Originally aired on Facebook Live.
Symbols are like… sticky tape. Lent rollers. They pick up meanings the more they roll around. Pretend my lent roller is Jesus. In our reading today, Jesus rolls up to Jerusalem.
That’s the first symbol – Jerusalem – the place where Heaven and Earth are thought to touch. The place where the divinely chosen King is supposed to rule. It’s also the place where Rome has held a stronghold for some years. Look at all those other meanings we’ve rolled up with just the association of “Jerusalem.”
Jesus enters Jerusalem riding on a donkey colt. This is connected to kings coming to a town – riding on a horse for war, or on a donkey for peace. It’s connected to the prophet Zechariah who proclaimed in verse 9:9
Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
The new king of Jerusalem will “command peace to the nations” with his reign from “sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the Earth.” (10). Your king has come. Come to the place where his throne shall be. And the people welcome him as a king – singing Psalm 118 – bringing their bound branches to join the festival procession – heading to the altar of the Lord. Oh man, now we have the symbols and images of an altar, of kingship, of thrones, of nations and peoples, of sea to sea, of the whole known world, of peace…. and a reference psalm 118 so it brings in all of that psalm we just read…
And to top it all off, Mark has the people add to the psalm “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David.” Blessed is the foretold reign of the anointed, the chosen, king, who will right not only this city but right all things in accordance with God.
A unity of heaven and earth.
A time when God’s will is done on Earth as it is in Heaven.
The… full reign of God.
And this is just Mark’s reading. Add in the other Gospels when the branches are called palms and palm leaves? Then we get to add into the pile of symbols and meaning palms for victory, palms for funerals, palms as the symbol of Heaven and Earth connecting, as the symbol of peace, symbol of new life, symbol of life after death…
Easter is a time of symbols upon symbols. Meanings upon layers of meaning.
I feel like I approach Easter with a lot of picked up lent. A lot of new experiences and things stuck to me I didn’t have last year. I’m seeking meaning. Last year, Easter felt like a one-off strange time. “The weirdest Easter we’ve ever known or will ever know!” And yet… here we are… a year later… and… we’re doing it again? Again another Easter socially distanced? Again another postponement of our traditions? I didn’t expect it to last one year. But it has. Do I hope for 2022 to have Easter in the sanctuary or… or do I hang on to that hope like I would hold a butterfly – cupped, gently, and aware it may fly away at any moment and I… will have to let it go and just enjoy the experience while it lasted.
That’s a lot of lent, isn’t it? I imagine you’re coming with much rolled up and sticking all about you too. Good feelings of hope for the coming spring, for the vaccine, for new beginnings… and bad feelings of disappointment, isolation, and depression from a literal year, and then some, of a pandemic.
Scripture is a living text because we live it out. We put our lives and deaths in conversation with Scripture. So today, Mark and Psalm 118 pick up all the meanings we bring to it from our year of Covid. Humorously, I wonder… is it safe for all those people to be gathered and shouting? Talk about a megaseeding event of disease! What is this ‘crowd’ Do 3 people count as a crowd? It does feel like a crowd to me nowadays.
And, more seriously, I think about the hope and joy that brings the people out to greet this man. The way they welcome him as their new king – a king of peace – the way they expect him to take the Jerusalem throne and usher in the new era of God’s reign. I think about the hope we cherish, and how we still pray that God’s will be done here on Earth as it is in Heaven.
How… how amazing some of them won’t lose faith when Jesus is crowned with thorns instead of gems. How he’s mocked for his silence and restraint, given a mock trial, and the powerful and rich continue to rule… uninterrupted.
I am assured. For I know this story. I am assured that in that crowd are palm trees. People who get cut down to the roots and yet… rise again. In Mycenaean Greek, the palm is called a phoenix. Just like the bird that rises to new life from ashes.
We’re palm trees. We’re aspen trees. We’ve been cut and burned; our hopes have sprouted new and been hacked off over this last year; but we keep coming back.
And there’s people in that crowd who will come back. They’ll stick with Jesus for the heartache, and sprout new lives as he lives again Easter morn.
We are still occupied by the foreign forces of Covid-19. But fear, violence, and death don’t have the ultimate power. Life does. And time and time again, in ways like spring after winter, like new root shoots after a clear cut; like resurrecting Jesus, God shows us God’s steadfast love endures forever and new life, through God, always finds a way.
Amen.
Pastor Whitney Bruno Sermons 