{"id":998,"date":"2020-04-05T17:09:11","date_gmt":"2020-04-05T21:09:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/?p=998"},"modified":"2020-04-05T17:09:15","modified_gmt":"2020-04-05T21:09:15","slug":"who-is-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/2020\/04\/05\/who-is-this\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Is This?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gardening in the Wilderness #6<\/h1>\n

A Sermon for the First Congregational Church of Albany, NY<\/h2>\n

by Rev. James Eaton, Pastor<\/h2>\n

Palm Sunday\/A \u2022 April 5, 2020<\/h2>\n

Matthew 21:1-11<\/a><\/h3>\n

Puxsutawny Phil is a Pennsylvania groundhog who is supposed to signal spring. But in my world, it\u2019s Next Door Neighbor Andrea. Andrea loves working ground, making things grow. She cuts our lawn because she likes lawn mowing and hers just isn\u2019t enough. Andrea has a garden next to our driveway and she\u2019s out there getting plants going, when I\u2019m still avoiding the open air because of the cold. That means it\u2019s spring.<\/p>\n

Except this year, of course, it isn\u2019t. Andrea is a physician\u2019s assistant, a courageous woman who\u2019s working and risking to help people who are sick. Nothing is the same this spring; we\u2019re all being rearranged like rocks falling down a mountain in a landslide. I hardly know what to pray except perhaps the oldest prayer of all: \u201cSave us\u201d.<\/p>\n

Today is Palm Sunday. a curious celebration that remembers Jesus\u2019 entrance into Jerusalem. In North American churches, we wave palm leaves. We do that despite the fact that palms don\u2019t actually grow around Jerusalem; if, as some gospel accounts say, people cut ranches and laid them down, they were cutting some other kind of branch. But we do palms. Sometimes we just hold onto them; like to throw them around, I like to get people to wave them. I insist that everyone shout \u201cHosanna!\u201d. More than once, when I didn\u2019t feel the shouting was loud enough, I\u2019ve made people do it again, sometimes even a third time, just to get the volume up. You could do it now; in fact I\u2019m going to pause while you do it. Ok: now louder: \u201cHosanna!\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u2018Hosanna\u2019 isn\u2019t a word that often comes up in conversation. When someone shoves their phone in front of you with a YouTube video and says, \u201cLook at this\u201d; most of us don\u2019t yell, \u201cWow, Hosanna!\u201d No, \u2018Hosanna\u2019 is pretty much saved up for this one day, one morning, every year. So let\u2019s make the most of it. One more time, this time really loud, stand up, put your arms up and shout, \u201cHosanna!\u201d We don\u2019t need palms: Matthew says, \u201cA very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road,\u201d so you could take off your shirt or sweater and toss it on the ground and shout \u201cHosanna!\u201d.<\/p>\n

What does it mean? If you\u2019ve been going to church for a while, this isn\u2019t the first time you said it, first time you heard it. What does Hosanna mean? What are they shouting? Simple: \u201cHosanna means \u201cSave us\u201d. The crowds are shouting the very prayer many of us are praying today: \u201cSave us!\u201d Shouting it at Jesus means you know he\u2019s your savior.<\/p>\n

The whole story is shaped around this prayer. It starts out at the Mount of Olives. The Mount of Olives was believed to be where the Messiah would appear. The part about the donkey and the colt is also from Zechariah; he said,<\/p>\n

Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. [Zechariah 9:9]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So Jesus starts from the place of salvation and acts like a savior and people are shouting, \u201cSave us! Save us! Hosanna\u201d. It\u2019s a parade of salvation.<\/p>\n

Imagine this parade It\u2019s hard to be anything but silly on a donkey. And Jesus certainly isn\u2019t wearing expensive clothes. It\u2019s almost Passover; people from all over are streaming into Jerusalem for the celebration. The paths up to the city are crowded. Jesus and his followers and friends aren\u2019t the only ones on the road. Those are the ones seeing him for the first time, those are the ones throwing shirts\u2014\u201ccloaks\u2014down and cutting branches. It\u2019s a sign you recognize this man as something special.<\/p>\n

