A People of Grace and Welcome to All

This is what's happening in Orlando right now. As I write this, the debate is raging - well, has been raging; I believe they've stopped right this minute for some parliamentary procedure of some kind.

As I write this, Disciples of Christ from churches and institutions throughout the global breadth of our denomination are discerning, debating, and deciding. Their decisions on various topics - from resolutions condemning unfair wage practices or drone warfare, to resolutions supporting the DOJ's promised investigation of the Trayvon Martin incident, to this resolution on grace and welcome - are not binding upon congregations. Nobody will be kicked out of the Disciples of Christ for disagreeing with a decision of the Assembly, and nobody will be forced to comply with a practice that they don't want.

But these resolutions are important nonetheless.

Because Christians are meant to speak for and with those in pain. We are meant to recognize the ways that we - our society, ourselves, and even (especially!) our churches - hurt other people, deny the fact that they are fully human beings made fully in the image of God.

It would be easy to consider this debate in terms of how it affects me, how it affects my congregation, how it affects our image.

But those aren't the most important factors.

It would be easy to consider this debate in terms of a church simply following the rules laid out by God, denouncing evil and celebrating good.

But those are simplistically misleading answers to complex emotional questions, and the fact is--

God is not about rules. Just plain not. If God's highest goal were humanity following the rules set out in the Holy Books, then God would never have given us Jesus Christ. Christ proved by his

life
words
love
death
resurrection

that the God who sent him is best recognized by an all-consuming love for Its creation. An all-pervasive grace that overcomes all obstacles and draws all people to one another, to Christ, to the Source.

That's the only reason I'm a Christian. That's the only reason that I know this God. That's the only reason that I am confident in the future - because God loves, and doesn't stop loving, any and all of the people It created.

As I write this?

As I write this, I learn that the Assembly has passed the resolution, and my eyes fill with tears of praise.

Thank you, Lord, for guiding Your children in the ways of love.
Thank you, Lady, for nurturing our compassion and helping it to grow.
Thank you, Eternal Companion, for never leaving our sides.
Thank you, Friend of the Friendless, for opening our eyes to the people that You have called us to serve.

Disciples, you are not required anything but what your heart tells you, but... Disciples, you are called by name to
welcome
accept
affirm
and love
without ceasing
without restrictions
without barriers

Just love. That's what we are called to do. That's what we've agreed to do.

It is resolved. Let us be so resolved, and act like God's children.

Great Quote from JPII

I ran across this beautiful quote today from the beloved, late, soon-to-be-Saint, John Paul II:

It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal.” 

Amen!

No, It's Okay, I'm Not Racist! I Get It!

#1 - It's apparently tough for me to keep up a regular blogging schedule. Oops. Working on it.

#2 - I've been thinking lately about race.

Ethnicity. Heritage. History. Color. Whiteness. Blackness. Otherness.

I feel like it's important to discuss these things, to see where we stand on them, and to see the ways we can stop doing damage and start doing good. As a follower of Christ, it's important to, like him and the God he communicates, embrace those considered "other", to find our commonality as humans and as children of God.

I think about it often, the "race problem". Sometimes, it's because of something overt I've seen out in the world - On Facebook or Twitter, on a bumper sticker, spewing from the mouth of some Christian personality on television. Sometimes it's because I've come across some well-meaning but still racist ideology in one of those venues - somebody complaining about racism against white people, or denouncing the existence of discrete black culture as divisive, or denying the inherent racial biases within such social ills as poverty, crime, and drug abuse. Just recently, I saw again the blanket claim that racism is no longer an issue in America. That we are a post-racial society. That we are all color-blind, and that we as a society punish those who see race and judge upon it.

But racism is so not dead that it's the status quo. Every time you see a brainiac of Asian descent on TV, that's a little bit of racial prejudice poking through. Every time you see Jeff Dunham pull out his "Ahmed the Dead Terrorist" puppet, that's pure mockery of people with Arabian heritage, and people who hold the Muslim faith. Every time you see a poor kid of African descent sacrificed upon the altar of white American values, from the Treyvon Martin debacle to every black man who receives a harsher sentence than his white counterpart for a minor drug conviction, you are seeing the powerful and harmful effect that racism has on our neighbors of color.

