Sunday: Palm Sunday
Reading: Luke 19:28-40
Preacher: Anne Benvenuti

In Carlos Castaneda's book Don Juan: a Yaqui Way of Knowledge, Don Juan says this, and I quote, "Anything is one of a million paths.... But your decision to keep on the path or leave it must be free of fear or ambition. I warn you. Look at every path closely and deliberately, [asking] ‘Does this path have a heart? .... If it does, it's a good path; if it doesn't, it's of no use. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you."

Does this path have a heart? If it does, it's a good path; if it doesn't, it's of no use. I think of Mary, in last week's gospel reading, pouring expensive perfume out on Jesus' feet, extravagantly, wastefully even. And I wondered then what she knew that the others didn't know that caused her to make this lavish offering so close to Jesus' death, yet not waiting for it. She certainly knew that she had to do it, and do it that day - something compelled her, and it wasn't public approval.

Today's gospel finds me wondering what Jesus knew that we don't know. He sends his friends to get the animal on which he will ride into the city, telling them where it will be and what they're to say. But after he starts with the air of prescience and assertiveness we're accustomed to, it seems as though things take on a life of their own-his friends saddle the animal with their cloaks, and they place Jesus on it. It's oddly unlike the Jesus we've known, suddenly passive, he who has been found striding from town to town, Jesus the provocateur, sleeping on hillsides and in boats. Suddenly he's being carried and put somewhere; it makes me wonder if he had pulled a muscle or something, but nothing like that is mentioned... so maybe he's just fully surrendered to his fate, laid claim to the path he'd been walking for some time already, the path that would lead to his death. He knows who he is, and today he is laying claim to that knowing.

And we know what happens next, and there's no stopping it. The people line the street with their cloaks. They heap praise upon him; he's their man, he speaks the truth and heals the sick, he turns over the apple cart and cannot be silenced. The religious authorities warn him to silence the people, to quiet them so that violence might be prevented. Effectively, they're saying, ‘it's on your head, Jesus, if the streets turn bloody; don't let it happen.'

They were neither the first nor the last authorities to want the people-or some of the people - silenced. It didn't work then, and it doesn't work now. Jesus, ever true to himself, is not coerced to take a different path. If the people are silent, he says, the stones will shout. The truth cannot be shut up for the sake of safety; just as the perfume cannot be sold for money.

I think also of Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, whose self-sacrifice we remembered on the anniversary of his death, March 24, 30 years ago. Knowing he would be killed, he said: "...hope is not resignation; it is a commitment to continue to struggle even when things seem to warrant surrender--when hope flares, it allows human beings to overcome monstrous difficulties. It allows people to defy common sense and confound strategists. Hope experienced in the extreme... is miraculous." And I think, too, of Hissa Hilal, a woman poet of Saudi Arabia, who lives yet, this year, but whose life is already under the same old threat of violent death, as though the flame of hope could be extinguished, as though love could be killed. Of those who would silence the voice of hope, the beating heart of love, Hissa says in a poem, "they wear death as a robe, cinched with a belt," while of her, the BBC reports "Even old ladies, young ladies, they all said: ‘You are our hope.'"
And of course, I think of our own Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose anniversary comes up on Easter Sunday this year - and whose own night of agony had taken place years before his death, when his daughter was still a baby. You may know the story of the night through which he stayed awake, crying and praying, and wondering if he should be quiet, perhaps saving his words for academic journals, and living in peace. He wanted to take care of his wife and see his baby daughter grow, and he knew he risked his life, and theirs, if he continued as the voice of the civil rights movement. He struggled through that night of fear and with the dawn his conviction was made clear: he had affirmed the voice given him by God, he would get up to do the job given to him by the times, by the people, by God. He would not be silenced. In his final speech that he gave the night before he died, he said, "So I'm happy tonight. I'm not worried about anything; I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord." Whatever happened to him, he knew that history was moving inexorably forward. There might be death, but there would also be resurrection.

Where did these people get the courage to live such extraordinary lives, and then to lay them down with such generosity? Was there something they each knew that we don't fully know?

....Here's the thing, I think. No one could tell Martin how to be Martin, and no one could be Jesus except Jesus, and no one could tell Mary what to do with that perfume, no one else can write Hissa's poetry, or celebrate Oscar's last Eucharist. Each had to find the voice of his or her own life. None of them would, or could, be silenced. Their paths had the heart of which Don Juan spoke - the essence of vocation, of calling - the word from which the word ‘voice' itself comes.

What is that je ne sais quoi about a person who is inhabiting the house of her life, using the power of her one life? Writer Derrick Jensen says, "If you have to ask, it ain't jazz." .... "We all know it... If the magic is not there, it doesn't matter how many roses you send, nor chocolates you receive... and no amount of rewrites will awaken words that lie dead on the page. The same is true for music: if you have to ask, it ain't jazz." Those palms and hosannas that day? They were jazz - and Jesus knew it. He'd lived his unique mission, not out of fear or ambition, but out of his own deep liveliness; and it made him strong enough to face his very difficult death.
What Jesus, and Mary, and Martin, and Oscar, and Hissa know is that you can't kill a person who's walking a path with heart. Like them, you have to be yourself, and no one else can tell you how - you have to kind of move in and take possession of the you that life has given you, then you have to give yourself away - intentionally and genuinely interacting with the circumstances of your time and place, in ways that enliven you... whether you are a provocateur, a healer, a maker of beauty, a prophet of change, a bringer of peace....

But because we've spent time in the company of such people as these, we're more able to pour our lives out instead of hoarding them or ultimately just having them taken away from us. And, to the extent that we each find our unique voice, our path with a heart, we enliven and encourage others around us, building up over time a community of goodness, a path of beauty for each other, and for future generations. Now that's jazz!
When death comes, the one question will be: did we walk a path with a heart? Did we spend our lives on something of value?