Palm Sunday — Luke 19:29–40
El Sinai Lutheran Church, Rio Seco Neighborhood, El Alto, Bolivia
This sermon was originally delivered in Spanish—my first sermon in the language! If you want to read it in the original language, check out the language buttons at the top of the page.
If they had known what kind of messiah Jesus is…
I have been in La Paz now for two months, and I’m really falling in love with it. One of my favorite things to do here, silly as it might sound, is ride the teleférico, the mass-transit gondola. From the heights, even the worst parts of the city appear beautiful. And the view of the mountains, the green and grey and brown hills in the foreground, and the splendor of the snow caps in the background… I don’t think I will ever get used to it.
Once in a while, though, I notice something that I do not like. For example, when you ride the orange line, right around station Rosinha Pampa, you pass a large church with the words, “The House of God” painted on the top in Spanish. It’s a bold claim, that God’s house is here, but it’s a fair one. My real problem with this building is only one word: “The.” I suppose it would look silly if it said, “A House of God.” But there is an exclusivity in the word “The” that makes me very uncomfortable. “This is the house of God,” it seems to say. “And every other church is, well, not.”
Ancient Israel thought exactly that, though they had better reason to think so. The temple of God was in Jerusalem. It was a sort of “vacation home” for him. God’s real house was in heaven, but there was this smaller version here in Jerusalem where God would go when he wanted to visit his Creation. Other cities, other nations, had their own temples, where their false gods supposedly lived. The real God only lived in this one.
Life in the Roman Empire was terrible. You were always afraid a soldier would come to your door, demanding something you didn’t have, for no reason at all. Poverty was everywhere. It was never certain when you would be able to feed your children their next meal. Or if you could even live to see another sunrise over the mountains.
But God promised to send a Messiah, someone to rescue the people, and in him, there was hope. He would come, and he would take back the throne of King David in Jerusalem, and he would drive away the Romans, and he would win back Israel’s wealth and health and strength.
How exciting it must have been, then, to see Jesus himself, riding into the city. This special, holy place, and now, God’s own messiah was here. God’s presence was stronger than ever, tangible, everyone could see and hear! Shout God’s praise, hosanna, loud enough to be heard up in heaven!
If they had known what kind of messiah Jesus is, they would have responded very differently.
The palm branches in the story are a small surprise. In fact, we only hear about them in the Gospel of John. In Luke, which we read this year, people just use their robes and cloaks and spread them in front of Jesus. But I like the image of the palms even more.
In the week-long Jewish festival of Sukkot, palm leaves are woven together, with other branches and with lemons, to make small tents. During the celebration, the people live in these tents, or at least eat in them, sheltered from the hot sun. The holiday takes place in autumn, at the time of the very last harvest, like the festival at the *aymuray* or *llamayu,* (the Quechua and Aymara harvest times.)
Leviticus tells us that this is a reminder of when the Israelites wandered in the desert, without a permanent home, stopping in different places every night. A good reminder. But the story of the Exodus never tells us that the Israelites constructed little shelters of any kind. They probably wouldn’t have needed it, since there was little rain to shelter from in the desert. Instead, many scholars think that in Israel’s past, it was just easier to live out in the fields for the week, pausing briefly to eat or sleep, while the harvest was gathered in. This quickly became a grand festival, with singing and dancing in the fields as the grain and fruits were brought in, the whole community taking part.
That is to say, one of the three great festivals of Israel’s religion really wasn’t religious at all. It was just that time in the agricultural year. God did not create the festival of Sukkoth, the great ingathering, the holiday of shelters. It was already there, maybe even before the loving relationship between God and Abraham first began. Perhaps that’s uncomfortable to hear. Maybe it feels like part of our religion is made-up. Like the waving palm branches of this Sunday don’t really mean anything.
But of course, that is not true. Not at all. In fact, I think the truth is even more exciting. The celebration was perfectly ordinary, normal, usual, nothing special about it except for the agricultural cycle. It was just that time of year. And God took that very human holiday and used it to help everyone remember how God had brought them out of Egypt, had freed them from slavery. God took the ordinary and made it holy.
When Jesus rode into Jerusalem, he did not ride on a great, white horse with marching bands and a military parade. He sat on a donkey, surrounded by ordinary people, people who struggled just to live to the next day. He did not ride in on a red carpet wearing royal robes. He entered the city on leaves of trees that mingled in the dust. And he did not enter Jerusalem, the holy city with the holy temple where holy God showed his holy face. He came in to break down all the barriers, to make every city holy, to proclaim that God was with us, Emmanuel, in every corner of the universe.
If they had known what kind of messiah Jesus is, they would have killed him.
Today, the dictionary will tell you that *huaca* in Quechua and *munakuskgay* in Aymara mean *idol* in Spanish. But five hundred years ago, those words just meant “holy thing,” or better, “holy place.” Old Irish Christianity has the same concept, a “thin place,” they call it, a place where heaven and earth seem to touch each other, where it is easier to remember that holiness impregnates this place as well, and every place. We need that reminder. It is easy to think that God is here, but *only* here, only in Rio Seco or in the Church or among Lutherans or with our type of person, but that’s a lie. It is too, too easy to get attached to our sin, to feel bad about ourselves, to confess and confess (a good thing) but never truly believe we are forgiven. It is easier still to forget God altogether in our daily lives, to feel like we leave God here in the Church on Sunday mornings, and the rest of our lives are just ordinary.
But I ride the Orange teleférico, and pass that building, and read those words, and I am reminded: This IS the House of God. Inside that Church and every other, yes. And the house of God is also the greens and browns of the hills, and the snowy mountains, a holy, *munakuskgay,* thin place, if ever there was one. And God’s house is the cabin of the teleférico and the faces of the other riders, and the dogs that chase taxis, and the beautiful kindness of God’s people, and the ancient women selling lemons on the streets, and the joy and the sorrow, the celebration and the despair, the birth and the growth and the pain and the death of human life. Everything is the house of God. Everything is sacred.
Not because suffering and pain are good. Of course they are not, never. Not even because joy and delight are good, even though the often are.
But because when our Holy God became one of us, he made us holy.
And when God walked with us, equally one of us, a human being perfectly holy, he shared his holiness with humanity.
And when the crowds cheered his way into Jerusalem, he made our celebrations holy.
And when his path finally led to the cross, when the second person of the Trinity, God himself, was beaten, and suffered, and cried out, and died— there was nothing any longer that could not keep us from being holy. Not even death.
If they had known what kind of messiah Jesus is, they would have killed him. And on the third day…
May the week ahead be a *munakuskgay,* a *huaca,* a thin place for you, so that you may see God’s holiness. Everywhere. In you. Amen.
13 Apr 2022 — 7:44 am
Very inspiring. Food for thought as well.