But this isn\u2019t the only parade that day. There\u2019s a much bigger one on the other side of the city. There, a Roman army contingent is entering the city. They\u2019re preparing for Passover too, but in a different way. Passover is a time of high passion in the city, the whole story is about liberation from foreigners and some people are going to get inspired enough to make trouble.<\/p>\n

So an army contingent is marching in to keep order. At the head of that parade is a leader on a horse, looking regal; after all, he represents the emperor, the Lord of the known world, whose title is \u201cSon of God\u201d. That\u2019s right: \u2018Son of God\u2019 wasn\u2019t just used about Jesus, in fact, using this term for Jesus is one of the things that got Christians in trouble. So over there is a much more impressive parade. I\u2019m sure they had people cheering, I\u2019m sure they had people selling souvenirs and food and it was a good time.<\/p>\n

You have to choose: you can\u2019t be a part of both parades; which one are you part of today? Are you still impressed with the trappings of power?\u2014or are you ready to shout Hosanna\u2014save us\u2014to the one who comes in the name of the Lord. There are always people riding high horses, looking regal. Jesus doesn\u2019t look like that. But he\u2019s the one coming to save us. That\u2019s what people saw that day. At the end, it says, \u201c\u2026the whole city was in turmoil, asking, \u201cWho is this?\u201d The crowds were saying, \u201cThis is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.\u201d [Matthew 21:10f]<\/p>\n

The gospel of Matthew is dominated by one question: Jesus ask, \u201cWho is Jesus\u201d Palm Sunday is an answer. Who do you say Jesus is? Are you ready to say he is truly the one come to save us, the one God sent? You don\u2019t need a palm for that, you just need your heart; you don\u2019t need to go to a parade, you just need to follow on the way with him.<\/p>\n

Right now, many of us feel overwhelmed. We know what makes sense: stay home. At our house, we\u2019ve had a pesky squirrel coming in our garage and crawling up in the overhead; I didn\u2019t need experts to tell me to shut the door and keep her out. But some religious leaders and some politicians amazingly don\u2019t seem to understand that just because it\u2019s fun to get together, we need to stay home. I don\u2019t know how they\u2019d ever manage a pesky squirrel.<\/p>\n

But I know this: staying home doesn\u2019t make us feel better because we feel out of control. Isn\u2019t that the best time to turn to God and simply pray, \u201cSave us\u201d? \u2014and then determine to be part of that salvation.<\/p>\n

Out on the water, there is a word that gets immediate attention: \u201cMayday\u201d. When you hear Mayday on the radio, you stop what you\u2019re doing, everyone does, and you listen. It\u2019s actually a legal requirement but that\u2019s not why you do it; you do it because you\u2019re human and out there another person needs help. Maybe it\u2019s someone close by, so you look, if you actually see them, you go help out. Maybe it\u2019s distant, so you stay off the radio, because staying off the radio, doing nothing, is how you help.<\/p>\n

When we stay home, we help. When we stay home and pray for others and let them know, we help even more.<\/p>\n

\u201cHosanna!\u201d\u2014that\u2019s today\u2019s word\u2014that\u2019s today\u2019s prayer. Some are like Andrea, called to go do things. Some help by staying home. Palm Sunday is a parade. When we join in praying, \u201cSave us\u201d and then become part of the answer to that prayer, we join the parade, we answer the question, \u201cWho is this?\u201d How are you answering it today?<\/p>\n

Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gardening in the Wilderness #6 A Sermon for the First Congregational Church of Albany, NY by Rev. James Eaton, Pastor Palm Sunday\/A \u2022 April 5, 2020 Matthew 21:1-11 Puxsutawny Phil is a Pennsylvania groundhog who is supposed to signal spring. But in my world, it\u2019s Next Door Neighbor Andrea. Andrea loves working ground, making things […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermon"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=998"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/998\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1004,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/998\/revisions\/1004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}