The Consequence of Joy

“The Consequence of Joy”
The Rev. Dr. Fred G. Garry

Matthew 21.1-11
When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, just say this, ‘The Lord needs them.’ And he will send them immediately.” This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying, “Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!” When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?” The crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”

In 2008 we took four of our children and a niece to Africa. We were given a Lily Sabbatical Grant so we could go as a family. We started our summer being greeted by Jim and Jodi McGill. They are Presbyterian Missionaries.

The plan was to stay with them for a week and then the McGills would head to the US for their year of interpretation (fundraising). We would stay in their house for the summer. In this fist week we would need to learn how to live in Malawi. A crash course.

Kathy took copious notes, shadowed Jodi on forays into markets and stores. Our children were enrolled in school. We were going to be there three months, and this was our one shot to get the lay of the land.

I spent this week talking with Jim. We talked through the morning and laughed. We didn’t talk about anything practical, but I learned a lot. I learned what it meant for Jim to be more African than American at this point in his life. How he needed to be in the bush; thought in the slow grandeur and magical notions of Malawians; and felt no sense of urgency.

Near the end of the week we all piled into two cars and headed into the bush. Jim handed me the keys and said, “you’ll need to drive.” And this was true. I could hire a driver for the summer, but the expense would have been great and the freedom of driving lost. So off we went.

Roads in Malawi are more of a metaphor. There are a few paved roads. In the cities there are some paved streets. Yet outside of this, there are less than a half dozen roads with tarmac in the nation. The remaining roads are dirt. And the substance of a road becomes less and less the farther you venture into the bush. And we were heading a good ways.

All was going well. I followed behind Jim and tried to mirror his tactics. When he slowed, I slowed; when he swerved, I swerved.

We were almost there, there being a remote village nestled deep inside a tea plantation, when the road came to a small, rickety wooden bridge over a gorge, dropping hundreds of feet. We came to a slow crawl.

Once across the bridge the road was deeply rutted, and the car pitched up and down. Even though we were going very slow, I lost sight of Jim.

Trying to avoid a large trench I turned toward the left, toward the gorge, and before I knew it the ruts began to lead our vehicle closer and closer to the edge. All of sudden I realized I was driving over the edge of the gorge. Stopping the vehicle, I encouraged everyone to get out.

In a flash, Jim was at the driver’s window. “I think you are stuck,” he said. He was quite right. If I went forward, I would go straight over the edge; if I tried back up the car we might tip to the side and go over the edge as well. I didn’t panic until I got out and could see how close we were to death.

Jim told me to head into the village; “they are expecting us. I’ll work on getting the car out.” By this time the whole village had found us, and we followed them the rest of the way.

I’ve had some near misses in life, moments where things could have gone sideways and you say, “wow, that would have been bad. That was close.” This didn’t feel that way.
After all the greetings and speeches in the village, after the meal was shared and the singing had commenced, I found a quiet corner in the house of our host. What I felt was a kind of crushing, pressing down. A goading voice came to me, “sure, take your young family to Africa for the summer, venture into the heart of darkness without experience or skill, what could go wrong?” Well, a lot.

I don’t know if your demons sound like my demons, but mine were saying, “what is wrong with you; how can you be such an idiot; what in the world were you thinking?” Not a friendly lot, demons. As I sat with them the weight got heavier and heavier. It was hard to breathe.

And then there were shouts. Jim arrived with the car now free. All was well. The celebration quickly changed though: the shouts of joy were replaced by a call to get going. Our little group was being rounded up. The sun was setting and it’s not safe to drive in the dark in Malawi; we needed to head out right now. I saw Jim conferring with one of the passengers in the car I drove. His name was Major Chirwa and I could tell he was not impressed. He was not impressed that Jim was convinced I should drive us out.
I tried to protest as he handed me the keys, but all he said was, “you’ll be fine. You need to try again.” I could tell by the looks of the people who got into my car that this was certainly a short straw moment. And Major didn’t offer reassurance; he gave me a look affirming all my self-loathing and recriminating fears.

Off we went. Slowly. This time I didn’t lose sight of Jim and soon were out of the bush and on the edge of the tarmac. Major could sense my relief about making it out in the dark. To assure me he said, “don’t relax. This is when it gets really dangerous. We should not be driving at night.” Again, off we drove.

