Divine Lowliness - Mark 11:1-11 (Palm Sunday)

Believe it or not, Christ Church has some of the tamest, most low-key Palm Sunday traditions of any church I’ve served. I’ll give you the highlight reel. I have witnessed the release of 200 red balloons into the atmosphere. How balloons are connected to Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem we may never know. I’ve processed around a church next to a real live donkey. I can assure you that no one in that procession was contemplating their Lord and savior as they walked. I’ve also paraded through a neighborhood where the locals stood in their lawns and threw Mardi Gras beads our way - a nice sentiment, though a bit problematic theologically speaking.

In comparison, our 10:30 a.m. procession around a downtown city block, which is largely empty on Sunday mornings, feels a little more…humble. And although we are typically passionate around here about the power of aesthetics in worship, when it comes to observing Palm Sunday, I actually think we get it just right. Or at least we did this year, in Lectionary Year B. Our simple but effective procession falls in line perfectly with Mark’s perspective on Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. 

There is quite a bit of variety among the Gospels in this particular story. Matthew and Luke both report that the gathered crowd begins to call Jesus “king” for the first time as he enters the city. They also describe a very emotional Jesus who reaches the temple and immediately raises his voice and begins to evict the money-changers. In John we get the detail about the palm branches that were laid on the ground ahead of Jesus, from which today’s celebration gets its name.

It’s a dramatic scene to say the least, and many scholars believe that this is precisely what Jesus and his disciples intended - that they created a spectacle to interrupt typical Roman daily life by mocking the pomp and circumstance of a royal or military entrance. There’s likely some truth to this idea, so we might very well discern an invitation to disrupt the regular Sunday routine of our own community in order to bring attention to what Christ is doing in the world during Holy Week.

But then there’s the Gospel according to Mark. Something different is happening in Mark’s account of this story that should give us pause. For starters, in Mark’s telling, there was no crowd gathered in Jerusalem to meet Jesus and his friends at the gate of the city. They were a bit like a parade with no spectators. Then, Mark’s Jesus doesn’t give any impassioned speeches. In fact, once he makes it to the temple, he stands for a few moments to take in the scene, then turns around and leaves Jerusalem just as quickly as he entered it. 

Although his disciples do shout “Hosanna!” as they process, in comparison to the other Gospels, Mark’s entry into Jerusalem is not triumphal at all, but humble, even lowly. What is Jesus up to here? After our own procession around the block surrounded by palm branches and a rousing rendition of “All glory laud and honor,” what are we to make of this display of humility in our scripture? Perhaps Christ’s divine lowliness is the lens we need see Holy Week clearly.

Last week, as a fellow priest and I commiserated about our Palm Sunday sermons, we found ourselves imagining what the first Palm Sunday might have looked like if the disciples had actually been listening to Jesus. A visitor to Jerusalem that day might have asked a local what all the fuss was about, and this good student of all Jesus’ teachings might have responded, “Oh we’re cheering for our savior! He’s in town this week to die - it’s a party!” 

We were reminded of that pivotal scene from last summer’s Barbie movie. You know the one. Barbie and all her friends are dancing at a party in Barbieland where everything is always perfect, when Margot Robbie’s character suddenly asks, “Do you guys ever think about dying?!” I don’t think the writers of the Barbie movie anticipated being featured in a Palm Sunday sermon, but honestly, they nailed it. This is Jesus in Mark’s Gospel. Surrounded by disciples and friends who are cheering and celebrating, Jesus is decidedly morose. It’s no stretch to imagine that he, like Barbie, was consumed with thoughts about his own mortality. After all, he alone knew the truth of what was to come. 

Palm Sunday is an opportunity to consider what kind of Holy Week we’re going to have. Will we imitate the disciples, ignoring Jesus’ warnings about what is to come, determined to set our minds on what is joyful, easy, comfortable? Will we dress up the journey to the cross with fancy clothes so as not to look too closely at it’s brutal nature? Or will we instead heed Mark’s warning and contemplate the stark reality of the crucifixion?

The truth of Holy Week and Easter is much less pretty to look at and easy to swallow than today’s festivities might suggest. What we are celebrating today, what we are preparing for and gearing up to remember faithfully, is not what’s going to happen next Sunday, but what’s going to happen this Friday. This is what Mark reveals to us this morning. All this pomp and circumstance is actually paving the way for the ultimate expression of divine lowliness. 

No matter how glorious our resurrection feast may be - and let me assure you it will be glorious - we cannot get there without first gazing on the lowliness of the cross. What saves us is not Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, but his broken body hanging from a tree. The way of the cross that we must follow is glorious and fulfilling and exactly what we were made for, but it is also difficult and vulgar and humble, no matter how we dress it up. 

This is true year-round, of course. Following Christ can be just as messy and painful as it is joyful and splendid. It requires an acceptance of our own lowliness. But Holy Week offers a distinct opportunity to relish in the divine lowliness, which is the source of our hope and our strength and our lives. It is a gift unlike any other to walk through Jesus’ final days together, bearing witness to the pain and ugliness and carrying each other along the way. 

I hope many of you can join us over the next few days as we mark this Holy Week with our prayers and worship together. And if you can’t be here in person, or participate virtually, I hope you can find a few minutes of prayer to contemplate the divine lowliness of the crucifixion, so that our whole community of faith can approach the cross this Friday and have our hearts prepared for the feast that will follow. 

Here at Christ Church, we may not be welcoming our savior to Jerusalem with balloons or live pack animals this year, but we have taken on the posture of humility that Christ models for us in Mark’s Gospel, which is a faithful response to the call of Holy Week. The disciples did not know what their celebratory parade foreshadowed, but we do. So our observances this week will be humble and authentic, like the cross itself. And through our experience of divine lowliness, we will catch that first glimpse of Easter morning, and everlasting life. Amen.