palm Sunday C
March 28, 2010

I drove by a church on Sandy Run Road the other day and in front of the building was a cross with a festive "He Is Risen" banner affixed to the crossbeam. It's not that I've never seen that message during Lent, but it always gives me pause.

There are a lot of Christian churches that do not observe Lent the way that we do. We Episcopalians draw our Lenten practices from the most ancient of traditions. Think about the Ash Wednesday liturgy when we get a bit of a history lesson: "The first Christians observed with great devotion the days of our Lord's passion and resurrection, and it became the custom of the Church to prepare for them by a season of penitence and fasting. This season of Lent provided a time in which converts to the faith were prepared for Holy Baptism. It was also a time when those who, because of notorious sins, had been separated from the body of the faithful were reconciled by penitence and forgiveness, and restored to the fellowship of the Church. Thereby, the whole congregation was put in mind of the message of pardon and absolution set forth in the Gospel of our Savior, and of the need which all Christians continually have to renew their repentance and faith."

Now there's nothing wrong with how other churches observe the Christian year, but my whole church life has been lived to the rhythm of the Anglican/Roman liturgical calendar. As Advent is a time of preparation at the front end of salvation history, Lent is a time of preparation at the climax of salvation history, and I think we miss something informative and transformative if we jump from Labor Day to Christmas and to Easter right after Christmas.

That said, with today's liturgy we officially enter Holy Week. Jesus' 'going up to Jerusalem' is accomplished. The final showdown is here.

I have this picture in my head of the crowds dancing and cheering and singing as Jesus rides into town on a donkey. In this picture in my head, the crowd is made up of the healed lepers, tax collectors, prostitutes, and other assorted sinners... the same sort of people whose very lives repulsed the scribes and Pharisees and whose close association with this "Messiah" drove the temple elite to distraction.

I imagine the bigwigs watching the festivities and discussing a strategy to deal with this potentially volatile situation. Here is a man whose presence threatens the status quo... a man who talks about God as 'father', who says he's a Jew and yet touches the unclean, doesn't follow proper hand-washing techniques, heals people on the Sabbath, and eats with people who are beneath contempt. A Messiah? We think not!

One of the pastors at our Monday group mentioned a remark he had heard from a rabbi who had been asked why so many Jews couldn't come to believe that Jesus was the Messiah. The rabbi said, "Because they don't look low enough."

Indeed, a genuine Messiah wouldn't come into this world in a barn and then be bedded down in a feeding trough. A genuine Messiah would come from a palace. A genuine Messiah wouldn't enter Jerusalem on a donkey. A genuine Messiah would enter Jerusalem in a chariot with proverbial guns ablazing, announcing God's triumphant entry and victory for Israel. A genuine Messiah wouldn't eat with the lowest of the low. A genuine Messiah would run with the A-list crowd.

I believe the rabbi makes an important point. I think we are often guilty of the same misdirection. We look for Jesus in the things that people look up to: success, wealth, prestige, and comfortable lives. It's harder to see Jesus in the homeless, the sick, the dying, the imprisoned, and the generally down-and-out. But looking 'down' is precisely where we should expect to see the face of Jesus and the love of God, except at the end of the Palm Sunday gospel when we look up... at the tortured, bloody body of a man who is nailed to a cross because He loves us.

Susan+