Oakhurst Baptist Church
Palm/ Passion Sunday
April 4, 2004
his melancholy madness,
stood up in the boat
and the sea lay down,
silky and sorry.
that night.
when something
different crosses
the threshold—the uncles
mutter together,
the women walk away,
the young brother begins
to sharpen his knife.
Nobody knows what the soul is.
It comes and goes
sometimes, for days,
you don’t think of it.
Maybe, after the sermon,
after the multitude was fed,
one or two of them felt
the soul slip forth
like a tremor of pure sunlight,
before exhaustion,
that wants to swallow everything,
gripped their bones and left them
miserable and sleepy,
as they are now, forgetting
how the wind tore at the sails
before he rose and talked to it—
as he always was—
than the killer sea.
This is a perfect poem for today which we call both Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday. Throughout his ministry, people responded to Jesus with incredible joy but also with deep fear. Never was this truer than in his last days. These polarities of response are reflected in the movement of our worship service today. The service began with a call to worship taken from Psalm 118, which sets the background for Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. This is a psalm of thanksgiving that was traditionally used when a king returned to the Jerusalem temple after a victory in battle. As the king approached the temple, the people would wave branches and sing “Hosanna” which means, “Save us!”
Jesus the Galilean had stirred up a lot of attention with his teachings and healings and prophetic words. As the crowds gathered in Jerusalem for Passover, there was a growing hope that maybe he was the one who had finally come to save them. He could be the one to strike a blow for the nation, a blow against the occupying Romans and for the homeland. Lying down cloaks in the road was a traditional way of welcoming a new ruler.
They waved branches, laid down cloaks and began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power they had seen, saying, ‘Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and the highest heaven!’”
But they misunderstood what he was about. “Instead of a fist raised in proud victory, this king comes in humility. Instead of chariots and stallions, this king comes riding in on a lowly colt. Instead of crowing over the vanquished, this king ‘commands peace to the nations.’ Jesus is king, but a king of peace not war, a king whose power comes cloaked in humility.” (Willimon)
The crowd would be greatly disappointed that Jesus would not turn out to be the conquering hero they wanted. Before long, they could not decide if he was good news or bad news. Many of these same people waving branches and lying down their coats in the road would be yelling ”Crucify him” by week’s end.
Reflecting this, our worship has turned from the waving of palms and singing of hosannas to Jesus’ last words on the cross in the gospel of Luke.
We pay close attention to the words of a dying person.
Pancho Villa, Mexican revolutionary at his death in 1923 was reported to have said, “Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something.”
The writer Oscar Wilde’s last words in 1900 were: “Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.”
While dying, Karl Marx said to his housekeeper, who urged him to tell her his last words so she could write them down for posterity. “Go on, get out -last words are for fools who haven't said enough.”
Emily Dickinson’s last words in 1886 were; “I must go in, the fog is rising.”
Beethoven at his death in 1827 said, “Friends applaud, the comedy is finished.”
P. T. Barnum’s last words in 1891: “How were the receipts today at Madison Square Garden?”
Just before she died in1964, Lady Nancy Astor woke briefly during her last illness and found all her family around her bedside and said, “Am I dying or is this my birthday?”
The last words I recall my father, Marcus Peters saying, were, “I didn’t have much to say, did I son?” To which I replied, “No you didn’t Daddy. And that’s all right.”
Just before Henry Ward Beecher, died in 1887,he said, “Now comes the mystery.”
We pay close attention to the words of a dying person for what a person has to say in the face of death might be significant. That's why during this season of Lent we have been listening intently to the last words of Christ.
In Luke’s account, the last thing Jesus said was, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” Barbara Brown Taylor has pointed out that at a funeral, the last words are called the commendation. The person presiding stands near the body and commends the person who has died to God. “There was no one to do that for Jesus. “Jesus’ last words are not a cry of abandonment but a giving of himself back into the hands of the one who made him.”
With these last words, Jesus “shifted the entire context of his death. Until he said it, it looked to everyone as if his life was being taken away from him. His perverse religious cult had been stopped. He was on the receiving end of the worst punishment the empire knew how to inflict, which should have made him their victim. But by saying what he did, he took himself out of their hands. By commending himself to the God whose enemy they said he was, he redefined what was happening to him. He gave away what they thought they were taking away from him.” From her sermon “The Commendation” by Barbara Brown Taylor
What we have seen in looking at Jesus’ last words during Lent is that even as he was being put to death, Jesus was true to his calling. Even from the cross, he offered assurance, forgiveness, and trust in God’s love. Throughout his life, and even in his dying, he showed us how to live. Amen