In the section of the country where we live, February and March are always cold and slushy months. So come April, nothing dampens my ardor for the coming of spring. I’m ready for it! Part of the reason I am ready for it is the fact that warm weather means the return of parades, and as the song says it, "I love a parade!" A community in which we lived some years back boasted the first Bicentennial parade in the nation, and well do I remember a family’s invitation to share that event with them from the bluff upon which their home sat. For over two hours we watched that multi-divisional parade. Howling fire trucks, snappy bands, balloons, popcorn, marches - they all were there. Then, too, I remember watching another parade - an invitational parade - that was sponsored by a Volunteer Fire Department. Lodged firmly in my mind is the sight of firemen engaged in inter-truck water fights and even in water fights with residents who had carted their pails or hoses to the roadside. Only a few spoilsports who have an aversion to water took exception to that frolicsome afternoon!
Palm Sunday recalls Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, and that procession into Jerusalem was something of a parade. To ape the creative mind of the ad man who, in attempting to show both the tradition out of which Seven-Up has come and yet its own uniqueness, has named Seven-Up "The Un-Cola," we could easily call the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem "The Un-Parade." To be sure it was a parade, but it was a parade in contradistinction to the parades that make their way down the main streets of our cities and towns.
Consider first this. Our parades are usually planned. By contrast, this Palm Sunday event was spontaneous. One gains the impression that the further the parade went, the better it got. The event perchance tapped a collective and latent enthusiasm that just had to be expressed, lest those who held it in any longer burst under the tension. Remarked the Pharisees to Jesus about such unbridled enthusiasm, "Teacher, rebuke your disciples." But came the response, "I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out." (Luke 19:39-40)
Years ago I preached before a gathered people who were accustomed to spontaneously responding to the preacher. If they agreed with what you were saying, they responded audibly. Before experiencing this, I had always thought it would be rather disruptive. But after experiencing it, I found it to be rather uplifting. It had the effect of launching me into my next point. At the very least, it served to remind the preacher that not everyone had gone to sleep! Worship is not intended to be a three-ring circus, featuring people who gymnastically respond to what is occurring, but neither is it to take on the air of a cemetery. Or let me put it this way: perhaps we need more of the civic center in the sanctuary and more of the sanctuary in the civic center. If in the sanctuary something is said that ignites the fires of humor, what harm in laughing? If in the sanctuary one is suddenly seized with a sense of religious assurance, what harm in bellowing out the next hymn? If in the sanctuary one finds herself resonating with the Scriptures, what harm in reading the responsive reading with gusto instead of reading it as though it was intended to be a dirge?
Some of life’s happiest and most memorable occasions are inspired by spontaneity. I believe discipline to be a needful part of religious life, but those moments when I have felt the presence of God are when his praise has been spontaneously upon my lips. Wordsworth was making the same point when he wrote of poetry: "I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility."1
Maybe the most genuine expressions of faith are those that catch us by surprise and emerge before we can even plan for them. Isn’t this precisely what happened to Janus when he remarked to Jesus, "I believe; help thou my unbelief"? (Mark 9:24). When the Psalmist declares...
Praise the Lord!
Sing to the Lord a new song,
His praise in the assembly of the faithful! (Psalm 149:1)
...his words are to be taken not as the measured cadences of one deep in religious thought, but as the heartfelt utterances of one who has sensed God’s deliverance.
Serendipity is defined as "the gift of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for," and what "the un-parade" that we remember on Palm Sunday can revive within us is the assurance that we will have spontaneous moments of eternal revelation, or, if you will, moments of serendipitous faith. Sam Keen discovered in his own life something more of us need to be tuned in to. Wrote Keen:
I have always been more interested in the graceful dimensions of the ordinary than in those supposedly crucial events which Christian orthodoxy has focused upon. I find more grace in conversation than in The Word, more in my familial history than in the history of Israel, more in the cool blue of the sea and warmth of flesh than in worship. When I cease searching and striving, I am always surprised to discover the density and meaningfulness, almost radiance, that ordinary things and actions have. When the quest for salvation is laid aside, a cup of tea with my wife as the sun goes down is as graceful as anything I can imagine. Grace surprises me in modest and hidden places.2
Second, this "un-parade" is different inasmuch as our parades are marked by a show of strength, but this one by a show of weakness. Our parades are usually filled with military units and military hardware. Bayonets glisten in the air and motorized military units capture the attention of the little ones for whom war is still a game and not a horror show. By contrast, Jesus comes into Jerusalem on the backside of a beast of burden, hardly something that would bid one take a second look.
As a rule, we are uncomfortable with weakness, and we deal with it on two levels. First, we like to hide it. We don’t like people to know about our unsepts, our downfalls nor our failures. Second, we like to fight it. I can speak personally to this point. Sometime ago I had three cords of wood delivered to our home and I set out to move them from our front yard to our backyard. About two cords into the load, my lower back began to bother me. Yet foolishly, the more it bothered me, the harder I pushed it, and of course this served only to worsen my plight. In time, the sciatic nerve in my right leg issued a protest, and for a long time I felt the results of its resounding report!
For those of us who are contemptuous of weakness, though, there are some words of hope and correction. They come from St. Paul who indicates that they came to him from God. These are the words he heard: "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." (2 Corinthians 12:9) I like the way the Good News Bible renders that. "My grace is all you need, for my power is strongest when you are weak." That all boils down to the fact that often our weakness can well serve us. It is not worthy of the abuse we like to heap upon it. Our weakness can teach us about the fruits of patience. Our weakness can sensitize us to the pain of other people. Our weakness can make God more visible to us.
