Emptied
Philippians 2:5-11; Mark 11:1-11

April 13, 2003

It's bugged me for some time: I keep wondering what song they were singing as they were entering Jerusalem that Passover time. Mark says the bystanders were shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest heaven!” -- but were they really singing?

As long as there is hope, there has to be a song, for no singing just wouldn’t be human. Every war collects a few songs that fill a heart-felt need for hope and the banishment of fear. Every movement for justice and self-identity find a song that epitomizes how they want to walk.

The civil rights movement is remembered by the gospel tones of “We Shall Overcome.” The 1967 Boston Red Sox World Series season is remembered as “The Impossible Dream” from “Man of La Mancha.” High school graduating classes adopted the rousing anthem of the 1960’s rock group, The Animals, “We Gotta Get Out of This Place.”

No song emerged out of the Vietnam War, although The Doors’ “This Is the End” as the voice over for the surreal opening of the movie “Apocalypse Now” might qualify. What are they singing today in Baghdad?

In Philippi, Greece, they sang an odd tune. They had to, for the young Christians in Paul’s first European church were considered resident aliens by the Roman government and other religious groups. They were discriminated against politically precisely because of their religious faith.

Our first mistake in making assumptions about the Biblical story is forgetting that we live in a society in which being a Christian is the norm of power and status. That may no longer be the case in the next generation or two, for already the vast majority of our Canadian society are not members of any church or organized religious group. In many circles, to advance a religious, theological or Biblical rationale for an action or position results in open dismissal.

The Philippian Christians knew there was nowhere they could parade into merrily without inviting more trouble. So they sang a somber hymn, not quite the blues, perhaps a ballad of how Jesus was victorious by being defeated, the tune long lost.

The Philippians were no shirkers as far as theology was concerned. They did not try to weasel out of committing themselves regarding who Jesus was. “Though he was in the form of God” - Jesus is godly and God. “He did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited.” Already this song is heading in a direction no one else would dare venture. If you’ve got a hero, you don’t mention weaknesses. If your God is the subject, then your God is perfect, invincible, all-knowing, all-powerful. Has George W. Bush ever talked about losing?

The Philippians sang about their Jesus who emptied himself of all this God-stuff and power. Fully God, but he emptied himself and became fully human and did what all humans have to do, lose to the forces of death. Would George have sung along?

The Jesus crowd had not yet crossed the city limits of Jerusalem, but pulled up in Bethany on the outskirts. As far as we know, Jesus always walked, but today he wanted to ride, sending a pair of disciples into another village to fetch a colt he knew about. Naturally, some neighbours thought they were stealing the colt, but the assurance that the Lord needed made it all oddly acceptable.

They threw some of their clothes over the colt for Jesus to sit on, and while it wasn’t red carpet they placed on the road ahead, their cloaks effected a humbler equivalence. A number of people cut down leafy branches from the fields and placed them on the parade path. It’s a good thing the Gospel of John identifies the leaves as palms or we would be celebrating “Leafy Branch” Sunday. Catchy!

A victory parade for the Empty One, the Prince of Peace, of Love Not War, a victory parade for the one who would be defeated is never normal. There is a ritual air about it all; Jesus could have walked, but the book of Zechariah hinted about just such an entry by a victorious, yet peaceful king. No high-tech tanks, but a low-tech animal was his vehicle. The people still shouted victory tunes. But once he arrived, nothing happened.

Several of the Gospels imply that the crowd dispersed rather quickly. Mark simply reports that Jesus went to the Temple, checked out the scene, and went back out to the starting place, Bethany, for the night. What was this all about?

Today is the beginning of the week during which the whole world passes by. When Jesus entered Jerusalem he intended no victory parade, and the odd way he entered proved it. This would be a week of teaching, of eating the Passover with his disciples one last time, of betrayal by one of his closest disciples, of arrest by the civil authorities, a trial and desertion and an execution and burial, an utter loss of hope. That’s the week. It ends Saturday night with an empty darkness that nothing could fill. Saturday night is alive - or dead? - in Baghdad today.

In a world full of itself, full of armour and tanks entering the enemy’s city as the only way to victory, this one man’s emptiness appears radically different. Jesus was not lacking in godliness; he had emptied himself of the need for flouting his power. If you and I are going to learn to live a different life of non-conformity to the powers-that-be, a Jesus who was full of God curing the ailments of humanity and dispatching the evil people and governments of this world would not be useful to us.

Jesus did not come to rid the world of evil. He came to enable you and I to fight evil effectively. We are not God, so we cannot zap the incarnations of evil as Jesus could have done. But he emptied himself of this gross Godness and became like us, empty yet capable of defeating these same forces of evil by means of our weakness and suffering and goodness. All we’ve got is our emptiness to defeat evil, but Jesus showed us how to fill ourselves with God to really triumph.

Power and brute might never work in the long run and that is not an original idea. People have always known that, even Christians have always known that. Each year, we wave those leafy branches again and pretend to parade, so that we who are empty can endure once again the injustice of our world, and know that there is a Third Day when our emptiness will be filled. A lot of songs yet to sing.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan