"But the Lord Helped Me"

Palm Sunday, the Sixth Sunday in Lent, is a cry for help.

In churches around the world, the words of Psalm 118 will be heard in worship services this week. One word in particular will predominate - "Hosanna." It comes from Psalm 118:25, a word that comes to the English language through a few other languages from its likely place of origin, two Hebrew words that in combination comprise a powerful request of the Lord: "Please, save us now!"

For expediency's sake, many worship services will abbreviate the Psalm, including exclusively the verses prescribed in the lectionary, verses 1-2 and 19-29. When we do so, we skip over some very important ideas, verses that actually inform the subsequent cry for salvation, verses like 10-14:

All nations surrounded me;

    in the name of the Lord I cut them off!

They surrounded me, surrounded me on every side;

    in the name of the Lord I cut them off!

They surrounded me like bees;

    they blazed like a fire of thorns;

    in the name of the Lord I cut them off!

I was pushed hard, so that I was falling,

    but the Lord helped me.

The Lord is my strength and my might;

    he has become my salvation.

Listen to the pain the poem describes. The Psalmist has felt such intense, relentless trauma, like bees buzzing in an angry swarm. They describe their experience not just as trying to walk through a patch of thorn bushes, but a patch of thorn bushes that are also on fire! They have been pushed hard, pushed to the point of falling. 

And at the same time, listen to the strength, the resolve, the power of the poem here. "I cut them off! ... I cut them off! ... I cut them off!" A repeated refrain, a statement that celebrates an act of overcoming, made with a slashing gesture through clenched teeth.

And notice, it is not the Psalmist whose power was at work here. No, it was the Lord's. God is the one doing the saving, then, now, and always. The adversity was cut off "in the name of the Lord." The Psalmist does not celebrate their own strength, but rather that "the Lord is my strength." 

I am not strong, says the poet, but God is. And God's strength is sufficient to get through what needs getting through. Even if it is a forest full of burning thorn bushes. 

And of course eventually, Psalm 118 gets us to the "Hosanna" and the "Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord" and the "Bind the festal procession with branches" stuff. And it is so good to celebrate this sacred day - the ushers handing out leaves purchased from a worship supply store, you self-consciously waving the leaves above your head during the opening song while the kids self-consciously parade around the room, then not quite knowing what to do with it for the rest of the service, (or if you are a kid smacking your sibling with it when your grown-up isn't looking), picking it up again for the closing hymn and waving it again but a bit less energetically, taking it home with you and putting it on the kitchen counter until it gets dry and brittle and then throwing it away. You know, the Palm Sunday liturgy. It's all good.

But maybe this year, when you receive that store-bought palm, maybe you can recall a time when life felt like being surrounded by a swarm of angry, buzzing bees. Maybe the slender points of the leaflets will call to mind a season when your life required you to walk through a burning hedge of thorn bushes. Maybe for you this year that "Hosanna" can mean something deep, something you feel at the very core of your being. 

Maybe this year Palm Sunday will remind you that when you need help (and yes you do need help - all of us do), God will help you. 

I am not strong, but God is. "With the Lord on my side I do not fear. What can mortals do to me?" (v. 6) And so now I give thanks, for the Lord is good. God's steadfast love endures forever.

Your Own Personal Jesus?

The theology behind almost every one of our ecclesial disputes is Christological. Simply put, church conflicts cannot be resolved when we make Jesus into an abstract idea, rather than a living, breathing, incarnate reality.

It is my belief that almost every disagreement within the church arises because each of us has created a particular Jesus, one who sees the world much like we do, and in doing so our “own personal Jesus” has become an idea, rather than the embodied presence of God. We love our idea of Jesus, especially because that idea always corresponds to our own way of thinking in the first place.

Why is this a problem? Well, here are a few thoughts:

There is no room for an abstract idea of Jesus to challenge your thinking. The real flesh and blood Jesus challenges human ideas all the time.

There is no way for an abstract idea of Jesus to empathize with suffering. The real flesh and blood Jesus suffers alongside people, meeting pain head-on.

It is not possible for an abstract idea of Jesus to relate to diverse human experiences. The real flesh and blood Jesus can talk with fishermen, tax collectors, lepers, disciples, prostitutes, centurions, children, grown-ups, the rich, the poor, the Jews, the Samaritans … and on and on.

In other words, when we reduce Jesus to an abstract idea, we lose the essence of who he is. When we impoverish our Christology to the point of abstraction, we make Jesus into no more than a weapon to wield against those with whom we disagree. And that’s just not okay.

The dispute du jour in the United Methodist Church is whether or not same-sex couples should be allowed to be married and whether or not gay people should be allowed to be ordained. (Yes, for you non-UMC people, we are still debating these questions - *sigh* - What can I say? Navel-gazing amuses us.)

