Sermon — March 24, 2024 (Palm Sunday)
The Rev. Greg Johnston
I spent a summer in college studying abroad in England, and while I was there, I chose to balance two parts of my brain: with one, I took a one-on-one tutorial in the history of economic thought from the Renaissance to the mid-20th century—with the other, a creative writing seminar. The intellectual history was enlightening and engaging and became part of my senior thesis—but the creative writing seminar was where I really learned something, and it was this: the golden rule of narrative writing is “Show, don’t tell.”
For example: if you want the reader to know that little Billy is afraid of the dark, don’t write, “little Billy was afraid of the dark.” Write, ““Good night, little Billy,’ still echoed in his ears as the shadows of the willow branches swirled like ghoul-fingers on the walls.” And so on.
Holy Week is the Church’s great season of “show, don’t tell.” We don’t just say, “Hosanna,” standing primly in place. We march around the room. We don’t just hold our hymnals as we sing. We wave our palms. I don’t just read the story of the Passion to you from the center of the church: we act it out with a whole cast. And all throughout this week, we’ll do the same: in our Holy Week services, we’ll taste and touch and see reminders of the last week of Jesus’ life, and not just be told about them.
But the true expert in “show don’t tell” is not my writing teacher, and it’s not the committee who created our Book of Common Prayer. It’s Jesus, planning the ambiguous events of that first Palm Sunday.
I say “ambiguous” because, at least in the story of Palm Sunday we read this morning from the Gospel of mark, it’s not exactly clear what Jesus means.
Jesus seems to be prepared for a parade. He knows that the colt will be ready to ride. But he won’t explain what he’s doing. He tells the disciples that if anyone asks them why they’re taking the colt, they’re simply to say, “The Lord needs it.” (Mark 11:3) And nothing more. Those in the crowd who know the prophets well might recognize an allusion to the words of Zechariah, who says, “Lo, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey” (Zech. 9:9). The Gospel of Matthew helps the reader understand by quoting the text. But here, we just get Jesus, riding a small horse. He doesn’t quote Zechariah. He doesn’t quite tell you he’s the king. He just goes out and does a royal thing.
The same is true with the palms. Or the not-quite-palms, which the people don’t quite wave. Palm branches are a part of the Jewish festival of Sukkot, and they’d become a patriotic symbol of redemption in the first century, such that the coins minted by the Jewish rebels against Rome a few decades later were stamped, among other symbols, with palms. To march around with palms would be the equivalent of a Fourth-of-July parade, a rebellion in the face of the occupying authorities: but simply to cut leafy branches from generic trees and lay them under his feet, as the crowd does in the Gospel of Mark: Well, is that really the same thing?
The same goes for the carefully-worded chants. “Hosanna!” the people shout. “Save us, please!” A prayer addressed to God, or a celebration of Jesus? “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” they say, which is a quotation from one of the psalms of ascent, sung by pilgrims as they processed toward the Temple. Are they saying that Jesus himself is the Messiah, the one who comes in the name of the Lord, or are they just singing a psalm? And they go on, “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David,” and you’ll notice they don’t say, as our prayer book had me say when the service began, “Blessed is the King.” They’re careful to keep things abstract. The chants are as ambiguous as the palms are as ambiguous as the colt: Jesus shows those who are wise enough to recognize the signs that he is the Messiah, that this day is the long-awaited return of the King. But he doesn’t tell anyone anything.
He won’t even tell the Roman governor Pontius Pilate what’s really going on. He would seemingly rather die for a crime he’ll neither confirm nor deny than proclaim the truth of the charges to the world, and so when Pilate asks him, “Are you the King of the Jews,” Jesus answers him, with infuriating ambiguity, “You say so.” And he makes no further reply. (Mark 15:2–3)
This whole series of events sets us up for Easter morning itself, when Mary and Mary and Salome go to Jesus’ tomb. As Mark tells the story, they don’t see that Christ is risen, but they see that he is gone. A young man, sitting by the tomb, shows them that it is empty, and he tells them that Jesus has been raised. And they run away in fear, and tell no one anything.
A few days ago I was in a meeting, totally unrelated to this, where a group of people were trying to parse out the meaning of a somewhat convoluted policy. If the policy meant A we’d want to do thing #1, and if the policy meant B, we’d want to do thing #2 instead. And we struggled to figure out whether we should do thing #1 or thing #2, because it seemed the creators of the policy could choose whichever interpretation worked out best for them, even if it left us holding the bag.
After a few minutes’ discussion, one of the wiser members of the group said: “Ambiguity can be a tool.” And isn’t that the case? Ambiguity gives the interpreter flexibility; the real issue in our group was that we didn’t trust the people who’d be enforcing the rule.
But it’s exactly this flexibility that makes ambiguity such a powerful spiritual tool. It’s why Jesus teaches in parables. It’s why he keeps his identity a secret, why he only alludes to messianic prophecies, and leaves later interpreters to connect the dots. Because it’s one thing to be told the truth; it’s another to be shown everything you need, and then forced to work it out yourself.
If Palm Sunday were filled with unambiguous signs, then the story wouldn’t work. The failure would be too clear. If Jesus rode in on a donkey, quoting from Zechariah, and the people waved palm branches in the air, and said, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!” then this procession would be unambiguously a coup. And imagine the disappointment they would feel when the parade reached the city, and went straight to the Temple, and instead of proclaiming that the King was finally here, and gathering an army, and throwing the Romans out, Jesus just looked around, and then went home. Jesus would still be put to death, and on the same charges of sedition. But it would look as if he’d simply got cold feet.
Instead, the ambiguity forces us to think. What is Jesus doing here? Why is he not getting ready to fight? What do the symbols in this procession really mean? And if he’s mysterious enough, it might take us long enough to figure it out that there’s time for the full picture to become clear. Because the Palm Sunday story doesn’t end with the Passion, today, with a failed attempt at revolution.
Because Jesus isn’t quite that kind of king. His ultimate battle is not with Rome, it’s with death itself. And so he doesn’t tell the people that he’s the Messiah, and call to mind their assumptions and ideas. He shows them what the Messiah does. He shows them what true kingship means. He lays down his life, to spare them from death, and up until the last minute, they’re still trying to figure him out. And in the end, only the centurion, the commander of the soldiers who have just killed him, realizes the truth: “Truly, this man was God’s son!” (Mark 15:39)
Palm Sunday is Jesus’ final parable, the final ambiguous story in which he shows the world what the kingdom of God is like. He doesn’t answer every question for us. He doesn’t tell us what it all means. And it’s not because he’s a bad teacher: it’s because he’s so good, and he knows that what matters for us is not a concise theological truth, but the struggle through which we try to make meaning of the text.
So make meaning of the text. Carry home your palms, and ask yourself what it means to say “Hosanna,” “Save us!” today. Think about this gentle, loving Christ, and wonder what it means to act as if he’s King. And if you don’t have any answers right away, remember that the slow work of figuring it out is the point, after all. So sing this morning, and pray, but ask yourself what it means for you, today, to join your voices with that ancient crowd, and say, “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!”