Every time the world screams that racism is dead - because of MLK Jr., or Obama, or "my black friend", or Kanye West - that's racism at its most cruel and insidious.

You may notice that I'm using really awkward language. As if the Hyphenated-American language wasn't clunky enough, right? Now we have to say things like "of African descent", "with Arabian heritage", etc.
As a young man at my college once called out during a racial-sensitivity-seminar, "I'm just being honest -- if I see somebody who's black, I'm going to call them black!"

Is that an individual being racist? Do you have to use a slur to be racist?

Do you, personally, even have to feel negatively about other races to participate in racism?

When it comes down to it, racism isn't about individuals saying or doing stupid discriminatory things. Those actions are important and horrible, of course, but they're mostly a red herring.

Racism is about the million, billion subtle ways that our

language
behavior
newsmedia
entertainment
institutions
systems

perpetuate harmful myths about nonwhite people, and dismiss their real human experiences, sweeping people under the rugs of their ethnicities.

It's calling a person black, when her name is Susan.
It's thinking a person is smart because of their east-Asian heritage, when his talents and abilities grow and fluctuate over time as they are nurtured and abandoned, just like yours.
It's staring in wide-eyed-wonder as a brown-skinned person prays fervently, assuming that their ethnic spirituality is deeper than your white neighbors' glassy-eyed trudge down the communion line on Sunday, when people of all colors and heritages are flawed, distractable, and pious in their own ways.
It's when we white folks try to speak on behalf of our sisters and brothers of color, denying them the chance to share their own stories, their own experiences, using their own words in their own time. Even when we're "standing up for them", even when we're shouting, "No! It's okay! I get it! I'm not one of those racist white people!", we still reduce our neighbors to nothing more than archetypes.

You are not Susan, you are A Black Woman. I, the Enlightened White Man, will speak for you and fix your plight, in an attempt to purge my own guilt about how my ancestors kidnapped, beat, imprisoned and oppressed your ancestors.

In short, when we reduce a person to their color, or the geographic region where their family originated, we hurt that person. When we consider a person to be black before we consider her to be human, we hurt all humanity. When we hear somebody speak Spanish, and immediately imagine that the person is rich, poor, smart, stupid, evil, devout, lazy, or hardworking, then we hurt God, who creates all people as complete, complex, many-sided reflections of God's complex, many-sided Self.

Outer-Space Outlaws?

One of the pictures above depicts an illegal alien. Can you guess which one?

Whenever I hear the phrase, "illegal alien", that's all I can think of: "What do you mean, like an outer-space outlaw"?

Part of the problem is our use of the word "alien". The internet says that the standard modern use of the term - referring to an extraterrestrial - is traceable back to 1864. In our post-X-Files world, whenever you say "alien", the first thing that comes to most people's minds is a little green man.

Part of the problem is our use of the world, "illegal". As is often said, people cannot be legal or illegal. People can commit crimes. People can have or not have proper documentation to be in a place. But people can't be illegal.

So when we put these words together - "illegal alien" - we get this notion of an inherently polluted nonhuman creature. A beast so incapable of civility that its very nature is law-breaking. Sadistic, unsympathetic, and unworthy of human decency.

That's why it's so easy to say things like this:

However.

Consider this loving God that we proclaim and we serve.

Consider the words of the prophets and the patriarchs -- "The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt." (Lev 19:34) This is not an isolated command, but a running theme, and nowhere is there any mention of legal immigration status.

Consider the call throughout Scripture to care for and defend the people most powerless in society (the Scripture often explicitly referencing immigrants) - and who, in our society, is more powerless than people who have no protection from a legal system that will rip them from their lives and families to incarcerate or exile them if they speak up?
Consider grace, that quality of God that causes God to love each and every one of us despite the ways that we hurt, that we defile, that we destroy.
Consider love, that quality of God that causes God to do and wish the best for each of us no matter what we deserve.

Consider what the Kingdom of God - the Domain of God, the Reign of God, the Family of God - really is. It's a version of our world in which there is no "us" or "them'. It's a vision of our world in which all nations are the human nation and all families are the human family. It's a glimpse of our world in which people are treated in human terms as equally as they are loved in God's heart, and where "justice roll[s] down like waters, righteousness like an ever-flowing stream."

