When the Climax Isn’t (Palms and Passion, Cycle B)

This week I did some reading on the lectionary, and even led a discussion on Wednesday, but due to work on some new book releases I never had time to write.  There is one theme that came to mind when I was looking at the two liturgies–palms and passion.

In teaching Bible study I like to use a couple of key stories.  The first is the story of Jonah and what I call “the Jonah problem.”  Now this doesn’t refer to the possibility of large fish swallowing people whole and said people surviving for days, then being spit up on shore.  That’s an interesting point to discuss, but even more important is the issue that comes up at the end.

Jonah, whose preaching has been wildly successful, beyond the dreams of any evangelist that I know, is discouraged.  Down and out.  Suicidal even!  Why?  Because the story seems to him to have come to an end, and the end isn’t what he wanted.

We often think that Jonah’s big problem with going to Nineveh was fear of the Ninevites.  I imagine he was afraid.  The Assyrians were not known by their foes as nice people.  But more importantly, I think, Jonah didn’t like the Ninevites.  He’d really have preferred to see them all consumed.  He ran away primarily because if the Ninevites didn’t hear the message, they wouldn’t respond, and they’d all be dead.  To Jonah, this was a good thing.  (Now before you go condemning him, think of your worst enemies, no, not the guy who taunts you at work.  Perhaps a serial killer.)

So Jonah gets the wrong ending, which incidentally isn’t the actual end, as in the end the Ninevites get wiped out and it was many centuries before the site was even identified again.

Jonah expected and was looking for one ending, and he got another.  He didn’t recognize what God was doing, because God didn’t do what he expected.

The disciples have a similar problem.  To them, Palm Sunday should have been an end, or at least the beginning of one.  It should have been the end of them being the down-and-out, scum from Galilee, Jews of a lower class under the domination of Rome.  Palm Sunday was the thing that was supposed to happen.

But in Mark 11:1-11, which is our gospel passage for the liturgy of the Palms, Jesus goes into Jerusalem to the temple, looks around, and then leaves.  It all falls flat.  Nothing comes of it.

But the real climax was coming soon–the cross.  Of course, even though they had been told about it many times.  It just didn’t sink in. It didn’t become real to them.

I had the experience of talking to a Sunday School class once immediately after what might have been a controversial sermon.  The interesting thing was that the minister had spoken against religious pluralism and in favor of salvation by grace.  The class members tended to think one got into heaven by being good enough, that the benefit of Christianity over other religions was that Jesus gave us a better example of how to live.

But they liked the sermon anyhow.  They thought the pastor had said just what they thought.  Now I had heard the same sermon, and he said no such thing.  I talked to him and confirmed it.  He intended to say, and said, what I thought I had heard.  I know I’m perfectly capable of error in hearing, so I checked this carefully.

During the class, however, I tried to explain what I thought he had said, and heard the same line repeated.  It was as though the actual message simply couldn’t penetrate.

I think that’s where the disciples were.  Since the message of the cross made no sense at all, they had to try to interpret their way around it and come to understand it as meaning something other than it was.  So they thought Palm Sunday should be the beginning of the end, followed, of course, by Jesus taking the throne and driving out the Romans, whereas Jesus knew that the cross was coming.

Now on Easter Sunday we get another high–the resurrection.  But have you noticed that again, the ending isn’t really quite there yet?  Oh yes, Jesus has paid the price and salvation is ours.  But that coming kingdom is both now and not yet.  The structure of the Christian year points that out to us, if we will pay attention.

Good Friday must come before Easter.  Being the body of Christ here comes before the rest of heaven.  The apparent end of the story, isn’t really the end.