“All you can do is to walk into Jerusalem, with the Hosannas ringing in your ears, and the palms coming at you in every direction…”
The words of our reading remind us, in the midst of our self-isolating…in the midst of our fears…in the midst of our financial anxieties…even as we weep for the suffering caused by the virus that comes closer to us with each day…
In the midst of all of that…this is Palm Sunday in the Christian tradition…the beginning of Holy Week which leads not only toward Good Friday, that death on the cross, but also toward the rebirth of hope on Easter morning.
Passover begins on Wednesday…the Jewish celebration of liberation…that remembering of freedom that was claimed unexpectedly in a world of plagues and suffering…not unlike our own.
The cycle of spring holidays has come again…as it does each year… asking us to enter our own Jerusalem of the spirit…uncertain…unclear…in need of renewal…knowing that both death and life are part of these religious stories…
Neither Passover nor Easter are free of suffering.
All you can do is to walk into Jerusalem…with the palms coming at you in every direction.
It was the Passover, and Jews from the countryside were streaming into Jerusalem to celebrate their story of liberation at the Temple.
From the Gospel of John (12:12-13)
…the great crowd that had come to the [Passover] festival heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, shouting,
“Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”
Hosanna! All praise!
It is the picture of a triumphal entry into the city. That picture assumes a Jesus who knew the suffering that lay before him. But a Jesus confident that the cross would not be…for him…the last word.
The Gospel of John, where we get the name Palm Sunday, was the last Gospel written…over 100 years after Jesus’s death. The earlier Gospels…none of them…use the term “palms.” The earlier versions describe the people placing grasses in his path…the wild grasses that grow everywhere in the spring even in dry and dusty Palestine.
Making a carpet of wild grass.
The image is less royal than palm fronds…less triumphal…
More human.
And though the promise of salvation through the death of that dusty, itinerant Jewish preacher is clear in each Gospel…
The Jesus who enters Jerusalem, knows only that he has to answer the call…his call…
That human Jesus has to answer his call with faith that whatever possibilities become real…all he can do is to walk into Jerusalem with the people throwing wild grasses in his path and shouting Hosannas because they yearn for liberation once again.
Possibility is our spiritual theme this month and, though we most certainly did not predict the current state of our world when we selected it last year…the theme of possibility speaks to these days in so many ways.
There is no uncertainty about the suffering around us, nor uncertainty that the worst is still days ahead for us. The possible futures we face never included an absence of suffering.
But the possibilities for how we move through this time are many and the outcomes…the community that will emerge out of these trials…those possibilities are many as well…and it is in the choices that we make that glimpses of hope can be found… And so, our choices have to be the justification for Easter this year.
All we can do is to move into our Jerusalem…
The question for us is how we move, what we hold in our hearts as we enter and what glimpses of hope we allow to inspire us and to hold us up.
The virus is a tragedy…a natural tragedy. That it has become global…and so rapidly…is a function of the global economy and habits of travel and movement we assume as our right. But the virus is not malevolent. The virus doesn’t “have it in” for us. The virus is simply doing what we are doing…trying to live.
Now, I can argue that the explosion of population and our colonizing of more and more of the earth’s surface brings us closer to these natural threats. I believe that.
The virus is a threat to our lives, but it is not evil.
What the virus is doing, however, is exposing evil…in our human world. Exposing evil in the notions of what has become normal. Many of us don’t accept those notions of normal…I’m not accusing any of you of callousness…but there are notions of normal that we have not found the energy or developed the strategy to successfully change.
Dr. William Barber, one of the leaders of this era’s Poor Peoples March, writes: “Epidemics emerge along the fissures of our society, reflecting not only the biology of the infectious agent, but patterns of marginalization, exclusion and discrimination. [This] pandemic is no exception.”
Fissures of our society…patterns of exclusion and oppression.
In the Gospel of Mathew, Jesus goes directly from his triumphal entry into Jerusalem to the Temple where he overturns the tables of the moneychangers: “It is written that my house shall be called a house of prayer; but you are making it a den of robbers.”
He challenged the sin of greed and the structure that made greed normal. It was the first thing he did.
Again from Dr. Barber: “If we had paid sick leave for all workers…if we had strong labor rights and unions, a guaranteed living wage, good benefits…if [our taxes were fair] and we used that money for the public good…our health system would be better equipped to sustain this shock. …
Fissures in our society…patterns of exclusion and oppression.
“…the truth,” Dr. Barber preaches, “must speak out loudly, as Jesus did, with a certain righteous militancy.”
It will not be “a very good job” if a quarter of a million of us die from this virus. “Only” a quarter of a million will be a heart-breaking tragedy…not a very good job.
And it is not just the deaths.
There is no normal I can accept in which millions of our neighbors must rely on our schools to feed their children. Last month there were 470 million free and reduced price meals not served to our children because schools were closed. 470 million. How many of our children went to bed hungry?
Nor is there a normal I can accept that trades the likelihood of hundreds of thousands more deaths for a slightly more rapid economic recovery.
Because we know whose lives are ok to lose…
We know…don’t we…come on…
Its the oldest of us, the poorest of us…the houseless…the helpless…the incarcerated…people of color…those in migrant camps and cages…those who cannot afford to lose hours of work…those who cannot afford the test or the treatment…those without insurance…
We know…don’t we… We know.
The least of these…that’s the way Jesus described them…the least of us.
Some of us refuse to accept that we are all worthy…all lovable…all already loved. For some, it is the saved vs the damned…every time.
When did we determine……when did we decide that the quality of our health care should be determined by the profit motive, and that who can be served and saved should be determined by the financial bottom line?
