Palm Sunday helps us see that the story isn’t about greatness or even weakness, but of facing an uncertain future through the grace of God.
Palm Sunday and the glory of God
Palm Sunday | Matthew 21:1-17
On his way to Jerusalem, Jesus tells the disciples a parable. One that we could use right about now.
Jesus says that “the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.” The landowner offers a full wage for a day’s labor and brings them into the vineyard to work. He goes out again at 9:00 and finds more laborers looking for work. So he sends them in to work alongside the others.
The landowner goes out again at noon and 3:00 and 5:00 and keeps finding more people looking for work.
Now, we usually get caught up with this parable’s ending. When the day is done, the landowner pays all the laborers in the opposite order: the last ones in are the first ones out. And he gives them all the same pay: the day’s wage.
This parable messes with our sense of fairness and pride. Even though the laborers agreed to a wage that would give them enough, they wanted to tie that to their work…AND their good fortune. We often treat our means of survival as a reward. Something not only earned, but given as a bonus.
The landowner takes a different approach. He keeps looking for laborers. And when he finds them, he marvels at the fact that they are jobless. By the end, we realize what the landowner is actually thinking: Why isn’t anyone else helping these people survive?
The wage isn’t earned or tied to the fortune of being in the right place at the right time; the providence of their birth. The landowner pays them all, every last one of them, enough to live: a living wage.
This is the foundation
They’re almost to Jerusalem now. And the mother of James and John makes a ridiculous request. The kind of request only a parent can make on behalf of their children.
“Declare that these two sons of mine will sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your kingdom.”
It isn’t just Make them your top lieutenants in your army, your co-numbers 1. Declare it. Prove to all how much you love them.
It’s almost like she wasn’t even listening.
Then on their way through Jericho, Jesus brings the walls of blindness down from the eyes of two men who shout to him.
This is the Son of David. The one who is going to Jerusalem to liberate his people.
Telling stories of the beloved community,
gospel equality,
the freedom of God’s grace.
And then he enters.
The instructions are specific and tailored, not to the political moment as nearly as to Scriptural expectation. A donkey rather than a warhorse. The far more modest image of a king-to-be than usurpers usually choose. A moment as humble as his origin, when his family had to flee to Egypt. The gold, frankincense, and myrrh were such extravagant parting gifts.
This one, they don’t really know what to call him. Prophet, rabbi, messiah? They settle on the obvious: Son of David. He reminds them of the great king; God’s favorite and the people’s promise kept.
Now the whole city is in turmoil. It’s abuzz with rumors and questions about this man on the donkey. This is no Tiger King, we know that. Everyone’s asking “Who is this?”
And the crowds, the ones following alongside Jesus; the ones who left Jericho telling people to stop shouting about Jesus (the blind men were calling him Son of David) they are sharing the message freely. The walls have fallen for them, too.
“This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee”
they tell everybody.
Coming Home
We normally talk about the Triumphal Entry today—about the palm part of Palm Sunday. Or we remember the Passion—often hearing it in multiple parts. But today, I invited us into a bigger portion of the story. And in Matthew’s narrative, Jesus doesn’t just enter Jerusalem. He goes to the Temple and makes a big show.
If we step back, we can see this wider context isn’t just about praise for the king’s return. Jesus has a purpose that isn’t just Show up to die.
He’s proclaiming the Kingdom Come. God is here among us. And what we’re doing doesn’t match.
If anything, it’s like Mom and Dad have gone out on a date night, we’re all the big brothers and sisters, so we were left in charge. And Jesus has shown up to say “Mom and Dad are almost home!” Only to find that some of us have made slaves of our siblings, some are extorting the weak, and others are going along like all of this is normal.
In a sense, Jesus enters Jerusalem and sees a city full of people just like the mother of James and John.
But rather than condemn them; Jesus keeps trying to reach them.
A COVID Palm Sunday
The struggle we have on Palm Sunday is that this story is like the negative space of a picture. It may draw your attention, but its place is to orient you to the story all around it.
All around us are signs of inequality in God’s beloved community. Not by God’s design, but ours. And this pandemic is hitting the working poor and those who serve them the hardest.
Meanwhile, the comfort of a mother, seeking the best for her children, isn’t only the picture of celebrities trying to get their children into elite colleges. It’s the image of property taxes, school funding, and how we build our communities. Communities stressed precisely because the poor are always with us.
The blind men shouting for Jesus, declaring his saving power were shushed by the crowds before the crowds themselves took up that cause. Our own propensity to silence the uncomfortable declarations that are true is further broken by our willingness to encourage the spread of misinformation. Only, in the end, we claim we always knew better.
Even our willingness to profit off of the pilgrims, changing their money and selling them doves. Which, by they way, is not so much a story of profiteering as it is about a whole economic system making one’s righteousness dependent on having money.
The landowner from that parable has made the vineyard the anti-Temple. A place in which all people can be saved, regardless of their personal circumstances—their personal wealth, station, or ability.
Remember
As we enter this Holy Week of physical distancing, with minds of concern, not just for our own safety, but the safety of others, let us reflect on the kingdom of heaven in our midst. The one Jesus declares is here! A kin-dom of enough rather than scarcity. One that is less excusing of injustice and more demanding of equality.
Our nurses, orderlies, and doctors don’t have enough PPE, enough masks, enough training. And it is enough for us to know that a just system doesn’t make them buy their own. Nor does it tolerate profiteering in the midst of crisis.
Jesus walked into Jerusalem, like his apostles today are walking into capitals and hospitals and saying This is a picture of injustice.
But he continues.
The Kin-dom is here. Prepare for it—don’t avoid it.
And
This Kin-dom, the beloved community, is for all people. But it can’t work if we allow injustice to reign.
These are our directions, apostles. To see the kin-dom breaking into this world—our world—home of greed and selfishness. And breaking through that fear and individualistic desire is something that is native to this place. Something older, here from the beginning. A thing that predates our European invasion of a sacred land for our own domination.
Something that predates the native populations and their own use of this bit of creation.
All the way back to the forming of the cosmos. When God made this and declared that it is good.
That ancient wisdom is trying to break through. And Jesus is showing us where we can find it. Even in the fog of our culture that would hide it.