In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
How quickly things change.
In our first reading this morning, Jesus rides towards Jerusalem to the sound of the crowd’s acclamations—“Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!” This so-called “triumphal entry” takes the features of a grand imperial procession and turns them on their head—in place of a magnificent steed, Jesus rides a colt; the crowds are not the privileged citizens ensconced at the centers of power, but villagers and laborers eking out a living on the edges of empire. Though today we carry palms, used in the ancient world to herald kings and conquerors, in Mark’s account the bystanders spread onto the road branches they’ve cut from their fields—while some lay down their cloaks—surely, for some, their only cloaks—on the road.
The kingdom whose coming the crowds are proclaiming—“the coming of our ancestor David”—is at once very old, promised by God centuries before, and very new—a kingdom organized not around military might or commercial profit—not even organized around laws and rules and regulations—but a kingdom that emerges from God’s love for humankind and of all creation, of God’s promise, from the prophet Ezekiel, to dwell with us and walk among us.
But how quickly things change.
As we hear Mark’s account of our Lord’s Passion—just a few days after his triumphal entry—we see this kingdom mocked and derided, dressed up in cruel parody. “And they clothed him in a purple cloak,” Mark tells us, “and after twisting some thorns into a crown, they put it on him.” In place of royal palms, “They struck his head with a reed.” The crowd’s acclamations are replaced by the soldiers’ spitting; the heartfelt praise of “Hosanna in the highest heaven” is replaced by the soldiers’ kneeling in false homage.
Within just a few days in Jerusalem, within just a few minutes of our time together this morning, our joyous and triumphal recognition of God’s presence among us gives way to human cruelty, to human sinfulness—to our tendency to reject God’s love and twist it into something false.
What the soldiers mocking Jesus don’t realize, though, is that it is precisely in these moments—in these moments of degradation and suffering, in the indignity of torture and the pain of crucifixion—that God’s kingdom draws nearer and nearer—as God joins humankind most fully. In his suffering and death, Jesus, the Son of God, passes through the darkest reaches of our human experience. And in doing so, he shows us that God is always with us, that there is no place God’s love cannot reach, that there is no experience of suffering we can have that is beyond God’s power to reach us, to heal us, to bring us into new life.
Because for God is to dwell with us and walk among us, to truly take on our human nature, means that God can hurt with us, weep with us, mourn with us—and die with us.
Perhaps citing one of the earliest hymns of the followers of Jesus, St. Paul writes in the letter to the Philippians that Jesus “humbled himself, and became obedient the point of death—even death on a cross.” It’s in this perfect self-emptying, this perfect humility and obedience, that Jesus fulfills God’s desire to be with humankind—to walk among us and to be in relationship with us no matter the cost. And it’s through this suffering and death that Jesus will accomplish his victory over death itself—rising on the third day into a new life that will never end.
Friends, just as God in Christ walked among us, we are invited today and in the days to come to walk with Christ. Over the course of this week we will gather in this place to remember Christ’s betrayal, death, and resurrection; the new commandment he gives us in the Last Supper, to love one another as he has loved us. We will pray with him in the Garden and we will stand before the Cross the next morning. We will gather, on Holy Saturday, under cover of darkness as a new fire is lit and the light of Christ is proclaimed again. And, as we are always called to do, we will go out into the world to share the good news of a risen Lord—a Lord whose kingdom has drawn near even as we have mocked it; a Lord who has walked with us even through the valley of the shadow of death; a Lord who through death has driven away the sting of death.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.