Powerful Choices - Palm Sunday 2023
Powerful Choices
Ps 118:1-2, 19-29; Mt 21:1-11
Ps 118:1-2, 19-29
O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his steadfast love endures forever! 2Let Israel say, “His steadfast love endures forever.” Open to me the gates of righteousness, that I may enter through them and give thanks to the Lord. 20This is the gate of the Lord; the righteous shall enter through it. 21I thank you that you have answered me and have become my salvation. 22The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. 23This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes. 24This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. 25Save us, we beseech you, O Lord! O Lord, we beseech you, give us success! 26Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. We bless you from the house of the Lord. 27The Lord is God, and he has given us light. Bind the festal procession with branches, up to the horns of the altar. 28You are my God, and I will give thanks to you; you are my God, I will extol you. 29O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.
Mt 21:1-11
When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, 2saying to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. 3If anyone says anything to you, just say this, ‘The Lord needs them.’ And he will send them immediately.” 4This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying, 5“Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” 6The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; 7they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them. 8A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 9The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!” 10When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?” 11The crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”
Prayer – Lord of grace and mercy, each day people make choices – to go to the store, to stay at home, to work at the church, to go to the beach along with a multitude of other choices. You know something about choices as well, O God. Remind us this day, that in the midst of our choices you have chosen to love us, to pour out your grace upon us and that you will never turn your back on us. Help us to make powerful choices of faithful living each day – amen.
In February of 2022, Vladimir Putin made a powerful choice that hasn’t worked out as well as he hoped. On February 24th of that year, Russia invaded and occupied parts of Ukraine in a major escalation of the ongoing battle between Russia and the Ukraine which actually began in 2014. At the time of Russia’s powerful choice to escalate the war with an invasion of the Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was not considered a very effective nor astute leader for the country. But today, people around the world compare him to Winston Churchill who powerfully chose to stand up to Hitler during WWII.
Zelenskyy’s turnaround began that morning of Feb 24th as Russian soldiers were headed towards the capital city of Kyiv, intent on capturing or killing him. Despite efforts from the US as well as advisors of his own Ukrainian cabinet, Zelenskyy made the powerful choice to stay put and lead his people. One advisor, Oleksiy Arestovych, was with Zelenskyy at the beginning of the war and asked, ‘What about cruise missiles?’ to which Zelenskyy replied, “I’ll stay here.” ‘What about Russian saboteurs or assassins?’ to which Zelenskyy replied, “I’ll stay here. Give me a machine gun, I’ll stay here.”
Arestovych said the military and other advisors were trying to do their job and protect the leader of the country, but Zelenskyy was choosing to think more broadly. Zelenskyy understood that if he chose to leave his people, it would have a devastating blow to the people of the Ukraine. On the second day of the war, Zelenskyy stood with his chief of staff as well as Ukraine’s prime minister next to a building in Kyiv that everyone would recognize and sent a defiant message – “We are all here. Our soldiers are here. The citizens are here. We defend our independence.”
From a comedic actor and entertainer to President of the country where few viewed him as powerful or political, Zelenskyy has become the powerful face of democracy in the face of a powerful nation. Zelenskyy made a powerful choice to stay and lead his nation against a nation and army that far exceeded any expectations of survival. And now a year later, Zelenskyy and Ukraine have fought back and regained lost soil and are poised to rebut yet another escalation from Putin and Russia – all because he made a powerful choice.
We are entering Holy Week in a world which is not quite sure what to make of what it means to make powerful choices. Here at Trinity we have made some powerful choices in recent weeks – to paint the buildings, to rebrand and to rename ourselves Trinity Grace Church. We have other choices ahead of us – choices to help pay for a new electronic sign out on Walnut Creek to let Mansfield know that we are not just here, but we are reimagining ourselves, we are renewing our covenant to be faithful, we are growing in life and faith so come join us. All are powerful choices.
Two thousand years ago, Jesus was faced with countless powerful choices – choices that he knew could very well cost him his life. Every meal he provided, every person he healed, every life he transformed, every broken life he filled with grace, he chose time and time again to continue that life-long journey to Jerusalem and ultimately to the cross. Jesus made the intentional and powerful choice to enter into Jerusalem that holy week of the Passover, knowing full well that he wouldn’t be leaving town at the end of the week. Jesus’ entire life was made up of powerful choices.
Our gospel lesson this morning introduces us to Palm Sunday and the conclusion of the many powerful choices that Jesus made. He asks two of his disciples to go into town and ‘borrow or steal’ a donkey and a colt for him to ride into Jerusalem for the Passover. Meanwhile, on the other side of town, we know that Pilate was entering on a mighty white steed, led by the powerful Roman army to ensure that no insurrection would occur from the Jews during this holiest of weeks for them. Interesting dichotomy of entrances for sure.
The truth of what we call Palm Sunday is that this is not a simple celebration that happened a long time ago to give present day Christians a chance to whoop it up with some palm fronds every year a week before Easter. Instead this is a story fraught with powerful choices. Did the disciples wonder what was going to happen when Jesus told them to bring a colt back for him to ride on – what if divine arrangement didn’t connect and they had been caught stealing a colt? Did they suspect that Jesus was playing into OT anticipations; and if so, what was going to happen in the end? And if they did, what did they make of that? This had to be confusing to them. So did Jesus’ public identification of himself as the Messiah by riding into Jerusalem on a colt confuse them even more or make them really, really excited to finally be moving toward the political victory they were hoping God’s Messiah would bring to God’s people?
