The Worst Possible Time for a Parade

This is the worst time possible to throw a parade.  It’s sick, really.  We parade all of the children forward, palm fronds forced into their pudgy little hands, to sing songs they barely know with words they cannot understand. It’s not really about the story, and it’s not really about Jesus.  Not really.  We do it for the nose-pickers, the dress-lifters, the microphone-yellers, the criers, the runners, and the ones who sing the right words at the wrong time.  Parading off to the cross, it’s no wonder this text is at the beginning of the service, if - for no other reason – only as a way to get the kindergarteners to the front of church to distract the adults.  To make matters worse, those of us who think we know how the story should go relegate it to the world of necessity, as though that could help any, talking about how it makes perfect sense.  Yet, for all of our practical plans to make these palms into ashes, we forget that there was a parade.  We forget to laugh at the irony and humor that twists its way into our upside-down lives. 

And so we imagine the disciples calming walking up, untying the donkey, pacifying the people with “The Lord needs it,” as they watch two men walk off with their property.  Really?  I think it probably went a little more like this: whispering to each other as they try to find the “right” donkey, they grab it and run, the owners chasing after them, shaking their fists and yelling as the disciples call back, “The Lord needs it.”

But we don’t pay attention to this.  We’re so busy running toward the resurrection that we bump into the cross on the way.  Trying to turn away from the cross, we find ourselves part of this twisted parade on the way to Holy Week.  We sing the song of the crowd each week, but do we really know what it means?  What does it mean? 

When all that’s left is the horse dung and candy wrappers, when you watch a classmate fight with cancer and then see cancer win, when the child you loved into existence yells she hates you, when buildings that used to be full turn into caverns, when places of worship become places of conflict, when someone else gets the call and you get sent to North Dakota, and when an undeserved pink slip from somebody else’s mistake throws you under the bus?  What does this song mean when all that’s left is the empty hands of failed hopes and crushed expectations?  Here irrupts the song we barely know with words we cannot understand: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”

“Teacher, tell your disciples to shut up” is the word on our lips.  And we shut up, closing ourselves off; we stop listening; we stop talking; we stop showing up for each other; we stop being honest with ourselves because, if we just make the voices stop, it will all make sense.  The carousing fools Joy and Hope give way to their silent counterparts: Fear and Despair.  The parade continues around us, and we calculate how much the parade cost, clutching our coats instead of putting them down, wondering if the palm fronds are really necessary or what else we could have spent the money on, wondering if the disciples ever bothered to return the colt they stole, and we find ourselves in the middle of the parade route.  The brass-blasting marching bands deafen us as we watch the crowd mouthing the words, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”

We don’t understand the song, so we refuse to sing, thinking that the song’s capacity to make sense is what gives it its power.  For all our talk about the cross, even we don’t want Jesus to die, certainly not for our garden-variety selves, not quite good, not quite bad, so we try to run from it, combining the smorgasbord of Holy Week into a mouthful too difficult to chew.

It’s easy to forget that there’s a parade, and that the whole twisted orchestration of Holy Week holds within it a party of laughter and wine.  We sing this song we barely know with words we don’t understand not because we will ever really learn the words or because we will ever really understand it.  We sing it because it’s true.  We sing it because we need it to be true.  We sing it because, when all we can see ahead of us is a cross, we need to be reminded that there was a parade on the way. 

You are invited to a feast, where you receive grace you haven’t worked hard enough for and hope that offends your imagination.  You hear the disciples yelling back, “The Lord needs it,” as they are chased down the streets of Jerusalem, maybe not so much because it was the only way Jesus could figure out how to get a donkey, but because he knows those disciples were going to need the echoes of laughter during the days to come.  Jesus throws a parade at the worst possible time.  But the parade route carves the way to the feast, and the feast the way to the cross, and the cross to the upper room of fear and failure, to the “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” 

And so we sing “Blessed be the one who comes in the name of the Lord,” the song we hardly know with words we can barely understand, because under the song hide Joy and Hope, seeping through the cracks of Fear and Despair.  Maybe it’s the nose-pickers, the dress-lifters, the microphone-yellers, the criers, the runners, and the ones who sing the right words at the wrong time who actually get it: this is the song we have to learn again and again, even from the front of church, whose words take on new shape and meaning with each iteration.  When all that’s left is horse dung and candy wrappers, the echoes of laughter remind us of the laughter to come.  And come it will, on the heels of a poorly-timed parade, in a yell of necessity… NO… in a yell of sheer extravagance, of a little too much wine and a little too good a feast, the memories of yelling back, “The Lord needs it,” not because Jesus really needed a donkey, but because his disciples needed Joy and Hope… a little more laughter for the journey.