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.