You see, it’s easy to preach on Palm Sunday when we sing about it in church to make the whole story look like a clear-eyed, straight forward set of events. It’s too easy to picture the disciples as moving through all this with heads-held-high confidence and swagger, to treat Palm Sunday as a big bright spot in the midst of all the Lenten darkness and ahead of the darkness of Holy Week, which this Sunday kicks off of course.
But think about it for just a minute with me – the world, indeed, the cosmos, it is not too grand a thing to allege – was teetering on the brink of the most momentous event since the Big Bang. The very Son of God was about to be handed over, betrayed, abused, murdered. There was, in a sense, going to be a death in God within a few days. The universe was about to turn the corner from endless darkness back toward the Light that just is God – the Light that darkness cannot overcome. What all was at stake cannot even be overstated or overestimated. The very hosts of heaven – and maybe of hell for all we know – were quite literally holding their breath to see what choices were going to be made.
Think of a time when you were anticipating something big. And think of a time when just how that big thing was going to go was by no means a 100% clear to you. Maybe you were planning to pop the question and ask someone to marry you. Maybe you were considering totally changing the face of the church, or creating a new name, or spending a significant chunk of money to catapult yourself into the future. Remember that knot in the pit of your stomach as you thought about your choice and how it was going to impact your life – if it went well or not. Remember how tense you felt, how jumpy you were, how now and then someone would catch you staring off into space with a couple of fingers held up over your lips as you were totally lost in thought. You and I both know that feeling.
Now transfer all of that onto the canvas of this story. See that kind of nervous anxiety and wondering in Jesus, in the disciples, in the whole cosmos, for heaven’s sake. What Palm Sunday celebrates and observes is not that simple, it is not neat, tidy or straightforward. The air fairly crackles with electricity as the characters of this grand drama sense that some powerful choices need to be made. And if we can pick up on those aspects of this story, we may also pick up on what makes Holy Week so momentous, so amazing, so jaw-dropping powerful – it is about the choices that get made.
Jesus knew that the time for his hour has come – that is, that the time to make a powerful choice between saving himself and being a Savior has come. He knows that the Jewish leaders were in cahoots with the government of Rome to get him. One should never forget that within that crowd that was waving palms and singing out Hosannas also included those who were not celebrating his appearance but were also planning to destroy him while he was in Jerusalem for the Passover celebration. So his willingness to ask his disciples to find a specific colt for him to ride into Jerusalem was the first of many powerful choices that Jesus made that week – he knew where his week was going to end up – and still he made the powerful choice to move towards the cross, rather than away from it.
Today is Palm Sunday and every year as we enter Holy Week I am reminded, deeply and powerfully, of the choices that Jesus made that fateful and faith-full week. To send his disciples to get a colt; to ride that colt into Jerusalem, knowing full well that by the end of the week his death was going to be a reality; to go into the Temple the following day and toss the moneychangers out on their backsides; to kneeling before his twelve disciples, washing their feet like the servant to humankind that he was; to sit down with his twelve closest friends for a final meal, knowing full well that one of his friends was betraying him before the night would be over, knowing full well that his most fervent disciple would deny him three times before the night was over; to serving his betrayer and denier the bread and cup of salvation that was part of their Passover celebration; to going to the Garden one last time and sweating blood knowing that God was not going to deliver him from the miracle of death; to submitting himself to his betrayer’s kiss; to humbling himself before civil and religious authorities; to the humiliating scourging that literally tore the flesh from his bones; to the inhuman, lurching, stumbling faith walk with a cross hanging from his ravaged body; to being hung from a criminal’s cross for me and you and all of humankind; to asking God to forgive; to granting forgiveness to a broken human being hanging by his side – ALL POWERFUL CHOICES. That is what Palm Sunday means to me.
What might it mean to you as we gather this day in a world still trying to recover from a pandemic; another shooting in a school; and the ongoing tension across our world related to politics and even faith? What powerful choices are out there for you and for me to make on a daily basis? Is it to teach inner-city street kids that they have choices to live their lives differently than those from their neighborhoods who make poor choices? Is it to do the best you can to see the homeless person as a precious child of God, to see the Mexican immigrant working in your neighbor’s yard as a neighbor rather than a ‘dirty Mexican?’ Is it to lurch and stumble faithfully through each day, trying to be a faithful person on all days that end with ‘Y’ rather than just for an hour on Sunday? Is it taking a flying leap of faith in changing the name of the church and calling out to the community where we live that we are doing new things here, come and see? Each of these can, and perhaps should be, powerful choices. Palm Sunday isn’t about the celebration because the Hosannas only lasted a few minutes. Palm Sunday is about recalling the powerful choices that Jesus made for you and for me – while also being willing to make our own powerful choices, trusting that God will give us a vision for today and tomorrow – thanks be to God – amen.