March 28, 2021 (Palm Sunday) – Mark 11:1-11, 14:1-15:47
Mark 11:1-11, 14:1-15:47
Save Us and Keep us Safe
Palm Sunday/Passion Sunday – March 28, 2021
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
The disciples brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it; and he sat on it. Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields. Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!” Then he entered Jerusalem.
Hosanna. It’s such a funny word.
When we sing it in worship, or the kids chant it in procession, it sounds sort of fun,
like a team cheer.
Maybe it even sort of sounds like Hallelujah, which means “Praise God.”
But of course it means, “Save us!”
The people are desperate, and desperately looking to be saved, to be safe.
But saved and safe from what?
In their context, it means something like this:
Save us from hunger. Save us from poverty. Save us from oppression.
Save us from violence. Save us from fear. Save us from injustice.
Save us. Keep us safe.
In our context, what might it mean?
What might we be begging Jesus to be saved from this morning?
It could certainly mean some of the same things.
But after a year of COVID and a year being prevented from gathering,
and a year of racial turmoil, it might mean as well:
Save us from isolation. Save us from anxiety. Save us from depression.
Save us from meaninglessness.
Save us from racism and racially motivated attacks.
Save us from systemic racism and the poverty and injustice it perpetuates.
Just save us, Jesus.
That is a tall order, though.
Do we really believe Jesus can save us from this?
Like some of those gathered on that Palm Sunday long ago,
will we be disappointed when Jesus doesn’t save in the way we think he should?
+ + +
It was nine o’clock in the morning when they crucified him. Those who passed by derided him. In the same way the chief priests, along with the scribes, were also mocking him. Those who were crucified with him also taunted him. When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. At three o’clock Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last.
If you’ve been following the Devotion Moments and the Sermons,
you’ll know that Mark’s Gospel is framed as a showdown between Jesus and
all the forces that dehumanize us.
This battle escalates in the Passion story.
At a quick glance, I see Jesus coming up against apathy, tiredness, betrayal, mockery,
torture, disappointment, violence, scorn, belittlement, self-preservation,
injustice, and utterly devastating isolation.
In Mark’s Gospel, as I have noted many times, Jesus is, at the end, pretty much utterly alone.
His disciples have fled.
His closest friend Peter has denied him.
His religious leaders have utterly rejected him.
The political leaders have sentenced him to death.
And even God, seemingly, has abandoned him – or at least that is how Jesus feels when he cries,
My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?
This all makes me love Jesus so much.
Are these not the same things we face every day?
All these things dehumanize us – and those around us.
That is, they make us less than we are capable of being, less than God made us for.
Jesus’ mission, though, is to re-humanize us, and re-humanize the world.
Yet, there is tremendous opposition to this –
it involves too much disruption of the way things are.
What got Jesus killed is his refusal to compromise or tone down his mission.
In the words of one commentator, Jesus loves at full speed – and it’s what gets him killed.
But Jesus knows that love is the one thing in the universe that can overcome everything,
even death.
Jesus knows that it is love that will save us.
It is love like Jesus’ love, loving at full speed, that will save us.
This, too, is a tall order though.
Do we really believe that love at full speed will save us?
Like those women who remain at a distance on that Good Friday long ago,
do we remain hopeful that love will overcome death in all its forms, as Jesus believed?
+ + +
When evening had come, Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council, who was also himself waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God, went boldly to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. He granted the body of Jesus to Joseph. Then Joseph brought a linen cloth, and taking down the body, wrapped it in the linen cloth, and laid it in a tomb that had been hewn out of the rock. He then rolled a stone against the door of the tomb.
The one really faithful, bold person in Mark’s telling of the story is Joseph of Arimathea.
He has the courage to face Pilate and ask him for Jesus’ body.
He wishes to honour Jesus’ body by entrusting it to the holy ground of God for safe-keeping.
Perhaps Joseph is the one person in the story who actually takes Jesus at his word,
when Jesus affirmed that love will overcome death itself.
So Joseph acts on that assurance.
He asks for Jesus’ body – and is given it.
He takes it and commits it to the ground for safe-keeping while awaiting a better day.
A day when the de-humanizing of human beings is turned to re-humanizing them.
I recently read a story of how a man in London entrusted a box for safe-keeping to a priest.
The man was from a country with many human rights violations –
he had come to London out of concern for his safety.
But now he wished to return to his country in order to continue to work for its re-humanization.
It was a dangerous thing to do, and likely his life would be at risk.
“But,” he said, “I know where my home is, and it’s not going to get any better
if all the people who want a better future leave.”
The priest then asked what was in the box.
It was a toy animal the man had named after himself:
the little animal represented the man’s vulnerability and tenderness.
And he wanted it kept safe somewhere he knew part of his tender heart would be kept safe.
It was a token, like a keepsake lovers give one another when they must be separated.
It is sign that no matter how things bad get, part of you is safe with me – and I’ll never let go.
I sometimes wonder if the safest place for Jesus after all he went through was God’s own ground.
The ground that belongs to God and will always belong to God.
The ground from which Jesus was made and from which all of us earth-creatures are made.
As the priest writes, “The simple claim of Christianity is that no matter how bad things feel now,
ultimately we will be safe.”
Jesus trusted that promise, and so did the faithful Joseph of Arimathea.
Love will overcome death – and it does.
Jesus came to do battle with all that dehumanizes us – but his power is the power of love,
and love will win.
COVID has been disheartening and dehumanizing.
Isolation is disheartening and dehumanizing.
Racism is disheartening and dehumanizing.
But the claim of Christianity is that no matter how bad things feel now,
ultimately we will be safe.
Jesus was entrusted to God’s good earth on Good Friday,
but that is not the only thing that was given for safe keeping that day.
In Joseph of Arimathea’s act, we see a person entrusting his own tender heart of
hopes and dreams for a better day with Jesus in the tomb.
Trusting that the love that will raise Jesus will re-humanize us all.
Trusting that Jesus’s love at full speed will save us and keep us all safe.
With Joseph of Arimathea, can we entrust the tender, loving parts of our hearts to Jesus,
trusting that he will keep them safe through all that assaults them,
hoping that one day, we will all be safe?
Together, let us affirm that “Yes! It shall be so!” by saying together, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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