Year A
Isaiah 50:4-9a
Psalm 31:9-16
Philippians 2:5-11
Matthew 27:11-54

Have you ever heard of lucid dreaming… dreams in which you know you’re asleep… you may even say out loud to yourself in the dream… I’m in bed and just dreaming… and to varying degrees… you can actually control what happens in the dream… that’s the premise of the 2010 movie Inception… but this movie is about several people dreaming a common dream… which one of them… the architect… has designed… and everyone has agreed to go along with the storyline…

And what they’ve agreed to do… is to take part in corporate espionage… to plant a suggestion in the subconscious mind of a CEO… but it must be the simplest version of the suggestion… one that will resonate with him and grow in his mind… and one that he will act on when he awakens… but they have to be certain that he thinks the idea is his and his alone… because if there’s anything that doesn’t feel right… if he suspects even for a moment… that it’s what someone else wants… he just won’t do it and they’ll fail… so in order to minimize that risk… they design not only one dream… but a dream… within a dream… within a dream… but this creates another wrinkle… because the deeper they go… the greater the risk that even when they wake up… they’ll remain convinced that they’re still dreaming… ironically… in this pandemic… we know we’re not dreaming… but just wish we were…

In a recent article in Time magazine… Anglican Bp. N.T. Wright wrote… for many Christians… the coronavirus-induced limitations… have arrived at the same time as Lent… the season of doing without… but the sharp new regulations make a mockery of our Lenten disciplines… doing without any of the things we choose to give up… is child’s play… compared to not being with friends or family.. or going to the pub… the library… or to church…

Rationalists want explanations… they want to know WHY… but the unfathomable complexity… of how countless variables have unfolded… and converged… and created this pandemic… makes it almost certain that there will never be one… universally accepted explanation… so maybe what we need to do is recover the biblical tradition of lament… which is what happens when people ask Why?… and don’t get an answer… it’s where we go… when we move beyond the focus on our own sins and failings… and look more broadly at the suffering of the world… I mean… who in Pompeii ever thought the city would be buried in volcanic ash… and I’m sure the survivors asked WHY?…

In The Lord of the Rings… Frodo says… I wish the Ring had never come to me… I wish none of this had happened… Gandalf replies… so do all who live to see such times… but that is not for them to decide… all we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us…

And David Brooks… remembered that Viktor Frankl… writing from the madness of the Holocaust… also reminds us that we don’t get to choose our difficulties… but we do have the freedom to choose our responses… and the meaning we make… comes from three things… (1) the work we offer in times of crisis… (2) the love we give… and (3) our ability to display courage in the face of suffering… because suffering can be redemptive… the differences between red and blue… don’t seem as acute on the gurneys of the emergency room… but the inequality in the world does seem more obscene… when the difference between rich and poor… is life or death…

That’s why… my hope… and perhaps what may turn out to be a silver lining in all of this… is that globally… we’re being invited to repair the systems which keep some in poverty… and allow others to remain in wretched excess… we’re being invited to replace our hearts of stone… with hearts of flesh… hearts which cry out that maybe it’s more important to eliminate homelessness than it is to build McMansions… hearts which proclaim that it’s more important to eliminate food insufficiency than it is to build Five Star Michelin restaurants… hearts which make known that it may be more important to do without some things than it is to pollute the environment… remember… there’s a Palm Sunday story… of Jesus coming into Jerusalem… and the community began to praise God loudly… and some of the Pharisees told them to be silent… and Jesus… knowing that God’s Truth cannot be suppressed… said that if they were… then the very stones would shout out…

Our reading from Isaiah tells how God awakens the prophet each morning… Ephesians 5:14 exhorts us… Sleeper, awake!… over and over in scripture Jesus calls us to be aware and awake… in Paul’s letter to the Philippians… he urges them to take on the Mind of Christ… and as God said in the vision to Jeremiah… your job is to take apart and demolish… and then start over building and planting anew… and the building and planting continues… and as we live into our new normal… we are called to move closer to God’s dream for us and for creation…

Pilate’s wife had a dream… she told her husband that Jesus was innocent and to leave him alone… but like Jesus… we may think that God’s justice has passed us by… like Jesus… we may feel forsaken… but we are not alone in this… Katie Hines-Shah… senior pastor at Redeemer Lutheran Church in Hinsdale, Illinois…. wrote… this isn’t how we expect the story to end… and yet… if we pay attention to history… if we listen to the voices of less privileged people [ and those of color… as Jesus was… ]… another truth becomes evident… The National Memorial for Peace and Justice memorializes 4,000 people lynched… often in daylight… in front of crowds… and at county courthouses… The Innocence Project has exonerated 367 people in its 19-year history… twenty-one of whom were on death row… and the third season of Sarah Koenig’s award winning podcast Serial… recounts the shocking normalcy of the biased and flawed processes of a typical midwestern courthouse…

So are we willing to consider… dare we even wonder out loud… whether we’ve bought into… a carefully planted suggestion within a dream… that the American Dream… may in fact… be at odds with God’s dream of justice for all people… a common but contrived dream from which we haven’t yet awakened… but believe is real…

Innocent people like Jesus… who Pilate’s wife Claudia Procula knew to be innocent… are scapegoated and blamed and wrongly convicted… whistleblowers and truth tellers are silenced… and some of them are murdered… to protect the positions and authority of the wealthy…

But we know what will happen next Sunday… we know that the Tomb will be empty… we know that resurrection overcomes death… and the blessed one… the one who comes in the name of the Lord… isn’t only Jesus… each one of us comes in God’s name when we realize that a suggestion has been planted within us… for someone else’s benefit… and we wake up to God’s dream… and to God making all things new… that is the victory of Palm Sunday… and we say… Thanks be to God…