Shadows

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
The First Presbyterian Church
Washingtonville, New York
March 20, 2005

Shadows
Isaiah 50:4-9
Matthew 21:1-11

As always, Jesus was awake early in the morning,
long before his exhausted disciples roused themselves.
The morning was precious time for him:
Quiet time; time all for himself,
time for a walk; time to talk with his Father;
and especially time to listen to his Father,
his ears awakened by the Lord,
awakened to the Lord.

But this morning he stopped before he headed out
and turned and looked back at the men as they slept.
Such a ragtag group, so ordinary,
a rich stew of strengths and weaknesses.
Each man struggled with his teachings, his parables, his lessons.
Each man struggled with faith, sometimes getting it,
and at other times each could be so frustratingly dim and dull.
But Jesus loved them for their willingness to walk with him:
to risk themselves trying and failing with such utter humility,
such a complete lack of self-consciousness.
He regretted the times he had lost his temper with them,
especially poor Peter.
Peter could often be as thick as the mast on his fishing boat
but he was also as strong as that mast,
and in only a few short days,
Jesus was going to entrust his motley group to that strength.

Jesus knew his time with his disciples was limited.
There would be no more outbursts, no more anger, no temper,
just love and forgiveness.
He had much to do over the next few days,
before he ended his time with them over one last meal
as they marked the Passover.
As he shared bread and the cup with his disciples
Jesus would be tell them of his love for them
and leave them with no doubts.

Philip stirred and started to wake, a signal to Jesus
that he’d better move along if he was going to have any quiet time at all,
any time to listen to the word of the Lord, his Father in Heaven.
When he came back from his walk,
the men were moving, some a bit more slowly than the others,
but they were ready for their day’s activities,
ready to follow Jesus.
They never knew what Jesus was going to do next
or where he was going to lead them.
All they knew as they wiped the sleep from their eyes
was that they were going into Jerusalem that morning.
They stumbled out into the early morning light,
the sun brilliant, more white than yellow on the eastern horizon.
The sky was cloudless, deep blue, brilliant and rich,
a blue that even the most skilled artisan could never quite match.

Less than two miles from the central part of the city
Jesus stopped and turned to two of his disciples and said,
“Go into the village ahead of you,
and immediately you will find a donkey tied and a colt with her;
untie them and bring them to me.
If anyone says anything to you, just say this,
‘The Lord needs them.’”

As the two disciples left, Andrew and Philip looked at each other,
each wondering what was happening.
Philip seemed to remember a line from Scripture,
something from one of the prophets about
“a king coming, triumphant and victorious, yet humble,
riding on a donkey, a colt;
He shall command peace to all the nations.”
(Zechariah 9:9)
But before Philip could remember which prophet had spoken those words,
the two men returned with the animals, their mission completed.

All the disciples gathered around the donkey
and the two who had brought the beast laid their cloaks
over his rough fur and then helped Jesus up on to the animal’s back.
They started again, half the disciples walking in front of Jesus,
half following behind, a small procession,
heading down around the Mount of Olives and across the Kidron Valley
on the road that would take them directly to the Temple.
Much to their amazement and delight their little parade attracted followers,
men and women, young and old, all waving and shouting as they walked by,
“Hosanna to the Son of David!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!”
Again, Andrew and Philip looked at one another,
wondering what to make of the scene.
The people were shouting out verses from the final Hallel Psalm,
words that were on everyone’s lips during Passover:
“Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.
We bless you from the house of the Lord.
The Lord is God and he has given us light.
Bind the festal procession with branches,
up to the horns of the altar….
You are my God, and I will give thanks to you;
you are my God, I will extol you.
O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,
for his steadfast love endures forever.”
(Psalm 118:26-29)

The city was teeming with people, thousands upon thousands
of pilgrims from throughout the countryside,
all there to celebrate Israel’s most important anniversary,
the anniversary of their release from slavery under the Egyptians,
more than a thousand years earlier.

