Preached Palm Sunday, April 13, 2003 by the Rev. Steven J. Lashbrook, Pastor

First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, Manistee, MI

I have always loved Palm Sunday, but for many years, I never understood why. What I have finally come to understand is that there is nothing to understand. On Palm Sunday there is nothing to be analyzed or sorted out or comprehended. Palm Sunday is only to be enjoyed.

When we look over the life of Jesus, there is very little that possesses that feeling of joy. Jesus is shown by all the gospel writers as a self-assured, but serious person, a man with a purpose that must be accomplished, a person with a power to change lives through healing and forgiveness and love. From mountain tops and along lake sides and in crowded houses and synagogues, Jesus encourages all who listen to consider their lives, to confront their sin and repent, to leave behind the most treasured relationships and to prepare for a new life. Sin, sacrifice and struggle. Those are the themes of Jesus’ ministry. They are at the heart of Jesus’ words and life. Not much lightheartedness there. Interspersed, too, with those teachings and experiences are the death threats, controversies, and conflicts with the most powerful people in religious institutions and governments. Everywhere that he goes, the sick and outcast reach and cry out and crowd around. It is never a happy group that comes seeking Jesus. They are people who want something, and when they want it. A father worried about his epileptic son, a blind beggar dwelling in the dust of the city, a man crazed with demons forced to live in the tombs are only a few of those his life and hand touches. The pictures of Jesus’ life are ones of darkness and foreboding.

But the story we read today is different. It opens us to a new view of Jesus that at first seems unique among all the stories in the New Testament. Here Jesus is surrounded not by suffering, but with laughing! It is not a scene of remote loneliness, but set in one of the great avenues of one of the world’s greatest cities; not a time of bitter controversy and crushing demand, but of carefree joy. For these moments on Palm Sunday, we see a crowd rushing and waving branches and shouting and singing and pressing together. Teacher, command your disciples to be quiet, says one unrepentant grumbler. But Jesus feels differently: I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out! Jesus is enjoying this moment and nothing will stop it. Jesus is enjoying the cheers and the crowds, and no one can change it. Jesus is enjoying being alive. And that is how it should be. I love Palm Sunday because it is a day of joy!

Without a doubt, behind him are scenes and people of dark demand. And we know that ahead is a confrontation with the forces of hate and power of death and times of suffering and grief. But still, Jesus enjoys his life and all those around him. This is a moment to see that, in spite of the agony, life is very good. In the middle of the darkest moment, a light can appear, and when we look more closely we discover that Jesus was always finding that life and wanting to share that joy. Recall that first miracle. He wanted the party to go on, so he changed the water to the very finest wine so the guests would stay and be happy. This is the same man who took careful note of the beauty and grace of creation around his head and at his feet: Look at the birds of the air… consider the lilies of the field. And this man loved to be in the company of children, to hear them, care for them and in gentleness and happiness have them close to him: But the disciples rebuked them; and Jesus was indignant and said to them, "Let the children come to me and do not stop them…" And he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands upon them.

Remember the themes we have heard and repeat each Lenten season: penance, preparation, prayer, forgiveness, sacrifice and new life. Our worship, in all it is and does for us is meant to change us. It is meant to touch the deep, dark painful places of our lives. But today, on Palm Sunday, something else about our worship comes alive and into view. It is now easy to understand that our worship is meant to help us see all the wide, lush, open spaces of our lives. Our worship is meant to help us see that life -- our lives on this day -- are filled to overflowing with goodness, bounteous joy, overwhelming in those moments for which there should be rejoicing. If we would only consider and see, if we would only look around our lives, if we would not forbid those moments from coming to us, we could find and live in worship at all times.

But the world is not all I want it to be. What about you? It is still filled, as it was for Jesus, with sadness that never leaves and danger that threatens life every day. War has been waged in another part of the world and the lives of soldiers and civilians have been threatened and in danger. Bombs have been dropped on military installations and children quake in their mother’s arms and news reports keep us up-to-date on the status of our military personnel, young men and women from communities just like Manistee: some of them are missing, many have died, and even more lie injured and an agonizing few are held captive. We pray for peace and an end to fighting and at the same time worry and wonder over those whose lives and efforts will hopefully bring a lasting peace to the world. It is all real and so very close to home. But if we believe what happened on that Jerusalem street, we too, can have moments of joy in the midst of clinging sadness and a moment of bravery in the face of terrible danger. If we believe Jesus, there is abundant life to be seen and heard, considered and embraced all around us. If we believe Jesus, there is life with unyielding goodness.

And if we believe, we will see that goodness: tips of tulips and daffodils poking their heads through the earth; an elderly couple far past their fiftieth wedding anniversary, who still hold hands when they usher together; a couple who have taken in and cared for more than a dozen children, all hurt or forgotten or handicapped in some way, and the couple I heard about: she, the wife, is completely blind herself! And a group of courageous marine from North Carolina, twenty years old and just out of training who, when he saw a mother and her children caught between his combat unit and a group of renegade Iraqi soldiers, ran over one hundred yards to when they were kneeling and pushed them to the ground and covered them with his body. It is miraculous that none of them were injured or killed. Is the world only filled with dangerous threats? Is it at best a droning, boring series of days without end and without meaning? Church historian Martin Marty gave an answer I would like us to remember: "Not as long as there are sights to see and sounds to hear and tastes to taste and friends and you." To receive the goodness Jesus found in life we must see that goodness is a part of our lives.

But the church is not all I want it to be. What about you? There are disappointments and discouragements, unmet expectations and failed hopes, words without actions and actions without love and love without truth. I hear that every day from people and I see it every day in my work. But if we who are the disciples of Jesus Christ cannot also see goodness in our being together, who will, and where will it ever be seen? If we believe Jesus, we must believe the goodness he found is here, too. If we believe Jesus, we can see that goodness is already present: when my friends, some of them in the ninth and tenth decade of their lives, still walk to worship and walk down this aisle to sit in their pew to listen for God’s voice. When active members and marginal friends of this congregation give of their time and their commitment and their dollars to support the church through bazaars and restoration work and organ rebuilding and clockwinding. When the music of our choirs echoes in our hearts and reverberates in our sanctuary. With all of them we glimpse the joy and feel the momentary loveliness and see the parade of goodness. When we do not deny all that has been done in and by this church, but when we stop for a moment, and make an accounting, when we see the beauty and great goodness here, we are living with the goodness Christ offers.

Still, I am not all I want to be; I am not all I hoped I would be. Years ago I had hoped I would be different. And only this morning, I hoped I would be different. Oh, I’ve made resolutions to change and to be better and thinner and more organized and more aware and more faithful. But they often remain only that: resolutions. Those failures and regrets and sins can gnaw and grow very large. It is easy to feel badly about our lives. It is easy to believe we are not good enough. I am not all I want to be. What about you?

Palm Sunday makes us look again and think again. On the first Palm Sunday the King of kings, the Word of God in human flesh, the Savior of the world rode down a Jerusalem street. Greeting him were people, unknown and unnamed to him, yet whatever past, whatever faith, whatever disjointed lives, whatever sad thoughts they each and all possessed, they were good enough to be invited into the circle of Christ’s life.

Do you understand? Do you see? It can happen again. If we believe Jesus, if we see that goodness is already within us. If we find that goodness in our lives, that same invitation will come to us.

O Lord of lords and King of kings, we want to be invited to share your life and your joy. So let us live our lives as we have said with our words: let us see that in everything God does work for good. Let us have the same mind as Christ Jesus, let us empty ourselves and become your servants, that our tongues may confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God. Amen.