Hoping against Hope

First Congregational Church UCC in Auburn MA, March 24, 2024, Palm Sunday

Mark 11:1-11 NIV

As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples, saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and just as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ say, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here shortly.’ ” 

They went and found a colt outside in the street, tied at a doorway. As they untied it, some people standing there asked, “What are you doing, untying that colt?” They answered as Jesus had told them to, and the people let them go. When they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks over it, he sat on it. Many people spread their cloaks on the road, while others spread branches they had cut in the fields. Those who went ahead and those who followed shouted, 

“Hosanna!” 
“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”
“Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!” 
“Hosanna in the highest heaven!” 

Jesus entered Jerusalem and went into the temple courts. He looked around at everything, but since it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the Twelve.

Philippians 2:5-11 NRSVue

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, 
who, though he existed in the form of God, 
did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, 
but emptied himself, 
taking the form of a slave, assuming human likeness. 

And being found in appearance as a human, 
he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— 
even death on a cross. 
Therefore God exalted him even more highly 
and gave him the name that is above every other name, 
so that at the name given to Jesus 
every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 
and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

About a month ago, Lizzy the dog went blind.  Her owners rushed her off to the vet and discovered that she had painful glaucoma in both eyes.  Her vision was gone, permanently, and the only way to deal with the pain was to remove her eyes.  It was devastating news to Lizzy’s family.  Lizzy herself was struggling with the sudden blindness.  Most dogs can adjust well to the loss of vision, especially if there’s another dog in the family – they’ll help each other out – but this had happened almost overnight.

Lizzy’s owners made the decision and about 3 weeks ago, Lizzy had her eyes removed.  One of her owners, Pastor Milton Brasher-Cunningham, wrote recently:

When we chose to have our sweet Schnoodle Lizzy!’s eyes removed about three weeks ago it was to alleviate her pain. She had already been blinded by her glaucoma, and the pressure caused by the disease was debilitating. Thanks to the counsel of people we trust, we chose a surgery that felt drastic and then lived through the two weeks of the incisions healing (and the cone of shame). Now we have had about a week and half of whatever this stage is, with all of us learning how to live, and there are new pains to discover, not the least of which is she bumps into everything.

. . . The other two pups have done well with her–until they hit the attention threshold and demand they get noticed as much as the Little Blind One. . . .  Both of them want to make sure we remember that pain in universal; Lizzy! is not the only one in need of comfort and care.

Some pain we live through, some we learn to live with. The pain of the glaucoma and the surgery are gone, but the discomfort of her blindness continues. Now it is part of our lives. As we watch the joyful personality that put the exclamation point in her name re-emerge, I am learning once more that we both shape and are shaped by our pain, whatever it is.  

(Milton Brasher-Cunningham, https://mailchi.mp/donteatalone/mixing-metaphors-the-point-of-pain?fbclid=IwAR0lk9-YYjGWNFaNvwDtX5sYmrKlBXScwx0-ME7Vy3R7eKoKa0TevwrryW4)

Lizzy’s story is not just the story of Lizzy.  It’s our story as well, because Palm Sunday, this week of extravagant celebration is really about pain.  It starts with celebration, but it’s not really about celebration.  It’s not about triumph, not about winning.  It’s about life, it’s about losing, it’s about pain.

Sure it starts with crowds yelling hosanna.  You can just imagine the parade scene:  Jesus is in the crowd.  People are thronged around him, trying to get his attention, trying to give him fruit or some other food, handing him a jar of water or wine to drink, just as excited as people at a Duck Boat parade for the Red Sox after that World Series win twenty years ago.  

Maybe, back in the corner, leaning up against a pillar are two or three of the disciples, just kinda mindblown at how well it’s all gone.  I picture them with silly grins on their face as they see success staring them in the face… you can imagine it, right….that feeling when everything goes well?

And then, well, there’s the rest of the story.  By Friday afternoon, just five days from now, Jesus will have been arrested, tried, convicted and executed.  By Friday night, he will be dead and buried, and the disciple will have fled for their lives, hiding behind locked doors for fear of the Romans.  On Saturday there will be no more silly grins at how it’s all gone.

That’s life, isn’t it?

And although we’d much rather listen to a happy story than a sad one, and sometimes we whine – loudly – about the absurdity of calling Good Friday, good… every once in a while it’s really important to stop and acknowledge the reality that all too often life stinks.

All too often, folks get sick and die, when we’d rather they got better and lived.

All too often, there’s not enough money at the end of the month.

All too often, those nifty new hearing aids  don’t bring us pristine, just like new, hearing.

All too often, our money doesn’t go as far, the government doesn’t do what we think they should.

All too often, the bridge fails, and it just can’t be fixed in a day or a week or even a year.

We ought to know this.  All too often the Red Sox don’t play well, right?  We’re used to failure, and now even the Patriots are going to be teaching us more about failure than we wanted to know.

Marilynne Robinson, the essayist and author, suggests that the sole purpose of the Bible is to help us deal with the pain of life.  I think she’s on to something important.  Our faith is not so much about reciting feel-good stories of redeeming love, as it about recognizing that those stories occur in the midst of pain and betrayal. 

Jesus and his disciples did their best and it all went sideways.  

It wasn’t because they were incompetent.  

It wasn’t because they were greedy, or always fighting with one another.  

If you look at the story of Jesus in the wider context, look at it from the Roman point of view, you really can’t find any way at all that it could have turned out much differently.  No Roman governor was going to welcome someone who looked to everyone as if they were trying to start a rebellion.  And the local civil authorities knew their own positions, their own lives, depended on defending Rome.  Even if they had agreed with Jesus that the world needed turning upside down, even if they’d thought he was only talking about better personal behavior with no politics intended…. There was no way they were going to support him.

Look, we live in a world where we’re all going to die.  I don’t know about you, but I’m not real happy about that.  I want to see my grandnieces all grown up, I’d like to see how they turn out.  I want to know what’s going to happen and I’m betting we’re all pretty much in that same place.

But once we realize that, for each of us, it will all come to an end, we have to work to figure out what makes life worth living….what will we leave behind?

This is the week, in our tradition, when we spend time in the midst of tragedy, in the midst of failure, knowing that death is coming.   This is the week we immerse ourselves in hope, because – this week – hope is all we have.  

So, look forward to the hope that though Jesus is in trouble today, it will be good trouble, necessary trouble, the kind of trouble that changes the world.

Look forward to the hope that though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.

Listen to these words of hope, written by James Russell Lowell, in the years before the Civil War, when slavery was the law of the land:

Though the cause of evil prosper, 
Yet ’tis truth alone is strong; 
Though her portion be the scaffold, 
And upon the throne be wrong: 
Yet that scaffold sways the future, 
And, behind the dim unknown, 
Standeth God within the shadow 
Keeping watch above His own.

This is the week for hope, hope that next Sunday will come again, bringing love back from the dead.

This week, stand in hope, and look for love.

Amen.

© 2024, Virginia H. Child