Dissonance - Sermon for Palm Sunday, Reflection on Philippians 2:5-11

 

Palm Sunday 2021 – Year B – Reflection on Philippians 2:5-11

The assigned Epistle for today is contained in a letter by Paul to the church at Philippi:

⁵Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
 ⁶who, though he was in the form of God,
  did not regard equality with God
  as something to be exploited,
 ⁷but emptied himself,
  taking the form of a slave,
  being born in human likeness.
 And being found in human form,
  ⁸he humbled himself
  and became obedient to the point of death—
  even death on a cross.

The cross and humility of which Paul writes is what we contend with today – a day when, in our worship, we begin with jubilation and end with sorrow. A day in which we begin with acclamations and honor due the King of kings, Our Lord, and end with Jesus, our teacher, friend and savior, dead – his body removed from a symbol of torture and criminality – and laid in a borrowed tomb.

Historians tell us that Jesus knew exactly what he was doing that day, as he rode down the mountain road and entered the city of Jerusalem through the east gate – at the same time the Roman governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate entered the city in his own grand procession through the west gate.

Pilate symbolized worldly power – greed for status, wealth, control, and anarchy, surrounded by legions carrying weapons to maim and kill any who stand in their path. He still does, as these things are alive and well in the structures of society and culture even today.

Jesus came as the defenseless, weaponless king, riding on a donkey, whose rule would have nothing to recommend it but love, humility, long-suffering, and sacrifice.

Today is full of dissonance, which represents not only this day but our very lives, as we worship not the gods of power, wealth, military strength and hatred, but rather, God on a donkey, the one who died to live, a suffering servant king. We enter Holy Week as Jesus entered Jerusalem, on a trajectory leading us to Good Friday.

In these paradoxes Jesus calls us at every moment to hold together the truth of God’s love that is experienced in this counterintuitive reality of ours. We live in a world full of pain, mystery, and contradiction, but we are claimed by God and given faith that empowers us, as Fr. Richard Rohr says, “to live in exquisite, terrible humility before reality.”

Each of us has a question before us: will we choose the humble and the real?  Or will we insist on the delusions of empire? 

Will we accompany this Jesus, who rides in on his ridiculous donkey; will we honor the precarious path he has chosen?  Or will our impatience and pessimism undermine our journey?

Paul continues in his letter to the Philippians:
 ⁹Therefore God also highly exalted him
  and gave him the name
  that is above every name,
 ¹⁰so that at the name of Jesus
  every knee should bend,
  in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
 ¹¹and every tongue should confess
  that Jesus Christ is Lord,
  to the glory of God the Father.

Today is, as Frederick Buechner reminds us, a day of despair and hope, traveling the road to Jerusalem together. At the end of the week, it will seem as if it is the despair that wins out. But stay tuned. Because a week from now, something will happen that will blow the powers that seem to be drowning all hope, out of the water. Wait and see. Watch and pray. Welcome to Holy Week.