Palm Sunday – evening
Sunday 25th March 2018
Lent 6 – Palm Sunday – evening
Isaiah 5. 1-7
Mark 12.1-12
Revd Preb Maureen Hobbs
Love songs and protest marches.
That seems a fitting way to describe Palm Sunday. Today we think about Jesus’ triumphant (or so called triumphant) entry into Jerusalem. The people singing loud Hosannas! To his name…. what better kind of love song could there be?
But the love song did not last long.
You could also claim that this entry of the provincial preacher from Nazareth was a kind of protest march. Or that is what people hoped. That he would be the one to come and overthrow the oppressors, the Romans. And when the authorities came and told Jesus to keep his supporters quiet, he replied that even if he did so, the very stones themselves would cry out! Protest indeed.
But the protest march did not last long.
Jesus neither lived up to the crowd’s idea of what a beloved leader, or what a revolutionary leader might be. He disappointed them – not being made in their image, but in the image of God himself.
He was not marching to any human drum – but to the beat of a divine command. One that told him to follow the path of peace and not war. Of reconciliation and not armed conflict. It wasn’t the populist message.
And Jesus himself would not last long.
By the end of the week – a week that had begun with such high hopes, – he would be hung as a common criminal. Shamed and despised.
But his message – oh his message would last a very long time indeed. The fact that we are gathered here tonight is evidence to that.
We are not here to honour a pop idol.
We are not here to honour a superhero.
We are not here to honour a soldier.
We are here because we follow the Prince of Peace himself…
Our old testament reading starts by talking about a love song. A love song about a vineyard – which sounds a bit odd to modern ears – but I suppose we have “Come into the garden Maud”, and “I never promised you a rose garden” and even the “Green, green grass of home”. So maybe a love song about a vineyard is not such a strange idea after all….
But this is a peculiar sort of love song! A song about a failed vineyard, that only produces sour grapes… So bad that in the end the only remedy is to leave it to go back to nature and allow the brambles and the briars to grow up and smother out the vines.
And just like the sour grapes, the people have failed to produce good fruit. No sweet wine can be made from a people who resort to injustice, to cruelty and unfeeling authority. So just like the vines, the people can expect a rough and unpromising future. They will be overcome; the life will be choked out of them.
It sounds to me that the promised love-song has morphed into a protest song.
More Dylan than Daniel O’Donnel!
And in our new testament reading, Jesus himself is leading the praise – but employing parables to do it.
And the story is again of a vineyard that fails to live up to the expectations of the owner. But this time it is not so much the crop, but those whose responsibility it is to tend it who are to blame. The tenants; the religious leaders who were supposed to care for the vineyard / people. To see that it was fed and watered. That it was protected from disease or wild animals.
Oh they harvested a good enough crop. But when the time came to pay back the owner what was due, they reneged on the arrangement. The messengers who came to collect the share of the profits were killed. Eventually even the son of the landowner himself would be killed.
But the plan to take over the vineyard would not – ultimately – succeed.
The vineyard will never belong to those who try to usurp it with false theories that go against God’s will and his love.
God’s people, his church, will, in the end revert to its rightful owner and will be brought to flourishing life and fruitful abundance.
There may be a time of struggle and protest, but in the end it is the love songs that will win out – even if the tune can seem discordant at times to our unschooled ears.
Love songs and protest. A good way to sum up Palm Sunday? A good way perhaps to think about the whole of Holy Week and all the events to come.
O God our Father, we rejoice in the thrill of Palm Sunday. We see again the bright colours of that triumphant spring day; we hear the shouts of Hosanna; we wave palm branches in unison with the children of Jerusalem. Yet we know that joy can be short-lived, that a crowd is often fickle; and that we are part of the fickleness. Forgive our broken loyalty we pray. Make us true followers of Jesus, each day of this coming Holy Week, that as we walk the way of his cross, we may commit ourselves all over again to the fashioning of his Kingdom in Jerusalem, in our own community and across your world. We ask this in the name of Jesus…. Amen