Mark 11: 1-11

April 9, 2006

Holy Jumble

Elizabeth Macaulay

On that long ago Palm Sunday the people of Jerusalem gathered to welcome Jesus into the city. They laid down clothing and branches for him to walk upon. It was, as Sheri said, a powerfully emotional parade.

And the people gathered called “Hosanna”, “Save Us”, as Jesus rode past them on the back of a donkey.

When is that last time you heard that request flung out on the air as someone passes by?

“Save Us!” Is a plea, a bellowed begging for release.

And what was it the crowd in Jerusalem on that day sought to be saved from?

They sought freedom from the boot of Rome. They were an occupied people, the people who shouted “Hosanna, Save Us!”. A people made to pay taxes, a people in bondage, a people upon whose backs the elite of city and temple built their comfortable lives.

They wanted freedom to worship freely. Both Rome and the temple elite had created barriers to worship and it was difficult for a devout Jew of limited means to be allowed access to the temple.

The longing for freedom was so very great.

And there were many of those who called out to Jesus “Save Us!” in the city in that week, because the celebration of Passover was at hand. They came to Jerusalem, the holiest site of their faith, to gather around tables and share meals and remember together that they were a people who had practice in this business of being oppressed. Many of those who cried out “Save Us!” prayed fervently that Jesus would take up any means - including violence - to free them.

Those who called out in such a way knew the power of a shared story.

They were a people who gathered at Passover to remember the story of their people: the people of Israel, held in bondage by Pharoah, flesh made slaves to further his power. They remembered as they gathered at table during Passover that God heard their lament. Heard their anguish. Heard their longing to be free. And God sent into their midst a leader, Moses, and a vision, freedom, and God’s people were delivered from slavery into the promised land. A land where they could be free to worship and free to live into the promise of being whole people of God.

That story is ingrained in the soul of every Jew in the city of Jerusalem on that day. And it is a story ingrained in us each, we who spring from Jewish roots.

God does hear the cries of the oppressed. God does enter into the places of outrage in the world. God does speak.

And God continues to speak, not only through the remarkable: the Moses and Jesus and Mother Theresas and Martin Luther King Juniors of the world.

What the coming of Jesus into our midst would have us to know is this: God speaks through us each.

Through the event of Jesus, the coming of Jesus, the teachings of Jesus and the ongoing power and life of Jesus, we know this:

If we as followers of Jesus were to gather for such an outpouring of hope and desperate longing for a new vision, we must know ourselves as changed. We are, through the teachings and witness of Jesus, no longer a people who rally to cry out: “Save Us!” to a passing hero.

We are a people called to know that if there is saving to be done, it is we who must do the work.

We are called to work with the power of the Holy Spirit to make change happen.

It isn’t the job of some super figure we can project all of our hopes and fears and disappointments onto. It is our job to work with God to “Save Us!”.

We learn this from scripture, from the bitter testimony of Holy Week, and we learn this from seeing, time after devastating time, the world that is made when we are unwilling to claim the Holy Mandate we are given to create justice in our world. Through our own willingness to speak up and work for oppressions to be no more.

A columnist in the Minneapolis paper shared this teaching through a story.

In 1956, Nikita Khrushchev addressed a closed session of the 20^th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party. For nearly four hours, he spoke about the unspeakable: the crimes of his predecessor, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

It is against the rules, often, to speak things that people want to put behind them, even though we know that if we don’t allow ourselves to examine and learn from history, even the painful parts of history, we are destined to repeat them.

And so Khrushchev spoke, detailing the mass arrests, torture and executions carried out within the Gulag. Provoked by this naming, someone in the audience shouted: “And what were you doing then?”

“Who said that?” Khrushchev demanded. No one made a sound. “I want to know who said that!” he repeated, slamming a fist on the lectern.

The audience was silent, trembling in fear.

“That’s right,” Khrushchev said finally. “That’s exactly what I was doing.”

(related by Clifford D. May, Minneapolis Star Tribune, April 8, 2006)

Today is Palm Sunday. It is a reminder to us of the precious power of hope and the poignant power of the desire held through the ages: that someone would save us. Individually. Collectively. Someone would ride into our lives and make the pain of it all go away.

What Jesus taught is that that sort of savior work was not contained in any one person. Resurrection changed everything. The Holy Spirit was forever unloosed.

Jesus taught that discipleship is the work of each person who decides that they will use the God given power they have been given and they will join that God given power with others in community and they will raise their voices when oppression must be named and when the vision of freedom must be remembered.

Like the uncomfortable members of the Gulag in the Soviet Union, we often don’t want to really experience the pain and betrayal and brutal devastation experienced by Jesus in this week we call Holy. We don’t want to imagine that pain so great would be something we are called to face year after year after year.

But my friends. We must. Because in our silence, we allow history to repeat itself and please God we want the execution of Jesus to be redeemed by the lessons we learn from it and as followers of the Risen One we must be mindful that:

Oppression is yet.

Betrayal is yet.

Crucifixion is yet.

It is ours, as Jesus People, to hear and honor the cries of “Save Us!”.

And so we do.

Through God’s Hands, our thrift shop. Through learning events where we learn about the complexities of being a teen in our world. Through participating in civic demonstrations and through sharing our gifts and our hope as individuals and through this community of our church.

We’re living the work and ministry and we are silent no more.

Amen