March 23, 2018
Mark 11:1-11
The difference between Mark’s Palm Sunday and the Palm Sundays in the other three gospels is that from Mark you get the sense that you could pretty easily have missed the whole thing. Mark presents what has come to be known as Christ’s “triumphal entry” into Jerusalem as not quite as “triumphant” as the other versions.
One of my former churches had a tradition of hiring a brass band on Palm Sunday and parading around the church grounds in celebration after worship. I’m pretty sure that if all we were given were Mark’s account the thought of doing that would never have come to mind.
Mark spends 6 verses on the colt: Jesus explains which one to get and how to get it. “Make sure you tell them that I’ll return it right away,” Jesus says. The other gospels explain the colt and really their whole interpretation of this event. It’s a reference to Zechariah 9:9, “Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”
But, Mark doesn’t say all that. Again, he takes 6 verses to tell us that Jesus rides into the holy city on a borrowed colt. There’s no mention of fulfilling prophecy here. If there is a divine procession here you’ll have to see through its humble appearance, Mark tells us.
The crowds are different in Mark too. Mark tells us that “many people” spread their cloaks and their leafy branches on the road as they made their way into town and shouted their “hosannas.” We get just 3 verses of that, and then that’s it. The people vanish from the story as quickly as they appear, whereas in the other gospels the crowds are more of THING, more of sign that divinity is on the march. In John the authorities lament, “Look, the whole world has gone after this Jesus.” In Luke they tell Jesus to quiet the “multitude of disciples” who are singing his praises, and Jesus responds, “If these were silent the very stones would cry out!”
But, not in Mark. Mark ends his account with an anti-climax. Unlike in Matthew and Luke he doesn’t charge into the temple, propelled by the support of the suddenly awakened populace, turning over tables and chasing out the money changers. Instead, he enters and it is late, and there’s nothing much going on, and so with just his 12 disciples he leaves again and goes out to Bethany.
It’s an entirely different feel from the other gospels and perhaps from the Palm Sunday we’ve come to expect. To be sure, Mark sees this as a moment; there’s some providence at play in the fetching of this colt, but you get the sense that only those with eyes to see saw it for what it was. You get the sense from Mark that most of the world was going about its normal business; that what some saw as a special moment, most missed.
The message I hear from Mark is that we might miss it too. We need his version of the story because it reminds us that like most disciples in most times we look for God in the extraordinary while in fact God enters the world through its very commonness.
I thought of that the other day. Charley and I had dinner and then watched an episode of the Goldbergs. There was the normal business of straightening up the kitchen and heating up dinner along with thoughts about that evening’s bible study that occupied my mind and kept me from the moment when midway through one of Barry Goldberg’s crazy rants Charley put his plate down and rested his head on my shoulder. That was it; I suppose you could say it was pretty ordinary, but I was afraid to speak or move or do just about anything because it felt like grace to have my 13-year old’s head right there, and I didn’t want to interrupt it.
Lucy taught me a similar lesson on Friday. We had about 10 minutes before needing to head out for the bus. She was ready to go and I was stressing about the state of the house before our 7 to Sup dinner and the lack of a sermon for this morning, when Lucy said from the table, “Dad, come sit down.” I breathed out my reluctance to set aside my stress and sat. “Want to play Hang-man?” I asked. She very much did. I marked out enough blank lines to spell “Easter Bunny” on the mini dry-erase board that she loves to play teacher with and we played. Lucy guessed “Easter Bunny” with an arm and a leg to spare before our stick figure bought the ranch. And though we had to stop and make our way to the bus, Lucy smiled a devious smile of anticipation and told me she has a really good one for when she gets back.
“Dad, come sit down.” It was like the voice of God saying, “Stop messing up the ordinary. You have 10 minutes to receive the blessing that I have for you in it.”
God in the ordinary, that’s our theme for this Palm Sunday. God in the plain and simple everyday stuff of this very human life we have. But, if God is in the ordinary, maybe we need to reconsider what the ordinary means to us.
A little reflection I once wrote came to mind as I was thinking on these things. I wrote it while on sabbatical and added it to a collection of reflections that mostly just my mother has read. But, I thought that here in this moment you might appreciate hearing at least part of it.
I was in a hot church on a steamy Roman night with goose bumps up and down my arms. After a bit of silence my wife leaned over and whispered, “That one gave me chills!” “Me too,” I said.
We were sitting in a most beautiful Anglican sanctuary listening as four lovely opera singers and a small stringed orchestra performed a series of arias. To people who know much about opera these arias would likely have been familiar – they were highlights, famous pieces from famous compositions. Though my wife and I have an appreciation for it (we’ve been once to the Met and once to the NY City Opera) we know very little about the opera.
The arias that we heard to this point in that Anglican church were wonderful. They were all sung with spirit, considerable talent, and even a bit of good humor from time to time. But, they weren’t mind blowing. They were a “nice thing to do one night in Rome.” In fact, while I enjoyed each one I also found myself anticipating the next and wondering if, in my limited experience, I would recognize it.
But, then out walked a man who had already performed once or twice. He was of average height with a slightish frame. He was somewhere between thirty and fifty years old. Bald – the kind of bald that looked as if he was losing most of his hair anyway so he shaved the rest off. He had a goatee and kind enough eyes. In other words, he seemed to be the perfect example of your average, every-day, common, normal, middle aged man. I mean to say that simply by looking at him you would never have any reason to suspect that such a time-stopping, chill-inducing, life-affirming sound could come from his mouth.
His aria was from the opera Carmen and with it he silenced us – not only our words, but our thoughts and our hearts. We forgot to judge and assess. We forgot that we were being entertained. We forgot that we were having a night out in lovely Rome. His singing captured us fully and pulled us into a beauty that slowed us down and made our bodies tingle. After a moment of silence (all too short) we all clapped in appreciation, but that clapping for me was like a snapping-to, a waking-up to a truth that I know and yet regularly forget.
No one is simply average, every-day, common, or normal (though some of us are middle-aged.) Or rather, those words mean nothing. Beauty, great beauty, time-stopping beauty, comes from us all. At least it can. Of course, it comes in different ways. We cannot all be opera singers. But, this is what God does. God uses the common to reveal the beautiful. And in so doing God makes the beautiful all the more common.
Here’s what I think for this Palm Sunday. None of us needs to look far to find God. We simply need to remember what it is we’re supposed to look for.