Remembering...

The Rev. Kathi Johnson

C Palm Sunday – 20 March 2016

Text: Luke 19:28-40 and Luke 22:1-27

Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, Grand Prairie, Texas

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What do you do to remember the special days in your life? In our lives, we have happy occasions that we celebrate in various ways: birthdays, anniversaries, congratulations, to name a few. Some of us also have difficult memories, but they are important to us, and so sometimes it is helpful to commemorate those, as well.

My mom died on a September evening in 2005, at hers and my stepdad’s home in southern New Hampshire. Steve and I had been up there the week before, and so we were in Austin on that evening, having dinner with friends before we got the call from my stepdad. Even though that was now over ten years ago, we still go out for dinner on the anniversary of her death. We often go with friends, and I share stories about Mom, and it helps me remember her. It also helps me remember the many ways in which God has taken care of me in the years since she died –surrounding me with loving people, many of whom have surrounded me with loving prayers.

Remembering helps us live more fully as people of love.

So we begin Holy Week with its powerful stories, and their contrasts of devotion and betrayal, honor and humiliation, life and death. We spend this week every year looking at the events leading up to Jesus’ betrayal and arrest, his crucifixion and death, his burial, and his resurrection. Each year, we tell the stories again: observing and paying attention to the details. And so in the case of Holy Week, remembering helps us live more fully as people of faith.

Our Palm Sunday narrative for today is found in Luke 19, and it tells us of Jesus entering Jerusalem on a colt. This was a very humble mode of transportation, but in this case, it was a fulfillment of what the prophet Zechariah had written so long ago about the Messiah: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

The crowds of people who are welcoming Jesus to Jerusalem are jubilant, laying down their clothes to make a pathway for Jesus. (Notice in Luke’s version, there are no palm branches! Those appear in John’s version.) In this scene as Luke writes it, the crowds call Jesus “blessed” and they praise God for the mighty acts that Jesus has done during his time of ministry.

In terms of chronological time, we are far-removed from these people and their lives. But in terms of our deep need for Jesus, we too need this Messiah – this anointed one – we need him to heal us. For we are still sinful, and we still live in a broken world, a world that is desperately in need of healing.

As people of faith, we have Holy Week now ahead of us – including Maundy Thursday, upon which we remember Jesus instituting the Lord’s Supper. The story is familiar to us – we just heard Luke’s version, but we also hear it each week, as I say the words over bread and wine. Jesus takes the bread and breaks it, and he takes the wine and offers the cup to his disciples. In this supper, Jesus tells them that his body will be broken, and then on Good Friday, we devote an entire day to this one important event. Remembering helps us live more fully as people of faith.

It is in Holy Week that we remember that the yelling of the crowds changes from shouts of blessing and praise to shouts of taunting and ridicule. Today, on Palm Sunday, Jesus is praised as a king, but on Good Friday, the words change as we hear the horrific accounts of Jesus’ crucifixion. Jesus – the king who has come to us, triumphant and victorious, humbly riding on the foal of a donkey – we remember Jesus on the cross, his body broken.

And then, of course, next weekend – just one week from now – we spend the Easter Vigil and Easter Day remembering and celebrating the resurrection of Jesus from the dead – his new life becoming our new life.

It’s very easy to skip over all the remembering in between today and Easter. It’s easy to go from the jubilant shouts of Palm Sunday to the triumphant Easter shouts of next week. The harder thing is to remember. The harder thing is to observe, and to pay attention to, and to remember all these stories of Jesus that we hear again during Holy Week.

I challenge you to do the harder thing. I encourage you to hear these stories of Jesus that are so difficult to hear, and to pay attention to the details of these stories and the meaning found in them: the hands of Jesus as he breaks bread and pours wine, the bewildered disciples, the devoted women at the foot of the cross. And Jesus, on the cross and in the tomb. And Jesus, risen and alive!

These are the stories of God’s love becoming flesh for us – God’s love, with flesh put on it, living and dying, and rising to life again, so that we, in Christ, may have new life. Come and hear and live the stories again, and remember, for remembering helps us live more fully as people of hope.

Amen.

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