Searching for Sunday, Part 6: Anointing of the Sick

 

Service of Worship

Eastern Parkway United Methodist Church

Palm Sunday

March 28, 2021

Rev. Natalie Bowerman, Pastor

 

Let us pray:

Patient God, we confess that we love a parade. We are very happy to see banners waving and hear people shouting their praises. Our hearts thrill to the spectacle. But we fail to see the sadness on the face of the Savior; our shouts block out his sorrow. He comes to us as King, and we expect that royal treatment will follow. We do not and cannot believe that in a few days we will be among those who will turn our backs and run from his presence. How fickle we are, O Lord. Yet you continually forgive us and call us to turn our lives around--to see the needs of others, to reach out in trust and faith, to be willing to witness to your good news of saving love. Heal our hearts and give us courage for the days ahead; for we ask this in Jesus’ Name. Amen.

 

Mark 11: 1-11

Jesus Comes to Jerusalem as King

11 As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples, ² saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and just as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. ³ If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ say, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here shortly.’”

⁴ They went and found a colt outside in the street, tied at a doorway. As they untied it, ⁵ some people standing there asked, “What are you doing, untying that colt?” ⁶ They answered as Jesus had told them to, and the people let them go. ⁷ When they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks over it, he sat on it. ⁸ Many people spread their cloaks on the road, while others spread branches they had cut in the fields. ⁹ Those who went ahead and those who followed shouted,

“Hosanna!^[a]”

“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”^[b]

¹⁰ “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!”

“Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

¹¹ Jesus entered Jerusalem and went into the temple courts. He looked around at everything, but since it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the Twelve.

 

A Message

Searching for Sunday, Part 6: Anointing of the Sick

 

Friends, we’ve reached the sixth and penultimate week of this sermon series, as well as the beginning of Holy Week. Evans named this section of her book, “anointing of the sick”, for a ritual that many of our older Catholic friends still call “last rites”. I mostly mention that because “last rites” can be a more familiar way to talk about this practice, but the semantics aren’t important. What is important is that people of faith have turned to anointing as a source of healing for nearly as long as we’ve turned to God. Our holy scripture is full of stories of oil and perfume being used to bless—perhaps the most salient of these stories, in our tradition, happens just three chapters after Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, very shortly before his arrest, when an uninvited woman crashes dinner to pour out an extremely expensive bottle of high quality perfume on Jesus’ feet, and then wipes it with her hair. She breaks roughly a bazillion purity rules to bless a man she dearly loves, sensing that her window to do that is rapidly closing. Call it woman’s intuition, perhaps, but that woman is right, and she takes the heat of all the men in the room who witness her devotion but still just don’t get it. It’s okay, Jesus is graceful when we need more time. The other significant thing for you to know about the practice of anointing is that Catholic teaching no longer holds that you need to be dying in order to receive an anointing; it’s okay to ask your priest to anoint you during a non-fatal illness or injury. Since we Protestants don’t practice anointing the same way our Roman Catholic friends do, what I want y’all to understand about that it this: if you’re scared about the outcome, you’re losing hope, and you’re calling out to God with your last ounce of strength, don’t assume it’s the end. Ours is the faith that subverts death and loss into new chances at life.

 

Today’s Palm Sunday. It’s a really fun, joyous day for Christian people. Even if we’re not allowed to sing them this year, we get to hear some of our old favorite hymns. We get those awesome palm crosses. Given the circumstances of this topsy-turvy year we’ve had, this Palm Sunday our congregation got to triumphantly enter our sanctuary for the first time in three months just in time to hear this very familiar Gospel story about the town of Jerusalem throwing a parade in Jesus’ honor. Pre-pandemic I was never much of a “parade person”, but after a year of being cooped up at home a parade sounds like a lot of fun. This wonderful day is full of promise.

