Wholly, Holey, Holy Week: A Procession with Christ

The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph
A Wholly Holey Holy Week[1]: Procession with Christ
First Church of Guilford, Connecticut
Palm Sunday 2020
Luke 19:28-40

A wholly (w-h-o-l-l-y), holey (h-o-l-e-y), Holy (H-o-l-y) Week seems to be the reality we are encountering as we join together online for Palm Sunday worship on this day! Indeed, a wholly (entirely), holey (imperfect, swiss cheese, and gap-filled), Holy (sacred, intentional, hallowed) week is what we are starting with this Palm or Passion Sunday 2020. It is an entirely imperfect, gap-ridden, liminal week of personal, national, and human reflection this year.

While many of us feel very much alone and unmoored from tradition of palm fronds, hymns, and the notion of familiarity, this sort of unsettled version of a hole-filled Holy Week (like the one we are all experiencing for the first time) would be very familiar to Jesus of Nazareth.

The reading for today, from the nineteenth chapter of the Gospel of Luke, shows us that we are not alone in the strangeness, the awkwardness, the fear, the anticipation, the unknown, and solitude of this week. No, we are not alone, but something does feel different this year for me reading this familiar passage from Luke. The vantage point or narrative perspective (the lens through which we read this story) has shifted. Perhaps, I would argue, we are simply experiencing Holy Week more from the vantage point of Jesus this year.

The Palm Sunday tradition of the Church, as churches of every tradition and practice around the world, is to pass out palm fronds or olive branches. Before a word is said or a prayer is uttered—we distribute branches to signify the crowds welcoming Jesus to the city. Every year, we are set-up by this subtle gift of a palm frond to experience this story as the crowds—blissfully unaware of the difficulties to come.

Regardless of theological tradition—churches want us to imagine ourselves as the spectators in the narrative.  The fact that the Church marks this occasion by handing us palm fronds to hold in worship forces us into the Holy Week perspective of the fickle masses cheering, jeering, and mourning alongside the disciples and the crowd.  For everyone invited to the party, with the notable exception of Jesus, this week of Passover and reunion in Jerusalem is crowd-centric.

Jesus, socially distanced and self-isolated from the cheering crowds awkwardly atop a donkey, however, knows what is coming. For ten chapters, Jesus has been trying to tell his disciples what is going to happen in Jerusalem. Scholars of biblical literature have identified that Chapters 9-19 of Luke are all a collection of stories that move us geographically, step by step, closer to this moment at the gates of the City of Jerusalem. Jesus says in Luke Chapter 9:22-23 right before the Transfiguration, “’The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.’ Then he said to them all: ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.’”

For Jesus, Palm Sunday and Holy Week isn’t unexpected. He has been predicting and moving towards this moment for ten chapters.  If, this year, we put ourselves upon the donkey with Jesus—we see the story differently. We can sense the tension, the wonder, and the social-isolation/ loneliness of Christ on Palm Sunday—and we know that we too are not alone in these days—for Christ (God incarnate) accompanies us and we accompany each other on this solitary donkey-ride moment of life.

Every year we experience Palm Sunday (the day leading into Holy Week) from the bleachers. We are the observers, bystanders, audience unaware and unphased by the completely, messy, liminal (wholly, holey, Holy) time to come. With our palm branches in hand, we have been offered a ticket to the show…a place in the narrative as those who are blissfully unaware of the true meaning of the city gates for Christ.

This year, however, void of palm fronds, we are perhaps experiencing Palm Sunday from the solitude and bewilderment atop the donkey with Jesus. Separated from our tradition and rituals, removed from the familiar crowds, we find ourselves making this journey into Holy Week in a more intimate embrace with the Divine—close to God. Through dangerous gates we journey with the solidarity and the close companioning of Jesus.

Dr. Tom Long was a professor of preaching at Emory when I was a student there, and he wrote an amazing book on the Christian Funeral called, Accompany Them with Singing. In it he writes, “The key marks of a Christian funeral: simplicity, majesty….  For Christians, Jesus is not the founder of some new religion or separate sect, but rather a revelation of what it means to live a fully human life, a life that truly embodies the image of God.  To follow Jesus, then, is to walk the royal road intended for all humanity….  One of the earliest descriptions of the Christian movement was ‘People of the Way.’ For Christians, baptism is the starting point of this Way, a journey along a road Jesus himself traveled. Christians travel this road in faith, not knowing where it will lead and sometimes seeing only one step ahead. But they keep putting one foot in front of the other, traveling in faith to the end…”[2]

Friends, the word parade, as we often imagine the triumph of Palm Sunday, comes from an etymology meaning “a showing” or a “spectacle.” It means something to be observed and witnessed from the outside. It is neutral, it is passive, and it doesn’t call us to real lives of grace for each other or the solidarity with Jesus of his and our socially separated donkey-top ride.
 
On the other hand, what this story is really about is the word procession. A procession means “a moving forward” always and forever. It implies a deeper kind of togetherness than a crowd. It implies solidarity and spiritual unity. We are called to be people of the way, walking with Christ into, not cheap grace, but deeply lived lives of Christian experience and hope for each other. Christianity is a processional moving forward—one foot in front of the other in the company of Christ. Christianity isn’t meant to be a parade spectacle, but it is meant to be lived in motion… a moving forward together.
 

Let me close with a story. A couple of weeks ago, when it was still considered prudent, Gerhard and I set out to explore Guilford’s legendary Westwoods. We learned about the Connecticut color-coded trail system and set out into this shoreline wonderland of lakes, rock formations, and early signs of Spring. First our guidebook told us to follow the white circle trail North for two hours, then follow the orange circles back south.  We did this for four hours over cliffs, down ravines, past a Lost Lake, spying a tree miraculously growing through a split rock, and into deep woodlands. At times, we would feel alone and lost. We would have to backtrack constantly looking for a “white or orange dot” on a tree, a rock, or marker. Sometimes, the way felt incomplete. Sometimes, we would get lost. Sometimes, we had to backtrack or improvise to find our way. Sometimes, the path didn’t make sense to us for a long time until later, yet we learned to trust, we learned to see the signs “white dot… orange dot”, and we moved forward.

This year we are experiencing Palm Sunday more in the way Jesus experienced it, rather than the crowds bearing olive branches and palm fronds.  We ride this donkey separated, weary, wary, and (like Jesus…if we are being honest) knowing that unpleasant things are probably coming.  Yet we keep going, and we know we are not alone. Our companioning is greater and deeper than the anonymity of a crowd…the passiveness of a bystander, for we are sharing this donkey ride with Jesus the Christ, with God the Creator, with the Holy Spirit our sustainer, and with the spiritual presence of all Christians now living, yet to be born, and passed on.

White dot, orange dot… reassuring glimpses appear in unexpected places of promise, of a way forward, of the wisdom of others who have gone this way before us and God’s presence with us. What a blessed… Wholly, Holey, Holy Week indeed.

Life is short, and we don’t have much time to gladden the hearts of those who travel this donkey-ride with us, so be swift to love, make haste to be kind, and may the solidarity, the love and the companionship of Christ (greater than any stadium or cheering crowd) be with you now, always, and in all of your tomorrows in this life and the next. Amen.

[1] Upon a short google search, I found out I am not the first to find this alliteration fun and intriguing. This is often true with creative preaching. While the title of the sermon is similar, it has no connection to the book with a similar name written by an Evangelical writer. https://www.amazon.com/Holey-Wholly-Holy-Journey-Refinement/dp/1481909681

[2] Tomas G. Long, Accompany Them With Singing: The Christian Funeral (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), xii-xiii.