A Weekly Update from Pastor Rhea — Palm Sunday and Peace

This week I read a reflection on Palm Sunday written by Lutheran pastor Katie Hines-Shah. She tells of St. Nicholas Church in Leipzig, in East Germany in 1989, which held a weekly meeting to pray for peace. Careful not to be inflammatory, not to give authorities a reason to suspect insurrection or revolution, less than a dozen people simply prayed that there might be peace.

When some of the members were granted permission to emigrate to West Germany, thus getting rid of potential revolutionary voices, word spread that this could be a path to freedom. So people began flocking to church all around Leipzig. This movement couldn’t be ignored. Moscow sent orders to stop the peace prayers.

People were warned to keep away from the prayer meetings. St. Nicholas’ pastor’s wife told him to stay home. Instead, he told people to come to prayer carrying, not weapons or gas masks, but candles. Shah quotes the pastor as saying: "People carrying candles can’t be carrying guns; they can’t run." Maybe this would protect them from soldiers looking for an excuse to fire.

And at least in this case, it did. Shah says, "When the people spilled out into the Leipzig streets, candles in hand, the troops unexpectedly stood down. And while the Berlin Wall would fall some weeks later, people say that freedom came to Germany that night in Leipzig, thanks to some peaceful people carrying nothing more than candles, hoping for nothing more than mercy."

She continues: "The people gathered to greet Jesus riding into Jerusalem seem similarly ill prepared...Matthew writes that the crowd "cut branches from the trees." These are no match for the forces arrayed against them...What chance do the people have to stop or sway the powers of the world with only branches in their hands?

"They have no chance. Which is perhaps why Matthew writes that they lay their branches down on the ground, along with their garments. Nothing will protect them but the decency and mercy of other people. The people yell, "Hosanna," a foreign word that rings militant or even laudatory in our untrained ears. But Hosanna doesn’t mean anything like that. What it really means is "save us."

"...The Palm Sunday [crowds] know that. Their appeal is not to temple priests, Roman officials, or centurion soldiers. They appeal to Jesus, the "Son of David," to hear their hosannas and have mercy on them...

"[We] would do well to remember these things whenever we proclaim our Hosannas. Tree branches and candles are no match for the powers of this world, but the powers of this world are no match for the powers of God."

See you on Palm Sunday!

Rhea