April 17, 2011
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church
Palm Sunday
the Rev. Elizabeth Molitors
A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!”
Matthew 21:8-9
What is it that gives you hope?
This was the first question posed to Canon Andrew White during the question & answer portion of his presentation at Wheaton College a couple of weeks ago. In a book I’m reading by Canon White, he says it’s the question he’s asked most frequently. A number of you are already familiar with Andrew White and his work, but if you’re not, let me explain a little bit about him.
A dust jacket bio describes him this way: “Canon Andrew White is President of the Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East. He is the Anglican chaplain to Iraq, based at St. George’s Church, Baghdad, and Anglican Episcopal chaplain to its International Zone.” Put another way, Andrew White is a priest who is working to bring peace to two of the most violent, contentious and war-torn areas of the world, and he’s doing this difficult – perhaps impossible – work while managing his own serious health issues and frequently being separated from his wife and sons, who live in England.
When asked the question that evening, ‘How do you keep going? What is it that gives you hope?’ Canon White’s answer came quickly and with no hesitation: children.
In his book called Suffer the Children, Andrew White describes a common encounter with the children of his church in Baghdad.
“…soon will come the highlight of my week when, surrounded by heavily armed soldiers, I go to church. As we arrive at St. George’s, I will be met by scores of children shouting, ‘Abuna, Abuna!’ (‘Father, Father!’). I will hug each one of them and kiss them each three times, and then as I enter God’s house I will take off my body armour and hand it to the children and they in turn will hand me my robes. They will kiss my stole – my ecclesiastical scarf – in just the place that I do, and put it round my neck, and then they will walk with me singing up the aisle.
At times like this, I forget the pain outside. The sound of the gunfire no longer disturbs me. All I am conscious of is that I am with my people. I am surrounded by the ones who enable me to keep going, the ones who give me strength.
…Those [children] who have learned a little English call me ‘Daddy’. And as far as they are concerned only two things really matter: that their abuna loves them and that they love him.”
As I read this passage from White’s book, I underlined it, and scrawled in the margin the words “Palm Sunday procession” and then I reached for my bible and turned to the passage from today’s gospel reading: “A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!” (Matthew 21:8-9)
I draw this parallel, not in order to say that Andrew White is Jesus, but rather, that Jesus is Andrew White.
Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan write about Palm Sunday in their book called The Last Week, describing not one, but two processions coming into Jerusalem that day, one led by Jesus and the other by Pilate, the Roman governor of the territory that included Jerusalem. Borg and Crossan say that “…it was the standard practice of the Roman governors of Judea to be in Jerusalem for the major Jewish festivals. They did so not out of empathetic reverence for the religious devotion of their Jewish subjects, but to be in the city in case there was trouble. There often was, especially at Passover, a festival that celebrated the Jewish people’s liberation from an earlier empire.” Jesus’ modest procession, riding on a donkey and surrounded by joyous people waving palm fronds, stood in marked contrast to Pilate’s, which flaunted his military might, complete with columns of soldiers and horses. Borg and Crossan write that, “Pilate’s procession embodied the power, glory, and violence of the empire that ruled the world. Jesus’ procession embodied an alternative vision, the kingdom of God.” Violence and war versus peace and love. Sounds a lot like Andrew White’s experience in Baghdad and the Middle East.
Here on Palm Sunday 2011, we know the rest of the story, that Jesus’ crucifixion, death and resurrection mean that love – not death – will have the last word. But in the meantime, there’s this week to be gotten through. You don’t need to read much of the last 2000 years of history to realize that the peace and justice for which Jesus worked in his life and sacrificed in his death have not been fully realized. We are an Easter people, yes, but we live in a Holy Week world – in a time before the fruits of the Resurrection are fully realized; in a time where not everyone is free, where not everyone is safe. So, where do we find our Palm Sunday hope? Andrew White finds his glimpses of the Kingdom in the children. Where do you find hope?
I found hope these last days in a discussion during the Public Radio program called, On The Media. They were discussing the way the media covered – or, mostly didn’t cover – the public burning of a Koran by Florida preacher, Terry Jones. Most of the major news agencies, who knew about Jones’ plan, explicitly refused to cover the “event” in order not to give media power to someone who was actively promoting hate and intolerance. While reports of Jones’ action eventually came out, and prompted violent reactions in the Middle East, the fact that these news organizations took a strong stance gives me hope and a glimpse of the Kingdom, where hate and intolerance have no place or power.
Two weeks ago, we finished our Lenten series look at the history of slavery in the U.S. At the end of the documentary we were watching, called Traces of the Trade, the woman making the film, Katrina Browne, preached at the Episcopal Church in Bristol, Rhode Island, the town where her family’s slave trade was headquartered. She spoke with honesty and directness about her family’s legacy, and the fortune that her family – and the town – realized as a result of being the largest slave trading family in the country. In the voiceover, she says that she couldn’t judge the reaction of the church members as she finished her sermon; all she was met with were closed faces. As she sat down at her seat, the rector of the church did something unplanned: he invited the congregation to come forward to the altar rail for prayer and the laying on of hands. It was an incredibly moving sight to watch as every person – every person – came forward to kneel and pray. Ms. Brown says that she felt a shift in the church just then, a loosening. No “problem” was solved in that time of prayer; she and her family and the town would still have to continue to wrestle with their past, and with how they contributed to the ongoing issue of racism in this country. But for that moment, she felt some bit of hope in peoples’ willingness to listen and to open themselves to their grief and anger and confusion, and to prayer and healing. For those of us watching the movie, we found hope in Katrina Browne’s readiness to take on such a difficult project, and to devote her life to working for racial and economic justice for all people.
Hope isn’t an end, a solution, a ‘fix.’ It’s not about situations working themselves out in a linear fashion, marching in a straight line toward a happy ending. Hope is a glimmer – a glimpse of the light of Christ that is too often obscured – and it’s a desire to seek out that light even when the darkness seems overwhelming.
Hope is a crowd of children – joyous people waving palm fronds – gathered around their abuna – accompanying their Lord – walking down the aisle of a church or through the streets singing – on their way to the resurrection.
Amen.
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