 

The people who were in the crowds during this morning’s Gospel story felt the same way. Based on their faith beliefs and the legends they had heard, Jesus coming to Jerusalem was supposed to be day one of the Revolution. The crowds showered Jesus with love, shouted “hosanna!”, and proclaimed that the kingdom of David was coming back to them. They believed that if the Anointed One, the Messiah, the Christ, was coming to them, that he had a singular mission and they knew what it was going to be. Jesus came to unite all the Jews in the world in one place, at last, for the first time in thousands of years, he came to reunite the Northern and Southern Kingdoms of Israel which had schismed centuries ago, he came to overthrow the tyrannical Roman soldiers who occupied their land, and through him the Jewish people would live in peace. Indeed, Jesus wanted to save his beloved people from all that had oppressed them, but he looked nothing like the Messiah they expected and within five days they turned on him for it.

 

Though we’ve doubtless heard the word before, a lot of us have never actually experienced an “anointing” with oil. I’ve only participated in this ritual once—it was when I was thirteen, on my confirmation day. As my pastor blessed my relationship with Jesus, he put oil on my head. I was thirteen, so I bemoaned that he made my hair all greasy and didn’t think much of it beyond that.  But my pastor proclaimed something incredibly sacred with the use of oil. He signaled that my relationship with Jesus was holy. Not perfect, not better than anyone else’s, not infallible or without struggle. Just holy. Blessed for being just the way it was. My sarcastic questions, my doubts, my giggles, my tears, my struggle, and my clarity—everything that was part of my relationship with Jesus was holy.

 

When we anoint someone who’s sick or hurt, we’re blessing their body, mind, and spirit just the way they are right now. We’re saying your cancer is holy. Your surgery is holy. Your broken bones, your cuts, your bruises, your infections…you, just as you are, are holy. And God will walk with you from sickness and injury to whatever comes thereafter. And in so saying we bless you in a word that sounds nice but is also very scary: “healing”.

 

If you’ve healed from surgery or a serious illness, then you know that that was a long and difficult process. In this section of the book Evans distinguishes the process of “healing” from being “cured”. If your condition has a cure, the doctor’s job is relatively easy and quick. You come in with an infection, the doctor prescribes an antibiotic, you take it, you get better within days, and usually your doctor doesn’t even need to see you again to follow up.

 

We like being cured. We gravitate toward quick fixes and simple answers. We want to lose ten pounds in ten days, meet the love of our life by taking a quiz on the internet, and revitalize our church in ten easy steps. We want Jesus to cure us. We want him to snap his fingers and make us young and healthy with a big bank account and a gassed-up Ferrari in the driveway. We want him to instantly fix our relationships, our money, work, and school struggles. We want him to answer our prayers by pushing a button. Where it concerns the Church, we want to think if the bulletins have the right font, the organist plays the right hymns, the sign outside looks nice, the pastor’s sermon doesn’t go a hair over fifteen minutes and the chicken barbeque is cooked just right, that people will just flood into our sanctuary singing Jesus’ praises. That’s a cure. Jesus doesn’t cure people. Jesus offers healing. Healing is slow, messy, painful, and has no guaranteed results. Healing can even be part of death and grief.

 

A lot of Christian people would prefer for the journey of Holy Week to be about a cure. We party on Palm Sunday, we party on Easter Sunday, and we don’t need to worry about the suffering and death in the middle because there’s a happy ending. What we get instead might frustrate our faith early and often, but carries a much deeper and more meaningful reward. Jesus shepherds our selves, our Church, and our World through a healing by way of a death and resurrection. The people of faith may all be united in Jesus, but we’ll have to work out what that means. Our Church may overcome all of it’s divisions and schisms, but only through the difficult work of reconciliation. And in a world where we want to forbid distributing water to thirsty voters and where our police officers still have qualified immunity and permission to use knee holds, if we want freedom from tyranny and peace and justice for all, we’re going to have to build it through our own labor.

 

Today Jesus tells us a lot from the back of a donkey, though maybe not what we want to hear. He promises the Kingdom is coming, if we bring it to reality. He promises we’ll have eternal life, even on the other side of suffering and demise. He promises he’ll be there for us, but there’s a cost to discipleship. He promises there will be tragedy, but also triumph. And no matter what, he anoints the journey as holy, and tells us that we are loved.

 

Amen.

 

I invite you to receive the benediction: Our God, our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, will guard our going out and coming in from this time on and forevermore. And as all of God’s people we say together: Amen.