The denomination is polarized over the questions, with one pole saying “You just can’t” and one pole saying “You have to,” and I can’t help but think that the theological gap between their positions is and impoverished Christology. Each has created a version of Jesus that fits their own viewpoint, and appeals to that abstract idea of Jesus in their discussions on the issues.

So each pole cites Scripture, each pole emphasizes the mission of the church, each pole laments becoming a “dead sect” instead of a vital, vibrant church. People from each pole, in other words, have created faith-based frameworks that use very similar language from which to make their case. Each pole has created a Jesus who sees things like they do, and appeal to him as their source of authority.

And now each pole is unable to vary from their positions, lest they be considered unfaithful. There is no compromise for those on the poles, because to do so would be to admit that they might be wrong, which would mean that the Jesus they created might be wrong, which of course we could never say – Jesus can’t be “wrong,” can he?

In the meantime, there are a lot of people in the center of the dispute du jour, who would say “You can but you don’t have to” about marriage and ordination of people who are gay.

In this large “center” of the church there are people who are more ready for the real live Jesus to challenge their perspective and to change their minds. There are people who have experienced how the real live Jesus suffers alongside people instead of callously dismissing them. There are people who are open to how the real live Jesus might relate to people differently in different situations, even situations that are very different from their own.

I honestly do not know what exactly is going to happen over the next year or so in the United Methodist Church. Will the majority of us in the “You can but you don’t have to” center of the denomination be able to fashion a workable compromise? If we do, will the poles then split off and become their own thing? And then if they do that, will the hard work of the compromise prove to be a waste of resources and energy, if they were just going to split off anyway? There is so much speculation and guessing going on in the denomination right now, but the truth is that nobody knows anything for sure.

What I do know for sure is that Jesus is Jesus, and the heart of this dispute (and many others) is our inability or our unwillingness to allow him to be so. Rather, we insist on creating a personal Lord and Savior who sees the world exactly like we do, and then we use that version of Jesus to attack one another.

We’re coming up to Palm Sunday, when we remember how a whole crowd of people created their own personal Jesus, a Jesus who was going to conquer the Romans and drive them out of Israel, a Jesus who saw the world very much as they did. As they marched into Jerusalem with this abstract idea of Jesus, they shouted his praises and waved victorious branches in the air.

But then, Jesus was Jesus. Jesus refused to be an abstract idea. Jesus had no intention of conforming to human expectations. And even though he told them several times that it was going to happen, his followers were nevertheless stunned when he was killed.

This season, what might happen if all of us followers of Jesus who think we know him so well would empty out our Jesus bottles, so to speak, and allow him to do what he does? What might happen if we surrendered our preconceived notions of Jesus, started with a clean slate, and just let Jesus be Jesus?

Hidden From Your Eyes

This is a picture of a pew in St. George’s Coptic Church in Tanta, Egypt.

I do not want to look at it. I cannot stop looking at it.

I’d rather it was hidden from our eyes.

There is blood on this pew because a Daesh terrorist detonated a bomb in this sanctuary during worship, killing 27 people and wounding 78 more. (A few hours later another Daesh terrorist detonated another bomb at St. Mark’s Cathedral in Alexandria, Egypt, killing 17 more people and wounding another 48.)

It was Palm Sunday.

It was the day on which the Bible says Jesus said these words: “As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, ‘If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.’”

I wish I could stop looking at this picture. There is a smear on the back of the pew, apparently made by someone’s fingers in the drips of blood running down. Had those fingers been moments earlier waving a palm branch?

Hosanna, indeed.

We waved palm branches on Sunday, too. Young and old alike sang familiar songs from pews not that much different from the ones in this picture. As we did, our kids paraded around those pews a few times, holding their branches over their heads, smiling at the grown-ups smiling back at them, caught up in the joyful energy of the moment.

And then, you know, we went home and ate lunch.

I suppose I’ll never really understand what motivates violence like this, how such hatred and fear of the other takes root in the human heart, corrupting us, eroding us, minimizing us.

A sensible explanation is hidden from my eyes. Hatred warps the human soul. Violence only ever causes more violence. Fear distorts truth, casting instead a shadow of grotesque and horrifying false reality.

It’s the Palm Sunday juxtaposition that won’t let me go this time. Save us! From halfway around the world, a picture of a bloody church pew. A phrase from Jesus Christ Superstar that says “To conquer death, you only have to die.” A so-called “triumphant” entry, deeply misunderstood then as well as today. A cheering crowd of people who know not what they do. Waving palms, breaking bread, driving nails.

What has changed?

We’re just stuck here. Stuck between Palm Sunday and the cross. Cheers and lament. In between “Hosanna” and “Crucify.” The next big thing is already old news. That which is in plain sight is simultaneously hidden from our eyes. Spiritual déjà vu.

If I didn’t know better, I would say that it feels like we need a resurrection.