Last Week's Sermon: 

Palm Sunday
The Rev Andria Skornik
Sermon April 5, 2020

God in Our Present

Today is Palm Sunday! A day that Christians have been celebrating for hundreds of years. Where we process with palms and think about that day when people lined the streets of Jerusalem to welcome Jesus’ to their city.  

Of course, in our celebration today, there’s no denying that it’s a little different than most Palm Sundays. We don’t get to march around the block singing “All Glory Laud and Honor,” with everyone thrown off singing a different part. The pews aren’t full of people awkwardly juggling palms and a hymnal. But I’ve found that I’ve still really been looking forward to today. 

As I’ve been reading the gospel story in preparation, I can’t help but share in their excitement that God is coming our way. I am still so moved when I think about those first people who gathered branches, cloaks, and whatever they could find to celebrate. In fact, in some ways it resonates even more this year, because of how, in our efforts to stay home, we’ve ending up looking for whatever we have on hand for meals, activities, celebrations. I know I was thrilled to find the Easter eggs and baskets from last year. 

And yet, even as I feel drawn to join in the celebration of those first worshippers, another part of me wonders if that’s okay. It’s actually a tension I’ve been wrestling with a lot lately. Wondering if it’s okay to celebrate with everything that’s going on around us? 

In conversations I’ve had these last few weeks, I get the sense that many of us are struggling with this kind of thing. We’re overwhelmed by things we can’t change, wishing we could go help those places going through the worst. We may feel guilt when we experience happiness, knowing what others are going through. We may also be having a hard time not getting ahead of ourselves, dwelling on what’s next, or trying to figure out, what’s the next shoe to drop.
I know one of the times I experience this most when someone asks “how I’m doing.” It’s a good question and one of the ways we take care of each other. But it’s also like, what’s the right response right now? Things might be okay in that moment in my own little world, but I’m still aware of what’s going on around. And that’s still scary and sad. 

And then there’s a way in which all of it’ compounded as we enter into Holy Week and Easter. It’s like can we celebrate the full range of this sacred time -- the lows and the highs -- when it feels like we’re living in a Good Friday moment? 

And perhaps this is where it helps to look back, once again, at that very first Palm Sunday. Because really, it’s not so different. If we think about the time Jesus lived in, and those things facing the people who gathered on Palm Sunday, life for them was very hard. 

Some of the realities many of us are just now experiencing were just part of life for them. People suffered and died too soon from illnesses they didn’t have cures for. There was rampant poverty. Which meant that many of the people constantly wondered where their next meal would come from. There was extreme inequality, which meant that the resources were there, but not everyone had access to them. And of course there was the unpredictability of what or whom the Empire could take away at any moment.

And for Jesus, knowing he went through the full range of human emotions there must’ve been times that all of that was overwhelming. There was more work than he could possibly do. More people suffering than he could possibly get to. For someone so compassionate it must’ve been heartbreaking. And, for a good part of the time he was ministering, he knew he was going to die. In fact, as he rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, with all of the festivity and elation, he did it knowing what he was on the other side.

Jesus was living in a wild, intense, hard mix of things. Many of the things we’re struggling with. And what did he do? He handled it by being present. He gave himself fully to the moment he was in; and the people he was with. He spent time with those who were sick. He cried with those who were weeping. He stopped everything to take time for the children who interrupted his teachings. Even though there was so much work to do, he didn’t try to tackle all of the problems or all at once. He was highly aware of and responsive to the suffering, but he didn’t dwell on it at all times. And even though things around him were bad, and he knew they would only get worse, he still took time to celebrate and he still made a space for joy.

He feasted often. Enough to get him the reputation of being a drunkard and a glutton. He understood the value of lavish hospitality, especially in tough times. Like when he praised the woman’s gift of expensive perfume poured on his feet. He welcomed the crowd’s ecstatic gestures on Palm Sunday. And he took time for that one last extravagant meal with his friends on the night he was taken away. Jesus was present to suffering, and pain, and hardship, and injustice, but also to joy and love and hope. 

In the things we and our world are going through, Jesus gives us an inspired pattern of how to go through this life with the many things that come our way by being present. We too can be present to the suffering around us. We can pray. Cry. Do what we can to help. See that the pain we feel for others is one of the ways we experience God. As Richard Rohr says, God is experienced most often in love and suffering, which means we seek God in both of these things, not one or the other. 

And we can see also that we can immerse ourselves just as fully in the moments of love and joy and hope. We can celebrate where we can. Laugh when we can. Be at peace when we can. We can give ourselves to each present moment, whatever it is calling for. We can take care not to get too far ahead of ourselves on what might happen at the risk of missing what is happening right before us. 

I saw a great example of this this last week. It was a video clip of a hospital in Italy, and it was right at the peak when they had the most illness and deaths. In the video, there were doctors and nurses who lined the halls as a patient was being wheeled down the hallway. But it wasn’t one of the grim images we’ve come to expect. The patient was actually waving and smiling, and the doctors and nurses were all clapping and cheering. Because this was someone who recovered and was going home. I was so impressed to learn they took time to do this with every recovery. A great reminder of why it’s so important to be present to the joy in the midst of the sorrow. And I’m sure those little celebrations were part of what kept them going. 

On this Palm Sunday, we are invited to follow Jesus and practice being present. Wherever we are today and this week... we can give ourselves to the people and things that are before us. Whatever the moment is calling to. Our tears. Our makeshift celebrations. The simple beauties that surround us. And find that God is there in it all.