Every morning I read the paper, and I still call it the paper even though I read it on a tablet. The pictures look a lot better in high resolution than they used to in smudgy print, as do the fonts — sharp and clear against a flawless white background — but I miss the touch of rough newsprint and the smell of ink on paper. That smell, blended with the fragrance of coffee, is lodged in my memory as an essential, sensory part of a good morning.
Every morning I read the paper, and the other day I slowly scrolled down the home page, all the way to the daily mini crossword puzzle, without tapping any of the headlines. I kept scrolling because there was really just one story: the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on life on the planet. Politics, the economy, science, the arts, education, sports, technology, parenting and even cooking tips — every article told this one story from every angle of human experience. There was a brief moment when I said to myself, It’s quite remarkable how this global crisis has brought us together — but the moment didn’t even last long enough for me to finish my thought.
I don’t want to deny that this public health crisis has brought us together in well-coordinated responses, from the local to the international level, and that there are countless stories of human kindness and generosity and sacrifice to be told, but the crisis has also shone a bright light on our divisions, nationally and globally, especially between rich and poor.
When I feel trapped in my home, I don’t want to forget what a privilege it is to have a home to feel trapped in. I don’t want to forget that there are hundreds of thousands of people in refugee camps in Syria and on the streets of Los Angeles, Mumbai and elsewhere for whom social distancing is simply not an option. I don’t want to forget that there are millions around the world and in this country who don’t have access to good medical care. This public health crisis can help us see that the healing we need goes deeper than finding a vaccine, urgent and critical as that is. The healing we need is a deep mending of the fabric of community.
Today we celebrate Palm Sunday. Today we greet the Lord Jesus at the gates to welcome him into the city, singing with joyful exuberance, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” We sing, because we do want him to rule and to make all things right and whole and beautiful.
When I read today’s passage from Matthew earlier this week, the first detail that caught my attention was the “very large crowd” gathered to greet the humble king, and how very different loud Hosannas sound when sung and shouted by a crowd — and how much I miss being with you all. Perhaps it’s inevitable that I read everything with a Covid lens. But the spiritual challenge of this moment is of course to look at our situation through a Christ lens and to let the light of Christ’s reign illumine our seeing, our thinking and doing.
So let us notice how poor he is: he doesn’t even own a donkey — but a borrowed one will do for this inaugural parade. And let us notice that the donkey is simply given to the One who needs it, and what a kindness that is. Matthew quotes from the prophet Zechariah to describe the scene, “Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” But let us notice that Matthew doesn’t quote the whole verse; that he drops the big words “triumphant and victorious” so all that remains is, “Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey.” In the sermon on the mount, the same word, here translated “humble,” is translated “meek”: Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. The meek, in the company of their humble king, will inherit the earth. And inheriting the earth is not at all the same as accomplishing world domination, because the humble king doesn’t rule with brutal force like builders of empires do. Nothing about him is coercive. We call this week ‘holy’ because we enter the mystery of God’s power as it is revealed in the life and death of Jesus.
“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,” the Apostle Paul urges the church in his letter to the Philippians. “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit … Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” Such words were rare and foreign in a city like Philippi. The citizens of Philippi cherished their connections to the imperial household and their privileges as friends of Caesar. Roman culture valued force, competition, and honor-seeking. Humility was not considered a virtue. Roman society, much like ours, was built on the pursuit of status. You move up, and you socialize with the people who can help you move up even higher. You look around only to check out the competition with a quick glance over your shoulder. You press on, your eyes on the next rung of the ladder, leaving behind those who cannot keep up.
Jesus moves in the opposite direction — love divine, all loves excelling, joy of heaven to earth come down. Jesus emptied himself, Paul tells us. He humbled himself. He “made himself of no reputation,” as the King James Bible rendered the words so beautifully. He climbed down the ladder, nothing but the will of God on his mind, loving us all with a passion and a vulnerability for which we have no words. We call this week ‘holy’ because the final days of Jesus’ life on earth reveal to us the heart of reality, and it’s not relentless competition in the pursuit of status, but relentless love in the pursuit of true community. Jesus climbed down, all the way down, for love’s sake.
“Were you there when they crucified my Lord,” we sometimes sing, as though we could say, “They did it. It was the Romans, it was the Jews, it was the fickle crowd — it wasn’t me.” But the cross is our doing. This is what we do to each other in the name of religion or in the name of justice or convenience.
The cross is the culmination of our desire to be like God, the culmination of our rebellion against life as creatures made in the image of God. But this dark Friday truth has a glorious, hopeful side: God raised Jesus from the dead and gave him the name above every name. And because God raised Jesus from the dead, we can look to the cross and see more than the culmination of our rebellion against the life God has intended. We see love that goes all the way for the life of the world, for the sake of communion with us.
The palm branches we have cut from paper and colored with crayons or markers, and the green branches we are waving in our imagination today or holding in our hands, proclaim our allegiance to this humble king and his vision for the world: relationships rooted not in selfish ambition, but in care and concern for each other, at every level of neighborhood in our life, from the folks next door to the generations of our grandchildren and their grandchildren.
We enter this holy week under circumstances few of us could even imagine a couple of months ago. But we enter it nonetheless, praying that the Risen Christ will continue to convert our hearts and minds, so that all of us may grow in faith and hope, and participate in mending the fabric of community, in his name and by his love.
Please know that we will not gather online on Good Friday, but we will share an audio recording of a service of prayers and songs, readings and music, and you are invited to participate in it without the ever-present screen.