March 24, 2024

Mark 11:1-11

Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it; and he sat on it. Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields.

People took off their cloaks and laid them down along the road. They plucked branches from any handy tree. There may have been olive trees along the way and I personally saw clusters of rosemary bushes along the road down from the Mount of Olives into the city of Jerusalem. There were probably many options for the people in Jesus’ time.

At different times and in different places, you may not have had any palms handy, but the idea was never to get the materials exactly right. Some places refer to this day as Cloak Sunday or even Branch Sunday. In medieval Europe, for example, it might have been known as Yew Sunday.

The yew is a plant with its own mythology. In Celtic culture, it is a symbol of death and resurrection, because they are long lived. Old yews can apparently replant themselves when their branches droop to the ground. Life, death, and renewal in one plant, a plant that is also an evergreen, yet another symbol anticipating the new life of Easter morning.

Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!  Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

This is a triumphal entry. The imagery suggests the return of a victorious army or, perhaps, the return of a king from a journey. In both ways, the events of Palm Sunday reflect the people’s fervent hope that they might be delivered from something. Perhaps the oppressive rule of the Roman Empire. Perhaps the heavy-handed oversight of the Temple priests. Perhaps the poverty they suffered, the weariness of their hard days of labor. We do not need to choose among these examples. Like the branches along the side of the road, there could be many possibilities for deliverance overlapping in the hearts and minds of Jesus’ followers.

Unlike those people gathered in great expectation, we know that the story takes a different turn. Soon after his arrival, Jesus would make his famous trip to the Temple, driving out the money changers. He also suggested that the Temple itself would be destroyed. The priests and the scribes will question his authority to speak and to act as he does. The warm welcome among the people gives way to resistance by those who disagree with Jesus or who stand to lose out under his way of engaging with the world.

We know what happens. We know that the high point of the triumphal entry into the city gives way to the low point of Jesus’ betrayal into the hands of the authorities. Judas trades thirty pieces of silver for the location of Jesus. What were those thirty coins might be worth? As we just considered the money changers passage, I am guessing Judas would have received the same type of coins they were using, likely silver coins minted in the city of Tyr. By weight and purity, they might be worth up to $300. Not a lot of money to betray a friend.

When we consider the events of Holy Week, the jubilation of Palm Sunday gives way to the intimacy of the Last Supper and then the terrible reversals of Good Friday – “good” in this sense meaning “holy” by the way. On Holy Saturday, Jesus is at rest in the tomb. Depending upon your tradition, he is also on Saturday harrowing hell, meaning that he is breaking down the gates of hell and liberating the righteous souls trapped there awaiting their deliverance through his arrival.

This may allude to the concept of the bosom of Abraham, the place in Sheol where the righteous dead await Judgment Day. One could interpret that concept as meaning they will not enter into heaven, or into the presence of God, until that day. And for some Christians, that day had finally arrived through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

You may notice that I said some Christians, meaning not all. There are traditions that believe that the righteous souls of the dead will enter heaven only after Judgment Day, which coincides with the Second Coming of Christ. For some Christians, salvation will be all at once for a select few, while for others it will be every single one of us saved together. That is a belief in universal salvation as opposed to the elect being saved. There are many, many different ways of understanding the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus even among what might be called traditional Christian denominations.

Is that surprising? Is it surprising that even within relatively traditional strains of Christianity there might be significant differences when it comes to such theological conclusions? Is it any wonder that there are thousands of denominations and diverging faith groups under the broad banner of “Christian”?

Think about our reading. The people along the road are celebrating Jesus’ arrival, with cloaks and branches, with cries of Hosanna. They understand Jesus’ entry into the city as the beginning a new era, when the messiah would deliver them from their current state of difficulties. It was a person born into the lineage of David who would be a prince or a king and certainly a deliverer of the people.

And yet as the events of Holy Week progress, the expectations for deliverance in a literal sense slip away. Jesus would be arrested, tried, and put to death. It is a startling change. The public ministry turns into a public tragedy. What might we imagine these spectators were thinking after that grand journey leads to the cross?

And the same is true for the disciples. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus will speak of struggles and challenges for them, a time of great tribulation even beyond the destruction of the Temple. His followers will be persecuted. And then there would be false messiahs proclaiming themselves, false hope offered by those claiming to be sent by God. From the account in Mark, it seems clear that Jesus knew what was going to happen. Even as he entered Jerusalem, he knew that he was to be betrayed, that he was to suffer, that he was going to die. Even as the people celebrated around him, even as the disciples ate with him at the Last Supper. Jesus tells them about this, but we are left with the impression that they did not really listen.

When Jesus goes to the Garden of Gethsemane, when he is clearly troubled and distressed, they fall asleep. You might imagine that if they believed that their friend was about to die, Peter, James or John might have stayed awake. But they were unwilling or unable to listen to Jesus, to see the unfolding events in the same way as him. Much like the people cheering him down from the Mount of Olives, the disciples believed that Jesus was there to save them. To save them from suffering, not to usher them into a time of even greater difficulties. They did not listen.

And then there is Judas. Judas is not a name that anyone plucks out of the baby book. Of course, his name is simply a variation of Judah in the same way that Jesus is a variation of Joshua. It would be like the greatest villain of all time being named “John Smith” – subsequent generations might want to get more specific to avoid confusion. And thus, we have Judas Iscariot.

Aside from the long shadow of his betrayal, there is one other thing that sets Judas apart from the other disciples. He seems to be the only one who was listening to what Jesus was saying. That Jesus was going to die, that he was not going to deliver them from their worldly state of oppression. Judas understood that the triumph of Palm Sunday was going to end with the tragedy of Good Friday. He was instrumental in that turn of events, of course.

