Congregational Service for Palm Sunday April 13 2003

Some items included in the service

Reading by Nigel

Ten Commandments for reducing stress.

1. Thou shalt NOT be perfect, nor even try to be

2. Thou shalt NOT try to be all things to all people.

3. Thou shalt leave things undone that ought to be done.

4. Thou shalt NOT spread thyself too thin.

5. Thou shalt learn to say NO.

6. Thou shalt schedule time for thyself and thy supportive network.

7. Thou shalt switch off and do nothing regularly.

8. Thou shalt be boring, inelegant, untidy and unattractive at times.

9. Thou shalt NOT even feel guilty.

10. Especially, thou shalt NOT be thy own worst enemy, but be thy best friend.

Sermon by Peter Rowson
PALM SUNDAY

I would like to present some thoughts about Palm Sunday. I'm not a theologian but I hope these thoughts will lead to further reflection amongst us. One of the main themes to me seems to be humility, but it does seem to me to be a far from straight forward quality. More about that later.

T o start at the beginning. We have the image of a "King" choosing to make his entrance into Jerusalem, surrounded by followers, but riding on a donkey. - Not an animal normally associated with sovereignty and power. Delia Smith, the cook and Norwich Town supporter, puts it like this:

"In human terms this is a complete contradiction: how can one imagine a king arriving triumphantly and at the same time humbly riding on a donkey? If we compare what happens at our royal occasions - weddings or coronations - what we see above all is splendour and opulence. But there is also something else: every branch of the police force, royal guards, cavalry is paraded; guns salute and planes fly past. Behind the crimson carpets and flashing jewels there is a massive show of strength, military and otherwise. We are triumphant and victorious, and here's how" (p.104).

The King on a donkey is one of the many reversals of conventional values that typify Christianity. It is a religion of paradoxm, that glories in the illogical. Only through death can true life be found.
If we free ourselves from the values of money and possessions we are more likely to be able to recognize the divine. But this is a dangerous process. People do not like having their accepted values challenged.

At the end of the 18th century the German poet Friedrich Holderlin wrote a long and difficult poem entitled Patmos. Patmos was the Greek island where St. John the Divine wrote Revelations. Holderlin's life-long mission was to unify the mythical traditions of Greece and Christianity. A Unitarian really, so I'm allowed to quote him! The poem begins:

"God is near but hard to grasp.
But where there is danger, there too is the means of redemption."

To move on now to the crowd - The event that immediately precedes the Palm Sunday entry into Jerusalem is Jesus' raising Lazarus from the dead. In John's gospel the crowd is excited and motivated to go out to greet him because of this miracle. John writes:
"The reason why the crowd went to meet him was that they heard he had done this sign" (John 12,v.19).

One way of looking at this is to say that Jesus was completely isolated even amongst his friends, admirers and followers. He alone foresaw how short-lived popularity can be. The crowd and Jesus were interpreting events in different ways. The crowd thought that in Jesus they had an alternative political leader and the Pharisees thought the same; they saw him as a threat. In entering Jerusalem on a donkey, Jesus is turning his back on the triumph of power stressing that "the way of humility, peace and death was the only road to a certain future for the people of God " (Marsh p.460).

One of Jesus' main aims is to ensure that Old Testament prophecies become true. Not just on Palm Sunday , but on many occasions in his life. The path for him is clear - his task is to prove the supremacy of the forces of peace and love; to take part in a direct contest with the ruling powers of his time - something the Pharisees feared - would be a betrayal of the very forces it is his task and mission to incorporate. Those in the crowd who saw him as a political agitator in the short term were disappointed. In the long term however the ideals he represents are revolutionary and of immense power. The spirituality of peacemakers is far ineffective. .
Jesus enacts a role laid out for him in the Scriptures. This reminds me of the structure of classical tragedies. Janet and I went a few weeks ago to a performance of IPHIGENIA at the Crucible. What struck me was that knowing the outcome , the plot, focuses the mind on the essentials. In the play the fleet is ready to sail for Troy but it is becalmed. The gods demand that Agamemnon sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia; they will then provide the winds for the fleet to sail. Agamemnon knows that this is wrong but he also knows that the fleet is growing restive, that he will lose prestige and power if he decides to do nothing or to call the campaign off. Events get the better of him. He does not have the strength and commitment to hold to what he knows to be right.

Philip Larkin once wrote:
"Life has a practice of living you, if you don't live it".

In the end, after much anguish, the sacrifice is made and the fleet sails. We of course know that this unnatural act will be the cause of his death, murdered on his return from the Trojan War by his wife and her lover. The story moves to its inexorable conclusion just as Jesus' life did in its final week. Knowing the outcome heightens the tension for the audience, reader or believer. It also clarifies the issues. Jesus' death is to be the triumph of peace; avoidance of death would be the betrayal of an ideal.

Back to Palm Sunday - Jesus makes his triumphal return into Jerusalem on a donkey, a symbol of humility, and surrounded not by military might but by a crowd of ordinary people most of whom are following Jesus for the wrong reasons. The "HUMILITY" of Jesus in this context has some constraints. Jesus is not a meek and mild person. He has just raised Lazarus from the dead and after his arrival in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday he goes to the Temple and overturns the tables of the money-changers and claims the traders there have made the Temple into a robbers' cave. And then before the entry there is the incident of Mary's anointing Jesus' feet with costly perfume. Judas objects that that the perfume could have been sold and the money given to the poor. Jesus defends Mary "for you have the poor among you always, but you will not always have me" (John 12,v.9).

This is not the comment of someone unaware of his own worth. Jesus is someone aware of the power and strength of the ideals he embodies; the power of those ideals gives him his strength. Someone as assertive as Jesus, is not normally thought of as being humble. However his humility lies in his knowing submission of himself to his calling, to his role in the Scriptures and to the values he holds to be more important than his own life.

Ideals can appear remote and intimidating. They can make us feel inadequate and unworthy. They can also energize and motivate us but only if we are our own best friends, if we give ourselves time and space to appreciate the divine in us. Humility should not entail self-abasement because that way we would make ourselves powerless to promote and embody the values we stand for. The first step to true humility is self-fulfilment and then on the basis of trust and confidence in oneself the willing submission to those values we hold dear.

The story of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem is almost a cautionary tale. Even at the moment of apparent triumph Jesus is on his own. His guiding light which he never loses sight are the twin ideals of peace and love. These eternal forces cannot be subdued but it is our faith and hope that keep them alive. Amen

 

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