SALT For The Journey: “Where Is Your Passion?”
Psalm 118: 1, 19-29; Matthew 21: 1-16a, 23: 37-39
March 20, 2005 Palm Sunday

After Psalm:
The psalmist rejoices that even in the midst of hard life realities, God is God and God invites us to enter into God’s presence, heaven on earth really, enter through the gates of righteousness. To be righteous is to be a living manifestation of divine justice. So, on the way to heaven, you must pass through justice. No justice, maybe no heaven.

And, if you pass through those gates, you will find yourself feeling pretty rejected by the world, a cornerstone rejected, because the world’s ways are often not the ways of justice. And you will need God as never before and appreciate God as never before….and know success as never before. A success far different from the one deemed desirable by the world. You endure…and better…through Gods’ steadfast love of you!

Before Matthew:
This is the Sunday of Passion Week. It is often called Passion Sunday and all the scriptures of the week get shared because so many don’t go through the emotional shifts and pulls of the week otherwise, and so don’t receive Easter’s full impact and good news. It is my prayer you will come to hear these other stories this week to gain all you can from them. Today, we focus on the Palm Sunday aspect only….we enter the week with Jesus and go just as far today as he did and look forward..

Listen to this….Read Matthew 21: 1-16a

Yes, he enters on a donkey…the way most of us enter most new places and situations….not meeting the expectations of those around us either….but in not meeting those expectations, Jesus hoped they might begin to get it…he was not going to be King for a Day! …but a personal King for a lifetime….something new ruling your life!

The reading takes him from the parade of palms into the temple. Some began to see. Some did not. Those who suffered did! The kids did! The Pharisees and scribes and devout Jews did not. They were still caught up in the religious part of religion…following the rules rather than living the faith…when they had the new law and the true spirit of the religion incarnate right before their very eyes! Throughout the next chapters, Jesus tries to teach them using many parables. They still don’t get it! So he begins a series of teachings set apart by the use of the words…Woe to you hypocrites! And he goes on to name their hypocrisy in great detail. In Adult Ed this Lent, we named the hypocrisies of our church, of individuals in a church and in life…how hard it is to be true to the intention of the faith, your own intentions…we named internal resources to resist being hypocrites.

Jesus ends this section of teaching as the plot begins to thicken against him and he must poignantly pass through those gates of divine justice the psalmist names as the Pharisees and religious plot to do away with this trouble maker, as Judas plots thinking surely Jesus would now be forced to use his power to be King and would surely save himself and the people.

The Passion Stories are stories of Jesus inspired sense of how to keep on keeping on, going through those gates. Jesus ends this section calling out to Jerusalem….the center of all that was….all that is in us today. He calls out…Read Matthew 23: 37-39

Who were the people in the crowd that day? What were they searching for and in what way did Jesus seem to fulfill that need? Some would have been his followers. Others would have come out of curiosity and got caught up in the high emotion of the people, shouting Hosanna. Later, they would join another crowd and shout something else altogether, crucify him! Others in the crowd had been sent to spy. The air would have been thick with political agenda and subterfuge and none of this escaped the gentle, powerful giant entering Jerusalem on a donkey. He knew he was part of a slow dance with destiny….set in motion by people, not by God…not God’s desires for him…or for you…but the world’s response to anyone who threatens the status quo…who truly cares seeking justice…who is willing to enter life through those gates!

Why does Jesus die?
The usual atonement cliché that he died for our sins really doesn’t cut it, doesn’t do much to tell the story and invite us to God’s new reality of Easter. We today are not to blame for Jesus’ death….but we still have issues to deal with. Our God isn’t mean, mean enough to kill his own son to make a point. And anyways, how would that work? Jesus death so long ago absolves my actions today? The usual answers to why Jesus dies leave us all with very little insight into how Jesus’ death makes a real difference in living today.