Moreover, weakness can teach us the strength in passivity and the folly in aggressiveness. On that day of the original triumphal entry, there was more strength in the weakness of Jesus than strength in the strength of the Romans and Sadducees and Pharisees. I am not advocating in time of attack that we roll over and play dead, but I am saying that in times of counterattack the weapons we use do not always better the situation. When we begin to romanticize war and vengeance (as sweet as that sometimes seems), we can do worse than recall Ernest Hemingway’s comments upon returning from war:
I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory, and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it.3
The television series "Eight Is Enough" dealt regularly with creative themes, and in one segment addressed the subject of violence. Little Nicholas came home one afternoon with his head buried, quite literally, in a book. When finally convinced to put down the book, it was discovered that he had a bruised cheek and a bloody nose. He had been in a fight, but a fight with an interesting twist. He had been attacked by a girl in one of his classes. Being the gentleman, he didn’t swing back. But he didn’t know what to do with her. Then one day, at the coaching of one of his brothers who had been in a similar bind years before, he planned his counterattack. The plan called for him to jump out from behind some bushes and startle the girl. This he does, but the girl clenches her fist and is ready to "pop" him once more. He tells her to wait one moment, disappears behind the bushes, and appears once more with a gift for her. He has brought her roses! His gift mellows and melts her (all she wanted was his attention in the first place!) and their relationship is placed on a better footing.
There is a power in weakness that is often found to be stronger than the strength in strength.
Third, our parades are not found to be terribly purposeful; this "un-parade" was dripping with purpose. Jesus knew where he was going; he knew how he wanted to get there; and he knew what he had to face. He was a man on a mission with a sense of urgency. And more of us need a sense of purpose. Louis Kronenberger has described our age as one of "all signpost and no destination," and looking around it is frightfully easy to substantiate that claim.
When I was young my mother used to tell me about gypsies and all I have ever known about gypsies is what she told me, so my knowledge about them is hardly broadly based. She left me with the impression, though, that gypsies were largely wanderers - people who moved from place to place and had little sense of rootage and direction. While I’ve not seen any gypsies traveling through our town lately, I am wondering if there is still a preponderance of spiritual or emotional gypsies among us. I am thinking about students, for example, who obtain a degree but thereafter wander about and fail to take a job. I am thinking about romantic gypsies, for example, who wander from one marriage or affair to another marriage or affair, and who never seem to be willing to go through the painstaking and yet exceedingly rewarding process of being truly married through the seasons of life to another individual.
A sense of purpose has a way of pulling us along, making it possible for us to separate what is peripheral and what is central. A sense of purpose enables us to order our days and so use them that come nine o’clock in the evening we can have a clear sense of having contributed to what we feel is important.
It is reported that Abraham Lincoln once attended a camp meeting led by a famous evangelist. During the services the evangelist said to his listeners: "All who want to go to heaven stand up." When Lincoln failed to stand up, the evangelist directed a question at him: "Do you want to go to hell, Mr. Lincoln?" The young Lincoln replied, "I want to go to Congress." He knew what he wanted, and it’s important that you and I know that too.
Fourth, parades that you and I go to are, if necessary, called off if inclement weather prevails, but this "un-parade" would not have been. There was a persistence in Jesus’ manner that is often sadly lacking in the manner of many today. Matthew relates this persistence on the part of Jesus in the sixteenth chapter of his Gospel: "From that time Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priest and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised." (Matthew 16:21)
If one is not persistent, then she is pliant or yielding or spineless or vacillating or wavery, and those characteristics do not lend themselves to accomplishment. Save one’s bills, I don’t know much else that comes to one minus the use of persistence. A well-groomed summer lawn is won only at the cost of perpetual vigilance. A bug-free environment is won only at the cost of a fly swatter in perpetual motion. A dust-free family room is won only at the cost of a regularly employed dust rag. And more seriously, a good marriage is won only at the cost of persistent attentiveness, a healthy family environment at the cost of constant effort, or a healthy parish at the expense of unremitting mindfulness.
The apparent contemporary philosophy couldn’t be more different. Many starting out in the business world want to begin at a financial lever that supersedes that attained by one well-seasoned. Many starting out in marriage want it to work in two months, or they will forget the whole matter. Many in the ministry hope to win the confidence of a congregation in the first six months. Many in the faith want to get their religious act altogether by yesterday when you and I both know that a religious orientation is honed until the day we die.
Jesus once told a parable about persistence, featuring a judge "who neither feared God nor regarded man" and a widow in his city "who kept coming to him." Her wish was this: "Vindicate me against my adversary." He kept putting her off, but she kept insisting, and in the end persistence won out. Said this insensitive jurist, "... I will vindicate her, or she will wear me out by her continual coming." (Luke 18:1-5)
Then finally, our parades end; this "un-parade" has not ended yet. It is still going on, and it is peopled by you and me who tread still in the footsteps of Jesus. There are still Jerusalems before us, and while today’s Jerusalems may be no more receptive to the gospel than was Jerusalem of old receptive to Jesus, that in no way lessens the fact that there is a message that must fall afresh upon the ears of today’s world.
Interestingly, what is true of the "un-parade" of Palm Sunday is also descriptive of Christian manner and mission. Persistently and unendingly, we parade still into the various Jerusalems of today, with hearts and minds open to the spontaneous activity of God, proclaiming God’s grace and God’s will and God’s power made perfect in our weakness.
1. William Wordsworth, quoted in Familiar Quotations by John Bartlett (Boston: Little Brown and Company, Boston, 1955), p. 406.
2. Keen, op. cit., pp. 123-24.
3. Ernest Hemingway, quoted in A Treasury of Sermon Illustrations, Charles L. Wallis, ed. (New York: Abingdon Press, 1950), p. 286.