The Church of St. Paul and Incarnation, Jersey City NJ
March 28, 2021
The Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday
Mark 11:1-11
Isaiah 50:4-9a
Psalm 31:9-16
Philippians 2:5-11
Mark 15:1-47
God’s Love in a Time of Expectation and Disappointment
I don’t know about you, but I barely remember last year’s Holy Week services.
It was still the early days of the pandemic, just a few weeks after so much had suddenly closed down – including church – all in a desperate effort to “flatten the curve.”
Remember that?
A year ago, we were just beginning to figure out online worship – experimenting with new technology – trying to get the lighting and the sound as good as we could.
A year ago, the virus was burning through our area, all of those out-of-state ambulances were lined up outside the Jersey City Medical Center, ready to race across our city, sirens blaring, bringing ever-increasing numbers of very sick people to an already packed ICU.
A year ago, we were just beginning to realize that the pandemic would be a prolonged ordeal – much longer than just a few weeks. We wondered how we would manage, and we feared that many of us would not survive.
So, a year ago, we gathered – just Sue and me here in church – and the rest of you out there – and we retold the old stories, we journeyed with Jesus to the cross, and not unlike the first heartbroken and terrified disciples after the death of the One who was their Lord and friend, we waited, hoping against hope for new life.
Well, in the year since, Sue, Gail, and I have become quite skilled at online worship.
You have all figured out how to find us here week after week.
Over time, we’ve developed new rituals – Sue and I doing our “high five” pass at the peace – you all typing in greetings to each other, and giving responses to what you hear in the service, and when we’re done, wishing each other a good week.
And, over just the past few months, miraculous vaccines have arrived and gradually more and more of us have gotten our shots, taking that most important step to a return to whatever normal is going to look like.
So along with many of you, I began to expect that our masks and our distancing and our hand washing and our vaccines would all work to bring down our infection rate, and, until just a couple of days ago, I held out hope that we could have some kind of in-person worship for Easter.
But, it is crushingly disappointing that here in New Jersey, and especially in Hudson County, we are still very much in the red zone. Infections are widespread and dangerous.
On Friday afternoon, Bishop Hughes issued some revised instructions, advising against in-person worship, but reluctantly allowing small outdoor gatherings and even smaller indoor assemblies.
But, considering our situation here, the wardens and I agreed – with great disappointment – that we will remain online for now.
So, here we are, a year later.
We’re no longer stunned, no longer terrified by the pandemic.
Instead, we’re living in a combustible mix of expectation and disappointment – expecting that this nightmare will all be over any day now and disappointed that things are not happening the way had hoped and wanted.
It’s an uncomfortable feeling that’s leaving many of us so desperate for interaction that we take risks we would have never considered just a few months ago.
But, you know, I think living in a time of expectation and disappointment can help us identify even more closely with the crowds of people in Jerusalem for the Passover, some two thousand years ago.
In today’s first gospel lesson we hear expectation, don’t we?
The people of Jerusalem were chafing under Roman rule, anticipating that any day now God would act again, just as God had acted in the past to liberate God’s people, expecting that a savior would ascend to David’s long-vacant throne, at last restoring Israel’s independence and power.
Word had gotten around about Jesus of Nazareth. People had heard the stories of the blind receiving sight, the dead raised from the grave. Admittedly, Jesus wasn’t a perfect fit, being from Galilee and all, and didn’t seem to have any military skill, but anyone who knew even just a little bit of scripture knew that God delights in choosing unlikely people for big jobs – look at David, himself.
So the crowd gathered to welcome this unlikely King Jesus as he rode on into his capital city, laying palms and cloaks on the road before him, shouting “Hosanna!” – “save us!”
The expectation must have been at a fever pitch, giving the powers that be something to worry about, convincing them that they must be quickly rid of this so-called “king.”
And then, for the people there came the crushing disappointment of a King who doesn’t summon the troops, a King who doesn’t resist the Romans and the Jewish leaders who would do what they had to do to keep the peace.
The people must have been stunned by the crushing disappointment of a King who doesn’t fight back, who allows himself to be arrested and brutalized.
So, the disappointed crowd – probably some of the people who had so recently welcomed King Jesus with shouts of “Hosanna!” now call for his death.
Obviously, he’s done. And, they’re done with him.
“Crucify him!”
A time of expectation and disappointment.
So, now in our time of expectation and disappointment, maybe we can identify a little more closely with the people of Jerusalem two thousand years ago.
Of course, we have an important advantage over them because we know the rest of the story.
We know that the Cross was not the end for Jesus.
But, that’s for next week.
For now, as we live in our own combustible mix of expectation and disappointment, the story of the crowds and Jesus in Jerusalem two thousand years ago offers us some important and timely reminders:
Jesus does not make all of our problems disappear.
No, Jesus saves us with love.
Jesus is God’s most convincing assurance that God is always right here, here in the mess, right here with all of us.
In and through Jesus, God shows us that no matter what happens, no matter pandemic and political unrest, no matter if we're stuck in "Facebook church" for a while longer, no matter how many times we mess up and fall short, no matter how wrong things go, no matter what happens, we are loved – so loved that God endures rejection, forsakenness, and even death at hands just like ours – we are so loved that even death itself cannot separate us from God.
So, no matter what happens, we can be sure of God’s love - the best news of all in a time of expectation and disappointment.
Amen.
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