Psalm 22:1-11; Matthew 27:1-54
Welcome to Palm Sunday – but certainly a different
experience of Palm Sunday than usual. Typically,
we’d begin outside in joy, blessing palms and processing around the building, shouting
“Hosanna!” and proclaiming Jesus as our king.
Then, once the procession arrived at the door and we entered the church,
the service would shift abruptly, almost like whiplash, as we moved toward trial
and crucifixion instead. Today, as we
worship under such strange circumstances, with just Dr. Tom and me in the room,
we get fewer joyful “hosannas”; and we move even more abruptly than usual to
the cross, watching the king gasp for breath.
Maybe that fits this moment in which we
find ourselves, that sense of whiplash from joy to sorrow. A few weeks ago, things were OK for most of
us, right up until they weren’t. And now
I hear so many people feeling cut off, frightened, and alone. The news each day tells the story of a
downward spiral, with bodies being loaded into refrigerated trucks as makeshift
morgues, states competing for personal protective equipment for their
health-care workers, business shutdowns sending millions of people into
unemployment. As we wait for the pandemic
to peak, we literally can’t say what the immediate future will hold. And that can be kind of terrifying. It can shake our assurance of God’s presence
with us, making us wonder, along with the Israelites wandering in the
wilderness, whether God is there with us or not.
But this Palm Sunday story, especially as
Matthew tells it, is a story of witness to the truth that God is there, no
matter what – in fact, that the man on the cross isn’t just a king
but God in the flesh. This is the truth that
cannot be denied, despite the story’s downward spiral.
All through the story, even those who try
to take Jesus down can’t help but lift him up. Pilate, the embodiment of Roman imperial
power, argues for Jesus’ innocence and even declares the kingship of his rival
on a sign above his head. Soldiers
torturing Jesus also hail him as king. The
crowd accepts the blame for lynching the one God sent to save them. The chief priests, scribes, and elders come
by to mock Jesus on the cross, but even they name him as the king. And in the end, even silent witnesses speak volumes. In the Temple, until now God’s dwelling place
on earth, the curtain before the holy of holies rips in two. The earth shakes and the rocks split, the creation
itself bearing witness that the one who’s just breathed his last is the same One
through whom all things were made. The
truth that it’s God who’s there on the cross – that truth will be
proclaimed.
Something similar is going on for us, in our
own moment. God is present in this hard
time, a truth that even the worst news can’t deny. For every death, for every job loss, for
every person who can’t pay her rent, there are a hundred stories of the love
that unites us. Kids are handing
thank-you letters to sanitation workers.
People are cheering exhausted health-care workers in the street. Closer to home, parishioners and staff and
clergy and Vestry members are calling the people of this church family just to
see how they’re holding up. Sometimes
those calls result in voicemail messages, sometimes a quick thank-you, sometimes
a need for prayer or more tangible help – and, in at least in one case I know
of, the beginning of healing and forgiveness years deferred.
And these stories of love include serving
those beyond us. Several of you have made
gifts to support meals at home for students at Gordon Parks Elementary. Yesterday, parishioners brought sacks of food
and hygiene products for the families of Benjamin Banneker Elementary, many of
those bags not just bearing peanut butter and toothpaste but inscribed with messages
of love. 
And those stories of love include silent
witnesses, too. Walking my dog, Petey, I
saw art from kids down the street who use sidewalk chalk like a painter’s brush,
leaving behind an image that to me looks for all the world like stained glass,
along with these six words: “You are loved.
Don’t give up!” Even a walk with
the dog testifies to the truth that cannot be denied, the truth of God’s
presence with us even in the depths. And
in witness to that truth – on this holy day when we can’t come together
and carry palms and shout “Hosanna!” to our Lord – some of us have cut branches
from our own yards and hung them as makeshift palms on our front doors to honor
the king who has come to love sin and death into submission, despite the cost.
That power of divine love doesn’t crash
into the scene, and fight a decisive battle, and make everything OK again overnight. At least not yet. For now, as we await the king’s coming again
in the fullness of time, that divine love plays the long game, persisting in
the midst of what seems insurmountable evil, aching through it for the
opportune time, poised to blossom in victory on the other side.
We cannot deny our present reality, the downward
spiral of the Holy Week story we’re now living – the foolhardiness and failures
we see; the weight of our own isolation; the darkness that lurches at us from
the shadows, knocking us off balance and making us flee. All that fear is real, absolutely; and we
must not shame ourselves for feeling it.
Instead, we should hold it, and look at it, and see it in relation to the
power that will overcome it. For
even in deepest despair, God opens the door to hope.
I want to leave you with some scripture
that might seem like the very last thing you’d want to have in your head
and your heart in such a time as this: Psalm 22. We prayed part of it a few minutes ago. It’s the source for Jesus’ cry from the
cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (22:1). He speaks those words, and we hear terror and
abandonment – the human Jesus at the end of his rope. But like most deeply powerful theological
moments, this one is complex. I think a
part of him must have felt terrified and abandoned. That’s how we’d feel, certainly. But even from the cross, Jesus leads us to
keep looking deeper into the story. To
point us toward hope, he’s sending us a message in code – a code that the enemy,
the power of sin and death, can’t break.
It’s a message that God has not abandoned us, despite what we may
see and feel; a reminder that even the worst moment is a time to affirm the love
that plays the long game. For when Jesus
quotes the start of Psalm 22, I believe he’s pointing to the end of that psalm,
as well, the part we didn’t pray earlier.
Like God’s power and love, Psalm 22 doesn’t stop in the moment of dread;
it points to the end of the story. So, I’ll
leave you with the verses I believe were in Jesus’ mind as he cried out from the
cross, the end of Psalm 22 – that:
All the ends of the earth shall remember
and turn to the Lord, *
and all the families of the nations shall bow
before him.
For kingship belongs to the Lord; *
he rules over the nations. …
My soul shall live for him; my descendants
shall serve him; *
they shall be known as the Lord’s
forever.
They shall come and make known to a people
yet unborn *
the saving deeds that he has done. (Psalm 22:27,29-30 BCP)
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