PALM AND PASSION SUNDAY

Isaiah 50: 4-7; Philippians 2: 6-11 ; Mark11: 1-10; 14: 1-15:47

Today begins the holiest week of the year for Christians. This is the week in which the divine Jesus empties Himself of His nature as God, in order that He may experience to the full His weakness and helplessness as a human being. This is the week when Jesus identifies Himself with us to show us how Love acts when attacked by Evil. Today's liturgy is unsparing in its irony concerning human fickleness and betrayal.

The Church celebrates today as both Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday. This is also the time we remember and relive the events which brought about our redemption and salvation.

Many who witnessed Jesus riding into Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday probably thought they were witnessing an April Fools’ prank. The fact that the Roman officials did not interfere with this demonstration, not taking it as an insurrection against Romans shows that they just saw the whole thing as utterly contemptible, and a laughing stock.

Many had come out to see what they thought was the leader of a new religious movement, and quite possibly the long-awaited Messiah. They had heard amazing stories about this man about his feeding thousands of people with two fish and five small loaves, about his ability to heal, and even about his raising of Lazarus from the dead. Could this be, they wondered hopefully, the One they had long been awaiting?

When Jesus rides into the city of Jerusalem on a donkey, why does some of the crowd rush out to greet Him? The answer is found in Jewish culture and history. In Old Testament times, one of the ways a king was inaugurated was to get on a donkey and have a large retinue of people walk along behind him shouting, "Long live the King!"
The crowd in the temple wants to make Jesus king. When they see Him riding toward them on a donkey, they use it as an opportunity to precipitate a coronation. That he was crucified shortly afterward indicates that they were looking only for a national leader rather than a personal Savior.
We have two readings from Mark's gospel, and each describes a crowd. There is the enthusiastic crowd of people who cheer Jesus when he enters Jerusalem on the back of the donkey, and there is the mob that jeers at him on the cross.
Crowds are notoriously unstable. A group of football fans that is at one moment enjoying a match with relaxed cheerfulness can easily become a threatening mob. To be in a big group of people can feel like belonging to a community, and may be so. But you can be sucked up into a gang in which one loses one's individuality and consents to terrible deeds.
Today we begin Holy Week, and we are invited to become holy. Holy people grow into an independence of mind and heart which protect them from the seductions of the mob. A saint is someone who, by the grace of God, is becoming the person whom God created them to be. The saints take the risk of being themselves, the unique friend of God that they are. They are non-conformist.
The crowd that cheers Jesus as he enters Jerusalem is drawn by his power. He comes as the promised King, the descendant of their father David. They sing 'Hosanna', which means 'Save us'. They gather around him and escort him into the city. But the crowd that mocks him, many of whom were probably the same people, taunting him with his powerlessness. When they saw him not behaving like a powerful king after their demonstration, they turn against him. Don’t we at times behave the way this crowd behaved when we try to ally and associate with only powerful people, inviting them for parties or joining them in parties, may be wishing to share in their power and prestige, where as on the other side, we don’t like to associate willingly with the powerless and the poor ?

What is Palm Sunday? Maybe another way to approach that question is to ask another question: what if the gospel story ended with Palm Sunday? Like the disciples, we would like it if the gospel could conclude right here. After all that the disciples had been through, and with their own secret hope that Jesus would be a political success on whose coattails they would ride to prominence, the disciples looked at the Triumphal Entry and thought, "Now this is more like it!" They probably wanted to capture and bottle that festive atmosphere. It was rather like Peter's reaction to Jesus' transfiguration when Moses and Elijah also appeared with Jesus on the mountaintop. Peter piped up and said, "Let's build some tabernacles right here so we can keep this great thing going forever!" So also on Palm Sunday: if they could have hit the pause button on the remote control of life, this would have been a wonderful image to freeze frame.

The problem is that there is no salvation for anyone on Palm Sunday. The people cried "Hosanna," which means "Save us!" Have we thought about what we would really want God to save us from? Save me from anger, bitterness, depression, strife in the family, from debt, from humiliation, loneliness, from all type of fears. But given the world we are in, there could be no salvation from that kind of happy parade. It doesn't address the problems that need solving. We are saved not on Palm Sunday, but on Good Friday.

M. Kaeler described the gospels as "accounts of the death of Jesus, preceded by long introductions." One third of the gospels is about the passion and death of Jesus. The essential Christian proclamation is, "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again." The primary interest was the manner of his death, and that God raised him from death, giving us hope of rising with him.
The Cross of Christ has been a potent symbol throughout the ages. Its vertical axis, it was said, joins heaven and earth, and its horizontal axis joins all ages and races of humankind; everything meets in the broken body of Christ.
The Christian faith without the Cross is nothing. The Cross tells us that our goodness is not good enough. We cannot 'achieve' God by our own efforts: that would be to try to possess God as a sort of ornament on a life of achievement. Our ego would indeed love to do this, and is always ready to imagine that it has done so in fact.
The grave is a narrow place, and to suffer is distressing. But this is the narrow road that leads to life. First of all the Scriptures, and then the saints and mystics, vouch for this. First the narrow way, then the opening out. A Christianity without the Cross has never worked, and it is never likely to do so. It takes a crucified Church to bring a crucified Christ before the eyes of the world.

Martin Luther says that God thrusts us into death and permits the devil to pounce on us. But it is not his purpose to devour us; he wants to test us, to purify us, and to manifest himself ever more to us, that we may recognize his love. Such trials and strife are to let us experience something that preaching alone is not able to do, namely, how powerful Christ is and how sincerely the Father loves us.

This week sums up the whole meaning of our theology and daily lives as followers of Christ. Let us realize that true glory cannot be separated from some measure of suffering –Easter cannot be divorced from Good Friday. Let us go to die with Jesus, that we may rise with Him anew.