Poverty is a problem for all people. Injustice is a problem for all people. And the national/moral barriers that we put up between people and people, people and resources, people and God? Those barriers are as false as the barrier between Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female...

This is not about who deserves to eat and drink and have shelter, because every human being deserves those things. This is not about who gets a slender slice of the meager pie, because there is abundance both in God and in America. This it not about who got where first, or who has the right papers and who doesn't, and it's not even truly about the law - because, "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law." (Gal 5:22-23)

In Christ, and in the beloved community that Christ is creating among us, nobody is illegal, nobody is undeserving, and nobody is an alien. We are all beloved children of God.

Commitments, Covenants and Church Members

I've been thinking a lot lately about membership.

It's long been a running joke in churches that membership is a made-up number.
There are many churches, and many dedicated staff members, who put excellent and thorough work into calculating church membership. But things happen - people accumulate on the rolls but fade out over time. People are transient - they move, they change careers or sides of town or groups of friends, and people fade away. More often, "active membership" is a fluid term - is somebody active if they come to worship once every six weeks and a small group five weeks out of every six months? And what about all those people who clearly have a relationship with a church, but who never came forward during the altar call and answered The Big Question in front of God'n'everybody? What about all those people who fall between the cracks of "visitor", "member", and "active member"?

That's life.

So here's the question - what do we do about church membership? Because it's clearly built around a model that's no longer realistic, especially in cities. We can't expect people to establish a church home and stay there for their whole lives, and we certainly can't guilt people for living their real lives out there in the world instead of in church every day. Furthermore, research is clear that Millenials - the new adult generation formed of people like me born in the 1980s and 1990s - aren't joiners. They don't join - they do and they serve, if they believe in the cause, but they don't join. How passe!

Aren't we equipping people to live as Jesus-followers out there in the world?

Furthermore, all the traditional "benefits" of membership - exclusive communion, barrier to church leadership, social stigma - are failing. In our church, anybody can and does take part in leading worship. Any and all people are invited to take part in the Sacred Feast of Christ. We recognize the value of engaging with people where they are, even if they only show up to church every couple of months.

By the same token, we can't abolish membership. More to the point, we can't ignore commitment. We can't ignore the fact that people will inevitably respond to the Gospel, from time to time, with the fervent desire to dedicate their lives to what has for centuries been called The Way. That's a sacred covenant, with great responsibilities for both individual and body.

Becoming a Christian has nothing to do with baptism. It has nothing to do with church membership, youth group, or lifting your arms in worship. It has everything to do with a commitment to a love-oriented way of life. That's a very hard thing to dedicate yourself to - and when somebody decides to take that identity onto themselves, we should celebrate their bravery and strength with all due pomp and circumstance. Baptism and other commitment rituals are crucial. We need to recognize commitment... without pretending that "church members" are a separate and better class of people.

However membership ends up "looking" at FCC SouthSide, I know this -- our easy labels telling us "who's in the club" are gone. All we have are people - people dedicated, people wavering, people unsure, people trying, people succeeding and failing, people helping one another on the journey to God's wholeness and peace. If we can recognize the power of each moment on that journey, celebrate the difficult decision to walk, and walk with people as they take each trepidatious step, we will all reach the Kingdom together.

Share your thoughts on this complicated and deeply-rooted subject below, on Twitter with @revgeiger, or on Facebook with PastorGeiger. Thanks, and may your day bring you all the blessings you seek and more.

Madness and Prayer

Hey folks!

It's been pointed out to me that I never gave a final update on the outcome of Lent Madness through this blog when it ended last week.
So, if you're itching to get up-to-date, here it is:

After a hard-fought Faithful Four and final matchup against St. Luke the Evangelist...

Frances Perkins has won the Golden Halo! Apparently Christendom has a soft spot for social justice workers and "firsts" - as she was the first woman in the US Cabinet, and is responsible for all sorts of social reforms on everything from child labor laws to establishing a minimum wage to creating Social Security.
Congrats Madam Secretary!

