Year B Palm Sunday
Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem
The Teaching of Jesus in the Temple (adaptation of Mark 12)
Preach at Christ Church Christiana Hundred in Wilmington, Delaware

Three years ago, I spent Holy Week as a seminary intern at a small church plant in Brooklyn. I processed with palms through Bushwick, prayed through the night after Maundy Thursday, walked the Stations of the Cross on Good Friday, and embraced the joy of Easter. Being too far away to make it home to my family, I met up with some friends, lay leaders and clergy alike, for a festive Easter feast, full of exhausted laughter than rang out into the streets of Chelsea late into the night. The next morning, our Easter Monday sabbath, I embraced the resurrection triumph by sleeping in and then started to play on my phone to procrastinate getting out of bed. And I got a message. A picture popped up of one of my dear friends and housemates during my year in South Africa, someone I’d shared many laughs with, crowded around our kitchen table. My friend, my sister in Christ, Tylenia had died, suddenly, at 23 in some senseless car accident. I dropped my phone onto my chest, and it felt like a punch. All the glory of Easter vanished and suddenly I felt like I was back walking the stations of the cross. It was finished. Again.

The most important thing to remember about the gospel stories we’ve just heard is that these are the lessons that Jesus wanted to focus on conveying before his arrest and crucifixion; in these teachings, we hear what Christ knew was most important for us to remember as we begin our journey into Holy Week. Jesus’ knew that there were dark times ahead for the disciples and for all of his followers; he knew his death was coming even though they did not. Jesus called them – and still calls us – to do our part to stay in right relationship with God, so we’re prepared for whatever life throws our way. We’re beginning our journey through Holy Week and Christ is giving us a roadmap to follow. The story of Jesus’ teaching in the temple and the story of the Last Supper follow Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem but foreshadow the journey we’re embarking on as we begin Holy Week, and the story of the Passion that we’ll hear later in the service.

First, when we hear the summary from Mark 12 of Jesus’ teachings in the temple, we hear several rapid-fire stories of different teachings, with one common thread: to draw us closer to the kingdom of God. Jesus tells us which commandment is the greatest: to love the Lord our God with all our heart, and all our soul, and with all our mind, and all our strength. And to love our neighbors as ourselves. Then, Jesus praised the widow for giving all the had to God. God isn’t after the contents of our pockets: Chap Stick and credit cards. God wants us to offer up our whole hearts, our whole selves. Our Heavenly Father wants our whole trust. To love God with our whole hearts – to give all that we have like the widow did – we don’t only have to focus on God, we have to focus on loving each other, too. In real love, we let our guard down, which is why when we lose someone we love, we grieve. When I lost Ty, I remembered our laughs at the kitchen table in our home, our first University of Cape Town rugby game, our adventures traveling around the city. All the times we shared in joy and commiserated with each other in sadness. Grief longs for the community of shared joy as well as shared support in times of sorrow.

In the second part of Mark 12, we hear the story of the Passover meal: the narrative of the bread and wine that the disciples shared at the Last Supper and that we retell every Sunday. When we share the bread and the wine – Christ’s body and blood – we take in his life so that we can live in him. Part of the Eucharistic prayer is the retelling of the story. We say together: “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.” (Book of Common Prayer, 363). In our prayer together, the bread and the wine become the body & blood of Christ. They become a sacrament, a vessel of God’s Grace. For there to be a sacrament – any sacrament – the faith of the people is required. A priest alone in a room cannot consecrate bread and wine. Just like in the first half of Mark’s gospel: we love God better by loving each other. We’re all in this together

When I was on pilgrimage to Jerusalem last month, one of the great joys of my time there was the people, both my fellow pilgrims as well as the people we met along the way. On our last day in Jerusalem, we visited the site where the procession of palms began. Then, we made our way to Gethsemane, the garden where Jesus and the disciples went on the night before his arrest and crucifixion. There is a beautiful church where we prayed, and outside is a beautiful garden of olive trees. But if it weren’t for the evangelizing of one of my dear fellow pilgrims, I would’ve missed the very best part. If you stand in just the right spot, in the middle of all of those twisted trees, where Jesus prayed, awaiting the grief he knew was coming. If you stand in just the right spot, you can look through the trees, towards the walls around Jerusalem and see the Messiah’s Gate, the gate Jesus rode through in the triumphant entry we just read about at the beginning of the service. You can see the glorious gate framed by the knotty olive trees of Gethsemane.

Isn’t always just so that you can see the place of triumph so clearly – and yet just out of reach – from the place of grief? It’s a summary of the full spectrum of human emotion that we go through during Holy Week. Between the triumphant entry of Palm Sunday and the joy of the resurrection at Easter, we have the grief of Holy Week, the grief of Jesus’ passion and death. What makes the griefs we experience in lives so powerful – what made my grief for my friend so powerful – is that amid the darkness of grief like twisted olive trees, we can see – just out of reach – our own Messiah’s gate – our own place of great triumph, and – more importantly – great love. In Holy Week, we experience the ways God is with us through all of that – which makes coming out the other side in Easter even more powerful! The people I’ve grieved live on in me, Jesus’ teachings live on in us.

One of the hardest parts about grieving Ty from so far away was that there was no one around me who knew her, nevertheless loved her. I don’t think I was able to completely accept losing my friend until 10 months later, when I went to South Africa and had lunch with two of our other housemates, who could sit in Gethsemane with me and acknowledge how much we still miss her, and look back longingly at the Messiah’s gate, our glory days just out of reach. To fully appreciate the joy of the resurrection, we have to acknowledge the grief of the passion and crucifixion. I invite you to join us this week on that journey, for our Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services. Jesus’ glorious entry into Jerusalem led into the teachings we heard today in the summary of Mark 12. Part of loving God with our whole hearts is loving each other with our whole hearts, and sharing in the sacramental life together. And we need all the connection points to God – all the love and glory and laud and honor – we can get when the moments of triumph in our lives give way to experiences of grief and hardship. So, let us live that teaching and sow love with each other as we gather around the table today, and sacrifice our praise and thanksgiving to God, having faith in that love to be our daily bread, next time we get caught spending a long night in Gethsemane, with our glory days just out of reach, we can endure because of the love that keeps watch with us.