For as many as were shouting out Hosannas,
it seemed to Philip that there were just as many
asking who was the man on the back of the donkey.
When Philip heard one man say to another,
“don’t you know, it is the prophet Jesus
from Nazareth up north in Galilee.”
he cringed as he thought about how Nathanael had once sniffed,
“can anything good come out of Nazareth”? (John 1:46)

As quickly as the crowds gathered, they dispersed in the heat of mid-day.
By the time the procession arrived at the temple,
it was just Jesus, the twelve, and a handful of others.
The men were eager to follow Jesus up the steps
just to stand in the shade of one of the columns on the portico.
The sun was beating down on them without mercy
and they longed for relief from the heat and the dust.
But before Jesus climbed the stairs,
a large cloud moved across the sky
and threw a shadow, a heavy, dark shadow
over Jesus and his followers.
Andrew and Philip who had both been sweating so profusely
now actually shivered in the shade.


We think of Palm Sunday as a festive day, a joyful day
an opportunity for us to shout in church, to make a lot of noise.
Imagine the fun our children have when the minister himself says,
“Shout as loud as you can.” In church!
It is a joyful day, as any Lord’s Day should be.
But even as we shout our Hosannas,
even as we look ahead to Easter,
there are shadows that loom over Palm Sunday,
dark shadows, ominous and foreboding.
Shadows that will darken the sky in the days ahead.
There is the shadow of betrayal.
Even as the little parade was headed for the Temple,
the chief priests and scribes and elders
had determined that they needed to spring a trap,
to catch the man who had scandalized their leadership.
The troublemaking carpenter from Nazareth
threatened them,
threatened their peace with the Romans
threatened their very lives.
They knew in Judas they had their bait to spring the trap,
to catch the troublemaker,
And he could be bought for only 30 pieces of silver!
Not much more than the 20 pieces Joseph’s brothers got for him
when the sold him into slavery almost 2000 years earlier.

Then there is the shadow of denial.
Peter is the one whose denials --
not one, not two, but three of them --
are recorded forever in the pages of the gospels,
but all the disciples melted into the dust and woodwork
melted into the shadows, following Jesus’ arrest.
Peter may have been the one to say,
“I know not the man”,
but all the disciples uttered those words in their actions.
All of them in their fear for their own lives
denied Jesus, denied his teachings, denied his very presence.
All of them denied their own faith as they shivered in fear
behind locked doors following Jesus’ crucifixion.

The sky grows darker still with the shadow of hypocrisy,
as the very people who had shouted out “Hosanna!
raised their voices just a few days later in a mighty chorus of
“Crucify!”…. “Crucify!”….., “Crucify!”.
The ones who had sung out, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name
of the Lord” changed their tune to, “Release Barabbas!”

By weeks’ end the sky had grown as dark as night
and yet the worst shadow was yet to come,
the shadow of death.
This shadow covered all the world,
not just in dimness, but in darkness.
complete darkness, utter darkness,
bleak, mournful, hopeless darkness.

But the Psalmist tells us that we need not fear any shadow,
even the shadow of death,
for the Lord our God is with us
our cup does indeed run over,
and goodness and mercy will follow us all the days of our lives.
Shadows are part of our world, but they are fleeting.
As intimidating as they can be, they pass,
for the Lord is with us responding to our cries of “Hosanna”
which means “save us”.
Saved from
the shadow of betrayal
the shadow of denial,
the shadow of our own hypocrisy,
the shadow of grief,
the shadow of anger.
the shadow that blots out love,
and the very shadow of death.

Palm Sunday is not a festival, not a holiday;
it is gateway, a doorway that leads us into holy week,
a week that is as tortuous a time as we have on the calendar,
not torturous, but tortuous,
twisting and turning as we careen through a week
of emotions that run from the highest to the lowest,
the most joyful, to the most grief-filled.
It is a week that begins like a party,
and seems to come to screeching halt in the darkness
brought by the shadow of death.
Yet even the shadow of darkness that covered the world
for those three terrible days, Friday, Saturday, and into Sunday,
passed on that Sunday morning,
when God raised our Lord from death to life.
“The light shines in the darkness
and the darkness [and it could] not overcome it”
(John 1.5)

We walk into the shadows this week
as we walk with our Lord Jesus Christ
to the cross that he was hung upon,
hung upon for you and me.
But in our Lord’s resurrection, God removed the shadows in our lives.
In Christ we walk in the light in this life and the next.
“Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord;
Blessed is the Son of David;
Blessed is the Son of God, our Savior Jesus the Christ!”
AMEN