Jesus and his silly parade

A Palm Sunday sermon about breaking away from religious rules and saving the world with the practice of celebration.

I’ve continued to channel most of my writing of late into the sermons that I’m preaching each week for the church that I serve on a spit of land between two tidal rivers in Midcoast Maine. When I preach in that context I draw wisdom from Christian texts and from my understanding of the ways that Jesus lived and ministered and taught. And while I certainly don’t presume that perspective onto every one of you, my dear readers, I do so delight in sharing what I’ve written.

Sometimes though I hesitate to share. I get nervous about being too presumptuous, or inaccessible for those of you who follow other paths. I fear the sting of the harm caused by other people and powers purporting to represent the faith that I minister in. I don’t want to perpetuate harm.

But I always also wonder if, maybe, by not sharing some of these reflections I’m tempering not only my own delight but also the possibility that my work as a preacher might flood the banks of my particular stream of wisdom, and bring some nurture or inspiration to you whoever and wherever you are on life’s journey. That’s what I hope.

So enough with my caveats, huh!? I’m going to try to hesitate less and share more freely. I trust you to glean what’s good, and then to contribute right back to me from what you’re growing.

Here’s the sermon that I preached this morning, which is Palm Sunday in my tradition, which is an occasion of celebration that takes place right smack in the midst of an imperfect, topsy turvy world, with a whole lot of ache and barely a glimmer of hope on the horizon.

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Today we’re ending our series on the Way of Spiritual Formation, where we’ve been taking a close look at a handful of spiritual practices. So far, we’ve looked at prayer and meditation. We’ve looked at solitude and silence. We’ve looked at the practice of confession. We’ve looked at the practice of service.

And today we’re focusing on the spiritual practice of celebration.

But first I want to say a few words about what I mean when I talk about spiritual practices; what they are and what they aren’t.

These practices of formation that we’ve been looking at are about aligning ourselves with dynamic spiritual principles—things that are simply and elegantly true. They are not about submitting yourself to rigid religious rules.

Spiritual practices are not the same thing as religious rules.

Religious rules are things that are imposed onto you from a source that claims authority from outside of yourself. Spiritual practices are about aligning yourself with what is true and what you know to be true in your heart, the seat of your personal wisdom, the place where God whispers.

That’s not to say that spiritual practice does not require a commitment to hearing and heeding the input of others. It does. And it’s not to say that the way of spiritual formation does not require some form of obedience and surrender. It does.

But there is a qualitative difference between joyfully surrendering to the urging, prompting, whispering, guidance of the divine—and outright subservience to an external voice or source of power that claims to have authority over you.

You’ve experienced that difference, haven’t you?

The difference between the strong, confident, opening experience of knowing what it is that you must do in order to be true to who you are, and the icky, heavy, closing experience of being told or encouraged to do something—by someone with more power or status than you—that is out of line with who you are?

One way binds you up. The other sets you free.

So here is a spiritual principle that is central to the way of Jesus and vital for how we respond to the world around us:

True authority is always something that is shared, never something that is claimed or demanded.

False claims of authority—along with those who claim them (and there are plenty out there)—have a particular quality to them. They are tight, rigid, anxious, and obsessed with whether or not they are getting the respect that they think they deserve.

A life devoted to religious rules is fascinated with this kind of authority. That kind of devotion will have you fixating on whether or not you’re getting what you deserve; whether or not you are receiving what you ought to receive according to how well you have followed the proposed rules. How faithfully and dutifully you’ve behaved.

And it’s obsessed with whether or not others are getting what they deserve for how poorly they have followed those rules.

It’s full of grievance, and it’s obsessed with whether or not the world is fair according to the rules.

Devoting yourself to that way of thinking, to that form of authority, to the rigidity of religious rules—it’ll wear you right out. You’re bound to get lost in frustration when the world stops working the way that it supposedly should according those rules.

And—as one of my mentors teaches—frustration leads to resignation and resignation leads to cynicism. And cynicism won’t do you or the world any good.

But fortunately, there is a different way.

A life devoted to spiritual practice is not about what you receive or don’t receive, it is about who you become—or—perhaps more accurately, it’s about you living in aligned integrity with who you already are.

A life devoted to spiritual practice is rooted in a simple, elegant commitment to being true to who you are as a beloved creature of God; courageous, creative, compassionate and capable of heeding the wild wisdom that comes from those divine whispers.

Sometimes those whispers come from quiet places within yourself. That’s why we practice solitude and prayerful meditation.

Sometimes those whispers come from healthy community around you. That’s why we gather together for corporate worship and collective confession.

Sometimes those whispers catch us by surprise, they delight us, coming to us not only in whispers but in shouts of joy, experiences of awe, and moments of ecstasy about being body alive and receiving the good gifts of this earth. That’s why we participate in celebration, so that we catch the joyful guidance of God right in the midst of whatever worldly woes we may be enduring.

Jesus began his ministry in a world that was enduring plenty of woes. It was a world dominated by the whims of the uber-wealthy, where military might was used not to protect the vulnerable but to subdue those who were dissatisfied with the status quo.

Into this world Jesus ministered by proclaiming a vision for an alternative way of organizing power and resources, a vision that had deep roots in his tradition, echoing the prophets that preceded him, Jesus began his ministry by proclaiming something called the year of jubilee.

