I'm posting an excerpt from a sermon I preached 3 years ago. Unfortunately, it still applies.

A Palm Sunday Sermon: 2 Years in Iraq
The Triumphal Entry: "Ride On, In Majesty..."

We’ve just read about Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. In many churches, children will carry around palm branches. Brightly colored pictures of a smiling Jesus on a donkey will be passed around. It’s a great story and perfect for illustration in Bibles. It is also the same story where the religious leaders come and demand Jesus to quiet the people, and Jesus simply responds, “If they are quiet, the rocks will start shouting instead!” It was an exciting day, more exciting than we’ll probably ever understand. And the more I read this text, the more I am amazed at how little I’ve been taught about its meaning through my life. These people were exalting Jesus as the King; this was a political parade, full of expectation. Jesus rode a colt – a prophecy made by Zechariah about the Messiah and King of the Jews. Most of the crowd laid their coats down for Jesus to ride upon – the same thing the crowd did to Jehu when he was made king in 2 Kings 9. And Jesus was publicly heralded as the ‘Son of David’ who ‘comes in the Name of the Lord.’ No wonder the religious leaders squirmed. The people were choosing a new authority for themselves, without their permission or approval. And Jesus let them.

Rememering the Curse: "Driven out...."

This Sunday also marks the end of our study of the curse of sin from Genesis 3. The last verse of that chapter is very simple and sums up the whole judgment on Adam and Eve: “So [God] drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.” That conclusion – the picture of God evicting His creation from the place of beauty and peace of Eden, into the thorns and thistles and sweat and death of the fallen and cursed world – stands starkly contrasted to Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem. Driving out and riding in – these two actions by God represent the need and the means of our salvation. To protect Adam from eating from the Tree of Life and so living forever in his corruption, God had to drive him out of the garden. That was an act of mercy, and the Scriptures tells us that God, in His compassion, also made Adam and Eve clothes from animal skins to cover their shame. That God had to do these things points us to the reality of our sin. But how would God remedy it? We see the answer in Palm Sunday. God has descended to our level – not merely becoming human, which was humbling enough for God – but by riding into the worst, going the deepest, humbling Himself to the uttermost.

Perhaps Jesus was smiling that day, like He is in the Sunday School pictures. But Palm Sunday was not primarily a day of joy for Christ. In accepting shouts and acts of the King, Jesus knew He was sealing His fate. For that He came. Luke puts the day in the perspective that we too often miss – “When He approached Jerusalem, He saw the city and wept over it, saying, ‘If you had known in this day, even you, the things which make for peace! But now they have been hidden from your eyes.” Jesus looked on Jerusalem and cried, seeing all the pain and grief of His own crucifixion. And His sight encompassed more, to at least the destruction of Jerusalem. ‘The things which make for peace’ were not what Jerusalem was expecting.

2 Years in Iraq: "The things which make for peace...."

We still live in a violent, destructive, fallen world. In fact, yesterday's date, March 19, marked 2 years of our current war in Iraq. Palm Sunday seems to be the most appropriate time for us to look beyond our political opinions and see and weep over our own times from Jesus’ Palm Sunday perspective. “If we could know in this day, even us, the things which make for peace! But now they have been hidden from our eyes.” Not many people if any, for instance, could see what has unfolded in Iraq. There have been some very good things, from what we can hear. And we should certainly give weight to those things. But there is also a time for grief, for accounting for the pain and tragedy that we wish had never happened. What I invite you to this morning is not to deny the good things, but to also acknowledge and pray for healing of the wounds that always accompany the violence of war. What wounds? Economically, who is happy that, although initial cost estimates were $60 billion, already we have spent over $130 billion and President Bush has requested another $82 billion? Or humanly, who is happy about the over 1,500 US soldiers who have died in combat or the 11,000 who have been wounded? The tragedy only grows considering the over 18,000 confirmed Iraqi civilian deaths in the last 2 years, mainly women and children?

Those numbers flash too easily across our TV screens, if we hear or see them at all. But do you remember the Fallujah battles? Analysis of “the civilian dealth toll in the April 2004 siege of Falluja ... leads to the conclusion that betweeen 572 and 616 of the approximately 800 reported deaths were of civilians, with over 300 of these being women and children.” Scott Lipscomb has reported that of the verified civilian deaths where an age is confirmed, over 25% have been children. On this count, he said: “Every one of some [18,000] Iraqi civilians killed was a loved human being, whose loss creates heartbreak and bitterness among the bereaved families and communities. Each death deserves recording, each life deserves honouring. This harrowing list ... brings home the fact that, no matter how tragic has been the loss of American life, the loss of innocent Iraqi life has been greater still, and is a loss that is just as irreparable.” I have not seen enough grief on America’s part over these deaths, and it is precisely to this grief that I feel a commitment to Jesus calls us to.

Jesus’ tears also call us, personally and nationally, to humility. The world’s problems have never been permanently solved by war. Do you remember calling the first world war “the war to end all wars”? We tragically learned that there is no such thing. Wars are just as dependable as taxes. The American led war in Iraq will not end the violence of the world, any more than the violence in Jerusalem that led to Christ’s crucifixion brought the predicted national security the political and religious establishment desired.

Moreover, what Palm Sunday calls on us to acknowledge is that OUR eyes have also been blinded to God’s solution to things. As Christians, we have too often wanted Jesus just like Jerusalem did – we’ll claim Him as King but only on our own terms. We are too easy and too familiar with the world’s answers, and too uncomfortable with God’s. God’s ways are too risky, too wasteful, and too impractical. We turn Palm Sunday into a Happy Day Parade, instead of Jesus’ descent to death on the cross. And so we can slip into all sorts of ways of avoiding joining Jesus’ ride into suffering in Jerusalem – we can love our enemies and still kill them; we can love the poor and still ignore them; we can love the humble and still think mainly of ourselves. We can continue in such a way – but if we do, have we really loved God?

What are the things that make for peace? It is not enough to display our slogans to end war or support our troops. We must become peacemakers. We must enter our community and world, amid all the shouts and hoopla about who is king, and see beyond it. We must take up the cross and follow Jesus. We must take the risky, wasteful, and impractical way of God – of loving enemies, sacrificing our own comforts to help the poor, and thinking of others before ourselves. We must trade the blind eyes and ignorant shouts of the Jerusalem crowds for the teary eyes and prayers of Jesus. The words, though, may be the same. For ‘Hosanna’ simply means, ‘O Lord, save!’ And if Palm Sunday doesn’t put that shout on our lips, then we have missed the point and the hope of Jesus for our desperate, violent world.

Statistics and quotes from:
http://www.iraqbodycount.net/ ; http://icasualties.org/; the Sojourners Vigil Toolkit (http://www.sojourners.com/); & David Batstone in sojomail, 3/17/05.