But in his mind was it a matter of inevitability? Was he trying to extricate himself from their common troubles? Notice that after Jesus is arrested, everyone goes into hiding. Peter famously denies he knows Jesus three times. Judas betrays Jesus for 30 pieces of silver, a modest amount even in our day and age. But he was also saving himself, avoiding the need to hide from the authorities with whom he had cooperated.

There is a modern theatrical view that Judas was merely bringing about God’s plan, that he should not be faulted for what he had done. I do not know what we should make of the internal drama that Judas went through along the way to his ultimate betrayal of Jesus. Honestly, I have no way of knowing the innermost thoughts of anyone. Not my dearest friends, not my family members. It is one of the mysteries of everyday life – what are those around me truly thinking?

The crowd cheering Jesus: what did they want? We guess they had heard he is the long-awaited messiah, but what did that mean to them? Kicking out the Romans? Raising up those who mourn and those who are righteous, blessing the peacemakers, delivering the earth into the hands of the meek?

And what of the disciples? Peter, James, and John fell asleep when Jesus went into the garden to pray. This suggests that they were not troubled like Jesus. That they were looking beyond what Jesus said to them and instead were thinking about what Jesus would eventually mean for them – do for them.

If this is the case, they were not listening to his warnings and they were not listening to his teachings. Judas, for all his obvious failings, at least came to understand that Jesus was not the sort of messiah the other disciples were expecting. Judas’ wanted to avoid immediate suffering, perhaps as he considered Jesus to be a failed messiah in a very narrow sense of the term.

In hindsight, we shake our heads at their lack of imagination. Unlike them, however, we have libraries full of justifications for what Jesus represents. He is a messiah in a larger sense, one who has come to deliver the people of this world from the weight of sin and to reconcile them with God. That is how Christians have come to understand Jesus. But even that broad notion has splintered into a thousand ideas spawning a thousand religious factions.

Even among those sitting in the same pews on Sunday morning, even among those members of the same congregation, there are likely differences. Differences about the mean of Jesus’ lessons to us. Differences about what Jesus means to them or to the world. Differences about the meaning of life. And differences about what comes next. What comes next when our days under the sun come to an end.

Some might suppose that it is my job to tell you all what to think. And I do on occasion express an opinion or two from this very spot. But I do not have the final answers for you to these many questions. How could I?

We have the same book to read and yet there have been so many ways of understanding its contents. We have the same world to sustain us and yet we are so different in our approaches to living. We have the same sun and moon shining down upon us and yet we see each other so differently. How might I be able to offer a definitive answer to these great questions when I, like the rest of you, struggle with their meaning and with my small place in the scheme of things?

When Jesus rode into Jerusalem, the people gathered to cheer his entry into the city looked upon his passage with many different eyes, many different outlooks. They looked out upon a world through differing viewpoints that colored the world in the many shades of meaning important to them. Their hopes and their fears, their longings and their hesitations. Even as they all joined together in that moment, underlying their unity of action was, in all likelihood, a divergence of perspective or even purpose.

The same could be said for Peter, James, and John. They were not imagining an ending but anticipating a great beginning. Who they might be in this new world changed by their great teacher? And when Jesus is arrested, when he dies, they hide themselves away. Was it out of fear? Probably. Was it out of shame? Perhaps. Was it in disappointment for their broken dreams? Maybe.

And then there is Judas. I am not of the school of thought that seeks to redeem Judas because his betrayal was inevitable. Jesus’ death and resurrection might have been destined to happen, but the betrayal by Judas was not.

It might have been petty self-interest. It might have been bitter disappointment. Like all the rest, Judas looked out upon the events of that week, not knowing exactly what was going to happen. But he realized enough to know that what he was doing was the basest form of treachery. He knew that he was betraying a friend. And I do not care how many Broadway shows someone writes. That is a grave sin in my book.

You need not agree with my opinion.

When we consider the events of the Bible, the events of Holy Week, we can come away with different impressions, different conclusions. We can imagine what went on in the minds of those who stood witness to those long-ago days. We can struggle with what they mean in our lives and in our times. Perhaps the one thing we might be sure of is that we will each understand those events differently.

If we each stand apart from the other, if we each only know our own mind, and none other, what should we do? How might we strive to understand the people we encounter in this life? How can we ever achieve a meeting of the minds, a common sense of purpose and a shared understanding of the world?

How do we do any of that?

We watch. We listen. We think. And then, and only then, we speak. We engage in careful and perhaps even earnest conversations. We convey our understanding of life, the world, and everything as best we can to one another. We communicate, back and forth, with as much candor as we can muster. That is what one person can do, without any assurance that others will be as careful or as earnest or as forthcoming. For to come to know the mind of anyone is a struggle. But the surest way of coming to that greater sense of understanding, if there is any, is to keep talking.

And with that work in mind, it is important to do one more thing. Be humble. Be humble because you never truly know what someone is thinking. You never know what they have gone through before. The pain and the suffering. The hard-won wisdom or the gaps in their knowledge. The insight and the ignorance. The dreams they cherish and the hopes they have seen dashed.

Humility is the best gift we have to offer to any conversation, particularly when it is paired with the best tool we can use in any conversation, patience. Humility helps us to avoid seeming the fool, the truly embarrassing circumstance of celebrating long before we understand what is going on or going to happen. And patience gives us the strength to wait. To wait for events to unfold. To wait for the dust to settle. To wait for the sun to set, knowing as well that the sun will eventually rise once again.

The burden of Holy Week is to wait. To wait for the whole story. The highs and the lows, the celebrations and the tragedies. The suffering and the deliverance. The darkness of the tomb and the light of Easter morning.

And now, my friends, we must wait. Amen.