Today is popularly known as Palm Sunday, but it’s also Passion Sunday.  If you look in Webster, you’ll learn that passion is defined as a powerful emotion or feeling, such as love or hate.  But, the reason we call this Passion Sunday, with a capital “P,” is that it begins the most radically foreshortened and intense week in human history, a period of powerful emotions that Christ experienced as he suffered first exaltation, then betrayal, denial, and death on a cross.  Passion, in this context, originally meant suffering.

Today we’re celebrating one of the most passionate Sundays of the Christian year, but it is often separated from the suffering of Christ, because it focuses on the initial exuberation and exaltation of the Triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem.  The palms and the donkey, even the songs we sing are powerful symbols that we use very intentionally, precisely because they provoke strong emotions.  Those symbols were already well established in the time of Jesus.

Nearly two hundred years before Christ, Syria conquered Palestine.  The Syrian emperor, Antiochus 1V, was a man after Saddam Hussein’s own heart.  His domination of the city of Jerusalem makes Saddam’s domination of Baghdad pale by comparison.  He nearly wiped out the entire Jewish population, men women and children.  He hated the Jewish religion.  He tore down the Jewish high altar and erected an altar to Zeus in the Jewish temple, then ordered pig’s flesh to be offered up as a burnt offering, which was the ultimate insult, referred to in the Book of Daniel as the “desolating sacrilege.”  [Daniel 11:31]

A guerilla war of resistance broke out among surviving Jews and, in 165 B.C., the leader of the guerillas, a man known as Judas “The Hammer” Maccabaeus routed the Syrians in a pivotal battle near the town of Emmaus.  He liberated Jerusalem, cleansed the temple and tore down the altar of Zeus.  The people went crazy. The despised dictator was gone.  They danced in the streets, and when this conquering hero, Judas “The Hammer,” rode into the liberated Jerusalem, his supporters greeted him with palm branches, which became the symbol of the Maccabean revolution.  Many scholars believe that Psalm 118 was composed for the occasion, “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it . . . Hosanna!  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord . . . bind the festal procession with branches, up to the horns of the altar.”  [Psalm 118:24-27]  This liberation of Jerusalem and rededication of the temple is the origin of the Jewish festival of Hanukkah.

Now, fast forward two hundred years, when Jesus rode into Jerusalem and was greeted with symbols borrowed from the Maccabean revolution.  The palms and the songs were symbols of a new king who would drive out the hated oppressor and liberate his people.  He was expected to be a conquering hero.  And he was, but in new and unexpected ways.  Christ came as a man of passion, but his passion was not the triumph of a military leader, it was the expression of God’s eternal passion:  “For God so loved the world!”

        And there’s one other symbol that indicates the nature of Christ’s passion.  The prophet Zechariah had promised that when the Messiah came, he would not be riding a war-horse.  He would come as a Prince of Peace, riding on a humble donkey.  As we welcome Christ into the Jerusalem of our town and our church, to cleanse the temple of our homes and our hearts, as we wave our palm branches and sing our songs of hosanna, what does that mean, really?

The first thing we have to know is that the Jerusalem he comes to rule is not a chunk of real estate, a divided city that needs to be fought over and died for.  The New Jeru-shalom is a spiritual symbol for a peaceful, loving heart, enlivened, enlightened and completed by the ruling presence of the Holy Spirit. 

I’m ready for that, aren’t you?  That’s why I’m here today. I’m praying for the experience of genuine peace.  I am praying for a peace that transcends transitory passions and is rooted in the eternal love of God.

I’ve had enough of cable news manipulating people’s passions.  I’ve heard enough of anchors introducing their stories with words like, “Stay tuned for this next outrageous story, it’s really going to make your blood boil.”  The passion I’m here to celebrate is the eternal love of God as expressed in the undying passion of Jesus Christ, but, you know what, I don’t think I’m going to see that reported on television.  If the media had been around on that first Palm Sunday their story line might have run something like this:

The itinerant preacher, Jesus of Nazareth, made his entrance into the holy city yesterday.  He and his odd collection of disciples joined thousands of others crowding into the city for the Passover observance.  Also accompanying the controversial teacher were several of his admirers, people who for some reason have found substance in his teaching.  Temple authorities, when consulted, dismissed the preacher as merely another product of the religious and social ferment of the time.  His power, according to Temple authorities, is small, insignificant, and ephemeral.  There are reports of a parade that formed when the preacher entered the city, but those reports are contradictory.  Some say hundreds greeted him with shouts of “Hosanna!”  Other reports, certainly the most objective, say that only a few, mostly his followers, shouted their greetings, waved palm branches, and spread their garments on the road in display of respect, reserved for royalty.  This would-be king also rode a common beast of burden, his feet dragging in the dust.  So much for his royal pretense.  It is our opinion that this man, despite these regal claims, will be swallowed up by history just as the crowds of our city swallowed up his followers.  Life will go on as before.

And, you know, they’re right.  Life will go on. But whether it goes on as before is up to you and me.  Are we going to be swallowed by the crowds, caught up in the passing parade of passion?  That’s the question, isn’t it?  Here is the promise!  “This is the day that the Lord has made!”  May Christ rule in your heart and in your home.  May Christ be your peace.  May Christ be your shalom.  Amen.