Due to some logistical difficulties, I only have Joseph’s end of the recording of his sermon today for my congregation. I will say here, though, what I said in response to his offering:
Palm Sunday begins our journey through the Lord’s passion to the empty grave. Because of the promise and proclamation of Easter, Christians must say more than simply that “Jesus was a Jew.” Exactly to the extent that Jesus lives with death behind him, Christians must also confess that Jesus is a Jew. Therefore, if the church is to be the body of the Risen Jesus, then we cannot do so apart from fellowship and solidarity with Jews.
In that same spirit of friendship, here is Joseph’s sermon:
Psalm 118 & Isaiah 50
Palm Sunday is the calendar taking control of every Christian’s focus for the next seven days. The liturgy and Scriptural texts announce the final week of Jesus’ ministry, in preparation for the unique experience of God’s Love and Promise next Sunday’s of the Risen Christ. So why is a rabbi giving the sermon today, Palm Sunday 2024?
First, I hope you won’t be upset to learn, that the PALMS highlighted in the Gospel narrative were not used to welcome pilgrims before the Passover, but before the Festival of Tabernacles Sukkot, when the Palm Fern—the Lulav is one of the central ritual objects. Somehow the biblical festivals were conflated in the scriptural narrative, both significant pilgrimage moments became inadvertently combined.
Maybe the other reason that there is a rabbi here speaking on Palm Sunday is that
the calendar strangely overlaps with a minor Jewish festival, Purim, the Feast of Esther which began last night with the reading of the Book of Esther in synagogues. This morning at Alexandria’s Beth El Hebrew Congregation there is a Purim Carnival.
The calendar may have already confused you, why are Holy Week and Passover not connected this year as the narrative describes for this Thursday night. This year in the Jewish calendar has a Jewish Leap Year, which occurs 7 times in a 19-year cycle. The Jewish holiday calendar follows an ancient solar seasonal festival cycle, but also maintains a monthly lunar cycle; so, in order to keep everything in a reasonable order, we need a second of month of Adar which like this year makes Easter and Passover one month a part.
Regardless of the differences, Jews and Christians are both celebrating elements of their Scripture, today; in order to better understand what we are meant to learn, let us begin with a simple overview of Purim and the Book of Esther.
Purim like Palm Sunday is a calendar announcement, Passover comes in one month.
Esther is one of two books in the Hebrew Bible /Old Testament, that does not mention God, an ancient Persian folk-tale that produces a minor festival exactly one month before Passover, the key festival of the people. Many contemporary biblical scholars note that Esther is a book that was put into the Hebrew Bible as a warning about life in the Diaspora, as it portrays life that is radically different than all the other books in which the identity and destiny of the Israelites and Judeans is determined by God’s presence through priests and prophets. Esther becomes the queen after the King humiliates his queen during a drunken feast. Mordechai, Esther’s uncle helps save the King from a terrorist attack and his name is noted in a record of being worthy to honor.
The villain Haman, a descendent of Amalek provokes the King with the following classic antisemitic description: Haman then said to King Ahasuerus, “There is a certain people, scattered and dispersed among the other peoples in all the provinces of your realm, whose laws are different from those of any other people and who do not obey the king’s laws; and it is not in Your Majesty’s interest to tolerate them. If it please Your Majesty, let an edict be drawn for their destruction, Esther 3:8-9.
“There is a certain people…..and it is not in your Majesty’s interest to tolerate them.” The Book of Esther ends with the Queen exposing Haman’s evil plot and all that had been planned for the Jews of Shushan-ancient Persia, is done to Haman, his family and their followers.
A book without God’s intervention is read one month before the extraordinary origin story of Jews being freed from Egyptian slavery with 10 Divine plagues and the crossing of the Sea of Reeds. The Diaspora Jewish community needed to learn that their post-biblical destiny required even more than the slaves in Egypt!
So, my question on this Palm Sunday, is about the Judean—the Jew—Jesus who enters Jerusalem with his disciples to observe the Passover was he self-aware of being, ‘from among a certain people’? Surely the vulgar prejudice from an ancient Persian story is not as real as the Roman authorities and military who will eventually harass, arrest, judge and execute Jesus? Haman’s dismissive phrase, ‘a certain people’ hides the contempt and hatred that so many have historically acknowledged as being THE JEWS.
