Power on Parade

Preached at Prescott Memorial American Baptist Church
April 1, 2012 (Palm Sunday)
Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29
John 12:12-19

People love a parade. The Macy’s Parade is the most popular holiday parade in America. The amazing event attracts 3.5 million people each Thanksgiving Day to the streets of New York City. And there are fifty million television viewers nationwide. The original Macy’s Parade was not so spectacular. That initial parade took to the streets in 1924 when most of the employees at Macy’s Department Store were first generation immigrants. Proud of their new American heritage they wanted to celebrate Thanksgiving with an old- world festival. They put on costumes: cowboy and clown outfits. They borrowed zoo animals from Central Park and paraded through the downtown streets of New York City. There was much for which to be grateful. They sang songs of celebration.

The first giant balloon was Felix the Cat. He was filled with helium in 1929 and floated far overhead. Since there was no plan for how to deflate Felix, the balloon handlers simply let him fly away. That began a tradition of letting the huge balloons float wherever the wind would take them. Official Macy’s Cards were placed inside the balloons so that those people lucky enough to find a deflated balloon on the ground could redeem the card for a gift at any Macys’ store. These days the famous parade is a walk of 2.6 miles. Celebrities, media, performers, artists, bands and balloons fill the streets. 1500 dancers. 1000 clowns. About 60 balloons float overhead. These days balloons are carefully deflated and stored from year to year.

My daughter, Jennifer, watches the parade every year on television. She’s been talking about going to NYC, just to be there and see it for real. I asked her what it is she likes so much. She said, “It’s a tradition; it’s reliable. I like the way they maintain all the old familiar stuff but they add new things every year to make it more exciting.”

It’s interesting to notice what we put on parade, what gets our attention and what we consider “reliable.”

Jesus walked on water, calmed a storm out at sea. He healed the sick and set people free from demons. He caused the blind to see, lifted up the lame and allowed them to walk again. He brought sound back to the ears of the deaf. He gave voice to the voiceless, hope to the poor and allowed children a chance to feel special and valued.

He was something new and powerful. And yet he was from familiar stock, old and worn like furniture that has been in the family through several generations.

But just before the time of Passover this man from Bethlehem did something new and extraordinary. He raised a friend from the grave. Jesus shouted into the tomb and the sound of his voice, the power of his faith, the reality of his presence brought Lazarus back to life. And the whole world went after Jesus. Whatever his power, whoever he was—the world wanted him. He had power over our oldest enemy: Death.

Power that could defy death. Power that rode into the city on what!? A donkey. Have you looked at a donkey lately? Donkeys are short pudgy creatures, ears so big as to make us laugh. A hee-haw that is altogether ridiculous. I can imagine that Jesus’ knees were bent hugging the wide sides of the obstinate creature. It’s interesting to notice that Palm Sunday and April Fool’s Day are the same day this year. It’s appropriate when we think about Jesus on this donkey.

A parade for the Passover, remembering when the angel of death passed over the homes of the Hebrew families and spared the lives of their first born. The crowds stood along the dusty highway waving palms, shouting “Hosanna!” and hoping this new miracle worker, this Jesus, could save them from whatever traps their lives had fallen into.

Studs Terkel has captured Steve Young’s story…Steve Young and his wife, Maurine, raised four sons in Chicago. Steve was a piano technician and he coached speed skating. His son, Andrew, was competing in national speed skating championships so the father and son traveled from one frozen pond to another during the winter. Although Steve had four sons, he was very close to Andrew. All the coaching and traveling experiences made them best friends.

It happened in June of 1996. Andrew and his twin brother, Sam, were out in the afternoon. Sixteen year olds. They had just gotten their driver’s licenses. They were at the grocery store. Some kids from a gang started throwing gang signs. Angry words were exchanged. The gang kids were on a bike. One bike with two fifteen year old boys on it. Andrew and Sam started driving toward home. It was five o’clock rush hour traffic. The car was stopped at a traffic light. The kids on the bike rode up beside the car. One kid said, “Do it.” And the other kid aimed a gun at Andrew’s shoulder and shot him. There was too much damage done to Andrew’s heart. The doctor’s couldn’t save him.

