Almighty God, as we enter this most holy week, we ask
that you fill us with expectation as we remember Jesus’ humble entry into
Jerusalem. May our journey towards the cross and tomb bring us closer to you.
Amen.
Easter
is my favorite Sunday in the Church Year. Palm Sunday is my absolute least favorite;
I hate it. Actually, it’s not so much Palm Sunday that I can’t stand- I rather
like Palm Sunday. It’s Passion Sunday that I detest. Blending the Palm Sunday
narrative with the Passion makes no theological or logical sense. It’s
confusing, distracting, and assumes the worst of laity: namely that you’re just
going to skip Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. Whenever I preach on Palm Sunday,
I mention this. And with the exception of the year that I was coming back from
Israel the day before Palm Sunday, I’ve preached every Palm Sunday since I’ve
been at St. Francis. So I’m going to take that as a sign that, by consistently
assigning me to preach on this day, Michael agrees with me. If you’re
interested in a sermon on the Passion and Crucifixion, I suggest that you come
back on Friday at noon. Today, we’ll focus on Palm Sunday.
The Stewardship Committee firmly
believes in the power of prayer to transform our lives, our parish, and our
world. Just imagine how your own faith life might be deepened through
intentional prayer each day. How might that change the way you see the world?
What difference might that prayerful grounding make in your interactions with other
people and the way in which you see the world? What might God accomplish
through your prayer? The season of Easter, in which we celebrate the fact that there
are no boundaries to God’s salvation and power is the perfect time to focus on
our prayer life, inviting that transforming power to be made manifest in our
lives.
Prayer is also a fitting response to
today’s readings from Matthew and Philippians. Jesus approaches Jerusalem from the
Mount of Olives, heading toward the Beautiful Gate, the entrance that the
Messiah was anticipated to pass through. The crowds assembled, shouting “hosanna”
which means “save us.” It was both a sincere prayer, but also a shout of
victory, as that word is in the imperative. They had their palm branches, a
sign of Jewish nationalism, and fully expected Jesus to make a right turn upon
entering Jerusalem. The assumption was that the Messiah would march into the
Antonia Fortress, the seat of Roman military power in Jerusalem, and liberate
the Jewish city and the Temple from its Roman occupiers.
From the other side of the city,
there was another parade entering Jerusalem. While Jesus’ follower did their
best to celebrate the day, it paled in comparison to the Roman parade. In that
parade, there were drums and horns, horses instead of donkeys, soldiers clad in
armor, golden eagles, and a host of prisoners being dragged in shackles as a
reminder of what happens to those who dare stand against Rome and Caesar. But
there would be no collision of these two parades at the Antonia Fortress.
Instead, Jesus took a left turn
towards the Temple. And when he arrives he overturns tables and begins attacking the hypocrisy of the religious system, so much so, that by the end of
the week, Jesus’ own people are shouting “crucify him.” Jesus wasn’t the sort
of Messiah that people were expecting. As Matthew writes, quoting Zechariah, “Look,
your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey.” The key word
there is “humble.” Jesus is not the sort of king that will rule with a sword.
And so our response to our king isn’t
the same as our response to Caesar. Kings of the world will ask for your wealth
to add to their own, they will conscript your sons and daughters to defend their
palaces, and don’t have the time to know their subjects. But King Jesus will
ask for your money and your life, not to buy a golden palace, but to save you
from the demands they place on you. Jesus will come for your children, not
to make them into soliders, but to make them disciples. And Jesus tells his
followers that they are no longer servants, but friends. The response to most kings
is to cower in fear and begrudgingly submit. The response to Jesus though is to
take his yoke upon you and learn from him, it is to follow him, it is to draw
closer to him. And we can do these things through prayer.
In Philippians, Paul includes what
many scholars consider to be an early hymn of the church that proclaims Jesus’
humility. And he begins by saying “Let the same mind be in you that was in
Christ Jesus.” What better way to have the mind of Christ in you than to draw
closer to that divine mind through prayer?
Prayer is something that you can do
individually or as a group. And as you know, there are many types of prayer.
Petitions ask something of God for ourselves. Intercessions ask on behalf of others.
Praise gives glory to God for God’s mighty acts, while adoration gives glory
simply because God is god. There are prayers of thanksgiving and confession, as
well as prayers of oblation in which we offer our resources and skills to God.
Throughout the Bible, we see that
God creates and calls through speech. In the beginning, God could have created
through a snap of the fingers or a thought of the mind. But God creates through
words. Speech matters to God, and prayer is a way of continuing this holy
conversation that God began with the cosmos. As we see in the Psalms, prayers
can be raw and emotional, and as we see in the Book of Common Prayer, they can be eloquent and intellectual.
