PALM SUNDAY (Year C) - Isaiah 45:21-25; Psalm 118:19-29; Philippians 2:5-11; Luke 19:29-40 - 1 April 2007 - A sermon preached by The Rev. Peter A. Munson for St. Ambrose Episcopal Church, Boulder, Colorado

 

Christ, the Fool; A Fool for Christ

 

ALL FOOLS’ DAY

 

Today just happens to be April Fools’ Day, also known in some places as All Fools’ Day. Today is also Palm Sunday, the day Jesus road into Jerusalem to the shouts of “Hosanna!” and “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” It doesn’t often happen that All Fools’ Day and Palm Sunday fall on the same day, but I would like to suggest to you that it might not be such a bad connection for us to make. For us to see the connection, we must remember what else was going on as Jesus rode into Jerusalem.

 

THE CONTEXT OF PALM SUNDAY

 

You recall that the Passover was just about to be observed, that most holy time for the Jews when they remember and recount to their children the saving acts of God, who had led them out of slavery in Egypt, after he had “passed over” them.

 

We think of one procession happening as the Passover was about to be celebrated - the procession of Jesus into Jerusalem. But there were two different processions going on at that time. You see, it was the custom of the Roman governors of Judea to be in Jerusalem for the major Jewish festivals, in case there was trouble. The Roman rulers knew that there very well could be trouble, when people started celebrating their liberation from an earlier oppressor, and began to think about how they were now suffering oppression again.

 

The other procession was led by Pontius Pilate. It was necessitated by the fact that Pilate did not stay in Jerusalem for most of the year. Pilate was a beach kind of guy, you see. For most of the year, he hung out at Caesarea Maritima - “Caesarea on the Sea” - about sixty miles northwest of Jerusalem. Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, in their book, The Last Week, write, “Like the Roman governors of Judea and Samaria before and after him, Pilate lived in the new and splendid city on the coast. For them, it was much more pleasant that Jerusalem, the traditional capital of the Jewish people, which was inland and insular, provincial and partisan, and often hostile. But for the major Jewish festivals, Pilate, like his predecessors and successors, went to Jerusalem.” (p. 3)

 

Pilate and his military entourage would head south down the coast, and then go inland, approaching Jerusalem from the west. Pilate would be at the head of a column where the unmistakable message was one of power and domination. There was the calvary, mounted on their horses, the foot soldiers, the leather armor, the helmets and weapons, the banners with golden eagles mounted on poles. There was a Roman theology that came with this procession, too.

 

Again, quoting from The Last Week: “According to this theology, the emperor was not simply the ruler of Rome, but the Son of God. Augustus, the emperor just before Jesus’ time, was referred to as “son of God”, “lord”, and “savior”. His successors, including Tiberius, emperor during Jesus’ time, continued to bear divine titles. (Borg and Crossan, p. 3)

 

Jesus came to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. He had come from Nazareth, about 100 miles north of Jerusalem, with his followers. They were not an army of trained soldiers, but a crowd of peasants whose country was under Roman rule. In fulfillment of the prophecy in Zechariah 9, Jesus approached the city, riding on a donkey. And he came from the exact opposite direction as Pilate - from the east, from the Mount of Olives.

 

That prophecy from Zechariah? “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall command peace to the nations; his dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.” (Zechariah 9:9-10)

 

This was more than Jesus coming to Jerusalem with many other Jewish pilgrims from the countryside to celebrate the Passover. This was a timed, planned thing. Jesus would ride in on a donkey from the east, as Pilate and all his mighty warriors returned to the city from the west. And as we heard, Jesus allowed the people to shout out in praise to God, and proclaim him as king. “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Luke 19:38)

 

This was not just a feel-good kind of day. This was a day when Jesus was being proclaimed king, right in front of the Roman rulers. Of course, from the beginning of his ministry, Jesus had been proclaiming a different kind of kingdom - the kingdom of God. But make no mistake, in the first century, in any part of Israel, Jesus’ hearers would have heard the word “kingdom” as a political word. The Jews lived under kingdoms - the kingdom of Herod and his sons, the kingdom of Rome. For Jesus to announce any kind of kingdom, or even suggest that He might be a king of some sort, was a political statement.

 

And so he rides into Jerusalem on a donkey, a humble symbol of peace, but he is proclaimed a king - right in front of Herod and Pilate and all of the Roman army that was stationed in Jerusalem at the time.

 

WHAT WAS JESUS THINKING?

Don’t you wonder what Jesus was thinking as he rode this donkey, down the hill from the Mount of Olives, as he approached the Temple and the Temple Mount and the center of the city? People are throwing down palm branches and their cloaks in front of him as he goes by, and proclaiming him king. It must have felt really good on one level, to have his followers shouting out like that, and recognizing him as the One sent from God.

 

And on another level, I can imagine him thinking, “What kind of fool am I? I am sealing my fate today. I knew that this moment would come, but how crazy is this?” Everything was pointing to him coming to Jerusalem and facing the authorities, and telling them that God had a whole different kind of kingdom in mind. It was the kingdom that he had been proclaiming from the beginning - a kingdom that was about love and serving and forgiving your enemies, a kingdom where the humble are exalted and the exalted are brought low, a kingdom where the blind regain their sight and those who think they can see discover that they are really blind, a kingdom where common, seemingly unqualified folks are called into key positions of leadership.

 

Yes, there must have been a part of Jesus that day which was thinking, “What in the world am I doing? Am I crazy? What kind of fool am I?” His faith in God his Father was taking him into the very teeth of the Roman wolves, and he knew - even if none of the shouting crowd realized it - what was going to happen next. Though he was on a donkey, and unarmed, he was challenging the dominating, oppressive system, and he knew what that meant.

 

WHAT KIND OF FOOL AM I?

 

Do you ever have days, as a follower of Jesus, where you ask yourself, “What kind of fool am I?” I must confess that question wells up inside of me fairly often.

 

Who am I to be co-leading a bunch of middle school children for a week-long camp this summer? What am I thinking?

 

What was I thinking when I let someone nominate me to run for the Ecclesiastical Court, the person’s words, “Oh, it’s never called into session” still ringing in my ears, and now we are being called into session, as charges have been brought against one of my fellow priests? What kind of fool am I?

 

Who am I to be leading these couples’ workshops with Julia, when sometimes we feel half a step ahead of where these couples are who are attending, and other times we feel two steps behind?

 

For that matter, who am I to be leading a church? How did this happen? There are days when I, like Moses, tell God that I think he has the wrong man for the job. What kind of fool am I?

 

I am reminded of the words that Paul wrote the Christians in Corinth: “Consider your own call, brothers and sisters; not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God... For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.” (1 Corinthians 1:26-29, 25)

 

FOOLS FOR CHRIST

 

And in another part of that letter, Paul wrote, “We are all fools for the sake of Christ...”

(1 Corinthians 4:10)

 

We follow that fool who rode into Jerusalem, that fool who knew exactly what would happen to him, and did it anyway, because it was the faithful thing to do.

 

We are all fools when we do something that makes another person wonder, or even say out loud, “Why in the world would you do that? Are you crazy?”, but we do it anyway, because we are trying to be faithful followers of our Lord Jesus Christ - the Fool.

 

Maybe today it’s appropriate that we remember that we are fools for Christ’s sake, jesters for the King - the King who proclaims a very different kind of kingdom, a kingdom in which the king came “not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45)

 

It is Palm Sunday. May we raise our voices and shout, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!” It is All Fools’ Day. May we remember that we are all fools, for the sake of the foolish King that we follow.