Later the kid that shot Andrew would confess that he only meant to scare Andrew. He had no intention of killing him. But the kid was only fifteen. He had no idea how powerful and lethal a gun can be. What does a fifteen year old kid know about power and death?

Steve and his wife went to the funeral home to make arrangements. They purchased a casket for their 16 year old son’s body. As they were leaving the funeral home, Steve’s knees buckled under him. He fell to the sidewalk and sobbed. He knew that if the cops would let him in the cell with that shooter, that stupid kid, he would snap his neck in an instant. Steve’s rage and pain were overwhelming.

Steve lost his motivation for life. He couldn’t go to work. People called for piano service and Steve ignored the calls. Bills came in the mail. The mortgage payments were due. But Steve took to throwing the bills on the floor and walking on them. He didn’t care anymore. He had lost his son in a senseless incident. In one moment so much had been taken from him. He stayed in bed and let the world take care of its own problems. The power of Death settled in on the man’s shoulders and pushed him down.

Maurine, Steve’s wife, went to church, a Bible church where people were a little too extreme for Steve’s taste. Sometimes the people there got emotional and waved their hands in the air, shouted out. Steve didn’t go to church with her. The people at the church were concerned about the Young family and they started taking up special offerings. One Sunday Maurine came home with a check for $600. Another time she came home with a check for $900. The money helped but the family’s debt was out of control.

Yet somehow this kindness and generosity from the church people helped Steve enough to get out of bed. That $900. gift shed some light on Steve’s darkness. He got up. He took his tools and tried to work.

He went to visit a regular customer, an older woman in Glencoe. A sweet woman, she asked about Steve as he worked on her piano. “How are you and your family dealing with this tragedy?” she asked and then she listened carefully as Steve answered. She sat with him and offered safe space for the man to cry. Then the woman paid him twice what she owed him for the work.

There was an incident in the courtroom. It was six months after Andrew’s death. Steve and Maurine were at a sentencing hearing for the boy who had handed the gun to the shooter, the boy who had said, “Do it.” The judge said “Fifty-five years.”
The convicted boy’s father was a small man, a short Mexican immigrant. Steve heard someone translate for the father what the judge had said. Cincuenta y cinco.

The man put his head in his hands and started sobbing. His son was going to prison for basically the rest of his life. Steve felt sorry for the father. He, too, had lost a son. And somehow Steve knew this man did not raise his son to be a murderer. Steve knew a very little Spanish. So he went over to the man and said, “Yo siempre su nino.”

I’m sorry for your son. Steve put his arm around the man who barely came up to his shoulder. And the fathers held each other up as they cried.

Journalists were in the courtroom and a photographer caught a picture of Steve and the other father in each other’s arms. The story and the picture ran on the front pages of the next day’s Tribune and Sun-Times. Television reporters called for interviews. It was strange for Steve to suddenly receive so much attention for such a small gesture.

The regular customer in Glencoe, that kind older woman who had asked about Steve’s struggle and allowed him to cry in her living room, saw the story in the paper and she sent Steve and his family enough money to get them out of debt and back on their feet financially. A fresh start. New life. Death conquered by the power of love, compassion and forgiveness.

When the United States declared war on Iraq in 2003, there was a new tradition begun in Pasadena, California, a Palm Sunday Peace Parade. Each year on Palm Sunday the parade marches from a poor and marginalized neighborhood in Pasadena to the economic center of the city. Along the way people sing and lift prayers for peace. The parade is a witness against the powers and authorities of this world: those who make war, build bombs, provide guns to fifteen year old kids.

The Palm Sunday Peace Parade organizers say: “In these days of endless war we march as fools who believe that another world is possible. We march in the footsteps of one who journeyed on a donkey, as a fool into the hearts of his people to reclaim them for peace.”

It’s interesting to notice what we put on parade, what gets our attention and what we consider “reliable.”

This is Palm Sunday, a day to praise a God of power. As we deal with the death of Trayvon Martin, as we continue to cope with the ugliness of today’s political parade, as we each deal with crimes in our own cities and homes—let us wave a palm frond for the power of forgiveness. Our God has conquered death and sets us free to celebrate the power of love.

That has gotten our attention and brought us together here in this place. May it sustain us for the living of our lives.
Amen