Remember that? Early on in the gospel of Luke, when Jesus launched his ministry in his home town by opening up the sacred text of his people and declaring:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

The Whispers of God are in me,

They’ve compelled me to bring good news to the poor

They’ve sent me to proclaim release to the captives,

And to cast vision for a world free of oppression.

To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor—the year of jubilee—a year worthy of celebration!

Right in the midst of a world full of injustice and hardship Jesus roots his ministry in a vision of mass celebration. Celebration was central to the way that Jesus moved through the world.

For those of us who follow in the way of Jesus, celebration is more than a slate of practices. It’s central to all of the other spiritual practices. It is a quality that you’re listening for as you move through life. Without it, all of our other pursuits and practices are nothing but dull duties or religious rules.

Without the presence of celebration in the spiritual life, we are merely exchanging our behaviors for some reward, or in order to avoid some punishment. But the experience of spiritual practice needs no reward to sweeten or encourage it, because the experience itself, of being who you truly are, well… there is no sweeter thing.

There is a freedom to living that way, to being simply and sweetly true to your good god-given heart. And that freedom opens us up, makes us supple and receptive to the small enjoyments that are available to us, and it compels us to seek out and dive into deep sources of celebration.

More important than telling you how I think you should celebrate, I want to tell you that, as you go about your life and work in this world, you must consistently find ways to celebrate.

Ultimately, the way of spiritual formation, in all its forms, leads us through practice, toward freedom from the concerns and cares that would tell us that we may only celebrate the goodness of life once the world is devoid of all injustice and evil.

That’s simply not so.

Celebration—a lifestyle of joy and play and praise and embodied delight—is not a reward that we get once we fix the world to the way it should be. Celebration is a means by which we nudge the world in the direction that we know it can be.

This is not to say that we ought to numb ourselves or insulate ourselves from the cares and concerns of the world. No. Freedom from anxiety is not ignorance of injustice.

And it is not to say that we ought to pretend that we are happy with the way things are when we are not happy with the way things are. No. True celebration cannot be faked.

But the spiritual practice of celebration can—and must—coincide with protest. We celebrate the vision of jubilee, even as we protest the injustices of the current order.

Commenting on the vision of the year of jubilee, Richard Foster writes:

“Such a radical, divinely enabled freedom from possessions and a restructuring of social arrangements cannot help but bring celebration… Who can withhold the shout of jubilee?”

And here we are on Palm Sunday, reading the story of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Riding through the east gate, out of the wilderness, on the back of a colt, with people gathering around him and his vision for the world—shouting Hosanna! Hosanna! Hosanna!

Jesus launched his ministry proclaiming a vision worth celebrating. And here he is again, giving his people something to cheer for as he’s finally arrived in Jerusalem, carrying the hopes and dreams of his people deep and steady in his heart.

It had long been expected that a savior would descend to Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives. Though most expected that he’d arrive with a greater show of might and prowess. But, as was his custom, Jesus had different designs.

Some other would-be messiah might show up here, compensating for his spiritual incompetence with a military parade that costs around $90 million, but not Jesus. That’s not how he rolls. Jesus essentially tells a couple of his guys: “Just go borrow someone’s used Prius for me, one with a sunroof that I can wave out of. We’re gonna have ourselves a silly parade. We’re gonna come in the side door of this sacred city and turn this empire upside down!”

So that’s what they did.

And we enter this Holy Week participating in that vision. Today we celebrate as we wave palm branches and shout out: Hosanna!

We will move through the rest of this week, through the contemplative moments of Maundy Thursday, through the heartbreak and tragedy of Good Friday, through the dark quiet of Holy Saturday, and we’ll gather again on Easter Sunday, changed by our journey, made new, invited into resurrection.

In this single Holy Week we undergo the full spectrum of the human experience, which begins and ends with celebration.

Today we celebrate. And when we shout Hosanna we are declaring two deeply true things.

The word Hosanna is a Greek transliteration of a Hebrew phrase—hoshia-na—that translates to: “Save us, we beseech you!”

When we shout Hosanna we are declaring, first, that salvation for the world is not our responsibility. We do not need to constantly carry every care and concern that weighs us down about this world. Salvation is not our responsibility.

And second, we are declaring that we are ready for the year of jubilee. We are ready for salvation. We believe in the possibility of the vision that comes from the prophets, from the lips of Jesus, and—when we hear and heed those sweet whispers—from our own tender hearts.

So hear me now, because this subtle shift is everything: Salvation of the world is not your responsibility. But you get to participate in the salvation of the world!

Participation in the vision for collective salvation is our honor, our privilege, our joy.

It can be.

Without joy, without that spark of celebration and aliveness, our participation grows rigid. It becomes transactional rather than transformational.

Without cultivating celebration and aliveness, we will exhaust ourselves on the injustices of the world.

But, as Brother David Steindl-Rast says: “The antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness.”

And as the Rev. Howard Thurman said: “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

So find a palm branch to wave around, keep your eyes peeled for the messiah driving around in a four-door sedan, and as you move forward from today, on into this Holy Week full of sacred moments, may you release the burden of responsibility and embrace instead the honor of participating in a vision for the world worth celebrating.

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PS - You can watch me preach this sermon here.