The Liturgy of the Palms
The Liturgy of the Word
My
daughter Risa is nearing the end of fourth grade, and this year she’s been getting
homework assigned every week at school. She’s also started taking a bigger share of caring
for herself, making her own snacks, cleaning her own room. A couple of weeks ago we adopted a kitten, at
her urging, and the deal that my wife and I made with her was that it would be,
officially, her pet, and she could
pick out the one she wanted, and give it the name she chose, but in return, she
would have to get the kitty food and water, and clean her litter box.
And
with these changes in Risa’s life our relationship with her is changing. It used to mostly be about doing things
together, but now it’s more and more about helping her do things by
herself. There’s a way in which this is
a healthy, age-appropriate development, but there are also times when I feel
like I’m the unwitting agent of a soulless world. And as I function more and more as Risa’s taskmaster,
helping her get there on schedule, and complete it on time, and get it done
right, I am subtly reinforcing the message that these are the things that
matter, and we seem to have few and fewer opportunities to play.
Risa
still regularly invites me to play.
Sometimes I accept, and we’ll wrestle, or make up a song or a story, or a
silly game with rules we invent as we go along.
But as often as not I’ll say there’s still some work to do, or it’s too
close to bedtime, or I’m just too tired.
There are certainly times when one or more of these things are
true. But there are also times when I’m
just stuck. I’m so used to being the
grown-up who is always in charge of the situation, so identified with being the
responsible parent, so focused keeping us on track toward the goal, that I get
stuck in that role. And to get unstuck,
to come down from there into the intimate give-and-take, the open-ended,
timeless place of play is a step I’m unwilling or even afraid to take.
When
I think of the scene of Jesus riding into Jerusalem, I imagine that the crowd
that was shouting and running along, waving palm branches, included a lot of
children. Actually, I know there were children there, because
if you read on, the very next section of Matthew’s Gospel tells how Jesus went
into the temple, and started driving out the money-changers and overturning the
seats of those who sold doves for the sacrifices, and people came to him and he
healed them. And it says that the
children were crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” The Chief Priests and the scribes came up to
Jesus and said, “Do you not hear what these children are saying?”
To
these guys, shouting “Hosanna to the Son of David” in the temple is not child’s
play. It is like joking about having a
bomb in your bag at the airport. Because
right next to the temple, looming over its courtyard like a hammer poised to
fall, is the fortress of the Roman Governor.
Don’t say you’re the new David, the Messiah, the true King of Israel,
unless you mean it, because if you’re serious, it means war.
But
they were wrong about what Jesus had come there to do. You’ll remember that at one point, when his
disciples asked him who was top dog, he took a little child and put it in the
middle of them and said, “Unless you change and become like this little child,
you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”
The children of Jerusalem may not have understood exactly what Jesus was
doing that day, but they were much closer to the mark than the leaders in the
temple. Those men assumed that he was trying
to outplay them at their own game, and so they secretly set their traps for him. But the children saw that Jesus was inviting
them to his game, which was entirely
different, a game that was creative, and joyful, and fun, that welcomed
everyone who wanted to participate, and had no winner and no losers. It was open-ended, a game that could
potentially go on forever, and there was a place in it for them, so they came
out to play.
The
elders, and Chief priests, and scribes of Jerusalem got it wrong about what
Jesus had come there to do. And ever
since the church has been saying we’ve
got it right. Over the centuries, our
great preachers and theologians have come up with all kinds of explanations for
what Jesus went there to do. Most of
them sound very serious and businesslike.
They talk about the atoning work of Christ, and what he accomplished on
the cross, and his death as a transaction by which he substituted his own
sinless life for the lives of us sinners, and took on himself the punishment
that by all rights should have fallen on us. Mostly they seem to agree that Jesus went to
Jerusalem in order to die.
But
while the theologians give their explanations there is a kind of childlike
wisdom in the liturgical tradition of the church, that is faithful to the outlook
of the first Christian generations who gave us the gospels, who understood that
an explanation isn’t half as good as a story.
And this popular liturgical tradition knows that even a story isn’t as
good as a play. There is an intuitive
understanding, that you see expressed in different ways all over the world, in
German Passion Plays, and Guatemalan Holy Week processions, and even here in
St. John’s, Petaluma, that the passion of Jesus is a drama. I think this is no accident, but conveys a deep
insight into the mind of Christ, and even the purposes of God.
Because
Jesus didn’t go into Jerusalem to take over and become king, and maybe he didn’t
even go there to die on the cross for our sins.
Maybe he didn’t have a particular goal in mind at all, except to be
faithful to the role that God had given him.
Maybe he was simply continuing a game he’d been playing all along,
acting as if God really loves us, and really rules the world, and really just
wants us all to come out and play, in the open air, in the light, of truth, of
forgiveness, and compassion, and thanksgiving, and peace, and Jesus was willing
even at the risk of his own life, to bring God’s invitation to the priests, and
the elders, and the scribes. Of course
he was no fool, so he guessed how they would react. We watch them play out their own roles, and
every scene that follows has its grim theatricality—Judas’ kiss in the garden, the
kangaroo court in the High Priest’s house, Pilate’s washing his hands in front
of the crowd, the soldier’s brutal parody of coronation, and the naked tortured
body on the gibbet by the city gate, with the placard reading “King of the
Jews.”
These
actors think they know what they’re doing.
They think they are making a grand show of power, and innocence, and possession
of the sacred public trust. Little do
they know that down through the ages they will be synonymous with treachery,
impiety, and murder. How could they know
that they are tearing away forever the false pretensions of dominating power, exposing
the death’s head behind the mask? They
think that they are making an example of Jesus, a sign of terror and humiliation
to his followers and all the people. How
could they know that they are exalting him forever as savior and redeemer and
Lord? Who is the overlooked, forgotten
actor in the drama who could bring this about?
What shocking, unexpected twist could make such a dramatic reversal? Tune in next week to find out.
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