The Sermon Not Preached

Palm Sunday starts with a parade. Jesus triumphantly marches, or rides, into Jerusalem. It’s a ticker tape parade. Jesus is the star. The crowds have gathered for him. Young and old, all walks of life, come to see Jesus. As Jesus arrives at Jerusalem, the people stand by the side of the road and cheer and wave. Hosanna. They stand on tiptoe to see Jesus. They throw branches along his way. Hosanna. Blest is the coming of the king. It’s a vibrant image, this parade. And one with which we can identify. Is there anyone here who has not at least once stood on the sidewalk and watched a parade, experienced the excitement of bands or floats or the White Sox or the Flossmoor Little League teams passing by?

Palm Sunday. The crowds cheering as the parade passed. Then what? The Gospel reading for the liturgy of the palms says that Jesus went on into Jerusalem, to the temple. What did the people do? Go back to their knitting? Go home and grill up some hot dogs for lunch? After all, those Jewish dietary laws were intended for a different time and place, long before Jesus lived. Hard to take them seriously in first century Jerusalem. Maybe they went home and downloaded their photos from the parade. The kids were at such a cute age and they needed something for this year’s Passover cards.

All of that is the sermon I thought I was going to preach this morning. I was all revved up and ready to go. Christianity is not a spectator sport! Christianity is not something we observe occasionally, but disregard most of the time. That’s a sermon I give often in one form or another. It’s one I need to hear. It’s one you need to hear. Being a Christian isn’t about passively watching or attending some event from time to time, like worship on Sunday, and then just returning unaffected to our regular lives. Just standing on the sidewalk for the occasional holy day parade isn’t enough. Following Christ is about following. It’s about acting, doing, being. It’s about spreading the Gospel, about living each and every minute as the Body of Christ.

Palm Sunday isn’t about watching Christ pass by, taking a few photos and then getting back to our "real" lives. It’s about being Christ in our world today. So get off the sidewalk and do something. Surely in this holiest of weeks, we should redouble our efforts, recommit ourselves to doing the work of Christ. Don’t just be a bystander. It’s Holy Week. Do something.

That’s not a bad message to hear. And it’s a sermon worth preaching most Sundays. But not this one. Not on Palm Sunday. Not at the beginning of Holy Week. Today, that is the sermon not preached. That message goes on the back burner. Today, I’m not going to tell you to do more. Actually, I suggest we all do less this week. Hear again the collect with which we begin the Liturgy of the Palms. "Assist us mercifully with your help, O Lord God of our salvation, that we may enter with joy upon the contemplation of those mighty acts, whereby you have given us life and immortality." This week, of all weeks, is not about what we do, or even what we should do; it’s about what Jesus did. All of our focus and attention should be on Jesus, and on his acts, on what he did.

Jesus’ story is the only thing that matters this week. The rest of the year we can fret about our spiritual walk with Jesus. This week is all about Jesus’ literal walk to the cross. We are bystanders. We cannot do what he did this week. But we can, and should, watch. He did it for us. The acts of God this week give us life and immortality the collect says. We are only bystanders, but our life depends upon what Jesus did, what Jesus does. It isn’t about us, it’s about what Jesus does for us.

Our calling this week is to give our full attention, our full awareness, to watching, to hearing, to sensing, to experiencing what Jesus does and to contemplating what those mighty acts mean for us.

Think about that wonderful and rare experience when you really, truly "lose yourself" in a book or a movie or a concert or a play. It’s not that we actually move into being an active part of the story we may be reading or the action taking place onstage. We don’t take part in what’s happening. And yet we can lose ourselves in watching, hearing, attending to that sort of experience. The story, even though we are not principals in it… the story completely overwhelms us… completely overwhelms and transforms our lives. We are not the authors, the composers, or even the primary participants. We are just bystanders… but the story comes to us, enters into our lives, affecting and transforming us.

But only if we give it our attention. Even bystanders have to show up. To lose ourselves in Jesus’ story during Holy Week, we have to make that story, his story, the sole focus of our lives. The church reads the entire passion gospel today and on Good Friday so that we can hear the story. But we have to be here to hear it. And, like someone attending a parade, if we want to see Jesus, we must get a good view for ourselves. We must take responsibility in our lives for moving anything out of the way that blocks our ability to hear, to see, what Jesus does this week. At a minimum, we must make time for worship. And we must try, try with all our hearts, to put aside all of our life’s distractions. To be less busy with our own business this week. To do less ourselves, so that we may concentrate on what Jesus does. To put aside all of our anxieties and all of our ambitions, to silence without compromise all other demands upon our attention. Holy Week is not one more thing to add to the juggling act of multitasking. We have one task this week. To focus all of our senses, all of our attention on Jesus. To lose ourselves in Jesus’ story.

We are bystanders… bystanders by the side of the road as Jesus rides triumphantly into Jerusalem. We can only watch. But we must watch… watch as bystanders in the courtyard of Pilate… bystanders at the foot of the cross. We are just bystanders. It is not our story to live. But it is a story, Jesus’ story, that if we lose ourselves in it, will give us life.  Amen.