Year B, Proper 29 - Christ the King
Gospel Reading (2nd): Mark 11:1-11
This passage is about the fulfillment of an old, tired, worn-out hope that wouldn't die.
Today is Christ the King Sunday - it's the last Sunday of the church calendar. Next week, Advent begins. For Christians, Christ was Lord at his birth - we have the benefit of hindsight, but most people living at that time didn't know him as Messiah until the events of today's reading - when he arrived in Jerusalem at the head of a parade and claimed to be King.
Israel had been hoping for a king like David to restore its glory. They'd been hoping so long it seemed like just a crazy dream - and then Jesus came along and made it seem impossibly true.
One of my favorite poems is "A Dream Deferred" by Langston Hughes.
In the poem, Hughes wonders, "What happens to a dream deferred?"
And he explores some possibilities: "Does it shrivel up, like a raisin in the sun? Does it fester like a sore, and then run?"
His last option, more dramatic - "or does it explode!"
When something is deferred, you have to wait longer for it, and it may not be up to you how long.
What have you been waiting for?
What do you hope so much for that you are hesitant even to say it?
What hope have you voiced so often for so long, that you feel it must be impossible or it would have happened by now?
People in Israel had been hoping for about a thousand years for a messiah to rescue and restore them to the glory they had had under David. Israel under David and Solomon had been magnificent, like a huge spreading oak tree, but by the time of the Babylonian exile, it had been poisoned and had limbs broken off, and finally the whole tree was cut down and burned - all that was left was a charred bit of stump.
Imagine a rosebush caught by the frost. Some of you know my grandpa grew beautiful roses, and he showed me that even when the top of a bush is killed, it may be able to grow back from the roots.
That's the image Isaiah used to give people hope in a messiah who would be a shoot from the stump of Jesse...(Is )
When Jesus came into Jerusalem, a big crowd of people was there, shouting "Hosanna!" and waving palm branches. Hosanna means "save us!" It comes from Psalm 118, which is a hymn from the Feast of Tabernacles temple worship service. In the instructions for singing this song during the holiday, everyone was supposed to shake palm branches at the Hosanna part. The Israelites came to connect this particular hymn with a hope for a messiah - someone chosen by God to deliver Israel.
Learning this has completely changed my understanding of this passage. Before, I thought Hosanna just meant something like "Hooray!" So, when people were marching along with Jesus, I imagined it something like a Mardi Gras parade.
It has a very different meaning if what they were actually saying was, "Save us!" "We think you're the Messiah, the Son of David, a new king to restore our people!" From this perspective, it sounds like they expected him to start a revolution.
Imagine that a distant cousin of the late President John F. Kennedy announces he (or she) is going to run for President. This Kennedy goes on a cross-country bus tour, culminating with a march on Washington. Before the official compaigning even begins, while the current President is still in office, this Kennedy pulls onto Pennsylvania Avenue in a new black Lincoln, with flags on the front of the hood, red-white-and-blue bunting on the grill and a placard on the back that says, "End the War Now!" A crowd of people walk, run and ride along, waving flags and shouting "Rebuild Camelot!" and a band is playing "Hail to the Chief"
What Jesus and the crowd did in that parade was deliberately confrontational, throwing down the gauntlet. At that time, it's what people were hoping for - they were tired of being ruled by Rome and tired of being on the bottom of the heap in international matters. They wanted a messiah to deliver them - someone who clearly had God's power on him. Jesus looked like that one.
But things went all wrong.
He got himself arrested and then executed for treason - he didn't even try to stop it.
A good friend of mine is grieving for her older sister, who recently died of cancer, leaving a husband and three children. When she first discovered her cancer, Shannon was terrified and prayed to God: "I don't want to die! I need to be here for my kids!" and she believed God gave her a promise that she would be.
But she died.
How could that happen? Did God not promise her?
We've been trying to figure it out. What was the promise about - Did we all misunderstand it?
This seems to me possibly the situation Jesus' disciples and followers were in after his arrest. They had to be very confused, hurt and scared. They had been so thoroughly convinced. Hohw could they all have been wrong? Was there some impossible way for it still to be true?
Amazingly - this last one was the answer - with God all things are possible.
When he marched into Jerusalem as king, he was the king - king of the Jews - and not only a king but the King of all kings. This, people had no precedent for, though. There was no way for them to understand this, so he accepted it as true when they called him "king." It's the truth but not the whole truth.
So he didn't blame them for not understanding it. On the cross, he prayed that God would forgive them, because they didn't know what they were doing. When he came back and appeared to the disciples, he didn't condemn Thomas for doubting; he showed him what was needed for him to believe.
When I was talking to my grieving friend about this, it was such a big idea - so many parts. It was hard to condense down into one main point - one idea. I felt this scripture teaches us that we can't understand God's promises completely in our own language, but that doesn't invalidate our hope. I felt that it teaches God uses the words and understanding we have to communicate new things, but it can be very painful and confusing for us to grow in this way.
What she brought it down to was this:
God is not a liar.
It's right to hope in the promises he gives us. It's not easy - because it takes faith - you can't see it yet. Sustaining and nurturing hope is hard - and it takes practice and persistence, and we need all the support we can get with it. But also, God can take the smallest, weakest, most worn-out, damaged, dried-up piece of hope, and make it grow, because nothing is impossible for God.
He sent his Son among us, born as a baby, to become King - King of all kings.
Next week, Advent begins, and we re-live the story of waiting and hoping for Christ to be born. In a way, it doesn't demand much of us, because we're just pretending to wait for something that has already happened.
But there are other promises we're waiting on now that seem they will never be accomplished. Those are the ones to practice hoping and waiting for during Advent.
Remember the joy Jesus' followers had when they thought he was fulfilling their hope for a king.
Remember their confusion and pain when he was not a king in the way they expected.
But mostly, remember their amazement and awe - and they strength it gave their faith - when they began to understand what kind of king he really was.
Amen.
Given to Vidor Presbyterian 11/26/06
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