---
I also wanted to take a moment to share with you a new take on the Lord's Prayer that is a rather fitting for this venue and this modern age:

"A Blogger's Prayer" by Andrew Jones


Our Father
who lives above and beyond the dimension of
the internet

Give us this day a life worth blogging,
The access to words and images that express
our journey with passion and integrity,
And a secure connection to publish your daily
mercies.
Your Kingdom come into new spaces today,
As we make known your mysteries,
Posting by posting,
Blog by blog.

Give this day,
The same ability to those less privileged,
Whose lives speak louder than ours,
Whose sacrifice is greater,
Whose stories will last longer.

Forgive us our sins,


For blog-rolling strangers and pretending they
are friends,
For counting unique visitors but not noticing
unique people,
For delighting in the thousands of hits but
ignoring the ONE who returns,
For luring viewers but sending them away
empty handed,
For updating daily but repenting weekly.

As we forgive those who trespass on our sites to
appropriate our thoughts without reference,
Our images without approval,
Our ideas without linking back to us.

Lead us not into the temptation to sell out our
congregation,
To see people as links and not as lives,
To make our blogs look better than our actual
story.

But deliver us from the evil of pimping ourselves
instead of pointing to you,
From turning our guests into consumers of
someone else's products,
From infatuation over the toys of technology,
From idolatry over techology
From fame before our time has come.

For Yours is the power to guide the destinies
behind the web logs,
To bring hurting people into the sanctuaries of
our sites,
To give us the stickiness to follow you, no
matter who is watching or reading.
Yours is the glory that makes people second
look our sites and our lives,
Yours is the heavy ambience,

For ever and ever,
Amen

Enter the Champion [Sermon from Palm Sunday]

You know, Lent has always been a kind of a downer. It’s sorta designed that way, isn’t it? I mean, it’s a period of repentance and mourning, not happy stuff. It starts out on Ash Wednesday, which is a whole service built around reminding us of the reality of death. Then we go through the entire month, giving something up or fasting or adding on more spiritual disciplines – if you’re observing Lent, it’s tough. Sundays are a relief, since technically Lent takes a break on Sunday and you can do whatever, but it’s still not a happy time. In fact, an ancient tradition holds that we’re supposed to “Bury the Alleluia” during Lent – we’re supposed to put away the word Alleluia (literally, singing praise to the Lord), and not speak it again until Easter. Some congregations even do this physically, making some object that represents the Alleluia and burying it in the ground until Easter. It’s not a celebratory time, Lent.

But then you get Palm Sunday, a party within the dark journey. In case you’re not familiar with Palm Sunday – which we celebrate today in the church calendar - let me give you the basic rundown: After Jesus is more or less finished with his teaching ministry, it’s almost time for the Festival of Passover. Jesus, with thousands of other devout Jewish people in that part of the world, makes the pilgrimage to the Holy City of Jerusalem for the festival. Outside the city, he has two of his followers borrow a donkey from in town, and he rides the donkey to the Temple. As he’s coming, crowds start gathering. They recognize this guy. They know who he is, what he’s done, and they have an idea of what he’s doing now. They get excited. They greeted him on the road, waving branches and shouting and singing: “Hosanna to the Son of David” (“Hosanna” literally means “Save us”, but it’s a much more joyful word than it sounds, and it almost became sort of a catchall praise-word)  - “Save us, Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!” In Matthew’s version, Jesus then goes on to start a ruckus at the Temple with the moneychangers. In Luke’s version, Jesus goes from his donkey to a hilltop where he weeps over the city. In Mark’s version, he and the disciples go look at the Temple, but it’s late so they go back to the suburbs where their rooms are. Some accounts are more dramatic than others.

But it’s exciting, you know? The people are excited! These shouts of joy seem to come spontaneously, unprompted. They see Jesus, they remember him, and they’re excited for what he’s doing. They see God’s hand in all of this. In fact, when they see him, they remember all sorts of words from the prophets – like Zechariah, who talked about the King coming to the people riding humbly on a donkey, instead of a great warhorse like most kings do – and they think “Yes! I recognize this! This is what God does when God sends us a King!”

They’ve been wanting a King. Some have been wanting a Messiah, the holy king anointed by God. Some have wanted just, y’know, not the Roman Emperor, or King Herod who was a puppet of Rome and wasn’t very good to his people. The people wanted a new, better, leader. As I was studying for the sermon, I kept thinking of some lyrics from one of the great hymns of my generation:

  “Where have all the good men gone, and where are all the gods?

