Palm Sunday 2011

Palm Sunday 2011 (Matthew 21:1-11)
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Virtually no one was able to accept Jesus for who Jesus was.

It was an incredible almost triumphal entry into Jerusalem. The city was in a tumult. Visitors from all over the Roman world and from the Persian Empire had come to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover in the one and only Temple the One and only God had authorized people to build.

They asked: who is this coming into the city in triumph? People said: it is the prophet Jesus. People shouted out: Hosanna! Save we pray!

The chief priests and the religious authorities reacted with fear. The people were proclaiming Jesus to be the savior of the nation, the Messiah. If this were true, the priests would lose their jobs and the religious authorities would lose their power.

If it were not true, if Jesus failed to live up to the expectations of the people, there would be chaos. In that chaos Rome would impose the heavy hand of imperial rule. Many would die and the priests and religious leaders could be replaced for failing to maintain order.

There was a third alternative. The third alternative was for the priests and rulers to listen to Jesus. They could easily have asked him to clarify his position and his person. More than even Jesus’ students, the priests and rulers had listened to and watched Jesus over the preceding three years. But, as with almost everyone else, they never took Jesus seriously. They never allowed Jesus to be who he said he was.
Thousands of people had experienced Jesus’ miracles. They each saw something different.

The disciples saw a road to power through Jesus. But, Jesus had not come to impose a new system or institution on the people.

The crowds saw debt relief and revenge on their oppressors. But Jesus had not come with to overturn the economic system or to punish the oppressors.
The priests and rulers saw Jesus as a threat to their wealth and power. But, Jesus had not come to lead a revolution.

Many others looked at Jesus, experienced the miracles and then said: that’s nice but that’s religion and I’m not overly religious so Jesus means little to me. But, Jesus did not come into the world to offer one more religious opinion.

People imposed their own needs and desires on Jesus because all people reserve the right and the power to define God as we chose. This is the essence of Original Separation from God.

God had revealed himself to our first parents as love and holiness. They looked past the love and holiness to see the knowledge and power God had. They chose to purse two of the attributes of God and to ignore the essential nature of God.

BY that Original Choice our species separated from God. We are lost and we cannot find our way back by our own insights, efforts or will to power. The story of Jesus is the proof of this principle.

Virtually no one was able to accept Jesus for who Jesus was.

People heard the name Jesus, which means savior, and wanted Jesus to save them from the Romans, the priests and the religious rulers. In that salvation, they expected Jesus to crush their enemies, exalt his friends to positions of power, and make Jerusalem the capital of a new world empire that would enslave the nations.

This was not the salvation Jesus brought. It is not the salvation Jesus brings.
At the end, only Holy Mother Mary and the beloved apostle John had a tenuous sense of what salvation Jesus brought. As they stood at the foot of the cross they observed just how Jesus would embody salvation.

Jesus didn’t come into the world to effect regime change. He did not come to offer one more opinion among many opinions about religion. He came to seek the lost, find the lost, and reunite the lost to God.

He did this in two ways: he united his divinity with our humanity. And then, in that union, he trapped sin and death in his own body and soul as he died on the cross.
The cross was not something Jesus wanted to embrace. It was the only means by which he could accomplish his goal. For Jesus just doesn’t have love, Jesus is love. He is the co-eternal Beloved of the Eternal Father.

Jesus came to reunite each of us to God. He came to save us from sin by transforming sin back into love. He did this through his real choice to unite his will with the will of The Father. He did this by accepting the full weight of human sin on his soul and in his body on the cross.

Jesus came to save us from death. Death was never part of our Heavenly Father’s Plan for the human race. Death is the result of humanity’s original choice to separate from God. Death is not a punishment. It is a consequence.

God and God alone is the source of life. To separate from God is to separate from life.

Jesus trapped death in his own body on the cross so he could swallow it up and transform it back into life by the power of his own eternal life.

The salvation Jesus brings is a new life and a new way of living.

Jesus is not an add on to a personal philosophy.

Jesus is not one option among many.

There are only two options for humanity: life in union with God through Jesus Christ; or, death in separation from God through the individual will to power.
Who is Jesus Christ to you? Are you willing to allow Jesus be who he is? Are you willing to accept the gift Jesus brings, the gift Jesus is?

When you say the hosanna what do you chose to be saved from?
The crowds spoke truth when they shouted “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord”. They just weren’t willing to ask themselves the question Pilate asked: what is truth?

The answer to that question is a matter of life and death. The answer to that question is the context of the Palm Sunday acclamation: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

The answer is Jesus Christ who is the way, the truth and the life, who is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is He, blessed is Jesus Christ, who comes in the name of the Lord.