Palm Sunday Sermon: Marching Forward

“Marching Forward”

Sermon for MCC New Haven

March 24, 2013

Rev. Brian Hutchison, M.Div.

Texts:

Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29

Luke 19:28-40

         Two weeks ago, I stood on Chapel Street here in New Haven and watched the St. Patrick’s Day Parade go by. It is the only non-gay parade I have ever been to. Let’s just say, if we were to play “word association” and you said “parade,” I would say “gay!” I turned to one of my friends and said, “It’s not a parade without dykes on bikes!” Not a minute later, a bunch of butch policewomen rode by on motorcycles. My wish came true after all. And let’s not forget the men wearing skirts… well they call them “kilts” but by today’s binary gender standards, they are very out of place anywhere but the parade.

         The event we heard about today from the Gospel of Luke was just that: a parade. Today’s LGBT pride parades are often criticized for being overly sexual or perpetuating stereotypes. Even I have said at times that we should drop the colorful beads and streamers and pick up picket signs until we have full equality. But there must be a balance to life, a “Middle Way” as the Buddha would say. The middle way is a queer mix of celebration and protest. In the LGBT community, we have both separately. We protest for our rights and we celebrate the diversity of our community through parades. We walk down the center of our towns and cities with our queer siblings, not to “rub it in people’s faces” or to “recruit” as some accuse us of, but rather to remind the world that we are still here, that we matter, that we contribute greatly to the betterment of society, and we deserve equal rights. That’s it- no more, no less.

         Jesus’ brief ride into Jerusalem was a queer mix of protest and parade. He was parading in with a theatrical demonstration of humility. In mockery of the Roman Pontius Pilate who was possibly entering Jerusalem on a warhorse on the West end of the city, Jesus rode in on a borrowed donkey. While Ego rode in with armed soldiers and gold emblems lifted high in praise of the Empire, Love Incarnate rode in with shouts of “save us!” from the poor and the outcast who threw their tattered and torn garments beneath him.

         There is a terrible misconception about this scene in scripture. The misconception is that the word “hosanna” means “praise,” as the word “hallelujah” does. No, “hosanna” means “help, save!” These people were suffering terribly under the oppression of the Roman Empire. They were overtaxed, overworked, restricted in rights, and unfairly punished. The Romans kept the Jewish people in constant fear by leaving a row of crucified bodies just outside of the city walls. Jesus surely saw that carnage as he entered the city and could predict what was in store for him. But he proceeded anyway, because as Love Incarnate, his call was to nonviolent resistance of the oppressive power.

         Jesus didn’t go easily. It took a lot of chutzpa to enter the city in protest as he did. Surely the whole city knew of this event within minutes. How he avoided immediate arrest is unbelievable. But Luke tells us that he first wept over the future of Jerusalem, and then he turned over the moneychangers’ tables, and then taught within the city against the misdeeds of the religious leaders in their neglect of the marginalized.

Jesus even had a night with his family of choice to share one last Passover meal together, in which he queers the meal. To the common person, when Jesus said “This is my body; eat it” and “This is by blood, drink it,” they would have been disgusted by the thought. Cannibalism was not only against Jewish dietary restrictions, but Jesus was the one known to touch all kinds of “unclean” people, so they would be eating “unclean flesh.” Of course, when most Christians celebrate Holy Communion, we don’t think we are actually ingesting Jesus. It may sound that way, but I assure you that the Sacrament is simply an outer sign of inner grace, a ritual that shows our continual inner transformation in faith. Rest assured, Communion is a vegan meal.

But at that table, what we know as “The Last Supper,” Jesus acted scandalously in several ways. First, he spoke symbolically of ingesting him so that they might be like him and spread the Good News. Then he further broke tradition by taking the cup of Elijah from the table, which by tradition was left alone for Elijah’s return. But Jesus knew something new had to be done, so he proclaimed a New Covenant that is radically inclusive, inviting all who seek unity with God, not just those who had followed all the religious rules.

