Br. Curtis Almquist Palm Sunday Philippians 2:5-11 John 12:20-33 When I was a young boy, I hated lima beans. Now I love lima beans. But I have always loved my mother more than I love lima beans. Strong words – hate, love – used hyperbolically to catch our attention and to make a point. We do this a lot with English. And it also happens in the Greek of the New Testament. So we need to interpret here Jesus’ words about hate truthfully but not literally. He says, “Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” Jesus is not a hater. Here in the Gospel according to John, Jesus has only just said, “For God so loves the world . . .” And that includes you, and me, and everyone-everything else to which God has given life, God loves.[1] Eternally. God is love.[2] But Jesus gets our attention and his contemporaries’ attention saying, “those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” This Greek verb translated “hate” is not as bad as it sounds. This Greek word “hate” can also be translated comparatively, meaning to strongly value something that is more rather than something that is less.[3] In the strongest possible language, Jesus is affirming love for the full expanse of life; however, he is setting his gaze beyond just this life to include the life-to-come. That is the ultimate goal, what Saint Paul calls “the prize.”[4] Don’t live your life only clutching at what is at hand; live your life open-handed, as a generous offering of love for all that God loves, now and forever.[5] Jesus is demonstrating this on his ride into Jerusalem. In the Near East and Mediterranean world of antiquity, palms were used to symbolize victory, triumph, peace, and eternal life. In ancient Greece, then subsequently in Rome, coinage and medals were engraved with palms. Also, winners of great events would be holding a palm “trophy” as they were publicly presented to the crowds. Whether it was Pharaoh or Caesar being heralded after a military conquest, or whether it was an athlete who was the winner of a great contest – like the Olympics – the winners would be appointed with palms and the victor’s parade carpeted with palms. Which is what we see with Jesus on Palm Sunday.[6] Sort of. Jesus enters Jerusalem on a roadway covered with palms and riding on a donkey, which is no Roman chariot, and Jesus is no Caesar. His perceived flirtations with being divine were blasphemous to the Jews and seditious to the Romans. In the first century, Caesar Augustus had already claimed the titles “Divine,” “Son of God,” “Lord,” “Redeemer,” and “Savior of the World.” Those titles already belonged to the Roman Emperor, not to this itinerant and poor rabbi on a donkey, this Jesus.[7] Jesus here is making a very symbolic identification with the poor and powerless. He is messing with the symbols of conquest and victory, and a lot of people are watching. So here it’s as if Jesus is teasing the principalities and powers. He knows what he is doing.[8] There are curious bystanders including some of Jesus’ faithful followers, and there are his twelve apostles. His apostles had already begged him not to do this. They had predicted if he entered Jerusalem he would be killed by the authorities. Of the twelve, it had only been the apostle Thomas who had said, “Let us go that we may die with him.”[9] Death was in the air. His apostles mostly desert him. In the end, it is only the Beloved Disciple and the holy women who would stand with Jesus at his crucifixion.[10] We remember Jesus’ Palm Sunday provocation not as an historic reenactment. The point of Palm Sunday is a clarion call for us who are followers of Jesus, what Saint Paul calls “counting the cost.”[11] What actually are we to follow in Jesus’ example? Two things that are apparent, and one thing that is disguised. What is apparent is that those whom Jesus lived for, he dies for. What he and society identified as “the least” in society most captured his attention. The poor are not a problem; they are a primacy. How we think, pray, and act has to include those who are among the least, and last, and lost.[12] All of us have some reach to bring God’s blessing to some person, or to some people whom Jesus called “poor in spirit,” or “those who mourn,” or “those who are persecuted” or “reviled”[13] for whom Jesus gave his life and we, by extension, ours. Identifying with the troubled, those who are victims of oppression, injustice, and tyranny is what got Jesus in such trouble, and that, too, is our call. To be troubled by the troubled. To taunt insidious power. Secondly, Palm Sunday reminds us is how we must be on good speaking terms with life in this world and the life to come. We rehearse this in the prayer Jesus taught us – what we call the Lord’s Prayer: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it shall be in heaven.” Jesus is serious about this, using “love” and “hate” language for us to galvanize our priorities on earth as a trajectory into God’s future, what we call “eternal life.” It’s either give or take. We either live our life giving our life, which is eternal, or we live taking our life, hoarding, clutching, which is infernal. A third reminder on Palm Sunday is about people being scared to death: first and foremostly his own apostles from before Palm Sunday until after Good Friday. Something dramatic changes in them. They became able to hear Jesus’ words, which he spoke endlessly, about not being afraid, not being anxious. Jesus did not say these words in a scolding way; he said these words in a reassuring way. Not to be afraid. Why? Because Jesus is with us always, to the very end. We are not abandoned. Ever. If you are afraid of life, or are afraid of death, that is your prayer. Jesus will meet you, understand you, love you, carry you. On Palm Sunday, there is one word we repeat again and again: the Aramaic word “Hosanna.” “Hosanna” is a prayerful plea. “Hosanna” means to “save us” and to “help us”: the very thing that Jesus promises us, and which we most need: to be saved and helped. We, at our lowest, can cry out, “Hosanna, in the highest.”[14] And Jesus hears us.   [1] John 3:16. [2] 1 John 4:8, 16; Romans 5:8. [3] The Greek verb μισέω, miséō, appears 41 times in the New Testament: to hate, to detest, or (by extension) to love less. [4] “I [Paul] press on toward the goal, toward the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:14) [5] Saint Paul also writes: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” (Romans 12:1-2) [6] John 12:12-16. [7] J. D. Crossan, God and Empire (San Francisco, 2008), 28. [8] Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is remembered in all four Gospels: Matthew 21:1-17; Mark 11:1-11; Luke 19:29-44; John 12:12-19. [9] John 11:7-16. [10] At the crucifixion are Mary the mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, Salome, and the Beloved Disciple. [11] Philippians 3:7-11. [12] Matthew 25:40-45. [13] Jesus’ Beatitudes in Matthew 5:3-12. [14] Matthew 21: 9, 15; Mark 11:9-10; John 12:13.