Palm Sunday All Saints, East Lansing April 5, 2020 (during covid-19 pandemic)

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In the 5th century, a pilgrim named Egeria traveled from Spain to what is now Istanbul, and on to Jerusalem. She was probably a nun from a wealthy family or perhaps the patron of a convent in Spain and she wrote back to her sisters a long narrative about all her travels to the holy sites mentioned in the Bible and preserved as places of prayer.

One of the most fascinating sections of her travel log is about her experiences in Jerusalem during Holy Week. the things that we traditionally do in this week are practices that Christians have observed for more than fifteen hundred years. They are customs that Egeria knew from her convent in Spain and then saw lived out again in Jerusalem. She marvels at the similarity between the traditions that she knew in Spain and those that are kept in Jerusalem.

She writes that on the Sunday that begins Holy Week,

…The passage from the Gospel is read, where the children, carrying branches and palms, met the Lord, saying; ‘Blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord,’ and the bishop immediately rises, and all the people with him, and they all go on foot from the top of the Mount of Olives, all the people going before him with hymns and antiphons, answering one to another: “Blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord.’

1 And all the children in the neighborhood, even those who are too young to walk, are carried by their parents on their shoulders, all of them carrying branches, some of palms and some of olives, and so the bishop is escorted in the same manner as the Lord was of old.

I hope that all of you joined Pastor Kit in celebrating this custom of Palm Sunday – finding branches or coloring them and waving them as our forebears in faith did – not only that first time Jerusalem when Jesus entered the city, but across the whole world, year after year after year for two millennia.

Today we once again begin our own journey that connects us to Christians across time and across geography, back to the earliest followers of Jesus and to Jesus himself.

Of course, normally we gather together IN the church at All Saints, and in groups of Christians around the world to pray together, to sing, to celebrate and mourn, and to reflect on the final events of Jesus's life.

Like everything else, right now, that has changed. Not only can we not be in the SPACE that has held so many of our prayers, but we can’t even be together. It is strange and unsettling. And, yet, the customs that we practice this week continue to have power to bind us together with Christ. We have learned in the past few weeks that even in our living rooms, dining rooms, home offices, and maybe even a closet or two, we are still the Church! Our worship together – even online – is still life giving. The life of faith that we have lived together is bearing fruit in ways we

2 could not have imagined just a month ago.

If that has been true so far, how much more so will it be in the coming days, in this holiest of weeks in the Christian calendar, as we recall Christ’s journey to the cross, and his Resurrection that redeems us all?!

Jesus shows us how to respond to times of distress. Time and again he finds a place away – away from the crowds and chaos, away from the demands of his friends and family, away from everything that distracts him – a quiet place, to pray.

And so, after sharing a meal with his friends, and giving them the gifts of bread and wine, which will be the living signs of his presence with them – and us – until he returns, And, after he has exposed his betrayer, as he comes to understand that he must face the authorities of Rome who can no longer tolerate his challenges to their power, he withdraws. Like the rumble of a distant thunder cloud, he senses a storm ahead.

He takes his closest disciples, Peter, James, and John, to the nearby Garden of Gethsemane. It would have been crowded with people celebrating the days of Passover. We can imagine them threading their way through the garden – Jesus moving urgently with his friends trailing, wondering what’s happening.

Jesus finds a space away and turns to his friends and says, “I am deeply grieved, even until death, remain here, and stay awake with me.” And he walks away from

3 them and collapses on the ground in prayer. He wants his friends nearby, to stay awake with him as he wrestles with what God is asking of him. But he knows that he has no consolation left except God.

Have you thrown yourself on the ground in prayer, lately? Or maybe thrown your hands up in the air with an “Oh my God!” cry of exasperation?! Maybe silently, if not out loud? I certainly have. More than a few times in the past three weeks, actually.

Jesus knew that feeling. This is one of the most clearly human moments of Jesus’ life, which makes it feel like the most UN-Jesus-like moment. But in reality, it is the MOST Jesus-like moment. It is the culmination of God’s presence with us that began in a manger, when God came to us in the form of a vulnerable, poor infant, born to ill-equipped parents, into a harsh and unforgiving world.

