Who's Your Savior?

Who’s Your Savior?

Palm Sunday

Matthew 21:1-11

“When [Jesus] 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.’”

This past week in our staff meeting, we held an unexpected and a bit heated “discussion”

about who Jesus is to each of us.

How God worked through or was revealed through him in his life. What the disciples’ Communion with his body and blood meant.

How his death on a cross did or did not effect our salvation—and salvation from what?

And finally, does any of this even matter today in the über-liberal United Church of Christ?

Sarah and David and Hal and I all had our say with passion and difference (and Mark would have added wonderful fuel to the flames, had he not been in Cleveland)…

Poor Barb! I don’t think she knew quite what to do with us.

Oh yes, it was a vibrant and challenging “discussion.”

But a timely one, I think! Holy Week is upon us with Jesus being the central figure of

our palm-waving celebration,

of sharing the last Passover supper with his disciples,

of betrayal, trial, desertion, execution.

It makes me wish I could ask him directly: Jesus, why?

Why did you go through all this?

What really was the purpose of the palm parade and the Passover meal and the cross?

And how do we reconcile ourselves as Christ-followers—Christian—

if some of us struggle to find meaning in these events that lead to the final act:

resurrection?

Each of the 4 Gospel-writers clearly found meaning in this week’s drama. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—though sometimes wildly different in their interpretations (like Sarah, David, Hal and Sharon)—

all 4 preserved their understandings of events in Jesus’ last week of life.

Each of them found meaning, even if their interpretations of that meaning were different from one another.

There must be something in this week for us, as well.

I stress these things because I think many progressive Christians have become somewhat uncomfortable with proclaiming Christ: “Hosanna!” we shout on Sunday morning, when the crowd around us is like-minded, justice-seeking liberals who try to live lives of extravagant welcome. Hosanna!

Until we get further into our week, and we’re out in a world where “Christian” means something different to those around us, something we don’t want to be associated with, so we duck and hide from that damning word: Jesus.

Perhaps “Crucify him!” isn’t quite the comparative response, but what about Peter’s quieter denial,

“I’m not one of those….” 

Then what are we?

How do you proclaim yourself Christian,

particularly in this week that holds so much differing theology,

so many interpretations of why Jesus died which may conflict with who you believe Jesus to be?

~~~

Take Maundy Thursday, for example.

That evening of Jesus’ Passover meal with the disciples.

The night he shared with them the bread and the cup and told them (at least according to Luke),

“do this in remembrance of me” (22:19).

Theologian and author Joan Chittister describes Holy Thursday as “send[ing] us careening etween great joy and great confusion…. [It’s] the crossover point between life and death for Jesus, etween death and life for us all” (141, 144).

I think many of you are familiar with the language I do and do not tend to use in Holy Communion.

Rather than Jesus’ broken body and poured out blood,

I focus on his living body, his actions and

his teachings that revealed God’s love;

and his life-blood that coursed through his being

and which can now flow through our own bodies and actions as his church.

Theologically, I cannot give praise to a God that would demand blood sacrifice—a sacrificial lamb

killed on an altar to atone for the ways I’ve missed the mark in my life.

In my reading of the Gospels, Jesus’ life and teachings reveal

more love than vengeance, more compassion than judgment.

Animal sacrifice was an ancient understanding of a tribal god’s desires—

and connecting such symbolism to Jesus’ final self-sacrifice made sense to a people who

practiced such religious acts in first century Israel and Rome and Greece.

But Jesus’ execution by a governmental force

does not make sense to me

as a blood sacrifice to Jesus’ beloved Abba/Father.

And yet.

And yet my discomfort with this interpretation does not stop me from being a Christian. Hosanna!

It does not stop me from wondering at the meaning and mystery

of Communion and the rest of this Holy Week’s events.

And it doesn’t mean that my brothers and sisters who DO follow that idea are not Christian either—

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John told these stories differently—different even from Paul!

Different from Sarah and David and Mark and Hal and me.  

And so where does that lead us as we follow our donkey-riding savior?

“When [Jesus] entered Jerusalem the whole city was in turmoil, asking, ‘Who is this?’”

And we haven’t stopped asking…

Looking again at Maundy Thursday and now at Good Friday, too, and the ways that Christians have interpreted or found meaning in Jesus’ death, Joan Chittister offers this insight:

“For Jewish Christians in the early church…Jesus died…on the day of preparation for Passover. At the very hour, in fact, when the lambs for the feast were being chosen for slaughter. From this perspective, then, Jesus becomes the new lamb, the Passover Lamb—the Lamb of God” (136)—perhaps familiar Communion language to many of you.

You see, she continues, “For the Jew, Passover is a sign of salvation, of ‘God with us’ at a particular historical moment in the past [—the exodus from Egypt, when the lamb was slaughtered and its blood marked on the house’s door frame, so the final plague on Pharaoh would see the blood and pass over the Jewish homes]. For the Christian, Easter is a sign of ‘God with us’ in the past, but with us now also and at a time to come, as well.”

I appreciate Chittister’s noting that we remember this “God with us” every time we participate in our

Passover-turned-Communion-feast.

Does her interpretation give different meaning to this week’s events for you?

Or does it make it even more confusing?

“When [Jesus] entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, ‘Who is this?’”

      Matthew seems to focus on Jesus as “Messianic King,”

while Mark emphasizes the “Son of God.”

                              Luke is the only Gospel to use the word “Savior,”

and John draws on the mystery of “the Word made flesh.”

                                          Who is this?

First century Romans thought him a criminal and

Temple authorities thought him a heretic.

                                          Jews today say he was a Rabbi and

Muslims praise him as a prophet.

Who is this who enters our celebration today amidst palms waving and voices shouting?

What is he doing for the world in this Holy Week? And why does he matter to you?

I’d like to leave you with that question—a question for you to hold in “discussion”

with Matthew and Mark and Luke and John

and Sarah and David and Hal and Mark and me

and all of Christ’s living body, the Church.

This is one of the things I cherish about the United Church of Christ: I don’t get to stand up here and tell you what to believe—about Palm Sunday, or Maundy Thursday, or Good Friday or anything.

I can interpret the Bible, I can share tradition, I can offer my own passionate faith—

            but then it’s up to you.

Because you have to think and learn and wonder and experience and question for yourself!

Who is this, Jesus of Nazareth:

donkey-rider, Communion-sharer, betrayal-bearer, cross-sufferer? Who is he to you?

And why does he matter?

Because we are Christians—Hosanna!—and we follow Christ even this week even to the Passover supper, even to his execution. May this Holy Week be blessed with meaning for you. Amen.

Joan Chittister, The Liturgical Year: The Spiraling Adventure of the Spiritual Life (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2009).