Tension

Readings for Palm/Passion Sunday: Mark 11:1-11, Philippians 2:5-11, Mark 14:1-15:47. 

Image from theycantalk.com

Sometimes, in my Christian journey, I have been this donkey, blissfully unaware that I am not at all what the people are paying attention to. I carry Jesus all the same, but I have a skewed perception of what's really going on here. At the same time, I see this, and I tense up a little. Jesus knows what's going to happen this week. The donkey doesn't. The crowd doesn't. Smile and laugh all you want, but we smile and laugh here in the face of sadness and hurt. Maybe out of nervousness, maybe out of discomfort, maybe out of ignorance, but always for me with a bundle of tension growing at the back of my neck.

So, would you pray with me?

God, you are God when we are at peace and you are God when we are tense. You are God when we are near and God when we are far. You are God on Palm Sunday. You are God always. Be with us today and may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

There is always some tension in Palm/Passion Sunday. At the beginning of the service, we’re up here waving our palm branches to celebrate Jesus, but at the end of the service, we’re going to crucify him.

And it’s frustrating because Palm Sunday feels right. It feels right to wave palm branches in praise, to recognize Jesus as king, to put our lives and our faith in the hands of this man who we trust to save us. We as Christians know who Jesus is. We know that Jesus is God’s Love made flesh, powerful enough to make every wrong in this world right. We trust in the saving grace he brings and so we show up with our branches and our coats and we climb trees and we jump up and down and we shout hosannas until our throats are sore. Palm Sunday feels right, so how could we crucify him on Friday?

Well, maybe we aren’t seeing Jesus the way Rome saw him. We see our peaceful king, riding into town on a donkey; Rome sees a worrying protest. We see a rabbi with his faithful disciples; Rome sees teacher and a bunch of teenagers talking too loud. We see the man who can set us free; Rome sees a threat to law and order. When we step back, we can see that Jesus means to change things, and change is not comfortable when you’re the one in power. Jesus means to change each of us, and that is not exactly what we want to hear.

We’ve been talking during Lent about Being and Doing, about who we are in Christ and the things we do because of it. If Jesus wants to change us, I think we’ll find that there’s a tension between being and doing too. We know who we are, that we are beloved by God, but the entire rest of the Christian lifetime is figuring out what that means. We know we’re forgiven, but what does it mean to live without the things that needed forgiving? We know we’ve been set free so that we can love and serve God, but how do we love and serve God when it feels less like freedom and more like a burden? We know we should be more like Jesus, should “have the mind that was in Christ Jesus,” but what do humility and obedience really look like for us? We know we should grow closer to God, but how should we pray? How should we worship? How should we love?

It’s hard enough to know how to be. Now we have to know how to do too?

Well, of course we do. Because Jesus did.

There’s a tension for us in Palm/Passion Sunday, there’s a tension for us in our being and doing, and it seems like there’s a tension in Jesus too. The Gospel writers all notice it. Jesus is fully God, but he cries for his friend Lazarus. Jesus is fully human, but he raises people up from the dead. There is a tension, from our perspective anyway, between the humanity and the divinity of Jesus and we see it all throughout his ministry. He’s baptized and called the Beloved Son of God, but then he goes into the desert to be tempted just like us. He preaches words of wisdom to the crowds, but he also needs some alone time. He rides into town the picture of peace, but then goes into the temple and starts flipping tables. He knows Judas is going to betray him for blood money and he lets it happen, but as soon as he goes to pray after, he starts sweating bullets. If we ever have any questions about how human Jesus is, they’re answered as soon as nails hit skin on Good Friday. If we ever have any questions about how godly Jesus is, they’re answered by the fact that he knew the cross was coming, and he went anyway.  

Jesus, knowing who he was, knew what he had to do. His doing came out of his being. Being the Son of God born of Mary in first century Palestine meant that he would end up at Golgotha, doing for us what we could not do for ourselves, making us right before God and bringing us back to God. He did this for us, and he did this because he is what he was and always will be, what God always is: Love. And love can’t just be. Love does.

There is tension all around us. We live in a tense world that is getting more tense by the day. There is tension between our being and our doing. There is tension between the crowd that cries Hosanna on Sunday and crucify early Friday morning. But when it comes down to it, when the road that leads to Jerusalem also leads to the Place of the Skull, there is no tension in Jesus. There is only love because God is love. Wonderful, miraculous, life-changing, heart-breakingly deep love. Love unknown, as the song writer says: 

My song is love unknown,

My savior’s love to me,

Love to the loveless shown

that they might lovely be.

Oh who am I that for my sake

My Lord should take

frail flesh and die?

Beloved of God, reflect on this love, this love that was shown to us while we were yet loveless, that we might be lovely. Amen.