The Dominant Chord of Passion
A Palm Sunday Sermon by Brent J. Eelman
April 9, 2006
Abington Presbyterian Church

Mark 11: 1-11
When they were approaching Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples ²and said to them, ‘Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately as you enter it, you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden; untie it and bring it. ³If anyone says to you, “Why are you doing this?” just say this, “The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.” ’ ⁴They went away and found a colt tied near a door, outside in the street. As they were untying it, ⁵some of the bystanders said to them, ‘What are you doing, untying the colt?’ ⁶They told them what Jesus had said; and they allowed them to take it. ⁷Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it; and he sat on it. ⁸Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields. ⁹Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting,
‘Hosanna!
       Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
   ¹⁰Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!
      Hosanna in the highest heaven!’
¹¹Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.*

This past week, the columnist Nora Ephron wrote about her experience attending a movie theatre. As you can guess, a number of things went wrong, concluding with the film breaking twenty minutes before the conclusion, leaving the audience wondering what would happen. It rendered the movie meaningless and the viewers left with an empty feeling, knowing that the story was not complete. In many ways, Ephron’s experience at the movie theatre is not unlike the experience of worshippers today and in the coming week. Last year someone came up to me and made a comment about the music. She said: “It didn’t end right. It needed something else.” She was right and I praised her sharp perception. The music of this week has an incomplete feel to it. It seems to be anticipating something.

In short, the worship service ends on a dominant chord. These are the most complex chords in music. They often sound dissonant to our ears. They seem to anticipate something. They need resolution. Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday have an incomplete feel. The services end abruptly and in strange and different ways. Those who attend those services often leave feeling the tension of Christ’s week of passion… it is a tension that is looking for resolution. Today, in the next few moments, I want to share with you why this week is so important to our life today. First, this week parallels human experience. Second, there is a different way to understand Palm Sunday. Last, we can interpret our experience in terms of the passion of Holy week.

I

The psychologist, Bruno Bettleheim wrote a great deal about children’s stories and their function in the development of a child. The bed-time stories that we tell our children often describe conflicts and difficulties, but they resolve to a happy ending. This resolution puts the child at peace and enables her to fall asleep. Oh that life was like children’s stories! Every day would have a happy ending! The good would prosper. The evil in the world would be vanquished. People wouldn’t get sick. Accidents would not happen. Life would be fair and it would be just. But it isn’t.

The writer of Ecclesiastes captured this when he wrote in his 9^th chapter:

“The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the skillful….”

This is the reality with which we live. Life is filled with loose ends and things that don’t make sense. It needs something more. Something is missing. Life by its very experience anticipates a happy resolution.

But most of us know this. “Preacher… you aren’t saying anything new. This is why we come to church. We are looking to have the loose ends tied up and things put back together.” “Fix it!”

II

We have heard the TV preacher say that “When Jesus comes into your life…. Everything will be better.” It is a great promise and it appeals to a lot of people. Yet I cannot tell you how many times I have heard people say, “I am a faithful Christian.. Jesus entered my life… but things aren’t better.” The reality is that Christians have bad days. Good Christians become ill. They lose their jobs. The storms of life fall on us also. When Christ comes into our lives, shouldn’t they get better? Shouldn’t the illness go away? Shouldn’t we find a better job? Shouldn’t my marriage improve? The entry of Jesus into Jerusalem might help us understand what happens when Jesus is welcomed into our lives.

Jesus was welcomed with open arms, with shouts of joy, with palm branches and cloaks spread on the road. In some ways it was a great day because at last things were going to be made right. But consider the events that follow. We discover that the events following this entry into Jerusalem are filled with conflict and eventually death.

“Wait a minute, wasn’t this supposed to be the messiah? He seems to stir things up more than he fixes them.”

I believe that is our experience of Jesus. We welcome him with open arms. We cry out, “at last our messiah, our savior is here.” It is a great day. And then we go to sleep, wake up. At work the boss is still the same. At school we still have trouble with geometry. Nothing seems to change. That is the biggest argument against Christianity…. What has changed?

III

The theology book club here is reading Letters and Papers from Prison by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In that amazing volume he wrote these words. Christian faith involves “throwing ourselves completely in the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world—watching with Christ in Gethsemane.” That is the Christian life!

Too often we want the happy ending without the tension, without the difficulty. Think about it. Happy endings by themselves would make a terribly boring novel or movie. Because it isn’t real! What this week should tell us is that suffering, confrontation, conflict and tension are apart of life. Easter is the event that resolves the tension and redeems the suffering of life. It is that final resolution that we anticipate.

I was joking at the Worship Council meeting this week and said that we weren’t letting in anyone to worship on Easter, unless they had been to the Good Friday service. It would be a small handful indeed. But the point is that we want Easter without the Good Friday. We want the resurrection without the cross. Someone once told me that Good Friday is a “real downer”. It is. But it only accentuates the power of Easter. Art and music are so helpful in understanding this. Colors are always brighter against a dark background. The music of Mozart dances, but it dances over dark chords: the dark and dominant chords of passion.

This is the good news. There is an Easter. God does not leave us in the limbo of life. All the confusion and pain of life will resolve finally, and in Easter we receive a glimpse of that resolution. In a week, on Easter Sunday, we celebrate the victory of the empty tomb, but that victory was won on the cross. This is the week of the cross. It is the week when we walk through the “valley of the shadow.” Let us walk with Jesus this week and experience his passion, so that the light and power of the resurrection will become more tangible and powerful in our lives. This is the good news. Amen.

*The New Revised Standard Version Bible, (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers) 1989.

Abington Presbyterian Church, Abington, Pennsylvania,  www.apcusa.org