  Where’s the street-wise Hercules to fight the rising odds?

  I need a hero! I’m holding out for a hero til the morning light.

  He’s gotta be sure, and he’s gotta be soon,

  And he’s gotta be fresh from the fight!”

Okay, that’s not from a hymn. If you are my age or older, you know that’s the 1981 Bonnie Tyler song, “Holding Out For a Hero”, best known as part of the soundtrack for Footloose.

[EDIT: I'm told by people much hipper than I that this song is now better known from its place in Shrek 2. If you say so, dear!]

But I’ll tell ya, it hits the nail on the head, doesn’t it? Our songs and our poetry, they have a way of doing that, of really landing right on these feelings.

In fact, our text for today has a little something in common with that. We’re going to be reading from Psalm #118 today – many of the Psalms are in fact meant to be poetry or music, many of them were originally songs, and that’s why many Jewish and Christian traditions still sing them today. Psalm 118 isn’t a song, though – it’s a dramatic performance. Psalm 118, the best scholars can figure, is what’s left of a religious-slash-political ceremony, involving the King (or a priest playing the part of “King”) coming into the city after a great battle. It's got more than one part, and it's meant to be performed responsively. Accounting for the limitations of this medium, however, you'll have to imagine the call-and-response. Or, y'know, grab a friend a perform the Psalm together!

This is the first piece of Psalm #118, verses 1-4, adapted from the Common English Bible. The leader's words are in plain text and the people's responses are in bold text.

1 Give thanks to the Lord for God is good,

 because God's faithful love lasts forever

2 Let Israel say it:

"God's faithful love lasts forever!"

3 Let the house of Aaron say it:

"God's faithful love lasts forever!"

4 Let those who honor the Lord say it:

"God's faithful love lasts forever!"

Amen! That was the simplest bit. We’ll come back to read a little more of Psalm 118 in a few minutes.

God’s faithful love lasts forever!  At that moment, at that time, when the great teacher Jesus is making his way into Jerusalem, the people know about God’s faithful love. At that moment, they understand that God is still with them, that they have not been forgotten. In one way or another, the crowds thought, their champion had come.

We know what it’s like to root for a champion. To put your trust and hope in somebody, to cast your support with somebody and push them towards their prize. You know this feeling if you’ve ever supported somebody in an election. If you’ve ever thrown your hat in behind a team or an athlete. 

Or a Lent Madness athlete. I know that some of you have been following the Lent Madness contest, the unique Anglican devotional that pits 32 saints against one another in online-voting-combat. Have any of you picked favorites and followed them? Well I’m happy to say that one of my favorites – one of the saints that I preached about a few weeks ago – has made it to the semifinal round, the Faithful Four: Hilda of Whitby will be squaring against Frances Perkins. Just to remind ourselves, Hilda of Whitby was a woman in the 600s from the British Isles who founded an abbey and a whole new rule for monastic living that upheld Celtic Christian practices instead of the more dominant Roman Catholic ones. Frances Perkins, her opponent, was the US Secretary of Labor under FDR, the first woman to be in the US Cabinet, and she was responsible for a lot of the social justice programs that keep poor Americans alive, like unemployment benefits, pension, child labor laws, minimum wage and overtime laws. That was her way of living out the call to serve humanity in love – she once said “I came to Washington to serve God, FDR, and millions of forgotten, plain common workingmen.” 

That’s Monday’s matchup. Tuesday brings us the bizarre pairing of St Luke the Evangelist versus Oscar (o-SCAR) Romero. Luke, as you might know, is the traditional author of the Gospel of Luke, traditionally depicted as a physician and historian. Oscar Romero, on the other hand, was the Archbishop of San Salvador in the 1970s, who used his position to speak out against El Salvador’s government’s repression, its violation of people’s civil rights, its violence against its own citizens. Eventually he was assassinated by his government, while celebrating Mass, the day after he called for Christians in the Salvadoran military to stop participating in the violence and repression. He was shot as he lifted the cup to celebrate Communion. He’s considered a martyr.

