Mar. 28 Sermon: Palm/Passion Sunday
Palm/Passion Sunday Reflections
Holy Covenant UMC, March 28, 2010
Rev. Kate Hurst Floyd
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Luke 22:14-23: The Last Supper
Jesus enters Jerusalem, and it’s like a movie star arriving for a red-carpet premiere. Of course, it’s the first century, so things are a little more low-tech: Instead of a limo, Jesus shows up riding a donkey. Instead of paparazzi shouting his name and flashing photographs, people are yelling “hosanna” “blessed are you” “peace and glory” and waving palm branches. There’s no red carpet laid out, so they whisk off their gray and brown cloaks and spread them on the ground, one after another, to prepare the way for him. Jesus is a celebrity, hailed and welcomed and adored. People see the parts about him that are easy to love and want to follow him. They imagine, as people often do about celebrities, that his life is ideal and he’ll never disappoint them. They pin their hopes and futures on his life so they don’t have to focus on their own.
Now, as the shouts die down and the people have put their cloaks back on, Jesus is turning: turning away from the great crowds and turning towards a small gathering of his closest followers. For he knows that celebrity is fleeting, public love fades, and people will quickly find someone else to love. Someone who’s not so threatening, someone who doesn’t challenge the power structure. So he gathers around those who have been side by side with him on his journey of teaching and healing and feeding and preaching and does what he loves best: He shares in a meal. He breaks bread.
Jesus loves nothing more than a good meal. He takes every opportunity to share food: From a small lunch at the house of Zaccheus the tax collector to a huge field full of thousands where he serves enough fish and bread to have baskets of leftovers. He dines in the home of his best friends, Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, and he gets accused all the time of eating with sinners, a practice he engaged in regularly.
Throughout his ministry, he transforms meals into places of grace, love, and reconciliation. Now, as he faces his own death, he makes the ultimate transformation. Gathering with his disciples, he takes a cup, full of wine, and shares it around the table. This cup is me, poured out for you, he says. They don’t quite understand, don’t know why he’s making cryptic references to his blood and his life and the kingdom of God. Don’t know that this will be the last meal they share together.
He also takes the bread, he breaks it, shares it. Knowing that the world is turning against him, he continues to turn towards the world. He says:
This is my body, given for you.
My body transformed, into a place of grace, love, and reconciliation, where all of you are welcome. This is my body, given fully, and freely, for you.
Luke 22:39-46: Praying in the Garden
This is my body, given for you, Jesus says. This time, not to his disciples, but to God. He’s turning away from the intimacy of the meal and towards intimacy with God.
What he offers is his body, his earthly body, in great agony…for the very same crowd that a day before had welcomed him with shouts of hosanna is now yelling: crucify him! He’s no longer a celebrity, no longer someone who is popular to love; he’s someone people love to hate.
The people are driven by fear and controlled by the Roman authorities. They are suspicious and scared and looking for a common enemy. When they realize ganging up on Jesus can give them some security, however brief, with those wielding power, they quickly turn from throwing their cloaks on the ground and worshiping Jesus to stripping all the clothes off his body and worshiping at the foot of violence. They spit, they yell, and they won’t rest until they see him in his grave. Yes, this is the first century, but all we have to do is read the news or turn on the T.V. this week to know that this is a familiar human scene: people too often react to fear and anxiety with hate speech and threats and violence.
Jesus retreats from this scene, from this mass-anxiety, and he seeks communion with God. For he is tempted, by all the anxiety and the threats to give up and to give into fear. He began his ministry, in the desert, with temptation, and now, at the end of his life, he faces it again.
We know that temptation, don’t we? So often, we know the right thing to do, but it’s the harder and scarier choice, so we cave in to the powers that be: standing silent in the face of hate speech; ignoring the poverty in our own neighborhoods so we can live with abundance; treating our bodies as empty vessels, and having meaningless sex so that we stay popular and loved.
Jesus is tempted to give up on his mission so he won’t have to face his death: He could retract his message and save himself from the agony of death, of giving over his body. This would mean giving up on love and settling for hate speech. Giving up on including the social outcasts and only sharing meals with the elite men of the day. Accepting violence as a response to fear, and being satisfied with an economic system that keeps so many hungry while a few are full.
Most of all, he knows this would mean giving up on the kingdom he came to bring, turning his back on God’s beloved community.
He’s conflicted and scared, but he knows what’s right. And Jesus knows that when our hearts are torn, our bodies are in agony, our souls are weighed down, all we can do is pray. This is my body, given for you, he says, with tears rolling down his face, drops falling like blood.
Luke 22: 54-62: Peter’s Denial
Jesus knows he can’t deny who he is or the salvation he’s come to bring. He turns to God in prayer and is thus turned over to the authorities.
Now it’s Peter, a faithful, though often clueless, disciple of Jesus, who has the choice: His body is up for grabs and the people want to know: will you give it over, for Jesus? A servant girl, about 14, with clear vision sees his face in the firelight and knows that he and Jesus spent lots of time with one another, she’s seen them in ministry together. It’s your body, she says, that tried to walk on water, learning about faith; your body that sat at the feet of Jesus, asking him: who is the greatest. Your body that sat at the Passover meal and drank from his cup and ate of his bread. And Peter says, not my body, I’ve never seen him before.
But someone else recognizes Peter, he’s not out of the woods yet, because his life and Jesus’ life are intimately connected. A man says: He’s the guy, he’s a follower, Peter was helping Jesus hand out the loaves and the fish when they multiplied on that mountain. Peter says: I never did such a thing. Then another man says, surely this Peter is one of those Jesus followers, he’s from Galilee after all, and I saw him on the Mountain, when Jesus was giving that sermon about blessing the meek and the poor and the humble. And Peter says: I’ve never heard such radical and nonsensical speech in my life.
I will NOT, Peter says, give my body over for Jesus.
Peter doesn’t shout “crucify him” along with the crowd who cares about celebrity and popularity but his actions are just as bad—he’s complicit. He’s scared. He’s doubting what he’s even doing in this place, with this man Jesus, and what this means for his life, his body.
So Peter lets love die—doesn’t do anything to help hope live.
We know this kind of denial: People say, hey, aren’t you a Christian? I saw something about church on your fb page…and we’re embarrassed by the label because it’s not very cool, or it’s loaded with cultural meaning that we don’t want, and we’re afraid to talk openly about why we follow this Jesus guy. We come to church on Sundays, or one Sunday a month, And we say: sure, I follow Jesus some of the time, but I’m not giving my whole body—my soul and my heart and my life—my whole body to follow him. That speech about the poor being blessed, that call to feed to hungry, to forgive and love our enemies, we can’t possibly live that out between Sundays. We deny him in our daily lives. Instead of saying, “This is my body, Jesus, given for you”, we deny him to keep ourselves comfortable. How often do we, like Peter, let love and hope die?
Peter weeps, in the face of his denial, and so do we. And he’ll weep when Jesus dies, and so will we.
But the good news is, Peter will get a 2nd chance. Jesus continues to love Peter and calls him to be a part of spreading his message, forgiving him for his threefold denial. And we, too, get a second chance (and a third and fourth and a 10 billionth chance).
Because Jesus’ body—Jesus’ body– will come back. This week, his body will be given for us and will save us. And our bodies will have eternal salvation. For the body of love, the body of hope, the body of Christ, will never die.
Thanks be to God!
Tags: Kate
