April 9, 2006

Clay Nelson

Palm Sunday

Ever had a tune going through your head that just won’t go away? The one in my head this week is one I used to teach the children of my parish years ago when my theology was more uncritical. It started looping through my head while reflecting on what it is like for us to go as a congregation singing Hosannas to the anointed king to crying out in bloodlust for his death only minutes later. But what is even more annoying than having a cheery little tune running non-stop, is having to hum most of the words because the lyrics are a victim of an aging memory. What I do remember is its theme. It is about some of the surprises found in scripture like when David as a young boy goes out to do a man’s job confronting Goliath with only five smooth stones and a sling. To which David’s father observes in the song, “He couldn’t be my son,” he said. “God would have a better plan,” which is followed by the chorus:

Surprise! Surprise! God is a surprise. Right before your eyes.


It's baffling to the wise.


Surprise! Surprise! God is a surprise! Open up your eyes and see!

Then I hum a few more verses. But then there is one other piece I don’t have to hum. It comes after a verse that describes what we have just participated in, the crucifixion. In response the song observes, “He couldn’t be my God,” I said. “He’d have a better plan!”

That line is one more reason this song annoys me.

If I interpret it like the church has always done, that the death of Jesus on the cross was our God’s plan for making us feel better about ourselves, it fails miserably and is intellectually offensive. 

Suppose you come to me for spiritual support about something that is making your life hell. There are so many examples to choose from. Suppose it is a no win choice with which you are faced at work or guilt over hurting someone unintentionally or your partner has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s or your doctor has just told you your cancer is no longer in remission and there is nothing more she can do. I have found the church’s response that everything is going to be OK because God sent his only son to a cruel and bloody death for me, totally stuffed. And if that is all I offered you at such a moment, some of you would tell me to sod off and the rest of you would think it.

To find any comfort and insight I have to look at the events we have relived this morning without the veneer the church has put on it. I need to look at its unvarnished truth. Remember that it took four hundred years for the church to reach the general consensus that Jesus must’ve been fully God as well as fully human. Then for the next 1600 years rarely mentioned the latter.

Let’s reclaim the truth that Mary Magdalene sings in Jesus Christ Superstar, “He’s just a man.” There is no evidence that Jesus saw himself as anything more. He didn’t know his “last name” would become Christ.

He’s just a man who faced a difficult world, like all other men and women who came before him and all who have come after him. Disease, poverty, injustice, death have always been part of the human condition and they still are and always will be. Our sense of powerlessness in the face of nature and human institutions is still a fact of life, just as it was for Jesus and for everyone before him. Life has been difficult for humanity ever since we sacrificed our fins to crawl out of the prehistoric soup and evolve to a point where we could trade relying on our instincts for free will.

As an aside, I have to wonder if that “free will” thing was an intelligent design decision. It ranks right up there with why God would drive wedges into humanity by making some of us attracted to the opposite sex and others attracted to the same sex or by painting our skins so many different colours. What was the point of that? Isn’t life tough enough without those hurdles?

But back to the point. Jesus was just a man. Yes, he was a man on a mission. The mission was to give us an “Aha!” moment. Yes, life is tough, but we are not its victims. We are more than our animal instincts or our totally unpredictable and inconsistent free will. We are something more because of our capacity to love. 

I don’t think scientists will ever find a gene that will explain that capacity. It’s source is beyond our DNA. Being human we hate mystery, so we keep seeking it source. Failing that, we all try to name it. Robert Burns named it a “red, red rose,” Jesus called it Abba, the one Moses called Yahweh.

What today’s reenactment reminds us of is that it is that capacity to love, from wherever it comes, that frees us from being victims. By entering Jerusalem in an ironic mockery of a royal procession to suffering betrayal from those who should’ve known him best, to being unjustly charged, to being rejected and cruelly mocked by those he came to serve, and finally being enthroned on a cross with the satiric label “King of the Jews” above his head, he became for us the ultimate embodiment of our capacity to love. Sadly, the church has confused his embodiment of love with being its ultimate source. Sad because it makes us forget he is just a man. It blinds us to our own capacity to embody such a love unknown.

While today this man’s story is still incomplete. Holy Week still awaits us. Easter is still only a promise. But today we cannot escape the truth that love preserves us from becoming victims of the powers and principalities that surround us. We now know that our capacity to love cannot be washed away by a Tsunami or killed by a pandemic.

It is what allows us to go on in the face of whatever comes our way and ultimately what unites us and makes it all somehow worthwhile.

Yes, it is a truth we know, but like the lyrics of an old song, we sometimes forget. That’s why we re-live it every year. That’s why we will continue to do so during Holy Week and why we will come back next Sunday to sing out joyfully its truth, to the words, “Christ is risen! He is risen indeed.” If just a man can do it, so can we.