BCP - Palm Sunday C - 01 Apr 2007

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Brother Scott Wesley Borden, OHC
BCP - Palm Sunday C - 01 April 2007

Isaiah 45:21-25
Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Philippians 2:5-11
Luke (22:39-71)23:1-49(50-56)

I remember a time, not all that many years ago, but in a slightly different tradition, when Palm Sunday was just Palm Sunday. Come to church, remember Jesus’ triumphant ride into Jerusalem, get palms, go home. (I should add “annoy others by tickling them with said palms”.) We knew that crucifixion was coming, but not for a few days.

In our tradition, we come in rejoicing with palms, but triumph quickly yields to passion and we go out in the sorrow of crucifixion. We get palms with passion...

Putting these two very different things together - the triumphant road into Jerusalem and the road to the cross changes the way I think about these events. This palm-strewn road is really an express highway directly up the hill to Calvary - the road to life and death.

The association creates another association in my mind. There is a Buddhist teaching that says: “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” Here is Jesus... and here is the road to Jerusalem... and we’re getting ready to kill him. What might the Buddhist tradition have to say that may help us at this particular moment?

To be sure, Buddhism can not give us answers about our relationship with God or Jesus. Its just not part of that tradition. And if your looking for answers, Buddhism is a bad choice. But it’s a great place for questions...

Why should I kill the Buddha if I should meet him on the road? Great Buddhist masters could spend tremendous time sitting with this question. We could spend the rest of our lives, or at least the rest of the morning... If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.

But we’re hear to think about Jesus, and Palm Sunday, and the Passion. So I want to highlight just one thing: You can not meet the Buddha on the road. It just can’t happen. So if you meet someone or something that you think is the Buddha, its not: Its an illusion, or a delusion, or some type of lie. We’re not about killing the Buddha, we’re talking about getting rid of false knowledge. The Buddha that I think I've met stands between me and truth.

That’s beyond simplification and a total injustice to the Buddhist tradition, for which I apologize, but it’s enough for our purpose.

Back to Jesus and his triumphant march to death.

Are there ways that we think of Jesus, of God, that are illusions... delusions... falsehoods... dangerous lies? Are there people and things along the road that we have met and mistaken for God? ...objects of our own creation and affection that we want to think of as God?

Yes, absolutely. Some of them are pretty obvious.

Lets pick on Pat Robertson. He knows a god who, in order to punish our nation for our abundant moral failings, lifted the veil of his protection and allowed terrorists to fly planes into the World Trade Center. Sorry Pat, but I think your god has to go too.

Some people know a god who wants them to be rich... very, stinking rich. An appealing god no doubt, but a little hard to reconcile with Jesus who has deep concern for the poor, but pity and contempt for the rich. Prosperity god - your out of here.

Some people know a god who tilts the field in favor of their team. And as a nation we know, maybe only subliminally, but still we know a god who helps our army beat the other army. How much better would the world be without this particular god...

I knew an eleven-year-old who was afraid to pray. He explained to me that when his Grandmother was terminally ill he prayed for her to live - yet she had died. In his eleven-year-old mind he met a god who, for no particular reason, disliked him. So when he prayed for something, this god would do the opposite. How I long for some gentle way to kill this twisted god.

Its easy to see the false gods that other people need to be rid of. Its even a bit fun... I could go on and on... Blue-Eyed-Blond-Haired Jesus of the Sunday school books of my childhood... the god who assures people of one race that they are better than those of another... the god who gives people cancer and swats airplanes out of the sky... the god who doesn’t mind if we pollute the planet because he’s getting ready to destroy it anyway... the list is endless. As our President would say: “bring ‘em on.”

But it is really only a useful process, though not nearly as much fun, if I’m looking for my own false gods. I can’t rid someone else of their false gods any more than they can rid me of mine. It’s the Buddha that I meet, not the one someone else meets, with whom I have to be concerned.

If I meet the god of Pat Robertson along the road, I think I’d be happy to kill it. But I wouldn’t be a better person for doing so. I’d be a killer. As for the god of Pat Robertson - that god would probably just be stronger.

We hear over and over that Jesus died for us - for me. And there are various theologies of Jesus’ crucifixion.

But I’m beginning to understand a more personal one. Maybe part of the reason Jesus died for me is that I need Jesus to die... I need my image of Jesus to be crucified. It’s a very uncomfortable thought. I need to rid myself of some of my favorite images of Jesus. The Jesus that I know stands between me and Jesus.

Its not that all my images of Jesus are necessarily wrong or deluded, but they are all incomplete.

This holy week part of what I feel called to do is make sure that all my images of Jesus get nailed to that cross. All of my fantasies, my projections, my romantic expectations... all the “Jesuses” that I have met along the road. I have to kill Jesus so that on Easter I am ready to meet Jesus.

I’d love to say I thought it was going to be easier after Easter. It would be really great if the true Jesus was the only one that would resurrect. But I’m quite certain that just as surely as Jesus resurrects, I will be able to resurrect my fantasies and falsehoods.

Yet I do believe that I will be a little less attached to my fantasy images of Jesus after I have crucified them. If I can love the false knowledge a little less, I may be able to love the true Jesus a little more.

We do meet the authentic Jesus and we do know him. I’m drawn in particular to the Jesus who gives us a new mandate - that we love one another - that we be conspicuous in our love for one another - the Jesus of Maundy Thursday.

Jesus the triumphant riding like a King into Jerusalem is what I think I want, but Jesus humbly washing the feet of those who should serve him is real. The Jesus of Maundy Thursday calls me to humbly follow. For it is only in loving one another that we can claim to be followers of Jesus at all.

I begin this holy week not in the fear that Jesus will die, but in the faith that as I kill Jesus, through the mystery of the cross and resurrection, I will come closer to loving God.