Being Untied (Palm / Passion Sunday)

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One of the things that Martha and I often have to do in the office is edit announcements and information that people send us for the bulletins, email and website. Often, people send us very detailed descriptions of what’s about to happen, but it’s just too long. In some respects, it’s great that people include all this information, because it shows that they’re excited and interested in the thing that’s about to take place. But sometimes that means folks include details that probably don’t need to be there.

So if I were copy editing today’s Processional Gospel reading, I’d probably take out all this stuff about untying the colt. After all, did the disciples really expect that there’d be a colt just wandering around? And since you don’t have much space on a scroll to work with, couldn’t Luke have set the same story up more efficiently? 

Luke could have summarized Jesus by saying, “Go into the village and when you come to the first colt you see, bring it here. So the disciples did so, and they set Jesus on it.” It’s much tighter and to the point!

But instead, we have all this stuff about the colt being tied up. And then the owner, asking why they’re untying the colt. We seem to waste 5 whole verses just on this untying of the colt.

Or is it a waste? Luke does seem to be pretty careful about the way he tells the story of Jesus, so I wonder if there’s something important about all of this untying.

And maybe the untying really isn’t so much about the colt, as it is about Jesus’ mission of untying people, because it actually seems like Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem is, in one sense, about untying people from:

• The way things had always been – people came and went from Jerusalem all the time, especially at Passover. But now, Jesus was coming into Jerusalem and doing something new – he was reordering the way the things worked and upending the status quo (right after Jesus entered Jerusalem, he went into the Temple and literally turned the tables on how things were “supposed to work”.) Jesus was untying people from the way things had always been…

• A sense of resignation to the way the world worked – probably, a lot of the folks in Jerusalem were doing OK, but not expecting anything to really change. And they certainly didn’t expect that God would intervene in a way that would make a difference in their lives. And yet, when they saw Jesus, they experienced something new happening. They were excited and hopeful, so much so that Jesus said the stones would cry out if they suppressed it. Jesus was untying people from feelings of resignation and hopelessness…

• Death itself – Jesus’ mission in Jerusalem was ultimately to conquer death by dying. And by his death and resurrection, Jesus showed that even death was not the end. And forever afterwards, Jesus’ disciples would be about the process of learning to live in new ways because they were untied from the finality of death…

So maybe all this untying is important. Maybe it isn’t just a minor detail. And as we journey with Jesus on this Holy Week, maybe the best question we should ask ourselves is “From what is Jesus untying me? And how is Jesus leading me into new life?”

What are the things that have tied us down, and prevented us from being people who can rejoice in the new things God is doing in our lives and live in new ways and into a new time? That is, how is Jesus working in our lives to untie us from:

• The way things have always seemed to go for us? Have we been tied up to the way we think things have to be or even the way we think things are supposed to be? Does the journey to new life begin with being untied from those things?

• A sense of resignation that life really isn’t going to change all that much? Or from the temptation to just go with the flow, because we can’t really make that much of a difference? Does the journey to new life begin with being untied from that sense of resignation so that we can actually expect a change in our lives or in the world that makes us want to shout out in joy?

• The fear of death itself? And it’s not always just physical death. Sometimes, the desire to preserve our status or our comfort at all costs keeps us in the grind of our regular old lives, instead of the looking for the ways of new life that Jesus is leading us into. And often, the journey to new life begins with being untied from all kinds of “little deaths” that hold us down.

So I invite you to think about these kinds of questions as we follow Jesus on this Holy Week journey.

From what is it that Jesus is calling you to be untied? What ties you up and holds you back from following Jesus in new ways? And what kind of journey of new life is Jesus calling you to be part of?

Amen.