[NOTE: This was preached Sunday March 24. Today, March 27, brings us the winners of those matchups, and today is the final showdown between Frances Perkins and Luke the Evangelist!]

Make no mistake, these people are heroes. They are champions. They changed the world. They showed us ways to love God and carry out God’s mission. They showed us new ways to love the world and the people in it – Frances Perkins and Oscar Romero, who worked to liberate people from the injustice and oppression in the world, to lift people out of poverty and into joy. They showed us new ways to understand our old stories – Hilda of Whitby, who make Christianity make sense to Celtic pagans, and who showed people God in a way that truly made sense to them, even if you and I would barely recognize it. They showed us how God was working in the world – Luke the Evangelist, who conducted countless interviews and collected countless stories of Jesus and his followers, so that the world would have the most complete picture of Christ possible.

Our champions show us the best of our past and the best hope for our future.  They give us confidence in our victory – at least, they give us confidence that we will not be defeated, that we will not be overtaken and destroyed. For the Jewish people two-thousand, 2,500 years ago? They had lots of great champions, from Samson (super-strength, long hair) to Elijah (prophet, power of God at his fingertips, so awesome that he didn’t even die but God whooshed him up to the sky in a chariot of fire), all the way back to Moses (who faced Egypt and her armies in God’s mission to free the Hebrews from slavery). But for these people, the #1 hero of their culture and their stories was King David. Well, any King, really, but for them, every King was a recasting of David, and David set the standard for every King. How many leaders – presidents, monarchs, emperors – get people so hyped-up for them that they’re the standard by which every other leader is judged for literally centuries?

David was a textbook champion – he was the runt of his family, but he was chosen by God’s messenger. When he was still a teenager or a young man he took out the opposing champion, Goliath, with his slingshot. As the leader of Israel, he won battle after battle, taking territory and strengthening the nation.

Heck, according to tradition, David’s the one who wrote the Psalms! Now, it’s almost certainly not true, but the Psalms do show us a lot of the people’s celebrations about the King, about his protection and wisdom, about his special connection to God (the real leader of the people), about his military victories.

When the people saw Jesus riding into town, it’s no wonder that they thought of the words from the Psalms. Here was Jesus, the humble yet wise and crafty teacher from Galilee, doing a Triumphal Entry! Riding into town like a King returning from battle, and here they come with the shouts of joy and praise. Here they come, waving the palm branches and the laurels, the symbols of victory.

Read along with me the second part of the text (though you don’t have a speaking part in this one). Psalm 118, verses 5-18, as the King tells the story of his battle and his deliverance to the excited, gathered crowds.

⁵ In tight circumstances, I cried out to the Lord.
    The Lord answered me with wide-open spaces.
⁶ The Lord is for me — I won’t be afraid.
    What can anyone do to me?
⁷ The Lord is for me—as my helper.
    I look in victory on those who hate me.
⁸ It’s far better to take refuge in the Lord
    than to trust any human.
⁹ It’s far better to take refuge in the Lord
    than to trust any human leader.
¹⁰ All the nations surrounded me,
    but I cut them off in the Lord’s name.
¹¹ Yes, they surrounded me on every single side,
    but I cut them off in the Lord’s name.
¹² They surrounded me like bees,
    but they were extinguished like burning thorns.
    I cut them off in the Lord’s name!
¹³ I was pushed so hard I nearly died,
    but the Lord helped me.
¹⁴ The Lord was my strength and protection;
   God was my saving help!

¹⁵ The sounds of joyful songs and deliverance
    are heard in the tents of the righteous:
    “The Lord’s strong hand is victorious!
¹⁶     The Lord’s strong hand is ready to strike!
        The Lord’s strong hand is victorious!”

¹⁷ I won’t die—no, I will live
    and declare what the Lord has done.
¹⁸ Yes, the Lord definitely disciplined me,
    but God didn’t hand me over to death.

This is what they expect of Jesus. They know that his battle isn’t fought yet, but it’s still what they expect – a show of might! A little propaganda, if you please! It’s the only way they can expect him to behave.

