“Palm Sunday Parable”

March 28, 2010

Luke 19:29-40

At two different times when I was in high school I had brief conversations with two different ministers in the United Methodist church in which I grew up.

One took place after a church council meeting and I have no idea why I was in attendance there that night. The minister came up to me and asked if I might ever consider going into the ministry.

I took several steps backward, smiled nervously, and said: “I don’t think so.”

Maybe that response came as a result of an earlier conversation I’d had with another minister.

One of my high school careers was playing guitar in garage band. And my band was going to play at a dance at my church. Yes, we were dancing, rock-and-roll Methodists. So I was working with my minister to make a flier to publicize the dance. And this was back in the Stone Age, before photocopiers were everywhere. We made a stencil for the old mimeograph machine, and the minister and I were in the church basement running off the fliers.

As we stood there, he looked at the machine, then he looked at me, and he said “This is what I learned in seminary.”

I wasn’t quite sure what he meant at the time, but I understand now that it was a joke—a little self-deprecatory, ironic humor. He’d followed the usual course to ministry: four years of college and three years of graduate school, studying theology and the Bible and pastoral care. Now after all of that, here he was, showing some goofy high-school kid how to run a mimeograph machine.

It was a joke, I think. Or maybe he was telling the truth.

Many years later as I have made repairs in church buildings, or mopped up after the sewer backed up into a church basement on Easter morning, or fixed an incredibly frustrating paper jam on our modern photocopier, I’ve thought: “Oh, so this is what he meant!”

I didn’t learn how to do any of those things at Harvard Divinity School, but what I have learned in nearly twenty-five years of ordained ministry, is that ministry is often about the little things.

And even when it’s about the big things—illness and death, strained relationships and war, or love, birth, and rebirth—even then it’s often about the little things: sitting with someone who isn’t sure who you are or might not even know you’re there, waiting in silence, talking about something small that reveals something greater.

As Congregationalists, we are guided by the Protestant Reformation’s idea of the “priesthood of all believers.” That is to say, we are—each of us, and all of us—called to ministry and given gifts for our particular calling. So you have a ministry—sometimes carried out within the walls of this church, most of the time being done in other places.

You’ve no doubt learned in your own ministry and in your own living as well that it’s often about the little things: the immense task of nurturing children in faith means cutting construction paper on Saturday night; the endless work of feeding the hungry means cooking a meatloaf; the impossible job of comforting a grieving friend means making a casserole; the weekly process of preparing to worship the living God means changing light bulbs.

Small things.

During these forty-plus days of Lent we have listened to and read and discussed and studied some of the parables of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke. Parables are about small things—things such as sowing seed, caring for plants, caring for strangers, living in a family. Parables are stories about small things that tell us something about big things—God’s love, God’s judgment, God’s mercy.

As our time of preparation for Easter concludes this week, we here again the stories of Jesus’ final days, stories that are familiar to many, stories that speak to us in new ways each year.

This year as I read these stories I see them as parables as well—stories about small things such as traveling and eating that point to something much greater.

Look at Jesus and his followers approaching Jerusalem together. You can’t help but think that even the densest of Jesus’ followers know something big is going to happen. The rulers and the religious leaders are growing increasingly impatient with Jesus. At the same time, the crowds are getting bigger. They are getting closer to the capital city—the seat of religious and political power. What great thing might Jesus ask them to do now?

Well, Jesus sends two of his disciples off to get a colt.

This is ministry? For this they left their fishing nets and families and spent three years walking from town to town with Jesus? To find a colt?

I can imagine Peter or Andrew or James years from this day untying a horse and telling a young companion: “This is what I learned from Jesus.”

This is discipleship. This is following in the way of Jesus Christ. It’s not necessarily what we would expect or choose.

When we listen to Luke’s account of the Palm Sunday story we are reminded again that our actions, however small or seemingly inconsequential, are the ways that we make openings for God’s new creation in the world.

