Palm Sunday

Just this past Monday, I participated in a video conference with a handful of pastor’s scattered across the US.  Our topic of discussion was Announcing the Kingdom of God.  As we spent time in our conversation, one of the other pastor’s said:  How would people answer the question:  what does your life announce?  Jesus lived his life to announce the Kingdom of God.  What do our lives announce?  And I responded to him, thank you so much for that question, you have given me my Palm Sunday Sermon. 

            Palm Sunday is an announcement.  The crowds gather, the people cheer and sing, they wave palm branches and lay their cloaks on the road in honor of the one that comes.  The one that comes in the name of the Lord.  The people have lived in dark times and finally, finally, their king has come.  Hosanna in the highest, he is the One that comes in the name of the Lord. 

            Although I, personally, am not a fan of parades, we as people seem to be drawn to them.  Parades are held to commemorate people or important events.  Parades announce something that we feel is important to share such as  Memorial Day parades and Fourth of July parades.  Parades help us mark the transition in time: such as the Thanksgiving Day parade.  Parades can be held to celebrate victories such as for the Superbowl or the Rose Bowl Parade.  But they each announce something. 

            On this first Palm Sunday, the people are announcing their hope that Jesus is indeed their king.  That he has come in the name of the Lord to deliver them from Roman rule.  But Jesus announces something completely different.  Jesus rides into Jerusalem not on a horse fit for a king, but rather on a humble donkey.  His life is one that consistently announces the Kingdom of God, so although he has the ability to become the king of Israel, he has the ability to take a political stand against Rome, he is always pointing his life towards obedience to God, and his calling as one that shares the good news of God’s love, compassion, justice, mercy, healing and wholeness. 

            Jesus’ life, in a sense, was determined hundreds of years before he was born.  The prophets speak of the Messiah, the branch of Jesse, the eternal Kingdom of King David.  The angels announce his birth to both Mary and Joseph, he will be the Savior of his people.  Those that come to his birth announce his future role as a leader of God’s people.  That he will be the light that shines in the darkness.  The people had been waiting a long time for God’s anointed one to come to them, and now that he was here, now that they had seen the teachings of their prophets come to fruition, they were ready to celebrate. 

            And so as we celebrate Palm Sunday, as we celebrate the one that comes in the name of the Lord.  The one that announces that the kingdom of God is near.  How do we respond in the world today?  How do we live as disciples?  How do we embrace his life and allow it to be a part of who we are?  How do we announce ourselves to the world? 

            So, as I spent time thinking about this question, I came across a handful of videos that I was viewing for completely different reasons.  One video really inspired me.  There are two young ladies that live on the island of Bali.  While in school, they learned how plastic bags were deeply impacting the environment of their precious island.  At twelve years old, these two girls decided to make a difference and started a movement to end plastic bags altogether throughout their island.  They shared how difficult this journey was, but they were persistent and others wanted to be a part of this too.  Their movement grew and after several years of education, writing letters, and taking the steps to get the government behind them, the island is now plastic bag free for shopping.  These girls were passionate about something and dedicated their young lives to making a difference, the announced their lives for a better future for their island. 

            Just yesterday, people gathered throughout our nation to announce through their lives that they have had enough with school violence.  People may wear some sort of symbol or item to announce to others who they are.  There was a movement last year of people wearing safety pins as a way to announce to others that they are a safe person, that they support immigrants in our communities.  The rainbow has become a symbol for announcing to the LGBT that they are supported and safe in that specific place.  Teachers have put the rainbow sticker on their classroom door, or people have it on their car or churches have put them on their sign, announcing that if you are LGBT you are welcome here. 

            What do our lives announce?  Do we announce our love for God?  Do we announce the Kingdom of God?  Do we announce compassion, justice, mercy, and love?  I often find these Holy Spirit moments, because also this last week, I was reading a book for a book study group and the author writes: what if we lived out Matthew 25.  What if the church of today embrace this teaching: to feed the hungry, to house the homeless, to visit the sick and those in prison.  And I thought, well, we are doing pretty good at that, but are we announcing it?  Does the greater community know our commitment to Roxbury Social Services and Habitat for Humanity?  Does our own congregation know our growing call to Family Promise and Faith Kitchen.  Just embracing those four ministries and announcing ourselves to the greater world that this is our calling gives us meaning and purpose. 

            What does your life announce?  What does your faith announce? What might our church announce?  So, this is a slight detour, but I do think that our meeting of the congregation today is a part of what does our church announce.  Outward appearances do speak, and so as we seek to restore our steeple, we are making an announcement.  We are announcing that we are proud of our history, we are announcing that we care about our building, we are announcing that we believe in ourselves and our future viability as a dedicated group of disciples here in this place.  Our steeple announces to the greater community that we are here.  As I did a bit of research on steeples, the steeples house the church bell and they needed to be up high to help the sound travel throughout the region announcing to the community it was time to gather for church.  This was before people had watches of their own and they needed a way to know how to be on time.  The bells were used for other things in the life of the community announcing danger or meetings that have long been replaced by other forms of communication, but we still ring the bell every Sunday just prior to our worship service, announcing to the greater community we are here, and we are called to worship God.  As we leave this place, as we go out into the world, our lives are to be the bell that announces to the community we are called to serve.   Amen. 

