Scripture Reading:  Matthew 21:1-18

In the lean, spartan prose of the gospel writer, the story of Jesus spirals towards its climax..  The crowds are expectant, jubilant; the disciples are in their glory; Jesus is a hot prospect.  He gets a Messiah’s welcome, he cleanses the temple, he heals the sick and the lame.  The bad guys are on the run.  All’s right with the world.

I get a brief rush every year at about this time.  A fleeting feeling that this just might be the year that Jesus finally makes it to the top and stays there??casts the scribes and pharisees, chief priests and Romans out just like the money changers.  ...Only it never happens.

Every year Jesus’ Jerusalem gambit ends up exactly like last year--nailed to the cross of Calvary.  Every year Jesus’  humiliating political failure confronts his church.  Of course we focus on the victory of the resurrection--and that is entirely appropriate.  But in so doing we miss out on an important side-light of the passion-resurrection drama, an object-lesson in success and failure in the life of the Christian.

This is a difficult topic to broach.  It took over 700 years for Christian artists to portray horror of the cross.  Everything prior to that shows Christ beaming as though the whole thing were quite exhilirating.  Even today, ••perhaps especially today,•• the church struggles to face the grim reality of the cross.  Like the cheering throngs on Palm Sunday, we love winners.  We follow them; we emulate them; we define them, create them and even destroy them.

We live in a Palm Sunday society and the great temptation is to be Palm Sunday Christians

 You’ve probably figured out that Palm Sunday Christian isn’t a complimentary label and you may be wondering what I’ve got against Palm Sunday.  It’s such an upbeat story—little children yelling Hosanna and waving palm branches.

The trouble with Palm Sunday, is that joyful outpouring of the people was based on fundamental misconceptions of who Jesus was and what it meant to be his follower.  The people had seen the signs and wonders and they knew that Jesus was the Messiah and the Messiah was going to rule Israel and kick out the Romans and life was going to be a lot better.  The disciples weren’t any better.  They’d figured that Jesus was going to take over and that they, being early followers, would get the choice, cabinet-level positions.  Failure?  Disgrace? Martyrdom?  No way.  They were following Jesus straight to the top.

And so it is with our Palm Sunday society.  We’re looking for heroes; leaders who will whip the bad guys, restore our world status and sense of national pride.  Suffering is to be avoided at all costs; failure is swept under the rug.

It’s not hard to find this attitude in the church either.  Robert Schuler, Zig Zigler, Reverend Ike, Lester Sumerall, I could go on and on. ...Hey,  Not satisfied with $300 a week, tithe for $400.  Success is equated with faith, prosperity with blessing.
The Mennonite version of the Palm Sunday malady may be a little more subtle than Reverend Ike asking God to bless his parishoners with Cadillacs, but it’s just as real.  Oh, we might accept a little suffering—it’s in our heritage, but failure, uh-uh, no way.

For a people who define themselves by what they do, a professional failure is devastating. For a peole who strive for Christ-likeness, a moral failure is faith-shattering.

Who are we trying to kid?  Life is most certainly as much about failure as about success.  Yet we wear our successes like fig leaves to obscure our failures.  Perhaps we’ve sacrificed our families to succeed in our careers, or let go of dreams in search of security and stability.  Maybe we’ve even achieved our goals over the backs of others.

In the face of failure, Palm Sunday Christianity is powerless.  Without Good Friday and Easter, all Palm Sunday Christianity can offer the struggling is the back pew, the phone number of good self-help group, and maybe a lecture on what sins they may have committed to bring this upon themselves. Those who fail can only be an embarrassment to the Palm Sunday church.  After all, what will people think if they find out losers come to this church.

And so the challenge before us is to be Easter Christians in a Palm Sunday Society.  The Easter Christian imbibes on the totality of the Passion/Resurrection drama, because it is a microcosm of what it means to be fully human.  In Jesus’ final days, there is fame and ignominy, the sweetness of friendship and the bitterness of betrayal, popular support coupled with opposition and hatred from people he hoped might be co-laborers and supporters, oneness with God and divine abandonment, symbolic victories and humiliating failures.

As Easter Christians, our relish of the Palm Sunday victories is tempered by our knowledge of the fickleness of the crowd and fleeting nature of such triumphs.  At the same time we are not destroyed by our Good Friday failures.  To fail is quintessentially human, yet the definition of failure ultimately belongs to God and not  humans.  In the end, no one will judge us but God alone.  Entrusted to the tender care of God, our failures can be redeemed to broaden our humanity and deepen our empathy, and we, like Christ, can be raised to newness of life.

Conclusion
Easter Christianity is ever-new and ever-life giving. By embracing the totality passion/resurrection drama it accepts the range of human experience and the grace necessary to redeem it.  In so doing, the church is empowered to reach out not only to “model “ Christian folks, but to all those who struggle.