Yes, there are times when people are called to do great things for the God who has done great things for us. There will be times when even we are surprised by our own great courage, our own strong love, our own deep compassion. For most of us, most of the time, it’s the small things we do that will prepare the way for the ministry of Christ in the world.

Is there anything greater for us?

Yes.

This week we will hear again the great things that Jesus did “for us and for our salvation,” as the ancient Nicene Creed puts it. We will proclaim again that Jesus was betrayed, suffered, and was crucified that a broken and hurting humanity might know healing and new life in the resurrection.

When we are tempted to be petty or despairing or mean-spirited, when we are tempted to throw out all our values for a quick reward, we can remember this. We can remember the great things that God has done for us and for all people.

This is a week in which we look at the death of Jesus. But first we must enlarge our own concept of death. Death is more than the last moment of life. We die all our lives. Life begins to be limited from the moment we are born, and continues acquiring limitations until we come to the last, final limit.

When we look at the death of Jesus then, we are really looking at the life of Jesus—how he took up the conflicts of life, how he embraced the journey of life. Jesus embraced death just as he embraced whatever life brought him—his joys and his sorrows, his conflicts and his confrontations for the sake of his message and his life, his way of living.

When we watch, what we see is commitment—the result of faith that dares to act with no iron-clad assurance of success.

When we read the Bible, when we listen to this Palm Sunday story, we can get the mistaken idea that everything will work out.

The disciples do the small thing. They obey Jesus. They go into the next town. They find the colt just as Jesus said they would. Even when they meet with some resistance—the owner who asks, “Why are you untying this animal”—a few words overcome the obstacles that they face.

Everything seems to work out.

With Jesus on the colt the group heads toward Jerusalem. Heaven and earth meet as human beings give back the song that Luke has the angels sing at Jesus’ birth: “Glory in the highest heaven.”

Everything seems to work out.

Many would like to live in such a world.

Some people see this as a model for the life of faith. Do what God tells you and everything will work out. Only believe and you’ve got it made. But this is a “Discover Card” faith—a faith that pays you back with good fortune and a smooth flowing life. This is a life of faith without the valleys of shadows, a life without the long, dark nights that come to all of us. It is a life of faith without the limit of death that we know in part and will know fully.

We know the whole story of this week. And we know that everything does not work out.

We live, not with a promise of certainty but with a call to commitment—the commitment of love. One theologian put it like this: “When we talk about love, we have to become mature or we will become sentimental. Let us not say that we as Christians are potential martyrs or that we are more unselfish than other people. That is not what love means if we take it modestly.

Basically, love means responsibility toward our family, toward our nation, even toward all humankind, which includes our enemies. Love honors the commitments that we make even in the face of all that would stop us. Love does not depend on “everything working out.” It acts with responsibility even in the adversity that can be all too familiar.

The pinnacle of this love is forgiveness—the awareness of our own sinfulness that gives us the humility, the strength, and the ability to forgive others.

As we will go through the days ahead with humility and repentance, we will discover that we are walking on a path of responsibility and love. On this path we commit ourselves and our energies to a world where love, peace, a community of sister and brothers, a world where openness to God, will be less difficult. It means that we denounce situations that generate hatred, division, and the practical atheism that surrounds us. It means we proclaim—and practice in that love—justice in family relationships, in schools, in our economic transactions, and in political relations.

In this world truth and justice, love and beauty—even incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth—can be defeated and trampled down. Evil is strong indeed.

Our hope is not in positive thinking. Our hope is not in looking on the bright side and waiting for spring.

Our hope is in God’s power to begin again, in God’s power to renew destroyed lives. Our hope is still found in the continual springtime of God’s mercy.

We are often defeated.

Even Jesus was defeated and died.

God however is not defeated.

But that is Easter. And we have much to learn in the days to come before we once again face the empty tomb.

May the crucified and risen Christ continue to lead our way.