Sunday 25 March 2018

God for Us (Mark 11:1-11)


(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on March 25, 2018, Palm Sunday)



Someone to Do It for Us

When life becomes difficult and we cannot do it on our own, it is only natural that we want someone else to do it for us.

I remember the first few times that I drove a car.  Both my parents were with me.  Before taking on the road, I drove around the empty parking lot up at Godwin.  No problems there.  I cruised around the perimeter.  I practiced parking.  I felt rather accomplished for a beginner.  I could do this.  Then my dad and I swapped seats, and he drove us down Pump and Patterson to the entrance of West Creek Parkway.  It was a weekend morning, and there was hardly any traffic on the road.  The speed limit there, I think, was 35 at the time.  My dad pulled over and we switched seats. 

And suddenly my feeling of accomplishment faded.  There on the open road, everything changed.  Thirty-five felt like 80.  Each car that passed me felt like a wreck waiting to happen.  My knuckles white on the steering wheel, I looked for the nearest place to pull over.  I tried to give the wheel back to my dad.  He said he’d be happy to take it, if that’s what I really wanted.  But he also said, “Jonathan, I can’t do this for you.  If I take the wheel from you now, you’ll never learn.  Driving is difficult at first, but you have to go through the difficulty.  I can’t go through that for you.  But I will be beside you the whole way through.”

Fast-forward about five years from that time, and I found myself again in a similar place.  This time, though, it wasn’t driving.  It was relationships.  I had just gone through my first breakup, and I was at a loss.  Not only had I lost a close relationship, I had also lost things to do and places to go and dreams to chase.  I felt like I could not do life anymore. 

And like before, I wanted to pull over to the side and get someone else to do this for me.  I remember countless hours spent talking to supportive friends.  On the phone.  In coffee shops.  At the park.  I would ask pointless questions.  I would speculate on the unknowable gaps of the past.  I was looking for answers—but there are no answers for a broken heart.  And my friends, I think, knew this.  They could not give me what I wanted.  They could not make satisfactory sense of things, nor could they magically restore what was lost.  They could only share the long night or the lonely day.  They could only sit with me in my brokenness.   And that’s what they did.

The “Triumphal” Entry

The word “hosanna” means, “Save us, we pray!” (cf. Ps 118:25).  It is not difficult to guess, then, what the crowd in Jerusalem expected from Jesus. 

They who were powerless expected a man of great power.  They who were subjects to a foreign empire expected freedom.  They who were going through a difficult time expected someone who could do what they could not.  This passage is called the “triumphal entry” for a reason.  The crowd gives Jesus a reception fit for a triumphant king, expectant that he will prevail over all their difficulties.

But in only a handful of days, the crowd around Jesus is not celebrating him but instead crying out for his crucifixion.  Why?  I think it’s because they realize that they’ve been had.  This is not the man of might and muscle that they’d expected.  This is not a man who will triumph over their enemies.  This man is useless.  So they exchange their trust, putting it not in Jesus but in the people who boasted the most power: the religious authorities.

A Piece of “Street Theater”

To me, the most curious thing about today’s story is that Jesus seems to know all about the hero’s reception that he will receive in Jerusalem.  Most of today’s scripture is about Jesus planning for the event (vv. 1-7).  Only a few verses actually describe the entry itself (vv. 8-11).  This suggests to me the significance of the arrangements that Jesus makes.  He knows exactly how he wants to make his entry.  As one commentator artfully puts it, “He is carefully orchestrating a piece of ‘street theater.”[1]

And it is quite the performance.  For when the crowd gives Jesus a reception resembling a triumphant military procession, he turns it upside down (not unlike the overturning he will do shortly after in the temple).  Riding on a beast of burden, his feet perhaps dragging on the dirt path, Jesus comes not as one who lords it over others, but as one who humbly refuses the way of domination.  He comes not with prestige and power, but as one who identifies with the poor and lowly.  He comes not as a triumphant conqueror, but as one who is vulnerable and without force.[2] 

By Our Side The Whole Way Through

When life becomes difficult and we cannot do it on our own, it is only natural that we want someone else to do it for us.  It is only natural for us to cry out, like that crowd in Jerusalem, “Hosanna!  Save us!”

I have a feeling, though, that God has no more power over the problems of this world than my parents had over my driving or my friends had over my relationship.  Which is not to say that God has no power, but rather that it is an altogether different kind of power than we desire.  It is not a power that changes things from without but a power that changes us from within.  It is as simple as staying by our side while we journey through difficulties.  Which is also what we call love.  (Which is, rumor has it, the strongest power of all, stronger even than death.)

How do we know that someone is for us?  Is on our side?  Cares about us deeply?  It is not the immediate attempt to fix things.  Such an attempt betrays domination, however benevolent.  We know someone is for us if they are by our side the whole way through.  If they share our journey, our joy when we rejoice, our suffering when we suffer. 

And that is what we see in Christ today.  He is not for us in the false way of quick fixes and overriding force.  He does not come with the power to immediately change our lives and the world.  Such power would not be love but domination.  Christ comes to be with us.  To share our journey.  Even to cry out with us in the darkness when we feel God-forsaken.

In Christ, God is for us—even more than we are for ourselves. 

Prayer

Confounding Christ,
When we wish
For a hero
Of power,
You disappoint.
Because you are for us
Even more than we know,
Beside us
In all things.
Overturn our hearts,
That we might be for the world
As you are for us:
Not as one who has solutions and control,
But as a steadfast companion in hard times.  Amen.



[1] Charles Campbell, “Mark 11:1-11: Homiletical Perspective,” pp. 153, 155, 157, in Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year B, Volume 2 (eds. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2008).  “Street theater” is an image taken from Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998), 294.
[2] Campbell, 157.


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