Sermon on April 5, 2020: Palm Sunday
Let’s pretend that today is a normal Palm Sunday, as it was in former days, back before the age of social distancing. Imagine that it’s one of those Palm Sundays, and on this day, not only are you not self-isolated, but you’re in a densely populated place—say, New York City. Let’s say you are in Midtown Manhattan, on the corner of West 46th and 7th, right next to Times Square, having a stroll and dodging the crowds of other tourists swarming around you. Times Square is known for being a place of spectacle, and yet all of a sudden, you are swept up in a spectacle you were not expecting. Dozens of people in flowy garments begin marching by, and some of them are carrying strange objects that smoke as they are swung. Others are playing brass instruments. Everyone is holding palm branches and waving them in the air. Even though you were probably heading to the TKTS booth to buy your discount tickets to Broadway (you know, back when Broadway existed), instead, you have found yourself in the middle of a Palm Sunday procession that you didn’t want to be in. On that morning, the people in the nearby church were not content to stay in their pews, but spilled out onto the streets in a spectacle of their own, enveloping you and others in an outdoor church service that you hadn’t planned on attending. And yet there you are. You’re right in the middle of it, and whether you say the words or not, the lines are yours:
Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!
I’d give anything for a Palm Sunday like that. In any other year, this would have been an ordinary Palm Sunday at St. Mary the Virgin on West 46th, but not this year. Not for St. Mary’s, nor for our own St. Paul’s, nor for anyone else. Instead of spectacle, we observe Palm Sunday with a mostly empty church, and you are in your homes, taking part in small groups, or perhaps all alone. No crowds with which to raise our palms, with whom we can shout “Hosanna!” It’s a Palm Sunday unlike any we have never known.
All the same, as the saying goes, the show must go on. Broadway may be shut down, and even church is shut down, but the drama of Palm Sunday must happen—indeed, it will happen, whether we want it or not. It’s like being in a play that we didn’t ask to be in, though we can’t help but act it out. We may be away from the crowds this year, but we cannot escape being part of them. We can’t escape being like them, who in one moment cry, “Hosanna!” and in the next shout, “Crucify!” We are amazed at their fickleness, and imagine that if we were the ones in the crowd, it would have been different. Surely we would have resisted. Surely we would not have turned the Son of David into our scapegoat!
We will not be let so easily off the hook. Today we are forced to reckon with the prospect that we are in the camp of the crowds without knowing it. We are forced to stare at the crowds as though we are staring in a mirror, and that is a hard thing to have to do. And it’s natural to want to shrink away from that and find some other explanation besides the human nature that we share. But there is a reason that the liturgy invites us in as actors in its drama. Because it is the role that we were born to play. Showing us the depths of who we are and what we are capable of, so that we would see just how much we needed saving. Our Lord knew what was in the heart of human beings, even as they spread branches of palm along his way. He knows what is in our heart, too. And yet he comes anyway. For us and for our salvation. He comes to us, even when we shout, “Crucify!” at him.
Today is the one Sunday of the whole year that does not quite resolve. And though we continue with the mass, and lift up our hearts with our thanks and praise, it’s hard to shake those words that were so recently on our lips:
Let him be crucified! Let him be crucified!
Today we make our confession by playing our part in the liturgy, and while we know that in Christ we are forgiven and reconciled with God, today we do not hear the words of absolution. Today, the mass ends on a note that we are not used to hearing. We know it’s not that last note, because the performance is far from over, and yet we are asked to sit with it for a while. It’s a note that we need to hear, so that we will know just how extraordinary the final act of the drama truly is.
As we play our part today, consider it as an invitation to a full observance of Holy Week. It may be a Holy Week unlike any other, but social distancing cannot shut down the Christian mystery. The mystery happens, whether we are ready for it or not—whether we asked for it to happen, or not. We have lines to say even when we don’t want to say them, or if we think that, because this year is different, we cannot say them.
But we can. We must. There is a word that must be said next Sunday, and that word does not depend on where we are or who we are with, whether we shout it in a crowded church or whisper it in the pre-dawn darkness as we stare at an empty tomb.
Let us hear the Paschal mystery even now, even in a time such as this, that we may know the power of God, the power of life over death.
Amen.