The city of Mzuzu where we were staying sits on top of a mountain. There was a moment as we got closer to home that the air turned cool and foggy. Soon we saw street lights and Major and said, “You did well, you may become a driver.”

If I look back over the occurrences of my life, there are many good times and few bad times. Our life has known enormous grace and experienced heartbreak. This is common I believe. Yet looking over the events there are a few moments that rise above the common mercy and the everyday stumbles, moments of change, moments were life became something different.

Oddly, these moments of change, are not clear then and there; they I don’t have a sense of, “now my life is changed.” It would take years before I saw, let alone understood, what happened, changed, in the moment by the gorge.

Driving a car into the bush of Malawi changed my life that day. It was changed. The change wasn’t clear in the moment. The only clear definition I had that day was of idiocy, me that is. That was clear. In the months and years to come, another clarity came: this life, the life you live, the things you do have consequence and they are real; you have to live your life as if it all counts. From that point on I no longer saw life as an unfolding potential; I saw life as a gift I could live purposely.

I want to be careful here. It is easy to take words like consequence and purpose and “things that count” or accountability and all of sudden you hear the stern, serious voice of an angry parent chiding foolish children. That is not what I heard that night. Jim smiled as he handed the keys back to me. He did because he knew finding a purposeful life is not about shame or found by losing joy. In fact, joy is the purpose of life.

On any other Sunday I might be tempted to take on a somber tone here, mimic the voices of the demons who battered me in the corner of the house as the sun began to set on that little village in the middle of the Malawian bush. But this is Palm Sunday; this is a day you must rejoice and sing and find great comfort that the king has come humble and riding on a donkey. You cannot sternly wave palm branches. It just doesn’t work.

The truth is this doesn’t work no matter what Sunday it is, confusing being serious with being faithful is no good. Being faithful and being serious are not the same. This was one of the first lessons I learned about preaching.

The image I had of sermons, the impression I had was someone who inflicted enough guilt and shame, fear and confusion so lost sinners came to their senses, found the voice of reason calling them home; preaching was to force the moment of change. The lost are meant to find their way to the mercy seat and beg forgiveness for a squandered life.

Believe me, had Jim McGill come to me and said, “what were you thinking coming here and being so unprepared, putting yourself and others in danger, what were you thinking?” Had he said those things on edge of the cliff, I would have nodded in shame, agreed with him, wrung my hands in trepidation of what lay ahead. That sort of shaming was the image of the Word of God I had when I started to preach. Serious words for serious sin. That all changed when I read a silly Chicken Soup story about a young girl. I’ll tell you that story someday.

But today, this Palm Sunday, maybe what we could consider is that this life, the life you live, the things you do have consequence and they are real; you have to live your life as if it all counts.

I don’t believe we have to force profound change. What if the moments of real change have already occurred; the profound beginnings have taken place, and we are here not to force or demand obedience and change, what if we are here simply to ponder how life is to be lived in joy? How are we to reckon with consequence and accountability and truth all the while holding fast to joy?

Today is the moment of consequence for Jesus. He entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and there was terrible consequence. This little march set a series of painful decisions, hateful choices, into motion. This is the hard side of Palm Sunday. In short order the shouts of Hosanna would be replaced by the crowd shouting crucify him.
We could enter this hard side of the day. And there is value in doing this. There were hard consequences. We could dwell upon the danger. Yet, I believe in this moment it is better to remember the joy.

Palm Sunday is a day of great, wonderful, beautiful consequence. This is the moment where the kingdom of God is inaugurated. This is the beginning of us, the moment where we learn we can come unto him, his burden is easy, his yoke is light; we can follow him unto joy, the joy set before him.

Again, Palm Sunday, this moment, can be about violence, anger, fear, danger. It is just a stone’s throw away. Yet, in the grand scheme, in the unfolding of generations and centuries to come, the shame is not where we should linger.

This life, the life you live, the things you do, have consequence and they are real; you have to live your life as if it all counts for joy.

In the day unto the day in the life lived in consequence is a question: will you rise to walk in joyful humility behind our Lord? Will you live this day in simple, hopeful faith of God’s mercy? Will you quiet the voice of shame and take on the song of praise, Hosanna? Will you live a life that counts for the good, the beautiful and the true? For this is the way life truly counts. Amen.