Palm Sunday 2016

The Rev'd Richard Smith, Ph.D.

March 20, 2016

You may remember the powerful scene in the movie Gandhi. The Hindus and the Muslims have been locked in violent combat. To persuade them to stop the fighting, Gandhi begins a fast. Several days go by, the violence continues, he is pale and emaciated. Into his room comes a distraught young Hindu man. He says to Gandhi, “I'm going to Hell! I killed a child! I smashed his head against a wall.” Gandhi asks “Why?” The man says “Because they killed my son! The Muslims killed my son!” (Raises his hand to show the height of his young son)

Gandhi says, “I know a way out of Hell. Find a child, a child about the same age and height as your son, a child whose mother and father were killed, and raise him as your own.

“Only be sure that he is a Muslim and that you raise him as one.”

It’s a powerful moment that speaks to the difficult choices we must make in a violent world, whether to render and eye for an eye, or to follow a different path. What Gandhi counsels in that film, and what Jesus counsels in Luke’s telling of the Passion are the same: To meet violence head on with love.

Not so easy in the real world. In 2015 there were 53,030 gun violence incidents, including 330 mass shootings. Twelve hundred people were killed by police last year. Our country has killed many innocent civilians through drone strikes alone. Just a few steps from our front door, young men like Richard Sprague, Bennie Martinez, Hector Salvador, and Jose Escobar were violently murdered. Donald Trump continues to exhort violence not only against protesters at his rallies but also against people around the world, hinting at riots should he lose the nomination.

All this violence makes us very sober as we enter into the Passion story this year. We are not disinterested bystanders in this story.

Toward the beginning of the story, in the Mount of Olives, Jesus tells the disciples, “Pray that you may not come into the time of trial.” This is the very  same prayer we make in the Lord’s Prayer: “Save us from the time of trial.” (The King James version has it “Lead us not into temptation.”)
Question: What is “the time of trial” he wants the disciples and us to be saved from? What is the temptation he does not want us to be led into?

Some scripture scholars believe Luke has a very specific kind of trial in mind here. It is a temptation that was very real for the early disciples: the temptation to resort to violence in defending Jesus when he was violently attacked by the Romans. “Pray that when they come for me,” Jesus is telling them, “you will not defend me by resorting to violence.”

To flip this around, Jesus is telling them that if they do not pray, they will be tempted to give in to violence.

When we pray, we are connecting with our own deepest selves, with who we most fully are, creatures made in God’s image with an infinite beauty and dignity. When we pray, we are connecting to our very centers where we are deeply united to God. And when we speak and act out of that space of prayer, our words and actions reflect God’s mercy and compassion and love.

There, in the garden with Jesus, the disciples do not pray. They fall asleep, they become numb to life with all its joy and pain, they lose touch with their deepest selves where God speaks. And so, when they awake and see the aggressive, armed crowd coming toward them led by Judas, when they see all that is headed their way, fear and anger overtake them, and they immediately ask, “Lord, shall we strike with the sword?” And before Jesus can even answer, one of them grabs a sword and lashes out, cutting off the ear of the high priest’s slave.

“No more of this!” Jesus replies.

Jesus, who did pray all night in the garden, who entered deeply into his own heart where he is closest to God, this Jesus lives and speaks and acts in accord with his deepest identity. “No more violence,” he tells them. He reaches out to heal the wounded slave, because that’s what Jesus, the man of prayer, does. When he is beaten and falsely accused, he does not strike back or lash out bitterly. When he hangs from the cross, he forgives his executioners. That’s what he does. Because he prays.

And today on Palm Sunday, with all the violence around us, we have to choose how we want to proceed from here--whether to let fear and anger and depression govern our hearts and our actions, or to become, like Jesus, people of prayer.

Our tradition offers many forms of prayer--some with music and dance; some with a candle before an icon or a crucifix; some with the Jesus Prayer whispered in sync with our breath, or rosary beads; some with the Daily Office; some with entering the stories of scripture through the imagination.

But, for us Christians, our most profound prayer is the simple meal we share each week at this table. It’s here that all the movements and mysteries of this week are gathered to a peak, where bread, like the body of Jesus this week, is blessed, broken, and given. It’s here that Jesus says, “This is my body given for you, my blood poured out for you.”

This meal is more than a ritualized re-enactment of a two-thousand-year-old event. When Jesus tells us,  “do this in memory of me,” he’s asking for much more than a ritual. He’s asking us to give our bodies to be broken as he did, our blood to be poured out as his was.

Do you know what you’re saying when you share this meal? When we celebrate this liturgy, each of us is saying to each other and to the world, “This is my body given for you, my blood poured out for you.” You, as a follower of Jesus, are re-committing yourself to do, in your own way, precisely what Jesus has done before you: giving your body to be blessed, broken, and given so that others can live.

This is what we, people of prayer, do once again this Palm Sunday, the first day of Holy Week.