Finally, according to the Gospel of John, Jesus acted very scandalously when he got down on the ground as a slave or a woman in that time, and washed the disciples’ feet as a demonstration of what God’s love looks like in action. Jesus queered the hierarchy of power of his time in any way he could. In the words of the Apostle Paul, (Galatians 3:28), “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” In his final days, Jesus broke down societal boundaries by demonstrating with his male body what it meant to give up male privilege, what it meant to be humble by looking with pure love into the eyes of the sick, the poor, and those condemned as “sinful.” In contrast to society, Jesus affirmed their sacred worth as blessed children of God.

Many people begged Jesus to save the Jewish people by overthrowing the government. But Jesus knew that’s not why he was there. He was there to transform lives, to establish a counter-reign, the Reign of God or Kin-dom of Heaven. We call Jesus “the Christ,” “the Anointed One,” and “Messiah.” These are not titles of a far-off deity sitting on a cloud, waiting to end the world. No, these titles tell us of a subversive carpenter who embodied the call of the Divine to give up Ego completely and instead show his world the greatest possibilities of humanity. I am a follower of Jesus Christ, not for afterlife fire insurance, but because I see in Yeshua of Nazareth the depth of the human experience lived out fully. In a short three years, Jesus gave Life his all, and while he lost his own life, he gave Life to countless others. His words and Spirit still give us life 2000 years later.

We know of modern prophets that followed very similarly in the footsteps of Jesus. After decades of serving the poor and demonstrating nonviolent resistance against the British Indian Empire, Mohandas Gandhi was assassinated by shooting in 1948. The icon of the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S., Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. followed in the way of Jesus and of Gandhi in using nonviolent resistance against police who defended Jim Crow laws. After his own sort of march into Jerusalem (the March on Washington in 1963), King was also assassinated in 1968 in Memphis, TN. Also, openly gay City of San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk led protest after protest for gay rights in the 1970s. He too was assassinated in 1978. We also remember that in 1998, gay college student Matthew Shepherd was beaten and left to die on a wooden fence, a scene eerily similar to crucifixion. But Matthew is only one of thousands in the US and around the world who have been crucified by the bigots of our world. The truth is that Matthew’s murder became well known because he was the image of privilege in this country: a white male. So we in MCC choose to never forget the countless others who dared to be themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people of color whose lives were ended much too soon by hatred and violence.

At the end of the road to the Cross, at Calvary, we stand with the tearful women and men who loved Jesus as his family. And as if we were there, we look up and see the reflection of our own suffering there with him. We see the Christ covered in Kaposi’s Sarcoma sores, body wasted from battling AIDS. We see the Christa, bald from chemo, breasts removed. We see the Christ Child, dying of starvation. We see the Christ full of bullet wounds, or wrists slit, or victim of so-called “legitimate rape.” Why do we see these things at the Cross? Because in the words of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew (25:45), “Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for the least of these my sisters and brothers, you did not do for me.”

What the life and death of Jesus, Gandhi, King, Milk, and others teach us is that freedom is costly. Each of those great prophets knew that their own lives were at stake. But for the holy purpose of peace and justice to which they were called, they faced the Empires of their day and gave up their lives that others may live. May it never be misunderstood: Divine Love never desired any of them to suffer or die as they did. But since God has no body but ours, it is our life’s meaning and purpose to fulfill the Reign of Love in our time and place.

Tomorrow at 6pm, if you can join me, we will meet in Hartford at the State Capitol to keep vigil. We await the Supreme Court of the United States’ decision on California Proposition 8 and on the Defense of Marriage Act. These two laws stand in the way of same-gender marriage on a federal level. We stand in solidarity with people across the country to show our own nonviolent resistance to an unjust system that treats same-gender-loving people as second-class citizens. I believe that the Cosmic Christ stands with us, working in whatever ways possible to manifest justice and peace. If you can’t join tomorrow, say a prayer wherever you are that the will of Divine Love be done.

I pray each one of you have a blessed and prayerful Holy Week. Remember, it is not a time of intentional sadness, but it is a time to mourn what has been lost so that come Easter morning, we can fully embrace the power of resurrection. And so it is. Amen.