Lent week #3

Embracing our Emotions:

As we continue in this season of Lent with Barbara Brown Taylor’s book:  Learning to Walk in the Dark, this next area that we are exploring deals with our emotions.  As I read through this chapter, I, of course, immediately thought of the children’s movie:  Inside Out.  For those that have not seen this movie, it actually deals with topics that I feel are a bit too mature for children, a bit too deep, a bit too hard, because it really deals with sadness and depression and loss and grief.  Those aren’t really topics that we take our children to a movie to see.  Right, we want fun and happiness.  Which is pretty much what this movie wrestles with. 

            This movie takes place inside the head of a young girl named Ryleigh.  There are a handful of characters:  Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust, and Sadness.  As Ryleigh deals with her life experiences, these various characters interact with her causing her emotions.  Well, young Ryleigh’s family moves and suddenly the main character Joy finds herself being replaced by Sadness.  Joy is going to have nothing to do with this.  She does everything she can to keep Sadness in control.  Long story short, Joy finally learns that sometimes there is a place for Sadness and when we try and keep our true emotions hidden we can spiral out of control. 

            As Barbara Brown Taylor unpacks how we deal with our emotions, she shares that during the day, we do our best to keep busy, to keep distracted, and we don’t have to deal with the deeper feelings within us.  She then shares that during the night, during the time she calls Lunar Spirituality, those feelings can emerge and keep us awake at night.  I’ve been there, up during the night, tossing and turning and worrying about this and that.  We proclaim it when we know someone has done something wrong and we say:  I just don’t know how he can sleep at night.  Right, night seems to be the time we acknowledge dealing with the hard stuff.  Sometimes it can emerge as a bad dream.   

            What is going on with us in the night?  When all is quiet and the busyness of the day has silenced then we get real with ourselves or with the issues of life.  And we wrestle, we wrestle with the world in which we live, we wrestle with the decisions we make and the relationships in which we are involved and perhaps, perhaps we even wrestle with God.  Wrestling with God. 

            We even have a Biblical story of Jacob wrestling in the night, and the question is, with whom does he wrestle?  Is he wrestling with God?  In this story, Jacob is about to encounter his brother Esau.  Although he has come with gifts to appease his brother, He should have a lot of anxiety since he tricked his brother out of his birth right.  His brother just might be coming to kill him.  I think if I knew I was about to face a life or death fight, I might be up all night wrestling with fear. 

            As Jacob wrestles, he is injured, he is struck in the hip joint, but the fight continues, and as the day begins to dawn, the one with whom he wrestles instructs him to let go, but Jacob will not let go, until he is offered a blessing.  And so the dialogue between the two continues and it is here that Jacob is given a new name, he is to be called Israel.  And Jacob knows that in this encounter, he has wrestled with God, he has seen God face to face and has lived.  Jacob is never the same, he leaves the encounter limping, but he also leaves blessed, he leaves knowing that he has been with God.  If only we can take our middle of the night tossing and turning and listen to what God just might be saying to us as we fight being awake and finding sleep. 

            How many feelings do we suppress during the day?   A few weeks ago, right after the school shooting in FL our local middle school in Parsippany went on lock-down.  I had my girl scout meeting after school, and a mom came a little late to pick up her daughter.  She was distraught, since she has an older child in the middle school.  She was trying so hard to keep it together, and I told her it was okay, she was in a safe place, and that she could release her emotions.  Why is it that we feel we need permission to cry?  Why is it that we try so hard to keep it together all the time?  And do we stop to think about what it might be doing to our own spiritual self? 

            Back before Thanksgiving, my cat got really sick and I knew it was her time.  She has been my companion for seventeen years, and so saying good bye was so hard.  I came home and spent the day crying, and what I found was that I cried not just for her, but for all of the other griefs of this life that I have kept hidden away.  I cried for Sandy Hook, I cried for the war torn areas of our world, I cried for people recovering from natural disasters, for all those places that I knew I should be upset about but just could not cry for, I found the release I needed.  And afterwards, I felt so cleansed.  I wish I could have a cry like that every few months.  Not just once in seventeen years.  My spirit felt lighter, I felt stronger, I felt less angry, it really was amazing.  And yet, we have learned to hold so many of our emotions in.  Perhaps we can learn a lot from Jacob as we wrestles with God in the middle of the night, wresting but also finding God’s blessing within the fight.  The thing is, when we wrestle with God, we might just emerge changed.   

            I partnered this passage with that of Jesus in the Temple overturning the tables of the money changers as a comparison of what can be called righteous anger.  So many people picture Jesus as this peaceful man, holding lambs and being calm.  But here we have a story of anger, of rage, as he sees how corrupted the religious institution has become.  This is not what God wants of the people, and yet, people have created their own practices based on greed, manipulating people as they come to the Temple to worship. 

            Perhaps Jesus had wrestled throughout the night before he entered the Temple and turned over the tables, or perhaps the very sight of the corruption in this holy place caused him just to act.  Perhaps some of the wrestling we do at night that keeps us awake should also call us into holy and righteous anger.  Do we wrestle with issues around hunger or homelessness, do we wrestle with issues of violence and war?  Do we wrestle with issues concerning our environment, protected land, and endangered animals?  Do we see the world as God’s sacred Temple?  Do we see each other as God’s holy children?  Or are we torn into too many directions that we just feel immobilized, frozen, unable to react at all?  I know from conversations, people want to make a difference in this world and in our local community.  So let us wrestle with God and let us come forth as force to be reckoned with as we seek through God’s calling to feed the hungry and house the homeless and care for our planet as we name our feelings and emotions and concerns and passions for change within ourselves and the world in which we dwell.  Amen.