OF CROSS AND THISTLE: PALM SUNDAY
Palm Sunday, March 25, 2018, Trinity Anglican Durham
The Rev. Canon Dr Duke Vipperman
With grateful thanks and appropriate credit to Dr Ben Witherington for his sermon cited on page two
The Hinge of History-- a Palm Sunday Sermon (John 12.12-19) April 2007
Palm Sunday is one of the most well known Christian festivals, celebrated the world over. Matthew’s gospel adds children to the parade. A little boy had been watching the news on TV one evening. When he got to the dinner table it was his turn to say grace. With the news still fresh on his mind, he prayed, “Thank you God for the food, and dear God, please take care of yourself, because if anything happens to you, we're all sunk!"
We owe how we do a Palm Sunday procession to a Celt. St Columbanus of Ireland founded the Abbey of Bobbio in Northern Italy, dying there in the 7th century. Written less than 100 years later, the Bobbio Missal contains the earliest mention of these humble ceremonies. The order is pretty much what we did today – except they went out of doors from some other location to the church. Celts loved to process. They read how Jesus walked from place to place and rightly assumed walking is part of our journey. Movement to them was paramount. Walking together is a sanctifying activity; a liturgical act of devotion of the first order. Processions help us feel that our group is going somewhere: penitential processions, processions to holy wells, to monasteries local holy sites and so on: a poor person’s pilgrimage. To be Christian was a moving experience.
Celtic monks set out on what they called a white martyrdom: they who sailed into the white sky of morning, into the unknown, never to return.” Columbanus was one of those. Once he landed in what we call France, offended the king and was escorted to a boat on the shore and told to get lost. The wind, however, blew the boat back to France so Columbanus continued his gospel pilgrimage planting monasteries in France and Italy where he may have invented Palm Sunday church parades. Today we imagine we are going with Jesus into the holy city. Our first song was written in the 1990s for the March for Jesus. a very Celtic thing to do.
Jesus founded Palm Sunday. Celts followed his example. In a parade you start, walk and finish. On Good Friday at 2 pm we will start at St Peter’s and St Paul’s , walk down here to Trinity, then downhill to Knox, other churches in Lower town and finally to the park: an easy downhill. Jesus walked east to Jerusalem from Jericho, about the distance from Mt Forest to here but steep uphill 1000 metres higher above sea level. Jerusalem meaning “abiding place of peace” had been a capital city since before the time of king David. So impenetrable were its high walls that Jebusites who held the city at that time, mocked David besieging it, placing their blind and lame as their guards. After he captured the city it was said David hated the blind and the lame so they were not allowed to live in Jerusalem but had to lodge around a corner of the Mt of Olives in Bethany.
Bethphage, on the top of The Mount of Olives means “house of figs”. Olives and Figs were signs of prosperity. In contrast Bethany means “house of affliction” or “poor-house”. It was a centre of caring for the sick, aiding the destitute and offered lodging for pilgrims going to Jerusalem. Simon the leper lived in Bethany as did Lazarus who Jesus raised from the dead. On his way to the abiding place of peace, Jesus passes places of prosperity but, giving Jerusalem the once over, he returns staying in the poor place.
Knowing that the convoluted story of how Jesus hitched a ride makes more sense to me. He needs a donkey but he has none because he is poor. He borrows one. He has no saddle because he is poor. So they improvise with robes. Some say the custom on this day was for Pilate to enter the city through the West Gate protected by his Roman legions and he riding on a glorious war horse, guarded by rooftop Roman archers, until he entered the Roman fortress of Antonio. Jesus enters from the other side of the city and going the opposite direction, amid peasants coming in peace, dodging the fortress, going directly to the temple. Someone described that as brilliant political theatre. Two parades. Two kingdoms: from the west marches oppressive power; from the east comes humble poverty. Palm Sunday is a peasant’s peace protest, a march for eternal life.
Getting his donkey-ride got everybody’s attention. Hear its owners “Get you hands off my bleeping donkey.” But the Lord needs him and suddenly the whole huge Galilean entourage lodging in Bethany - because there was no room for them in the city - knew the Lord was still on the move. That crowd undoubtedly boasted the sort of outsiders Jesus attracted: people of ill repute, sinners, the formerly lame and blind, lots of women, some foreigners but mostly rural Galileans. Jesus was not well known in Jerusalem. In Matthew all Jerusalem asks “Who is this?”the multitudes reply “Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth of Galilee.” Why did the crowd cry Hosanna on Sunday and Crucify him on good Friday? Different crowds. Jesus was tried in the early hours in Jerusalem while his Galileans were still asleep in Bethany. The Palm Sunday crowd did not turn against him.
But they still didn’t get it. “Hosanna” Hosanna is a cry for help. “God save us now.” Not as how one five year old sang it, "Oh, Hosanna, now don't you cry for me!" The crowds were crying for instant political liberation, save us NOW wrote Ben Witherington, but peace, reconciliation, the end of our warring madness, liberation and redemption from our real enemy will not be won by violence. Out enemy is not corruption in the Temple or Greece or Rome or Hanover or the diocese or the poor. Our enemy lurks in our hearts. [Witherington, Ben The Hinge of History-- a Palm Sunday Sermon (John 12.12-19) April 2007, [
What flower am I describing? Delicately beautiful heads, viciously sharp thorns, a stubborn and tenacious grip on the land, defiantly flourishing in spite of your every effort to remove it? The thistle. Viewed positively the symbol of Scotland. It could also be a symbol of Christianity like the mustard plant – a noxious weed to those who don’t want it but enduring in spite of itself. The venerable, Bede biographer of Celtic saints, wrote that Jesus bore the crown of thorns on His head in His Passion, that He might bear the thorns and thistles of our sins. Sins sharp sting, its defiant stubbornness, has a firm grip on our hearts.
HOSANNA means "Save us now", a desperate plea for help! I know why 1st century Judeans and Galileans might have cried Hosanna. From what do you want God to save you now? from within, out of your hearts come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance, and folly. All of these evils come from inside and defile you.” [Mark 7] That disease is our real enemy. Jesus healed sin’s sickness with a heart transplant and a heart transformation. [Witherington, see above]
The hinge point of human history is not Palm Sunday. It is the whole Christ event when God walked with us – Jesus’ incarnation, through his life and ministry, to the cross out of the Easter tomb and rising on Ascension. Jesus absorbed in himself the full weight of the violence of the world, even praying for his tormentors saying “Father forgive them, they know not what they do.” He overcame sin and death but walk in the world we still must. And the paths are lined with thistles - a good symbol of how hard the inward and outward journey still.
The Christian pilgrimage is no cake walk. To get sustenance from the scripture said John Scotus Eriugena we have to till the ground and through thorns and thistles harvest truth though bruised by them. Untilled soil, St Theresa of Avila said however fertile it may be, will bear thistles and thorns; so it is with our mind. Someday I’ll teach you this song:Go peaceful in gentleness through the violence of these days. In a world of greed and lies, Give freely, show tenderness in all your ways.
A prayer by Joseph Bayly.
King Jesus, why did you choose a lowly donkey to ride in your parade? Had you no friend who owned a horse--a royal mount with spirit for a king to ride? Why choose a donkey, a small, unassuming beast of burden trained to plow not carry kings?
King Jesus, why did you choose me, a lowly unimportant person to bear you in my world today? I'm poor and unimportant, trained to work not carry kings--let alone the King of kings, and yet you've chosen me to carry you in triumph in this world's parade.
King Jesus, keep me small so all may see how great you are; keep me humble, so all may say, "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord," not what a great donkey he rides.”
Hosanna Son of David save us from ourselves.