Luke 19:28-40
We like to be prepared. I always feel better having some idea what a situation will be like. As much as my family gives me grief about saying, “What’s the plan?” I know it matters. We feel stronger with a plan.
Today is Palm Sunday, the day in the Church calendar when we arm small children with weaponry (palm branches) and send them to march through the sanctuary without any eye injuries. Add to that pageantry the fact that, at our church, the children’s choir sings alongside the adult choir, and you have a recipe for some really charming chaos. Bless all the hearts.
When it came right down to it, our entire plan for the day was turned around. Extreme weather was headed for our area, and the forecast included a tornado watch. With an excess of caution, our leadership made a plan: we canceled Sunday school and moved worship one hour earlier to get people home before the storms. Once again, preparation was in order. Emails, phone calls/texts, social media posts and even printed signs let people know exactly where to meet and when. Adults and children marched into worship at a different time and in different seats, smiling and waving palms. We were reminded that the people of God can handle a little flexibility and change.
I hear the preparation in this story of Jesus.
You’ll find this, Jesus directs his disciples.
When they ask you, just say this, Jesus tells them.
He walks them through what will happen. He offers them some readiness for the moments that are coming, like it or not. I hear Jesus’ compassion for his friends in the words that give them the smallest bit of preparation. To have something on which we can lean when everything around is disruptive and disrupting is, truly, an act of care.
The crowds shouted.
The palms waved.
The Pharisees insisted that the crowds hush their swelling praise.
The Christ spoke – softly, I’ll say – and responded with familiar, prepared words:
“I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”
What was the preparation Jesus experienced before this moment? Was there a self-talk session or a moment when he thought through all the ways this parade of palms could play out? I can’t help but notice the place of poetry in this moment. Rather than argument, Jesus responds with sacred words. Rather than bravado, Jesus simply answers with imagery from Psalms and Habakkuk. Witness-bearing stones are described throughout the experiences of these people. As they remembered, prayed, and sang together, the people had been prepared and shaped by stone stories.
Songs, stories and images have always been offered to us as pointers to the truth. The truth tellers are so often poets and artists. They prepare us for the moments when we most need to recognize what is true.
“A society must assume that it is stable, but the artist must know, and he must let us know, that there is nothing stable under heaven,” James Baldwin said.
The artists must sing to us that everything is not all right, that everything needs turning over. Overturning is exactly what we are following this week, on this road to Jerusalem. Consider the ways that artists gift us with preparation for the journey. They are the ballasts that hold up truth, point to it, and let us lean on it for a minute. They are the composers of Hosannah songs that even children can sing. They are the tellers of stories about stones. They prepare the way.
When you find this, they say, you should remember what is true. Jesus leaned on the prophetic lines he knew by heart. He was prepared.
As we prepare the way of the Lord, what artists are you hearing? Who is claiming that the powers of this world are not stable after all? Who is holding up an image of what is true?
ARTISTS:
Have a listen to these artists and share some that have mattered to you:
Carrie Newcomber. “You can do this hard thing”
Over The Rhine. All of it.
Austen Channing Brown. Her work is thoughtful, her book is a must-read, and her manifesto brings me to tears.
Poets like Lisa Furmanski and Ashanti Anderson.
Holy Women Icons. Look at their outstretched arms.
A PRACTICE:
Consider this practice for your Palm Sunday reflections. Choose an artist who is holding out truth for you. Sit with their words or images for a while. Maybe there is one lyric from a song that is striking or troubling to you. Settle on one phrase in their piece of work that stands out to you.
Next, write that phrase in a way that is disruptive to your routines of daily life.
Perhaps you could jot down the phrase on a sticky note and place the sticky note in a surprising spot in your office or your home. Perhaps you could use sidewalk chalk to write the lines of a poem on your driveway. My favorite? Use glass markers to write the line of poetry across a mirror or window in your home.
Let the artist’s work be disruptive to your rhythms of life this week. Let the words stop you in your tracks.
