"When I say so, Floor it!"

Homily from Palm Sunday 2021 - Area Parish of the Saint Lawrence

Entry into Jerusalem, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55433 [retrieved March 30, 2021]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Entry_into_Jerusalem_-_Google_Art_Project_(6834070).jpg.

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be now and always acceptable in your sight, Oh Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

So as you may or may not know by now, I haven’t been driving for very long. I somehow got my license in between various phases of lockdown back in December, and got my first car just before Christmas! Now, of course, I took, like, a year and a half of driving lessons and passed everything with flying colours, but once you’re in the driver’s seat on your own it’s a bit of a different story. I spent the first few weeks getting used to driving around Ottawa, often trying to go out every day, even just for a little bit, so I wouldn’t get rusty.  Eventually, sometime in January, I had to head over to the church for some reason, and noticed that the sky was clear, the weather was great, and it was late enough to where the roads were all dead by this point.  I decided that this was the night. This was the night where I was going to try the 417 for the first time! So here I am, all nervous and excited and ready to conquer my fears and not knowing what was going to happen, and there were no cars the entire way, and as I turn onto the ramp, and start heading down, I can see the 417, filled with cars, all going way faster than I had anticipated. The only thing that went through my mind at that point was, “oh no. I’ve messed up. I’ve messed up big time. I’m not ready for this.” And it took all my energy and concentration not to hit the brakes and clear a path through the forest. But then, like in some sort of movie, the disembodied voice of my driving instructor came to me, and I remembered her wise words. “When I say so, floor it.”
And I think that’s how the disciples, or at least some of them, felt that day 2000 years ago.  They had been following their friend Jesus around the countryside, healing people, feeding the hungry, proclaiming release of prisoners, the lifting up of the poor, the raising of the dead. And every time the powers that be got angrier and angrier, and you knew you were doing something right! But then, here we are, in Jerusalem, occupied by the Romans, obsessed with war, and horses, and chariots, and enforcing their own version of peace through oppression, and your friend’s about to get on a donkey and ride into the capital and establishing himself as King.  Muscle memory takes over as you untie the donkey, and you can’t even come up with any original words besides, “oh no. I’ve messed up” so you simply recite or fumble over the words Jesus told you to say. The empty streets fill with more people than you anticipated, and people start throwing palm branches and their coats in front of Jesus and shouting “hosanna,” meaning save us, we pray, in Aramaic, “here comes the real King!”
And I think that’s how we ourselves might feel heading into Holy Week… This transition from a few weeks of regular predictable wandering through the wilderness of Lent, and suddenly before we know it there’s palms in the church, and we’re studying the latest rules of the lockdown, and everything feels the same, but different, we’re engaged in some ways and isolated in others, or perhaps we’re spinning our tires waiting to fly out of lockdown, but are scared of what we’ll find when we return to a normal that hasn’t existed in over a year… perhaps, in some way in your own life, you see the 417 quickly approaching and you’re starting to say to yourself, “oh no. I’ve messed up.”
But as much as we see Maundy Thursday, the Last Supper, the Crucifixion, the agony of the garden, the crowds, the chief priests, the Romans, and everything else flying towards us at 100km/hr, and we want to slam the brakes, or pull out our swords to “protect” Jesus, or run away in fear that we’ll be next, that voice of Jesus seems to echo through everything, and gently, but confidently says, “when I say so, floor it.” And we trust. We trust that, through prayer, and acts of love and mercy, through a desire to love the world as God does, we have been given the skills and training to, indeed, “floor it.”
And sometimes we do! Sometimes we’re able to find the flow of the “traffic” that is God’s will of love and be at harmony with God and each other. But sometimes, just as we find ourselves in the crowd shouting “Hosanna” to God our King, we also find ourselves shouting “crucify him” to an Emperor obsessed with war and death. Sometimes we find ourselves denying the Christ that would never deny us. Sometimes, instead of carrying our own cross, we’re lifting up the cross of another. Sometimes, instead of feeling the nail of oppression in our own hand, we are putting it into another’s.
But this is a Christ, a God, a King, who, when we condemn him, he says, “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do,” Who, when we deny him three times, gives us three chances to say we love him. Who, when he thirsts and we give him vinegar on a sponge, he offers us himself in the Eucharist when we ourselves thirst. And when we keep going back, time and time again, to lifting up those who claim to be godlike because of their absurd wealth, their ability to kill lots of people without losing any sleep, and their radical hunger for suffering, the servant King, the Son of God, the Word made Flesh, humbly passes through our own streets enthroned on a living peace yet undiscovered.

I close by offering up some words of my favourite hymn, “My Song is Love Unknown.”

Sometimes they strew his way,
And his sweet praises sing;
Resounding all the day
Hosannas to their King.
Then “Crucify”
is all their breath,
And for his death
They thirst and cry.

Why? What hath my Lord done?
What makes this rage and spite?
He made the lame to run,
He gave the blind their sight.
Sweet Injuries!
Yet they at these
Themselves displease,
And against him rise.

They rise, and needs will have
my dear Lord made away;
A murderer they save,
The Prince of Life they slay.
Yet cheerful he
To suffering goes,
That he his foes,
from thence might free.

May God open our eyes this Palm Sunday that we might behold the Prince of Life, fill our breath with Hosannas to our King, and guide our hearts that we might stay with him through his death so we might be raised with him to a new life. Amen.

+Fr. Adam Brown