The Holy Week Journey Mark 11:1-11a, Mark 13:32-15:47 April 13, 2003, Palm Sunday, Year B The Rev. William V. Livingston, Rector Church of the Resurrection, Starkville, Mississippi Today, you and I are invited to share a journey together - a long journey. Not long in terms of miles or in terms of time, but a long journey in terms of emotion and understanding. We are invited on a 2000 year old journey, and we are invited on a journey that continues today. The two different readings from the Gospel according to Mark take us from a field near Bethany to Jerusalem, from Jerusalem to the Mount of Olives, from there back to Jerusalem, and from Jerusalem to Golgotha. Finally there's the journey from Calvary to the tomb. Each one of these journeys is a major event in itself, involving violence, betrayal, surrender, and regret. Each new path taken seems to draw us deeper into the darkness. Death and burial beckon us. The invitation to share the journey through Holy Week services only reinforces this reality. When the last journey is over, we will be left with a dead Jesus in a tomb. However, because we like happy endings, we avoid the journey, skip the pain and get on with the joy! Perhaps that's why many of us avoid Holy Week. However, we are also invited to journey with the fidelity and trust with which Jesus walks towards his saving death, to identify our world and ourselves in this sacred story. The journey of the two readings from Mark and the Holy Week journey invite us to let this story touch our hearts. This journey invites us to recognize the violence within and around us these days. Humanity is suffering from terrible insults to its being in Christ. We know how it ends, but the power of the story lies in our conscious or unconscious journey with Jesus, Herod, Pilate, the disciples and the crowds in Jerusalem two thousand years ago. We begin the journey with Jesus into Jerusalem where we find the seeds of the crucifixion lying among the branches we hold in our hand and in our cries of Hosanna! The journey of palms and the journey of Jesus' trial bespeak the duality of our human response to God throughout history; sometimes we allow him in and other times we push him away. We cry "Hosanna!" to the Jesus we have created. We cry "Crucify him!" to the Jesus we are invited to imitate. Do we long to journey with a donkey-riding carpenter's son from Nazareth? Or would we rather journey with a Napoleon-like gladiator who swings a sharp sword and takes no prisoners? All through Holy Week we find people drawn to Jesus, who then resist him, or try to change the story, avoid the consequences or denounce him. The crowds that had cheered him, later cried "Crucify!" Religious folk plotted his death. Most of the disciples ran away rather than face suffering and death. They just didn't like the way the story was working out. They feared reality. Peter denied him. After all Peter was important. He couldn't risk arrest. He was now in charge. In the end only Simon of Cyrene was prepared to be a faithful suffering servant and carry the cross, only the faithful and brave women and John, stood and watched the reality of a barbaric execution. Only Joseph of Arimathea was brave enough to claim the lifeless body. And, so, we journey with our own sense of helplessness, as did his loving mother and even his friends who denied him and abandoned him. We journey tensely with our desires to be freed again from the slavery of forgetfulness. We journey to remember again who Jesus is saying we all are by his life of faithful trust. We journey together today and in Holy Week to do the ancient rituals which remind us we are saved in our times. Each of these journeys draws us into a world of darkness, of betrayal, of naked power, of cowardice and of death. For us to complete our journey for us to grasp the power of the Resurrection, we must share with Jesus, the journey of faith: to the promised land; through the water, through the wilderness, a journey of faith of sustaining power in God's grace which preceded Jesus and followed him, faith that God also took the journey with him and takes it with us. Those of us who love a brave new world, inevitable progress, a comfortable pew, joy, peace, and love; who find illness, separation, betrayal, the use of naked force, darkness and death offensive, may well be discomforted by this day and the journey before us though Holy Week. However, our faith is not an escape from reality. It draws us into the reality of this world as Jesus, who is one of us, and Jesus who is true God, confronts and submits to the worst human beings do in order to give us the grace to be the best human beings can be. Jesus dies. He really dies an agonizing and dreadful death. In that agony, Jesus dies to all the acts of betrayal, false ambition, power, authority, evil and corruption that lies within the human race and within each of us. The road to Golgotha is lined by human tragedy. For a few hours, when the last journey is over, we will be left with a dead Jesus in a tomb. There's no Easter in the lessons today. Nor will there be all week. Unless we can walk these paths, leaving our comfort zone, our self-satisfaction, daring to walk beyond safety into the darkness of evil and death, carrying Jesus to the tomb, we will not even begin to grasp the power of the Resurrection.