Today we read from the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament-Isaiah 50:4-5
My Sovereign GOD gave me a skilled tongue,
To know how to speak timely words to the weary.
Morning by morning, [God] rouses me,
Rousing my ear
To give heed like disciples.My Sovereign GOD opened my ears,
And I did not disobey,
I did not run away.
The Prophetic charisma of Jesus is well described: the teacher, healer, and community organizer
is surely a source of political concern among those in Jerusalem. Was Jesus afraid? Did he realize that as one of ‘a certain people’, as one chosen to speak on behalf of the most vulnerable, his presence especially in Jerusalem during the festival of Passover was dangerous. The prophets of the Hebrew Bible were not intimidated in their own times, their pathos for God’s promises among the poor, orphans and widows threatened kings and priests; so too in his day Jesus would not have his prophetic insights silenced. Yet the Romans were like Haman refusing to even tolerate, those whose behaviors were different from those of any other people and who do not obey the king’s laws.
We share Psalm 118, from what we call the Hallel, Psalms 113-118 which is read on the three Pilgrimage Festivals. When we chant them in Hebrew attempting to imagine the sounds of the ancient Temple: 118:19 Open to me the gates of righteousness, that I may enter through them and give thanks to the LORD.
118:20 This is the gate of the LORD; the righteous shall enter through it.
118:24 This is the day that the LORD has made—let us exult and rejoice on it.
זֶה־הַ֭יּוֹם עָשָׂ֣ה יְהֹוָ֑ה נָגִ֖ילָה וְנִשְׂמְחָ֣ה בֽוֹ׃
הוֹד֣וּ לַיהֹוָ֣ה כִּי־ט֑וֹב כִּ֖י לְעוֹלָ֣ם חַסְדּֽוֹ׃
Praise GOD, who is good—whose steadfast love is eternal. 118:29
These are the same Hebrew words that Jesus—the Judean, the Jew---chanted as he and his disciples entered Jerusalem.
No matter what we have faced, been called….we have always shared in God’s joy. These two verses in particular are calming evidence that whether it is the Israelites or Jews who are defined as ‘ a certain people’ whose laws are different from those of any other people and who do not obey the king’s laws; they are also and always a community whose rituals and literature illuminate their endless devotion to God—and most assuredly God’s eternal commitment to these….both beloved and for some…that certain people not to be tolerated.
Why am I stressing this obnoxious phrase? As a guest it is probably rude to keep using it as if I were accusing anyone here of agreeing, even using it? The truth is that during Holy Week, Jews have historically experienced painful antisemitism from Christianity, “ that certain people” in Esther becomes “the Jews who crucified Jesus” in the Gospels. Since October 7 the range and intensity of global antisemitism but especially here in the US and most shockingly on university campuses has reopened the whole history of the hatred of Jews.
I am here today as your guest as a public statement of gratitude and a personal pledge of continued dialogue and solidarity with this community and its pastor, Jason Michelli. I am here to tell everyone and anyone, that even though I have been and still remain a member of that certain people, I refuse to be a quiet victim of the past or present, I am here to share our future, a future of a common ethical commitment that no amount of hatred from anyone will stop those who seek to build communities of care, understanding and being present to each other’s pain and hope.
One of the great interfaith leaders of the 20th century, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, teaches us:
What is urgently needed are ways of helping one another in the terrible predicament of here and now by the courage to believe that the word of the Lord endures forever as well as here and now; to cooperate in trying to bring about a resurrection of sensitivity, a revival of conscience; to keep alive the divine sparks in our souls, reverence for the words of the prophets, and faithfulness to the Living God. (No Religion is an Island) When we are gasping with despair, when the wisdom of science and the splendor of the arts fail to save us from fear and the sense of futility, the Bible offers us the only hope: history is a circuitous way for the steps of the Messiah. (Heschel, God In Search of Man, 238)
I shared Palm Sunday in the hope that when you are celebrating Easter’s unique blessings, you will remember that we share the eternal promise of the ultimate Messianic presence, for which we all still strive.
There is a Certain People