Sermon Palm Sunday 2006

Read Mark 11:1-11

The first time I registered as a taxpayer I was daunted. I felt they knew stuff about me that I didn’t even know - like they were going to discover my dirty little secrets. I went to the Receiver of Revenue in Plein Street and asked for assistance in filling out the forms. The clerk asked my name. For a moment my fear paralysed my brain and I just stared at her gaping nonsense until eventually from the recesses of my blighted memory I dredged up my identity. Needless to say, she didn’t seem entirely convinced that I was Gregory John Andrews.

Life has a way of dropping one a notch or two whenever one gets too high and mighty. My connection with the establishment I railed against didn't just start with taxes...

At university I was very impressed with myself for being a conscientious objector when every one else was off to serve in the Apartheid government’s militia, the “SA Defence Force”. It didn’t occur to me at the time that my study costs were being paid for by the State because Dad was a lecturer and so entitled to a ¾ bursary from the State for his kids. The same State I refused to serve by arms. The same State that used soldiers for acts of terrorism in the townships. The same State that imprisoned black students without trial who protested.

Whether we like it or not we are all complicit at some level in the systems of violence and exploitation that characterise this world. Try as we might - and try we must - we cannot see how our work, our play, our decisions, our relationships may somehow be connected to actions or values we do not consciously espouse.

We cannot wash our hands clean. Pontius Pilate tried when he judged Jesus.

Unlike the Roman Governor, who enters Jerusalem on a mighty warhorse with the conquered in his wake, Jesus enters the not-so-holy city with a rag-tag mob of joyful misfits as his retinue. Unlike Pilate, who plays politics to keep himself in unassailable power, Jesus relinquishes Divinity to die for his accusers. Unlike Pilate, who washes his hands of the messiness of the world, Jesus’ calloused carpenter hands have touched the diseased, held the heart-broken and embraced the untouchable.

Do we seek to be holy to preserve our own holiness, or is our faith about genuine transformation?

Pilate, and the religious establishment he conspires with, work hard at their own holiness and in the end lose their souls. Jesus, who thumbs his nose at religion and empire, is holiness personified.

This is Holy Week. Let’s reflect on whether our holiness is religious or messy. Are we following Pilate toward the pristine temple and courts of power or are we marching with Jesus in the squalor of the street to a ragged hill with a tormented cross?

(Inspired by Sarah)