Sermons

“Cloaks on the Road”

Psalm 118:1, 19-29; Luke 9:28-40 – Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn

Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), La Mesa, California – April 14, 2019

 Holy God, bless the speaking and the hearing of these words that we might welcome you with all that we are and all that we have, for the sake of the world.  In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

Did you know that this holiday had only a 25% chance of being called “Palm Sunday”?  This morning in Bible study, Michael led a conversation comparing the accounts of the resurrection found in the four gospels and some other places in scripture. It’s amazing what you discover when you look at the stories separately, rather than smooshing them all together like we often do at Christmas or Maundy Thursday.  If you do it with the story of “Jesus Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem,” as the headings in the NRSV like to call it, you discover that only in the gospel according to John does it say anything about palm branches.  In Matthew, the branches still come from trees, but it doesn’t say what kind.  In Mark, the people cut “leafy branches that they had cut in the fields.”  I’m having trouble imagining what kind of plant that even refers to!  But here in Luke, as we just heard, there aren’t any branches at all.  I suppose you could argue that Matthew’s version supports John’s, so the probability of settling on Palm Sunday is higher than 25%. In the end, it’s not surprising that “Cloaks Sunday” didn’t make the final cut.  It just doesn’t have the same ring to it.  But if we think about the differences between palm branches and cloaks, we can imagine that cloaks are actually a much more powerful symbol.

In every version of this story, it’s not entirely clear who all is involved.  There are multiple mentions of “crowds” and “people”.  And some versions have “people” doing one thing and the disciples doing something else. On the other hand, Luke refers to “the whole multitude of the disciples”, which could be seen as blurring the line between “the people” and “the disciples.”  At any rate, there’s a whole lot of carrying on, and we can be fairly sure that nobody besides Jesus really understood what was happening.

The religious authorities thought they knew what was going on, and it scared them.  The things the crowd was shouting, the scriptural references that colt brought to mind, the continual lining of the roadway where Jesus rode – these were all signs of a royal procession.  And a royal procession, centered on a non-establishment Jewish teacher from Nazareth, happening during the Passover festival, in a city under Roman occupation was not going to bring anything but trouble, as far as they were concerned.  But what was everyone else thinking?

Luke’s gospel is alone again in not using the word we most associate with this day, “hosanna”.  But he still references Psalm 118, where “hosanna” comes from.  “Save us, we beseech you!”  The word “hosanna,” in fact, doesn’t just mean “save us” but is even more emphatic, carrying the connotation of “save us now!”  People living under a brutal occupation, calling someone a king and asking for timely deliverance – is it not clear what they were looking for?  Do you think what they thought they wanted had anything to do with what actually transpired the rest of the week?

So let’s get back to those cloaks on the road. What is the difference between using a large, leafy branch to line the road and throwing your cloak down to be trampled upon by that heretofore unridden colt?  Both were signs of welcoming royalty, but one has much more significance for the person putting it there.  Leafy branches were likely plentiful.  They literally grew on trees!  (Or in the fields, if you prefer Mark’s version.). They wouldn’t have been that hard to cut loose, and one person could easily have brought a few.  Compare this to a cloak.  The vast majority of people in that crowd probably only had one cloak. Removing it would make them less than completely dressed.  If you wore the same one all the time, it seems plausible that people could tell which one was yours.  That might have become a big deal later, if the authorities came by and started collecting the names of the rabble rousers.  Most importantly, if you throw your cloak onto the road, to let a colt walk upon it, in the midst of a giant throng, chances are high that cloak is going to get ruined, and you will be cloak-less for a while.

Simply put, the stakes are a lot higher if you’re throwing your cloak onto the road, compared to just tossing a few branches down.  It’s one thing to welcome a new king to town, if you can quietly slip out the back with only the scent of palm on your fingertips to give you away.  It’s a whole other thing to have given your one and only cloak to this rebellion, thus becoming one of the easily-identifiable, cloak-less dissidents roaming the streets afterwards.  Openly defying the empire is a lot riskier than committing sedition anonymously.

So which kind of Sunday are you looking for?  Did you come here looking for an easy-out kind of Christianity, a palm-branch sort of faith that lets you enjoy the happy parts and then melt into the background when the need for risk and sacrifice arrives? Or did you come prepared to throw your cloak – the one that everyone knows is yours, your one and only, all-you-have-to-give cloak – on the road as a sign of your faith in Jesus Christ? Those folks on the path down from the Mount of Olives couldn’t begin to imagine what the week was going to bring. We know what happened there.  But when it comes to our own lives, the things that life is going to toss into our paths, the sacrifices following Jesus might require from us, we are just as clueless as they are.  In the face of such uncertainty, we might be tempted to hedge our bets with just a few, generic leafy branches.  But Jesus is asking for our cloaks.

Throughout this six-week journey, we’ve been praying about some “sins of the world”.  Big stuff – migration, climate change, gun violence, suicide, foster care, and homelessness – we’ve been holding these stubborn causes of suffering in prayer, alongside Jesus, in hopes of discovering new ways to approach them and with the expectation that we’ll get to know Jesus more deeply.  As we carry these prayers into this final, holy week, we will learn even more.  We may be tempted to turn away from these issues, once the difficult season of Lent is over. But what we will learn from Jesus this week shows us that following him is about facing the terrible, hard things in life head-on.  We may be tempted to take punitive approaches to solving problems, but what we will learn from Jesus is that love is the most powerful form of resistance there is.  We may be tempted to offer half-baked solutions, because what is required to truly transform our world requires too much sacrifice.  But what we will learn from Jesus this week is that half-measures will not do.  The beautiful, green branches may make it prettier, but if we’re not willing to throw down our cloaks too, we won’t be part of the whole story.

The story will go on whether we come along or not. The songs of the crowd, “Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!” remind us of the multitude of the heavenly host, singing in the sky above the fields as the shepherds watched their flocks by night.  This is bigger than the local politics of Jerusalem.  This is a cosmic story, and we’re invited to become part of it.  We’re invited to throw our cloaks on the road.  If we don’t, God will move ahead anyway.  If necessary, “the stones would shout out,” Jesus says. But we’re invited to take part.  We may think we’re just seeking our own salvation, but once we toss our coats down, we will discover we’ve signed onto the transformation of all creation.

So are you in?  Are you ready to walk with Jesus through the rest of this week?  Are you willing to throw your cloak on the road and welcome a new king, one who offers a realm grounded in sacrificial love, rather than an empire maintained with violent domination?  Are you ready to declare your allegiance to this Christ who will take you places you didn’t expect, require things of you that you didn’t know you could do, and accomplish miracles through you that seem unimaginable right now?  There is a lot we need deliverance from.  The sins of the world are many and weighty; we are not designed to carry them on our own. But we are also not destined to acquiesce to them.  We are invited, this day, this year, to renew our faith in the One who comes in the name of the Lord, the Blessed One who brings peace.  We are invited to enter into this new life with our whole selves, without holding back, without fear or shame, that the world might be saved.  Hosanna in the highest!  Amen!