Going where we do not wish to go
“Entry into the City” by John August Swanson, 1990.
Swanson, John August. Entry into the City, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56544 [retrieved April 3, 2023]. Original source: Estate of John August Swanson, https://www.johnaugustswanson.com/.
Sermon for Palm Sunday: The Sunday of the Passion (April 2, 2023).
View the scripture readings and the Collect of the Day: Palm Sunday: The Sunday of the Passion (Year A)
Preached at St. James’ Episcopal Church in Hyde Park, NY. A video of our whole 10 am service for Palm Sunday (April 2, 2023) is available here.
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A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting,
"Hosanna to the Son of David!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!” Matthew 21:8-9
Edited Transcript
May only truth be spoken here and only truth be heard. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit: One God, Mother of us all. Please be seated.
I imagine that Jesus was so lonely during that parade. I imagine that Jesus was perhaps the only person with all that crowd who really understood where he was going, and I imagine that must have been a very lonely place to be. While he was surrounded by people shouting and celebrating and saying to him, "Save us! Hosanna! Save us!" Which is something you would say to someone in whom you have great hope. But he knew what was going to unfold this week, as we do.
And I think of the prophet Isaiah who said, "I have set my face like flint." Because I imagine, amongst all that raucous shouting and cheering, there was one lonely person with a face like stone, headed where he knew he was called to go.
And we all actually know what this experience is like. All of us are called to go to places that we would rather not go. All of us know what it's like to take a deep breath, and go anyway. Right now I think of students and teachers who get into cars or busses and walk into school, they know that there is a risk. They go anyway. I think of folks who work in hospitals, who sit at the bedsides of the dying, and they know as they begin their shift that what they walk into might break their heart. And you go anyway. You set your face like flint.
We go to the bedsides of friends who are sick. We go to sit side by side with people who are grieving. Even when we feel there's nothing we can offer them, but we go where we know that we're called to go. We know, like Jesus, what it is to walk willingly into risk and into sorrow: into our call from God.
And I like to imagine that because we go where we do not wish to go, that that man Jesus, who was so lonely, somehow: in God's time, in this great mystical way that we are all one body united—because we go, he no longer goes alone.
Because all of us who go where God calls us are walking right next to Jesus into Jerusalem.
And it's because of Jesus' life, and his ministry to us, and his death and that mystery of his rising again, that we know, too: we are not alone. When we go with a face like stone into the place where we long not to go, Jesus is walking next to us. And we together are all walking together.
The church is an outward and visible sign of the truth that we keep each other company as we go where God calls us to go, and that God keeps us company in that journey too. When you go into discomfort, into grief, into that place, you know you're going, know that you are in the company of Jesus, of these saints, and of all the saints in heaven and and on earth. Amen.