Why did Jesus die?
For Matthew Jesus dies because the leaders of his own people…Jesus’ and Matthew’s…won’t admit Jesus is the one who knows how to live the righteous life…a just life….the only life that leads to joy….a do over life. The teachers of the law should embrace Jesus, but they won’t. He fulfills all they stand for, but they conspire to have him killed because if they acknowledge his teachings, they become sorta’ obsolete in that Jesus redefines holy power to be within the people, each of us!, rather than in them, over us. In Jesus, the old role of rabbi, priest becomes obsolete! It no longer serves God or the people well. Their work has been outsourced! Their jobs have been redesigned. And they’re fighting mad! There is still a role for them to play….but no longer a need for them to play the role of the holy.

Jesus dies a faithful Jew, quoting the psalms even on the cross. The keepers of the faith put a seal on his tomb, to be done with him for good. But the Jews didn’t kill him…the culture did…the religious and political culture did.

Why did Jesus die?
Look at how he lived and you begin to discover why he died. He taught and demonstrated God’s law of love and justice. He called for personal and corporate justice above and beyond religion. He ignored the boundaries/divisions people set amongst themselves. He created a new community of disciples…disciplined learners, ongoing…distinct from the world around them, but never exclusive.

What Jesus did and taught and created, got him killed! Put him at odds with the way the world works. It set him against the way we order our lives when left to our own devices.

He was killed because that’s what the world, people!, often do to people like him.

Why did Jesus die?
I believe he died to show us once and for all: scapegoating leads you no where; blame kills; violence begets violence. Our God does not blame, does not participate in violence, does not use violent tactics as a reprisal against us, even when we kill the holy one within us and beside us.

Our God is not vengeful, even unto the death of Jesus Christ. Instead of reprisals, pointing fingers, scapegoating and punishing, what does God do in Jesus' death? Come even closer. No one, no church, no government can stand between God and you. Jesus died because he chose to model a new way of creating change and being personal with God. Jesus died and the world was changed forever. Jesus died teaching us what it really means to believe and belong….and God is closer to us than ever, no one/no thing between God and you!

I believe Jesus' death atones for our sins in this way: Jesus' death shows us once and for all that God will not play by the rules we have set up. We confine, redefine, malign God. We align God with forceful power....and violence and scapegoating. And God says, "No! I won’t play by your rules! And, nothing you can do will keep Me from loving you even as I say “No!” to your choices and refuse to cooperate."

It was not the "un-religious" who killed Jesus, it was the "religious" because they just didn't get it. There will be no more scapegoating and blame. There will be no more rules and regs that seek reprisal or use violence, especially in the name of God.

The afternoon that Jesus drew his last breath, the curtain of the temple was torn in two. That curtain was the visual symbol that marked the location of the "holy of holies" within the temple--where God resided and only appointed priests may go. And now that curtain tears and the holy of holy no longer is a separate place. God can no longer be confined to a holy place or any place. God is not "owned" or "controllable" and “doesn’t chose sides.” God reveals God will not be kept out of our daily lives.

In Jesus' death, God says no to all of this. God says no to being held far away at bay, distant from our lives. Even when we say "No way!" to God, God says, "Yes, way!" to us. "I've gotcha, let go, come to me. Ride with me."

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Jesus' blood did not atone for our sins in the sense that Jesus needed to die so we would be forgiven. God forgives because of God, not because of us. And, I'm not sure those at the betrayal and death thought anything they had done needed to be forgiven. They had religion and the courts on their side.

NO. Jesus died to show us once and for all that nothing we can do will ever make God go away for God does not play by our rules. Jesus has been teaching us this all along. This basic understanding is at the heart of all Jesus' teachings and encounters with people--people who are just like us.

It’s Palm Sunday! Come and in-joy the parade. Jesus did! Join the crowd…but through your Easter eyes see in Palm Sunday the beginning of something new in you…a realigning of your life…a redefining of the crowd.

Find your passion in this story, these stories. What are you passionate about? And beware of those Gates of Justice we must pass through on our way to life. Because, if what you are passionate about sits you on your high horse, well…you’ll lose your head going through those gates. Be passionate and just the right size riding a donkey through life and through those gates…in the name of justice, it’s OK to make a donkey out of yourself!
Come with us this week and ride all the way to Easter with Jesus…to Easter and beyond…with passion!