Hikoi of Hope

This sermon can be listened to here

Gate Pa –  Palm Sunday - Year A - 2020

Readings:

Psalm -                        Psalm: 118:1-2, 19-29  
First Reading -             Isaiah 50:4-9 
Second Reading -       Philippians 2:5-11  
Gospel -                       Matthew 21:1-11 

What I want to say:

Palm Sunday (Branch Monday in Matthew) is time to join the disciples on their journey of recognising Jesus as the King who comes in peace, saving all from all that oppresses, offering God’s healing and life. We join them and Jesus as we walk though this holy week to Golgotha, where Jesus accepts his crown hung on a cross.

What I want to happen:

What oppresses in our lock down?

This week take time to learn to what makes for peace, in your life, in this lockdown. Take time to be still, to experience something of God’s compassion and healing. Take time to know hope love, and joy.

The Sermon

       1.     Introduction:

I wonder what your experience of marches has been

-         Have you been in any?

-         Or have you observed them

-         What was that like for you?

-         What is it like remembering those marches?

This may surprise you but when I was younger, at university, as a student leader I attended and marshalled at a number of marches.

-         Student marches on a number of issues.

Some were really big – huge even

-         Anti SIS Bill march - 1977

-         Anti-Springbok Tour marches in Wellington and Auckland in 1981

-         Final leg of Hikoi of Hope in Wellington in 1998.

Those felt like we were doing something important, and in each case did provoke change.

I think we often think of Jesus’ parade into Jerusalem as a march like one of these – certainly how it is portrayed in the movies, stopping traffic, huge crowds, everyone involved.

Also been on some pretty small marches.

-         Anti- springbok tour march in Blenheim.

-         Our leg of Hikoi of Hope that began here in Tauranga

Not well supported by local churches

Turned out to be quite pathetic really

-         Ignored by most

-         Scorned by quite a few

-         Met with confusion

-         Occasional support

That is really what Palm Sunday, or branch Monday in Matthew, was really like

Small

-         Maybe pathetic

-         Ignored by most

-         Met with scorn, confusion and occasional support

-         With a little bit of fear thrown into the mix.

o   As some of those who observed it or took part wondered how the Rome would react

From your experience of marches, where might you be in this story

-         Disciple

-         The cheering crowd

-         Bystanders looking on.

-         Somewhere else?

   2.     The Story

It is Passover

Great festival remembering how God had acted to free the oppressed people of God held in slavery in Egypt; then brought out through the wilderness for 40 years, where they learnt what it meant to be freed by God and how to live in the presence of this liberating God; and finally being led into the land given to them by this God. With these themes of liberation and freedom, this was always a turbulent time in Jerusalem.

Pilate and Herod Antipas will have entered Jerusalem on war horses, surrounded by legions and armed guards. The had come to supervise this unsettling time to maintain Pax Romana – a peace maintained by fear and violence.

In Matthew, Jesus and his followers come to Jerusalem for the first time just for this festival.

-         Entirely different timeline in John

They walk from Galilee to Jerusalem with other pilgrims who have also come for Passover. Walked everywhere.

When he arrives at the Mount Olives, he does a deeply symbolic act. He chooses to ride in on a donkey. Like Solomon who rode his father’s donkey to be anointed king. Like Solomon, son of David, Jesus enters Jerusalem, on a donkey, to be proclaimed king.

Not a king like Herod, but the kind of king described by Zechariah

“Shout and cheer, Daughter Zion!

    Raise the roof, Daughter Jerusalem!

Your king is coming!

    a good king who makes all things right,

    a humble king riding a donkey,

    a mere colt of a donkey.

I’ve had it with war—no more chariots in Ephraim,

    no more war horses in Jerusalem,

    no more swords and spears, bows and arrows.

He will offer peace to the nations,

    a peaceful rule worldwide,

    from the four winds to the seven seas. (Zechariah 9: 9-10 Msg)

Jesus comes not so much as to fulfil this prophecy, as to be the kind of king described in this prophecy.
He demonstrates this by riding a donkey
He demonstrates this by joining the crowds thronging to the temple, where he overturns the tables of those who provide the sacrifices needed to fulfil your Passover obligations and who change your Roman money into temple money to pay the temple tax. In doing do he is drawing attention to the way the temple system has been corrupted by the high priests and turned into a means for the leading families to enrich themselves on the ongoing demands on the poor to constantly come to offer, offer, offer sacrifices.

He then heals, symbolically turning the temple into a place where people come not to give more, but to receive healing and life. The temple becomes a place to receive, to dwell in God’s peace.

All this points to the end of the week when Jesus himself is anointed as king of peace, on a cross, his title sarcastically nailed above his head.

3.     Palm Sunday in Lockdown

Brian McLaren says the to be alive is to learn what makes for peace. “It is not more threats, more weapons, more fears. It is more faith, more freedom, more hope, more love, more joy. Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”[i]

This time of year can be very busy normally. There are lots of extra services that some people come to. Extra responsibilities and activities. It is hard to stop and take note in all of this.

But this year we have an opportunity to stop. To experience the story from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday in a very different way.

We also experience it in the midst of a pandemic; and all that means for each of us: a time of fear, uncertainty, maybe confusion.

As we join this peace march this week in our homes, I wonder if there are new ways we are invited into the story.

What ways might you be invited into more faith, more freedom, more hope, more love, more joy?

As we walk through this week take time to be still, to experience something of God’s compassion and healing. Take time to know hope love, and joy.

---

[i] Brain D. McLaren, We Make the Road by Walking – a year long quest for spiritual formation, reorientation and activation. Hodder, 2015. P.186.