If the Incarnation of God in Christ was to be real and true, it could only end here – in agony and heartbreak, in the very depths of what it means to be human.

Every moment of Jesus’ life is an identification with us. Imagine his first wobbly steps and his first words. Maybe an eager young Jesus learning to hold the tools of a carpenter, pounding his first nail – on a tiny work bench beside Joseph’s.

We know that teenagers are teenagers everywhere, because we get a glimpse of a precocious Jesus asserting his independence when he disappears from his parents at a previous celebration of Passover. They eventually find him in the temple, his

4 sense of identity and vocation growing.

Early in his ministry, his mother and brothers come to find him and drag him home. He’s embarrassing them, and probably frightening them. Jesus says, these are not my mothers and brothers, but you who do my will are. Nearly every parent of a young adult knows this moment, when a child firmly steps into their own, separate life.

All of these moments are how God lived into the mundane reality of what it means to be human. God with us truly means WITH US, not just hanging around the edges, not some distant power tossing ‘tips for living’ our way, but taking on all the joys, sorrows, frustrations, and boring ordinary details, here in the trenches with us – even in lockdown with family that will not leave us alone! Or all alone, separated for everyone we care about. Jesus is with us, all the way to death.

Death is perhaps the most defining aspect of our humanity, of our creaturehood alongside all the other creatures of God. It is the thing that makes us most finite, made by God, but not actually God.

It seems to me that we are living in the Garden of Gethsemane right now. We feel the thunder rumbling in the distance. We know the storm is gathering, and some have already been consumed by it. We have been tossed down onto the ground by a situation we did not expect, into a reality we cannot fully comprehend. I find it profoundly comforting to know that Jesus has been here. He has been down this path. But more, he’s been all the way to the other side and into new life.

5 The bad news, friends, is that the only way out is the way of the cross. There is no Monopoly card that will let us “Advance to Go,” and collect $200. No magic jewel that will help us level up and get out of here. The only way out, is through.

We have already experienced deaths on this journey. The loss of contact with others, the loss of our daily routine. The loss of jobs. The loss of important moments in life, graduations, birthday and anniversary celebrations, family vacations, maybe bucket list experiences. Many of these are gone for good, and our story about this time will always focus on what was missed. These are real, heartbreaking losses.

Many of us have become accustomed to a persistent anxiety or outright fear, that sits in the background, occasionally raising its head and overwhelming us – perhaps throwing us to the ground in prayer.

And even this coming week, the week upon which the whole church year focuses, which might even hold the secret for helping us in this time, has been utterly changed. Seemingly an eternity ago, but actually only about three weeks, when the Bishop officially cancelled in person Holy Week services, Pastor Kit and I were texting about our sadness over this. I can point to several specific Holy Weeks that truly changed the course of my life. And as a cradle Episcopalian, Kit has never missed a Holy Week. She said that missing it now will break her. And it struck me that that is exactly the point of Holy Week. It is when we recall the events that broke Jesus, even unto death. And in sharing his journey we are broken, too.

6 You probably saw the internet meme that said this is the “Lentiest Lent that I have ever Lented.” Well, my friends, we are embarking upon the Holiest Holy Week that we have ever Holied. J

That doesn’t quite work, but you know that I mean. Our traditions for this week have been broken. We are recreating them in new and strange ways – trying to get to the heart of them and what they are for. And we are being broken – by a virus we do not fully understand, by losses we can barely count, by real suffering and death.

We know the end of the story. We know that being broken, means being broken open, in prayer and longing, to strip away all that gets in the way, so that we can be open to the love and the grace of God and one another.

This holy week, perhaps more than any we have known before, we are accompanying Christ in his suffering and death, just as he accompanies us in ours. Together, we WILL arrive at Resurrection.

We may not see it fully in a week’s time, but we know that God will not abandon us, just as God did not abandon Christ on the cross.

We will again be reunited. We will rejoice and sing and celebrate. And perhaps even give thanks for the gifts that this journey to the cross has to offer. Amen.

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