Saint Matthew 21:1-17
We should have known that desperate times were ahead when Saint Patrick’s Day parades started to be cancelled.
From Dublin Ireland to Dublin California the annual events celebrating the life and ministry of Saint Patrick with corned beef and cabbage dinners, green beer, outlandish costumes and behaviors, were being nixed because of the virus. New York’s parade was “postponed for the first time in its 258-year history.”1
Surprisingly, in 2001 Dublin, Ireland had to cancel their parade “amid an outbreak of foot and mouth disease.” In their case it affected their livestock in ours it seems to have severely affected some of our nation’s leaders.
In a fit of long dead and buried pique in what seems like sociological light years ago, in Boston “cancelled their celebration in 1994, amid a legal battle over whether parade organizers could ban an Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual group from marching.2”
As a native I am proud to say that the South Side Irish Parade was suspended in 2009 for a far, far better reason after 54 people were arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct.3 That there were so few arrests still amazes me!
Besides celebrating all things Irish the parades have a political purpose as politicians jockey to march closest to the most popular leader at the moment.
If the parade were held this year, you would see lessor officeholders trying to get as close as they could to Mayor Lightfoot.
Some who share my belief that he is doing a fine job may have been seeking to get as close as possible to Governor Pritzker while others may be giving him a wide berth. There is little doubt that in New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo would be given rock-star status.
Sadly, for him, few would gather around Aurora’s mayor Richard C. Irvin who seems like an excellent executive but who could only watch the parade from his front window sequestered as he is from the Covid virus.
Most parades have political overtones and the Palm Sunday parade is no exception. In fact, this parade may have set the standard for highly charged political theater masquerading as a parade.
Take those palm branches we love so much!
At almost every church you can experience the same thing. Children get the branches and immediately turn them into instruments of torture. Ears are tickled with them from behind calling forth yelps of “Cut that out!” A palm branch in the hand of a boy can become a sword or, in this post Harry Potter age a magic wand pointed at one another with the cry of “Reducto!” hoping to blast them.
To us palms are like pennants and “Hosanna” is merely a shout but to the authorities in the Jerusalem of Jesus’ day those palms and that shout must have been a cause for concern.
Palm branches had been a sign of Jewish nationalism for about 100 years since the defeat of the Syrians in 141 B.C. They were a sign of victory over an oppressor nation!
“Hosanna” was an equally loaded shout for it literally meant: “Save us, Lord! Save us now!” The people weren’t talking theologically, but they were talking politically. Hosanna was shorthand for “Save us from the tyrannical rule of Rome.” Those palm branches that we wave sometimes so half-heartedly and those shouts must have made the authorities take special notice.
I am not sure that Jesus has choreographed his entrance but we do know that “with Passover due, Pilate with his Roman legion is marching into Jerusalem from Caesarea to the west, arms clattering, swords glinting in the sun, the thunder of hooves and chariots meant to intimidate, to quell any thought of an uprising.”4
But that is exactly what was happening with Jesus parade and things get worse when Jesus enters the temple it begins to look like a full throated rebellion.
Tables are turned over and money changers are chased out.
Blind and lame, forbidden from entry because of their infirmities, are now loose on the temple grounds being healed left and right.
And children who were not even to be seen let alone heard because of their status as not quite persons are continuing to shout “Hosanna! Here is the one who will save us now!”
It is all too much for those who want to keep the status quo. They look at the children and then look at Jesus and say, in effect, “Shut them Up.” And Saint Luke remembers Jesus replies to this request: “I tell you, if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”
That is where we are, isn’t it? There are no crowds. The children are not here and neither are the adults. There are no shouts. The church is empty except for me.
Instead of being at the head of the parade every politician is living out their lives like poor Richard Irvin who is quarantined in addition to being overwhelmed, like the others, by the enormity of it all.
The stones will have to cry out for us. Our parade has been rained on and feels like it might be rained out.
The Palm Sunday parade didn’t end as one might expect with a celebration and jubilation worthy of the afterglow of any Saint Patrick’s Day event. There are no parties. Jesus is not hoisted on their shoulder and hailed as a hero at festivities that go long into the night. Instead we are told, “And he left them and went out of the city to Bethany, where he spent the night.” 5
Jesus went home and that is where most of us have been. We’ve been curled up with a good book, or binge-watching our favorite series, or walking the dog.
But as the wonderful preacher MaryAnn McKibben Dana wondered recently, “could it be that maybe, just maybe, Jesus has stopped leading for a moment and is just standing with you where you are, and maybe he’s just pointing.”
Maybe all he is doing is asking us to follow him into that which is not just unfamiliar but that which we have never experienced before.
It takes Palm Sunday faith to go ahead of Jesus, knowing that the road leads us through the events of Holy Week … for we know that going into the unknown doesn’t always mean fun and adventure.
Faith is a risk, and nowhere do we feel that more acutely than in the events of Holy Week.
But let us not shy away from faith, for here is the twist—and how often does the gospel provide a twist! There is nowhere that Jesus sends us that is unfamiliar to him. It may be foreign territory to us, but there no dimension of human experience that Jesus did not share in.6
So even as we sit and stare out of our windows at our rain soaked, washed out parades we do so in faith that the one who bounced into Jerusalem on the back of a shaggy donkey is still the answer to our prayers even if the only prayer we can dare to speak is: “Lord, save us. Save us now!”
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1. Jennifer Peltz, and Don Babwin. “St. Patrick's Day Parades Nixed, from New York to Dublin.” Scottsbluff Star-Herald, March 12, 2020. https://www.richmond.com/news/national/st-patrick-s-day-parades-nixed-from-new-york-to/article_859b5ade-0e61-5006-8de6-65d5980257cd.html.
2. Michael James. “Coronavirus Halts St. Patrick's Day Parades in Boston, Dublin; Heavy Economic Impact Likely.” USA Today. March 9, 2020. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/03/09/coronavirus-worry-has-forced-boston-and-dublin-call-off-st-patricks-parades/5006173002/.
3. Michael, Konkol. “Bad Luck Of The Irish As South Side Parade Called Off.” Patch. March 11, 2020. https://patch.com/illinois/chicago/south-side-irish-parade-cancelled-due-new-corona-virus.
4. James C. Howel. “Palm Sunday: the 4th Sunday of Covid-19.” James Howell's Weekly Preaching Notions. Myers Park Presbyterian Church, January 1, 2019. http://jameshowellsweeklypreachingnotions.blogspot.com/.
5. St. Matthew 21:21. (NIV) [NIV=The New International Version]
6. MaryAnn McKibben Dana. “The Crowds Along the Way.” A Sermon for Every Sunday. asermonforeverysunday.com, March 31, 2020. https://asermonforeverysunday.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/MaryAnn-McKibben-Dana-Palm-Sunday.pdf.
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