The Hosanna Parade Continues

Mark 16:1-8
John 12:12-15

Rockville United Church
Rev. Dr. Duncan Newcomer

March 23, 2008

Hosanna. That was last week’s cheer from the crowd. “Hosanna!” The Palm Sunday festival parade shout of joy.

Shouts. We have a glorious church member here who uses an old southern turn of phrase with the word “shout” in it. She’ll call people going through some hard time and just say, “This is me! I’m sending you a love-shout!” A love-shout. And then she says goodbye. Shouts.

“Hosanna” a joy-shout, a praise-shout, a political-shout. “Blessed is the one, blessed is the one,” scripture goes on to report the crowd’s cheering, “blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord, in the name of the Lord—the King of Israel!” A political shout. King is not a metaphor. King is some kind of a political thing.

Blessed is the king of Israel who comes in the name of the Lord. Something political is going on as Jesus enters Jerusalem during the Passover Festival on a donkey, softly padding on peoples’ thrown robes under the spell of undulating palm branches waved. Some political hope. Some political reality.

What was the hope? What’s become of that reality?

We know that one reality ends when the cheered-words “King of the Jews” are nailed in a sign over the head of Jesus on the cross. The fourth nail. And with it is killed a certain political hope: that the King of the Jews will enter the capital and, as messiah, will introduce the messianic age, the era of shalom, peace and justice for the whole community.

It is obvious that as that king Jesus failed. Even with his resurrection that hope is not resurrected in his name. The resurrection is not an overtime victory for the kingdom of the Lord, a March-madness come-from-behind -victory.

Whatever the hosanna-parade people hoped for then, whatever “we the people” hope for now, Jesus Christ as the king did not, and will not, bring it about himself, even as risen-Lord. The kingdom did not change. Many more years of Roman imperial rule remained, drearily unscathed.

So, except for faith in the possibility of our own eternal life (however that could be defined and realized) what are we so excited about here on Easter morning? Or, what could we be excited about? What hope? What reality?

I confess that the most “exciting” Easter-day parade I ever saw was before I was ordained a Christian minister, was when I went with my family to Disneyworld in Florida. On Easter Sunday I watched with amazement the “Electric Parade” (which still has the best tune!) and saw atop huge carriages Cinderella, Snow White, and Minnie Mouse! I fell in love with all three of those magnificent imaginal queens.

So we know parade excitement, and we can hope for personal death-bed faith; is there more to Easter and our resurrection life? Is there more, is there more for us, than some spiritual good news from a sacred story?

The yes, the yes there is more, the yes that has rung out like wild bells over the history of the last 2,000 years, the yes that says the Hosanna parade has continued, does go on, is the yes that says the more to this story is political. Political. The original political hopes of the first Hosanna parade did not fail in Jesus; they were relocated by Jesus. And where my friends, where did our good Lord and Savior relocate the political hopes of the crowd? Where in the name of the Lord did Jesus place the hopes and fears of all the years? In you my friends, in you, in me, in us, and all those who join, have joined, will join, the on-going Hosanna parade of Jesus Christ.

This church, this great Rockville United Church, was created and has been sustained as a political church, a church that both holds onto its precious members and reaches out to the vulnerable and afflicted in the world. This church is not afraid of the word “power,” not afraid of the word “politics,” not afraid to play power politics in the name of the Lord.

I didn’t drive down the New Jersey Turnpike last April to fade into the sunset of poetry. I was and am tremendously moved by the creation story of this church, its mighty attempt to keep the political hopes of the Hosanna parade alive, as well as the spiritual enlivening of us all.

All of us here have been touched and moved by the wider world, the world of the polis, the political world. Sure I want to add my poetry, my preaching, my prayers to our spirits. But in the name of the Lord we do this for the good of the world.

Each of us, each of you, touched by, wounded by, the wider political world. There is no one here who just loves themselves. What we’ve all learned and what we celebrated last Thursday night at our shared Maundy Thursday service with Crusader Lutheran Church was Jesus relocating the power for the coming kingdom and reign of God within each and every one of us. That is what his Great Commandment means!

Love each as I have loved you. Be like me. Take me in. Repeat, imitate, replicate me in you to each other, Jesus says. Christ and the creation are one. God has placed the sacred in each of us. There is holiness without, and there is holiness within—and holiness is powerful—holiness is power!

Lest you did not know you were so powerful, lest you have not seen your inner holiness of late, I offer you these jewels for your crown. Often, to Jesus, on Easter, we sing “Crown Him with Many Crowns.” Crown him with many crowns. We are those crowns, Easter-people. We have those crowns within.

Last week our wise and lively youth minister, Amanda, wrote in her prayers for us that this holy week, and this Jesus Christ, is about paradoxes. Up is down, down is up, she said. Truly the world is turned upside down in our Christian holy week story. If God can be killed by cowards and empires, something is in great reversal.

And one of our new friends attending here with us pointed out to me what a parody the Hosanna parade was of the Roman military victory parades. Truly a great insight. A donkey not a horse. No chariots, street theater parody and a paradoxical truth. This ruler is a different kind of king.

Let me be blunt. The passion of Jesus Christ is the end of the alpha male as king! No longer can we look for a king to save us. We are the royal priesthood now. As God rules in us, so we can rule the world. Careful now! As God rules in us, we can, indeed we will, we must rule the world. And what kind of rulers will we be, would we be, what is the jewel in our crown?

We rule, not by gaining power, but by giving power. We have power in order to give, not to get. All the flaws in leadership occur when the leader takes rather than gives. How different was Jesus giving his life versus the emperor in Rome receiving tribute from little Palestine and hundreds of other servile places.

There’s a great line from The Lion King: “It’s great to be King!” To be a Christ-like king is our glory, not our shame. Now the image of king and queen is built on the images of magician, warrior and lover. The king and the queen are the consummate magicians, the consummate warriors, and the consummate lovers. We only need to look to Jesus Christ to see the holy and divine consummation of these jeweled-roles in life. Magicians are healers and artists. Wear that jewel in your crown! For we know, politically, healing medicine and inspiring art do not belong to the rich only. Warriors are people of order and peace-keeping. Wear that jewel in your crown. And we know, politically, our wars, if never started, need an equitable draft.

Lovers are people who include from their heart and with their bodies. There is glory not shame in that. Wear that jewel in your crown. And we know, politically, that women’s rights to their bodies, gays’ rights to marriage, and the demographics of disease all require people with power to wear the Lover’s crown.

Particularly, as our brilliant, compassionate friend, Sharon Ringe, has written in her book, Wisdom’s Friends, let us be lovers of the excluded. Let us reach out—really reach out—with our hearts and our embodied physical being to those on the margins of life, locally, globally, people on the edges of community, the food insecure, the emotionally insecure, the financially insecure, the spiritually insecure.

Let us be the magical lover kings and queens God made possible for us in Christ so that we secure the world not by war, but with the political power of the warrior we see in the Jesus, we saw celebrated in the Hosanna Palm Sunday parade, in the Jesus we saw washing the feet of his disciples, in the Christ we saw on the cross and the Christ we see leaving the tomb and entering into each one of us, each one of us, this day! That is our hope, and our new Reality, Christ is in us today! Amen.