Picture for a moment a wild campaign party in a hotel ballroom on the night the polls close. Red, white and blue balloons, confetti, crowds of people waving signs, loud upbeat music, wild cheering every time the TV cameras cut live to the scene. But then gradually, the mood changes as the numbers come in, and those wildly high expectations begin to fade quickly. A concession speech from the would-be hero, and a little cheering, a few tears maybe, but after a few last drinks the crowd begins to trickle away, and the next morning we’re left with nothing but an empty ballroom with the depressing signs of celebration scattered on the floor. All that’s left is a lingering feeling of what might have been, but even that passes after a few days, and the world moves on.
The two gospel readings we hear on Palm Sunday, the first before we started mass and the second just now, want to show us exactly this contrast. First, Jesus suddenly triumphant, the Jews of Jerusalem surging forward to proclaim him king, cheering and singing, ready for a victory, and then just a few days later, a scene of complete quiet and sad defeat, the crowd long gone, everyone disappointed that what they hoped and prayed God would do didn’t happen at all. In fact, not only did Jesus not want to conquer the Romans and free prisoners, the way the crowd wanted, he gave himself over to be executed for no good reason, humiliating himself on purpose, and maybe even some of those who believed in him.
We should be sympathetic with this crowd, since something in us all wants a God who wins in some obvious way. Wouldn’t life be easier if the good were always rewarded and the bad punished, right before our eyes? Lately you have probably noticed that there have been a lot of books arguing the case for not believing in God, and as you know there are some pretty good arguments, but what it all comes down to is this: Why isn’t there a god who conquers in the visible way we all want, vanquishing everything from evil nations to painful diseases, constantly reinforcing our decision to believe? Why instead do we have one who crawls down into all that mess with us, living as we do and dying as we do, proving that way how much God loves us and wants us, instead of liberating us now from everything?
We don’t know why God is always calling us to something more, something harder, something that makes following him always a risk, why God doesn’t just give us one victory after the other. But that is where we are. When Jesus tells us to take up our cross, it means that seeing his cross is always going to be a reminder for us not only of how much God loves this world, how much God wants our love, but it is there to show us where Jesus wants us to direct our lives, not to a storybook triumph, not to something easy where we can be carried along by a crowd, but towards love and courage and self-sacrifice and humility. Something impossible, we think, and yet we know that the opportunities for us to find our cross are all around us.
We call this coming week Holy Week because it is when we find out as much as there is that we can know about who God is, and we come to these liturgies again and again because no matter how often we hear it, what God is trying to tell us is so surprising we still can’t believe it: I am not your triumphant hero, he tells us, instead, it is you who will become the hero, by following me.