The big thing about champions is that they show us the way out of our despair. They answer the great question that is on our heart, show us the light at the end of whatever tunnel we’re crossing. And for the people of Judea in the first century, the question on their minds is, “How long do we have to suffer Rome? How long will the Emperor declare himself our leader, and how long do we have to pay him tribute, have to use money that says he’s a god, have to wait on pins and needles until he decides to crack down on our religion again and decide that we all have to worship him? It’s happened before; it’ll happen again. We need deliverance – who will bring it? Whom will God send?”

And when Jesus comes a-riding into town on that little donkey, they recognize it. They recognize him as the champion that God has sent to free them, to give them independence and rebuild the throne of David! Put yourself in their shoes – you can feel the excitement, can’t you?

  “Up where the mountains meet the heavens above;

    Out where the lightning splits the sea;

    I could swear that there’s someone somewhere watching me.

    Through the wind and the chill and the rain, and the storm, and the flood,

    I can feel his approach like a fire in my blood!

Okay, so that was Bonnie Tyler again, but you feel it, right? Aren’t you ready?

They don’t know how he’s going to do it, but Jesus is going to defeat the emperor. They don’t know how he’s going to do it, but Jesus is going to remove Israel out from under the thumb of Rome, and restore her glory. They don’t know how he’s going to do it, but Jesus is about to wreak vengeance upon those who have hurt God’s people, and strike down those who have surrounded them.

That’s his job. That’s what the King is supposed to do. That’s what the Champion is supposed to do – the Messiah, the anointed one, “he who comes in the name of the Lord” – that’s the whole idea!

And they’re getting ready. They’re rehearsing the processional already. Let’s hear the final part of the procession liturgy, so we know what they expect. As we read this together, imagine that you’re the crowd, shouting acclaim at your champion as he rides up to the gate of the city, the one who was once beaten down and who is now triumphant entering the holy place. Again, read the underlined parts of the text as we go through the rest of Psalm #118 together.

¹⁹ Open the gates of righteousness for me

    so I can come in and give thanks to the Lord!

          ²⁰ This is the Lord’s gate;
    those who are righteous enter through it.

          ²¹ I thank you because you answered me,
    because you were my saving help.

          ²² The stone rejected by the builders

    is now the main foundation stone!
²³ This has happened because of the Lord;
    it is astounding in our sight!
²⁴ This is the day the Lord acted;
    we will rejoice and celebrate in it!

          ²⁵ Lord, please save us!
    Lord, please let us succeed!

          ²⁶ Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord;
    we bless all of you from the Lord’s house.

          
²⁷ The Lord is God!
   God has shined a light on us!
So lead the festival offering with ropes
    all the way to the horns of the altar.^[d]

           All/
²⁸ You are my God—I will give thanks to you!
    You are my God—I will lift you up high!
²⁹ Give thanks to the Lord because God is good,
    because God’s faithful love lasts forever.

-          Amen and amen! The champion is finally here, to lead us in celebration and free us from our enemies!

There is no doubt that those people needed saving from oppression. There is no doubt that people today, all over the world and in our own community, cry out for champions to save them from despair and pain and injustice. And indeed, we can and should lift up our human heroes who do that work, some inspired by God’s love and some inspired by simple human empathy.

But the big secret about Palm Sunday is that, in Jesus, God had bigger plans. Plans that nobody could have imagined. It’s right and true and valid that these people hail Jesus as the one who comes in the name of the Lord – because he is. It’s good that they were shouting praise to God for this one who would deliver them from their oppressor – because he was in fact about to do that.

But it wasn’t the Rome Question that Jesus was about to answer. It wasn’t the Emperor’s house that has was going to storm and plunder. There is one greater thumb upon them – upon all of us. There is one great question, one great problem, that is universal to all people in all times and places: Death. The end. Nonexistence – or, as some people of the day thought, a pale half-existence in a kind of underworld place where God was distinctly not there.

Who would have thought it? Who would have thought that this scruffy young rabbi riding a borrowed donkey into town would defeat death? How could it be? Listen, if through Jesus God is eliminating the power of death, that’s not just for these particular people at this particular time. It’s a game-changer. It changes the whole universe. In Christ, because of what God did through Jesus, the end is no longer the end for anybody. Death is but a hiccup in eternity, and life in God awaits us all. And that’s a greater victory than any saint, prophet, or any other human champion could ever do. That’s the kind of victory that only God can achieve.

Amen.