Wandering In the Wild: Why Are You Doing This?

Mark 11:1-11

When they were approaching Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples and said to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately as you enter it, you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden; untie it and bring it. If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.’”

They went away and found a colt tied near a door, outside in the street. As they were untying it, some of the bystanders said to them, “What are you doing, untying the colt?” They told them what Jesus had said; and they allowed them to take it. Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it; and he sat on it. Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields.

Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.

Dear beloved of God, grace and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus who is the Christ. Amen.

Maybe we know this story too well.  For many of us, those of us who have grown up participating in this yearly palm party, this story has been so deeply baked into our liturgical DNA that we don’t see what a twisted charade this parade really is.  

I’m not sure why it hit me differently this year.  But for some reason it did.  And look, I’m not pretending to have had some great awakening here.  But have you ever asked yourself, why does Jesus play along?

I want to turn the contingency question that Jesus prepares the disciples to answer back on Jesus and say, “Why are you doing this?”

This has to be the most messed up parade in the history of parades.  

It has all the trappings of a military parade, a conquest parade.  Jesus is riding an animal.  People are shouting. Hosanna, which roughly translated means, “O Lord Save Us”.  They’re walking in front and behind him using language from enthronement and coronation hymns.  

Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!

They’re spreading their cloaks on the road.  They’re cutting greens from the field to spread before their conquering hero.  This is a parade of messianic proportions.  They have enormous expectations for what Jesus is about to do.

And the one person who really knows what’s unfolding, the person at the center of it all, the hero of the parade is the only one who sees it for what it is.  

It’s a funeral march.  And still Jesus rides on.  So I have to ask, Jesus, why are you doing this?

He has to know that they’re confused.  Doesn’t he?  He must know that they don’t understand.  Jesus has to be able to see they placed him and what he’s doing into their own categories and expectations.  He has to realize that they’re going to be frustrated and disappointed by what’s about to happen.  He knows how it’s going to end with him alone on the cross.  Tried and executed as an enemy of the state.

And still Jesus rides on.

Still Jesus rides on.  But why?

He tried to get them ready for it.  He told the disciples.  He invited the crowd to listen.  Jesus said that the Son of Man would undergo great suffering and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.

Peter said no, no, Jesus you’re doing it wrong.  This isn’t how we messiah.  It’s conquest and power and victory and might.  It’s a parade like this one!  It’s hosannas and blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.  It’s not suffering, and it’s certainly not death.

Jesus tried to prepare his followers, to show them the way, but they never fully understand.  So in the end, even his friends leave him.  Alone.

The shouts of blessing, of Hosanna, of O Lord Save Us will soon be ones of mockery.  As the people pass by Jesus, saying “He saved others; he cannot save himself. Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, come down from the cross now, so that we may see and believe.”

Still Jesus rides on.

And I don’t know what to do with that.  Right now, in this world that we’re living in where everything is dialed up to 11, I don’t know what to do with this Jesus.  I don’t know how to understand him or make sense of it.  I want a victory parade.  I want to know when there will be an end to all of this: to the gun violence and the virus and the racial enmity, the political rancor, the humanitarian crisis on the southern border, the unspeakable violence around the world.  I want it to be done with.

I want to declare victory and say that the power of God has wiped it all out.  Hosanna.  Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.

In reflecting on his now well-loved and extensively covered 1984 song, Leonard Cohen said:

“This world is full of conflicts and full of things that cannot be reconciled, but there are moments when we can transcend the dualistic system and reconcile and embrace the whole mess, and that’s what I mean by ‘Hallelujah.’ That regardless of what the impossibility of the situation is, there is a moment when you open your mouth and you throw open your arms and you embrace the thing and you just say, ‘Hallelujah! Blessed is the name.’…

“The only moment that you can live here comfortably in these absolutely irreconcilable conflicts is in this moment when you embrace it all and you say, ‘Look, I don’t understand a @#$%$# thing at all – Hallelujah!’ That’s the only moment that we live here fully as human beings.”

Jesus, why are you doing this?

Because, “Love is not some kind of victory march, no it’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah.”

This weird parade is God’s penultimate journey of love.  It’s confusing and disorienting and really hard to watch.  But don’t look away.  Because it’s for you.

Where we would hold a parade of conquest, Jesus rides on, leading a lonely parade of suffering and humiliation towards the cross defying all our expectations and carrying this whole world with him on this final journey of love from death to new life.  That’s where this parade route is headed next.  Amen.