Palm Sunday Sermon: The Lord Needs Them

This is a sermon adapted from one I gave at Calvary United Methodist Church in Frederick. You can view that version here.

Scripture: Matthew 21:1-11 (NRSV)

When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, just say this, ‘The Lord needs them.’ And he will send them immediately.” This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying, “Tell the daughter of Zion, look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them. 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!”

When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?” The crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”

Sermon: “The Lord Needs Them”

Let us pray: Patient Teacher, we give thanks to you for this story of Holy Week. It is a difficult story that you ask us to step into, especially because two thousands years seems so long ago. Through the words of my mouth the meditations of our hearts, may you speak to us again to help us see that this story is our story- that even in the midst of pain and desperation there is hope. Amen.

What does God need?

In our story today, God’s needs, or, rather, Jesus’ needs, are cited as a reason to borrow a donkey and colt. Jesus told two of his disciples, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, just say this, ‘The Lord needs them.’ And he will send them immediately.” Jesus doesn’t even give his disciples a reason to borrow a donkey and colt, though we know from the narrator that it is to fulfill scripture. That is the need: to fulfill scripture. To bring a story to life in this time and place. 

Is that what the Lord still needs today? To bring life to this story we are still living?

Because we are still living it. We might not be pulling branches off the trees in town to lay before a king, padding the dusty, rough path for the little hooves carrying Jesus, but we are still shouting Hosanna, perhaps even louder now in these pandemic times. Remember what Hosanna means. Scholar Debie Thomas explains, “In Hebrew, it means...‘Save now!’ As in, ‘Lord, we’re desperate. We’re frantic. We’re in trouble.’ Our praise is steeped in need, want, loss, and lack.  Hosanna, Jesus.  Save us.  Save us now.”

In ancient Jerusalem that day, people were asking to be saved from violence and poverty, just as we are today. From injustice. Maybe even from loneliness. From our own penchant for messing up and hurting one another. But in the midst of these desperate pleas for salvation, the crowd in Jerusalem that day also offers praise. There is this detail that has just stopped me in my tracks this week: these desperate people lay their cloaks and palms on the ground before Jesus, a gesture that to me signifies tenderness and care. 

I think I know a lot about desperation. I often share the story of our infertility journey and our losses. I often will say that what kept me going was not hope that one day we would have a baby- it was desperation. You do not put yourself through IVF if you are not a little bit desperate. And that desperation is isolating: it is hard to think of others when your own thoughts are consumed by what medication you have to take today or which injections you need to give yourself. Depression, loneliness, grief- all of these human conditions often make us turn in on ourselves, isolate us from others. God knows that is the case. The Bible actually has many stories of desperate people in addition to this one of people shouting Hosanna. But the story, this one on Palm Sunday and our story as people of faith does not end with isolation. There is something more here. Something about changing the script of our isolation, even if only a little.

I have seen people change the script from desperation, not to hope, but to care. I have shared this story in sermons before, but it is one that has stuck with me for almost a decade now. In my last year of seminary, I served as a student chaplain in a hospital near my school on both a regular medical/surgery floor and the behavioral health unit, or psych ward. Once, I noticed that we had three Spanish-speaking patients on the behavioral health unit, and they wanted prayer, so I coerced my roommate and fellow chaplain Lauren, who speaks fluent Spanish, to come with me to pray with these patients.

Lauren began by asking each of the three people to talk a little about themselves, trying to get them to share a little of their stories. Without a translation, I was able to understand the first woman speak of her babies who were not in the USA yet and give their ages, I heard the man speak of a tumor and a great loneliness, and the third spoke of lost love. Even as they shared a bit about themselves, though, they began to turn the conversation away from their lives. Instead, what concerned them, was another young woman on the unit.

This young woman was one I had met before. She was in a lot of pain, and speaking to her was off-putting as it took her several seconds to respond to you, as though your words had a distance to travel before they got to her. She was certainly a sweet woman, but--- and I made Lauren ask them to double check--- she did not speak Spanish at all. 

These people were in a behavioral health unit, which is often a desperate-feeling place, a place you go to when you don’t know what else to do. They were struggling not only with the illnesses that brought them there but with the weight of other struggles in their lives. But here they were, desperate to be saved from the pain of the world, but in spite of their desperation, they reached out tenderly to another. They sought to care for a woman who could not even speak their language.

Hosanna, those in the crowd cried that Palm Sunday so long ago. Save us, we still cry today. And yet, as we cry out, we can also reach out in the same moment to care for another. For the crowd in Jerusalem that day, care meant using what was at their fingertips to help with the dust and roughness of the road. For those three people in the behavioral health unit, it means asking for prayer for another person in need.

What does it look like for us? 

In the desperate cries of Hosanna in our scripture this week, I saw that same desperation in the news of another mass shooting. I saw the desperation in those places where COVID-19 cases are increasing in spite of the existence of a vaccine. Heck, as I read our scripture this week, I remembered my own feelings of desperation. And as I saw and remembered, I noticed the people who helped anyway. The survivors of the shooting recounting how people helped each other escape out the back of the grocery store. The medical professionals getting up every day and putting on their PPE and getting to work. And I found myself sharing my story this week with others, naming my desperation, and naming that we aren’t alone and can help hold one another up from the waves of grief and despair. 

What does the Lord need? Our scripture reading tells us Jesus needs a donkey and a colt to fulfill scripture. But I also wonder if the question lingers later into the story. If what God needs, what God requires of us is of us to reach out in tenderness even when we are desperate. If we are to learn to shout Hosanna even as we care for others. God needs us to step into the story, not just in the really human moments of despair that we will see a lot of throughout this Holy Week. God also needs us to step into the human moments of love and connection, where we gently lay cloaks and branches before one another to soften the way.

So many of our interpretations of Holy Week over the millennia has devolved to how depraved we are and how we need superhuman strength to fix our brokenness. But when I read the Holy Week story, even here on Palm Sunday, I see how Jesus’ power is not in taking sin onto himself, but on fostering a love so strong it can teach us to reach out tenderly to one another even in our own need. Jesus flipped the script of what a king could be, coming into the city on a humble donkey, and that act inspired others to flip the script of desperation and isolation. What does God need? Maybe this is also a question of what will save us (hosanna). God needs more love and connection, even in simple acts of care. May we use this Palm Sunday story to interrupt our isolation and share a bit more tenderness in the world.