What possibilities await us?
One possibility is that we will accept these evils as the best we can do. Those of us who are privileged enough and lucky enough to make it through will sink back into that normalcy in which evil is allowed to triumph.
We will be unwilling or unable to sustain our awareness of the suffering around us. We’ll go along to get along.
Closing our eyes to the suffering around us, we’ll gather at our tables again, share the bread and the wine and the fellowship and enjoy our privileged places. Without changing the rules. Without challenging whether the way things are, the way things have been, is the way that things have to be.
That is one possibility. That could very easily be what happens…for a lot of us..even if not for all of us. But that is not the only possibility.
When Thursday of that week came, Jesus gathered his disciples in an upper room to celebrate Passover with the traditional meal.
He knelt and washed their feet. No doubt they said the Shema. Then he broke bread, shared it with them and told them to eat. And shared wine with them and told them to drink. It was the first Communion. In past years we have celebrated that communion at our Unitarian Universalist Maundy Thursday service. This year…well, physical communion is not appropriate in this virus era. But spiritual communion becomes critical.
Jesus was profoundly Jewish. The last supper was a Passover Seder. Nothing else makes sense. But after he offered that first communion he also gave a new commandment…the Mandatum Novum…it is one of the many statements attributed to him that universalizes his message:
“A new commandment I give unto you. That you love one another, as I have loved you…” (John 15:12)
Love one another.
This is the hardest Easter season I can remember. The virus and the evils it exposes press down on our spirits. It is so easy to allow fear and self-protection to dominate.
This year, it is easy to believe that we live in a Good Friday world. Easy to accept that possibility. There is so much evidence to support it.
But there is another possibility…another set of choices we can make…a different path through our Jerusalem that we can follow…(to a different destination)
Where do we look for signs to follow as we move forward? Where do we look for proof that there is a different path? Where do we look for hope?
“New York needs more ventilators,” Gov. Kate Brown wrote yesterday, “and we are answering their call for help. We’ll be sending 140 ventilators to help New York because Oregon is in a better position right now.”
NY’s Gov. Cuomo replied with thanks, “We are so grateful to Gov. Brown and the people of Oregon. …rest assured that NY will repay the favor when Oregon needs it.”
There is another possibility… another path that leads to a different destination.
Look to the helpers. To the medical workers and the grocery workers. Look to the EMT’s and the political leaders who refuse to play the game of gotcha. The game of “we got ours”…good luck to you.
It is not that 140 ventilators will get New York past the apex of their need. No. Not nearly.
But it is a sign, an act of leadership that proclaims we are all in this together. An act of leadership made manifest in the sharing those tubes and pumps and monitors that can sustain life. The sharing of those ventilators is an act of communion and the expression of love.
Look to the helpers. There is a different possibility we can claim. Look to helpers to find a different path we can follow.
On Thursday I blogged about the nurse in New York who helped me get beyond despair. The nurse who at the end of her 12 hour day, working without adequate protective gear…at the end of her day, spent in the valley of the shadow…that nurse looked into the camera with weary eyes and said: “All we can do is love bigger.”
Love one another, instructed Jesus. Love bigger, urged that nurse.
In this church, we speak of a spirit of life and of love, we sing that there is a love holding us, there is a love holding all that we love. We sing that love will guide us.
That is not only our way of stating an aspiration for our own living but an affirmation of the way we believe the world can work. That we bring more love into the world with every loving act.
And God, whatever God may be to you…if she is anything at all…
God is the possibility that that love might just prove to be real…and prove to be resilient and stronger…in the end, than our self-interest and our failings.
This faith is not for the faint of heart. Because you must be willing to live as if that were true…despite all of the evidence to the contrary.
Emma Goldman, anarchist, activist wrote:
“Someday, human beings will rise, they will reach the mountain peak, they will [arrive] strong and free, ready to receive, to partake, and to bask in the golden rays of love.”
Disasters often bring out the best in us. That is true. But isn’t that such a sad truth?
Are we ready in this time when our spirits are being tested once again…are we ready to rise, strong and free…ready to receive and to partake and to bask in the golden rays of love…
Are we ready? Ready to lift our vision above our fear. Ready to reject the possibility that “normal” is as good as it gets? Ready to embrace the possibility that this world just might… just might be rebuilt to different standards…that we would not be ashamed to name.
Are we ready for Passover…for liberation? Are we ready to be free?
Are we ready for Easter?
All we can do is move forward into the city…feeling the wild grasses strewn beneath our feet…knowing that how we move will help to shape the possibilities that will emerge…
Knowing that this journey begins with our entrance…
Knowing that…
All we have
is the moving forward
in love.
Amen
Butterfly Effect. Emergency Fund…
Prayer
Will you pray with me now?
Spirit of Life and of Love.
Our routines are gone. Our treasured patterns,
That help us hold the truth at bay…gone at least for now.
Days at home for most of us…many of us alone.
The danger is greater for those of us who must go out.
And the news is grim.
We are being tested and forced back to ourselves, back on ourselves.
Be with us, spirit.
Help us remember that it is only love that can cast out fear.
Help us remember that we are one family…even as we must keep our distance.
And help us remember the source of our hope
And the power we hold in each of our hands
Help us keep that faith that we struggle to name
That faith that calls us into community
That faith that calls us to be agents of love
That faith that calls us to enter our Jerusalem
Ready for what may come
Carrying our commitments to justice, equity and compassion
Carrying our trust in love with us
As we move through the gates.
May that be so.
Amen
Topics: Possibility