Philippians 4:4-9
Troparion for Palm Sunday
John 12:1-18

Behold, He Cometh!

Today, it all comes together: the God Who gives His Son in marriage in a cosmic act of self-sacrificing love and the bride, His beloved people, ourselves, who find that we cannot make this same depth of commitment. Yet, many of us cannot bring ourselves to walk away either. Here we have the greatest conflict of expectations in human history and, of course, far above human history. Here is the God Who wills to give everything venturing inconceivable risk all prompted by the madness of love. Yet, His bride is a shrewd negotiator wanting to take all she can get but, in truth, having none of the kind of love He offers and desires back in return.

This is the sad, sad story of our God — outlined in the Book of Genesis, attested in the Book of Exodus, and then echoed in the Prophets, the story of a faithful God and His unfaithful spouse, His people:

For this spouse He has given everything: built a world of beauty for her to command, surrounded her with ministering angels, even created her with His own loving Hand and breathed into her His life-giving breath. He has rescued her, forgiven her, restored her. But time after time, she has played the harlot and betrayed Him. She is fickle and faithless and cannot be depended upon.

Why should such themes arise on Palm Sunday? Because Palm Sunday is the great moment when Divine Love meets with the wheedling and scheming spouse He unaccountably loves so well. And the result is the greatest catastrophe in the history of the world. Let us return to our Gospel text this morning and watch all this unfold. We read that "a great multitude had come to the feast." We infer from the calendar that the feast is Pesach, the Passover, which echoes another risk of God's love: His monumental intervention in Egypt, rescuing His royal bride from bondage and then carrying her into a wilderness where they might be alone renewing the primordial love of Eden. But when He reveals Himself in intimacy — His voice, His Person. He even removes His Hand that we might see His back (though never His Face) (Ex 33:23). Yet in this moment of love's vulnerability, the bride does not return anything like this tenderness and devotion:

Here is our story, the story of God's wayward people beginning in Eden and recurring in the Sinai wilderness. It plays out in each of our lives today. For how many us can say we have never betrayed God's love?

The nominal feast of Palm Sunday Pesach, or Passover, celebrates a particular occasion. But it points to another, deeper thing: a banquet that goes to the heart of God's own Nature and Will:

A great multitude comes to the feast, but Who do the people see? Do they see the Bridegroom, the one to Whom they are to pledge undying love, the one to Whom they are to commit complete and exclusive fidelity, the one for Whom they will lay down their lives? This is the identity that Jesus repeatedly has claimed, attested in all four Gospels: the Bridegroom. Or do they see what they want to see, a mere king of Israel, like Saul and countless others? "Perhaps he will rid us of the Romans," they ponder in a self-serving pipe dream.

This is the Palm Sunday moment for them, for God, and today for us. Whom do we see? From the Book of Genesis to the Book of Revelation and throughout our lives, this is the great and decisive question. Jesus sat His disciples down before the shrines of Pan (suggesting all gods) and the Temple to Augustus Caesar and asked, "Who do you say that I AM?" Who do we say that He is?

The people came to Him by the thousands in a wilderness (twice!) and, impossibly, He fed them with only a few scraps of bread. In this great miracle, He set the scene, God's unique scene, alone with His people in the wilderness. But do they get it?! He says,

Today, on Palm Sunday we we hear these same voices echoing their same, tiresome folly:

The Synoptic Gospels propose that one great question is set before each of us: "Who do you say that I AM?" St. John the Theologian proposes one additional question: "Do you love me?" In His Resurrection and Ascension, God the Son removes His earthly garments displaying Himself in divine intimacy. We see God, even His Face. He lays bare His love for the bride. He stands before us, yes, in His Almighty Power, yet vulnerable, for He offers us His love and awaits our reply. "Do you love me?" He asks (Jn 21:15).

Peter replies, "No. Not the sacrificial love, this 'marriage love,' you have proposed." Reading the Greek original of this passage, we discover that each time Jesus uses the word love, it is the verb-form of agape, the deepest kind of life, the love to which you devote every sinew and nerve of your life. Each time Peter replies, he replies with the verb-form of philia, the first-century word for "brotherly love" (as in Philadelphia) or even devotion to ones vocation as in philosophy or perhaps philatelics, the love of stamp-collecting.

When we read the real Bible, the Greek original, we see what is going on in this famous exchange. For Jesus is challenging Peter to commit to the all-encompassing love found in marriage. But Peter weakly offers in reply, "we can be friends" or perhaps "I will devote myself to my vocation," which is why Jesus concludes with the flinty rebuke, "Then do your job!" — "Feed My lambs." "Tend My sheep." "Feed My sheep." And then He leaves Peter with these last words, calling him significantly "son of Jonah" (the man who ran from God): "When you were young you pulled up your own pants and went wherever you wanted, but the day is coming when someone else must pull your pants up and carry you." Old age comes all too soon. But you, Peter, have chosen the pleasures of this life over the eternal love of God. And we hear an echo of Father Abraham saying of the rich man, "He received His reward" (Lu 16:25).

"Who do you say that I AM?" and "Do you love me?" These are the two great questions posed to each one of us. We know how the story will end. The Son of God will be mocked and scourged and spitted on. And having been spurned in love, He shows us a different aspect of His identity, also proper to a spouse, the spouse who has rejected Him:

When I was a young man, I did young man things. On Palm Sunday, I marched around waving palm branches. But now I am old. And I have put away childish things. What is "Hosanna!" but a faint cry to a petty king of Palestine? Our Lord God is not to be found among petty kings or politicians. And Palm Sunday is no time to follow the herd.

How will the story end for you? Will you see in Jesus the approach of God? Will you see the Bridegroom, Heaven's supernal love and the bosom of Abraham? Will you open your arms in a firm and final commitment to this unbreakable faithfulness and devotion? Or, like Peter, will you wheedle and scheme and backpedal angling to take whatever it is you can though constantly delaying a whole-hearted commitment?

To reject God is to mock Him. And to mock Him is to crucify Him again, as He told Peter plainly outside of Rome (Acts of St. Peter, XXXV). Peter asks Him, "Quo vadis?" But the real question is "Where is Peter going?"

Where are you going this Palm Sunday? Will you reject His love? Will you reject His invitation to a whole-hearted, final, permanent, and sacrificing commitment? Or will you say, in effect, "Crucify!"? He asks us, will you say, "I will love the Lord my God with all of my heart, with all my of soul, with all my of mind, and with all of the strength and devotion of my body" set aside only for Him ... and then do it? There is no middle ground. For at the crossroads, He promises,