And so perhaps you’re interesting in
drawing closer to God through prayer, but you’re not sure where to start. CS
Lewis said “we must lay before God what is in us, not what ought to be in us.”
In other words, prayer is honest. It is not isolated from our actions either.
It is not that simply praying for hungry person that makes a difference, but
rather giving them bread, praying that your action might be a part of
eliminating hunger. In Hamlet,
Shakespeare writes “my words fly up, my thoughts remain below: words without
thoughts never to heaven go.”
Prayer challenges us, as it is about
listening as much as it is speaking. Mother Teresa is reported to have once had
an exchange with a journalist about prayer. The reporter asked “what do you say
when you pray to God?” She said, “nothing, I listen.” “Well then, what does God
say to you.” “Nothing, God listens.” The journalist looked confused, and she
said “I can’t explain it any better. I’m sorry if you don’t understand it.”
What Mother Teresa is saying is that prayer doesn’t fit into a nice little
package. We can’t easily define what prayer is and what it isn’t. So some of
you will take great solace in the quietness of contemplative prayer. Others
will enjoy physical sorts of prayers using a labyrinth or rosary. Using written
prayers from the Prayer Book will feed the souls of still yet others. There is
no right way to pray, and no wrong way to pray, except for not doing it.
In 1 Thessalonians, Paul says to “pray
without ceasing.” All of our life is a prayer, if by prayer we mean
conversation with God. If God is always with us, then we are always in conversation
with God, whether we realize it or not. So while prayer can be seen as an
orientation to life, there is something to be said for intentional time to be
set aside for the praise, confession, adoration, and intercession. But what
often trips people up is the question “what is prayer supposed to do.”
There are stories of monks who lived
in secluded desert monasteries for decades, praying multiple times a day,
without ever “feeling” anything in their prayers. We’ve been, falsely, taught
that prayer is supposed to produce in us a feeling or warmth in our hearts. If it
does, great; but that is not the way we measure prayer. Again, CS Lewis wrote “it
is quite useless knocking at the door of heaven for earthly comforts; it’s not
that sort of comfort they supply there.” We misunderstand prayer when we see it
as a bartering system with God. One author has remarked that what we often do
in prayer is ask God for the sum of 2 and 2 to be no longer 4, and then
frustrate ourselves when nothing changes.
There are two major objections to
prayer. The first is that if God knows everything, then why pray?; it won’t
change anything. But if we look seriously at the Bible, it doesn’t seem that
God has complete foreknowledge of the future. Many theologians have supposed
that God faces all of the possible outcomes that we face, and for there to be
true consequences for our actions, we can’t be bound by a fatalistic and
deterministic faith. It also makes God rather unnecessary, as the clock has
been wound and now is simply running its course. But what if the future lies
open to God, and God is working to create more and more loving opportunities
for us to live into? Well, then prayer becomes a way of opening ourselves to
those moments when they are presented to us.
And the other problem with prayer is
related to the first, and is that it can seem that prayer has no impact on the
outcome of world events. Some people are healed, others aren’t. A tornado wipes
out one house and leaves another standing. The greedy person becomes wealthy
and the honest person loses it all. If everything is so arbitrary, what is the
point of prayer?
Science is beginning to show us that
things are more interconnected than we thought they were. Even if, like me, you’re
not a scientist, just knowing that science includes concepts with the names like
“chaos theory” and “uncertainty principle” should tell us that cause and effect
might not be as linear as once thought. So, through the power of God, it really
is quite possible that a prayer could have an impact on some event. If we
believe that Creation didn’t end on the sixth day, that God continues to
create, then prayer is a way of opening more spaces for God to work. Now this
isn’t to say that God is restrained by the bounds of quantum physics and us
praying for the right things, but rather that there is an intrinsic interconnectedness
in all things and a certain openness to the universe and its range of
possibilities. So perhaps prayer is a way of stepping into that openness and
inviting God to transform us and our world. Does this mean that everything will
work out? No. But it does mean that redemption is always a possibility and that
God so trusts and loves creation that our freedom will never be diminished.
So the Stewardship Committee invites you to
this holy work of being open to God through prayer. We hope that this
intentional prayer will help you to go deeper into your faith and put you in the same mind as Christ Jesus. We pray that it might transform you and your interactions with the world.
And we look forward to the unity that it will be bring to our parish as we all
dedicate ourselves to the common work of prayer.
Today begins our holiest week at
Christians. Let us prepare ourselves for the sorrows and the joys of the week
by humbling emptying ourselves, as Jesus did, that we might have the space to
fill ourselves through prayer with the possibilities that we have in God. Amen.
