April 1, 2012, "A Fickle Faith"

Psalm 118: 1-2 & 19-29
Mark 11:1-11
What do we do with Palm Sunday? What does this passage teach us about Christian faith?
The innocence of the Christ-child, the feeding of the 5000, restoring sight to the blind and healing to lepers, Jesus' suffering and death and resurrection, all of these teachings have had application to humanity throughout history. Other than that this actually happened in this way, why did each of the Gospel Evangelists insist on describing Jesus' Entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday?

Throughout time, Preachers have extolled Palm Sunday sermons about Power and Righteousness, projecting meaning and interpretations for why Palm Branches, why children were included, why they laid their robes on the ground, the meaning of a colt never ridden, versus a donkey, reminding us that the words Hosanna Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord comes from Psalm 118 and was the greeting pronounced for passing of religious pilgrims on their way to the Temple.

Jim Forbes was my Preaching Professor who suggested that Palm Sunday would be an excellent time for First Person Sermons... the first year taking the identity of a child who gathered palm branches and laid them for him; the second year to take the identity of a disciple who did as instructed untying the donkey and bringing it to Jesus; the third year to take the identity of a person of means taking off their robe or coat for the donkey to walk upon; the fourth year to take the identity of a Palm Tree, watching over the whole procession, mining the road to from the Mount of Olives to the Temple, and from the Temple to the Cross; but to be careful the fifth year of preaching a first person sermon because the principle role that is left is of being the donkey.

Every one of these sermons are frustrated with irony, because while the Crowds watched Jesus' Triumphal Entry, while Jesus was pronounced Son of David, while the roads were covered in Palm branches, while everything was done as had been foretold, within the week the very ones who had shouted Hosanna, cried CRUCIFY HIM! Where all of Scripture is filled with hope, while the point of faith is not only acceptance but forgiveness and redemption... Palm Sunday we know will end with Good Friday's suffering and death. Rather than a story of redemption, rather than a silver lining of hope, Palm Sunday is filled with discord waiting for the shoe to drop, waiting for the fears and anxiety of people to turn from triumph to accusation.

INSTEAD of the FICKLENESS OF FAITH, what I hear in these passages this morning, is a reflection on Love.
Each of the Gospels up until this point have seduced us. We have been told of this individual. We have been courted by the power of his words, by the compassion of his heart, by the miracles he commands, to Fall in love.
For most of us, the experience of falling in love is as close to a religious experience as we will have. Falling in Love is different from Loving, Falling in love is larger than life, greater than reality, there is always something overblown and Spiritual about falling in love. The difficulty with falling in love is that LOVE LIES, just a little. Love is the desire to like and to be liked, which is so addictive, which feels so good when satisfied, that love edits the facts of reality in order that we continue to feel the euphoria of remaining in this desire. To Fall in Love is to PROJECT the most noble parts of one's self onto another. We envision our own image of the divine in another human being. There is divinity in the other person, but we cannot see it clearly until we remove our own projections, of our desires. Making this fine distinction is one of the most delicate and difficult of tasks in life.

The Gospel of Mark describes the infatuation the crowds had with Jesus being like that for a Rock Star. They ripped off their shirts and coats for him, they swooned and bowed down for him. The problem of Palm Sunday was NOT that people did not Love Jesus, but that theirs was a superficial love. Christian Faith is the practice of living more than a projection of love. We rely on the Holy Spirit to guide us beyond the superficiality of the moment, beyond our projections of our desires, to what endures.

Woody Allen in the film Love & Death may have described it best that “TO LOVE IS TO SUFFER.” So to avoid suffering one must not love, but then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer, and not to love is to suffer, to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love, to be happy then is to suffer but suffering makes one unhappy, therefore to be unhappy one must love or love to suffer or else suffer from too much happiness.”

The Scriptures, both Old and New Testaments challenge us to be scared of the full revelation of God's love, both that looking on God's holiness is more than any sinner can take in, and the revelation of God's glory in Jesus Christ includes greater suffering than humanity had ever known.

God's Love ought to scare us, because it reveals that Love is not the desire to hold another person like a pet, an object that can be controlled, because an object is not what that other person is, and if that is all we see – all we are in love with is our projection of our self.

Palm Sunday is the beginning of Holy Week because rather than being the Climax of the Story, the first great Crescendo, Palm Sunday is a instead the beginning of the Catharsis, a transformation from the infatuation of having Fallen In LOVE to the Enduring Commitment of LOVING that will do whatever is needed. The point of love is not “For Richer or Poorer, or Better or Worse, or in Sickness or in Health” but no matter what to love.