By Reverend Laurie DeMott

“Everyone here is abuzz with the news,” the fake reporter proclaims. “The consensus is that this man is just what the country needs at a crucial moment in our history. He has an incredible reputation, a stunning resume, is renowned as a brilliant thinker, and everyone agrees that this is a this is an inspired appointment. We just can’t say enough good things about him.”

The camera pans back to Jon Stewart in the studio who replies, “That’s really great. It’s wonderful to hear that you are so positive about this appointment.”

The camera returns to the fake reporter whose eyes widen in disbelief at Stewart’s words. “Positive?” he snorts. “Positive? Oh, Jon, that’s so ‘five minutes ago’. While you were talking, we here in the media moved out of our ‘breathless excitement phase’ and we are already on to the next phase of our reporting -- the “witch hunting phase”. Let me tell you about the dirt we’ve dug up on this creep.”

This fake news report was funny because it is so true. The demand for a constant news stream combined with the stiff competition for viewers and readers means that the media must constantly be ratcheting up expectations and then just as quickly sensationalizing disappointments. Sober analysis of events is too dull to ensure a steady stream of viewers and so, if there isn’t a real crisis to report, the media will create one. How many times have we watched a poor soul be thrust into the limelight of celebrity only to be denounced as a villain when the hero worship isn’t news any more?

The media is able to get away with this two faced nature because even though it may be accelerating the process, it is only capitalizing on something that is part of human nature. We are and have always been a fickle people. Our love can change to hate in a moment; our greatest fan can become our worst critic in the blink of an eye. Just ask any sports figure how capricious people can be: baseball fans brag to their rivals about a player’s incredible finesse on the field, only to boo him mercilessly the one time he fumbles the ball. “What a loser!” they yell, “What are we paying you millions for if you can’t even catch?” A player can go from hero to goat in an instant.

The hero becomes the goat, the lover becomes the despised, the savior becomes the villain -- the cheers of Hosanna turn too quickly into the mocking shouts, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”
This is the dark side of hope.

The apostle Paul declares hope one of the three great attributes of the Christian life – “faith, hope, and love abide” he says in his letter to the Corinthians – and hope is, without doubt, a central characteristic of Christianity. Life may seem like an endless cycle of suffering and death, the Christian says to the cynic, but I dare to hope; I dare to believe that there is more to our lives than we can see, that there is possibility for our future and promise for tomorrow. I hope for healing even in the midst of brokenness, I hope for peace even in the midst of strife, I hope for liberation even when the chains of oppression are all around me, I hope for new life even in the midst of death. Hope is what keeps us going. Hope is what lights our way along the darkened path until we can emerge again into the sunlight.

But hope itself has a dark side which shows its face when our hope is disappointed.

The cheers that greeted Jesus as he rode into Jerusalem were cheers of hope and expectation. When the people proclaimed him king, they weren’t speaking metaphorically – they believed that Jesus was going to enter that city and bring about significant change to its political and religious structures. First century Jerusalem was a highly stratified society where the rich were incredibly wealthy and powerful and the poor crushingly impoverished. There was a small middle class of merchants but for the most part, the gap between rich and poor was enormous and there was little opportunity to move out of the economic class into which you had been born. There was no American dream for the lower classes of Jerusalem. Furthermore, in Jerusalem, the religious authorities had become cozy with the political authorities resulting in a controlling Temple elite. Faith had become simply another means of maintaining the careful power structures of early century Judea.

And the people knew that Jesus was willing to challenge those in power and in his preaching they caught the scent of revolution. “Hosanna!” they shouted out in expectation. “Bring it on!” they yelled, pumping their fists, thumping their chests, waving their palms like swords in anticipation of a glorious battle.

But the battle didn’t come. Things started out promising – Jesus turned over a few tables in the Temple but it turned out to more symbolic than substantive. In fact, Jesus remained frustratingly non-violent. Instead of the miraculous intervention they expected from him, they got lectures on forgiveness, reconciliation, and turning the other cheek and when things came to a head and the soldiers arrested him, Jesus, their mighty warrior and King, turned into a passive lamb who didn’t have the backbone to speak out on his own behalf. The people’s hope for a glorious revolution turned to ash. The light that had shone so brightly in their eyes was dimmed by the tears of their disappointment in this mute meek figure and they let loose their anger – “Crucify him!” they shouted. “Crucify this man because he has trampled upon our hope.”

Hope disappointed. It is a most dangerous emotion that can flame the fires of hatred and turn the most faithful believing heart into a cesspool of cynical despair. How many atheists have been born not because they believed too little, but because they believed too much – because they pinned great hope on the power of God to work great miracles and fix all things, and when the miracles they expected didn’t materialize, their broken hearts lashed out at their God and they crucified him? There are some people who are atheists because they are simply not able to believe in what their eyes cannot see, but there are just as many whose atheism has its roots in the grave of a fallen God.

So what is the lesson of Palm Sunday? Is it that we should not hope because hoping can lead to disappointment? No, the apostle Paul was right that hope remains one of the central characteristics of the Christian life but we must understand what it is that we are to hope for. The Rev. Carle Marney, a pastor in the south during the 1960s, tells of praying week after week that God might bring integration to the churches of his community. “Finally,” he said, “I stopped praying that prayer, not because I didn’t believe in integration but because I realized that I should not be asking God to do something that we could do ourselves. All it would take to integrate those churches was a majority vote of each congregation, so how could I put the responsibility for overturning that injustice on my God?”

It took some time for his disciples to understand it, but what they finally came to see was that the hope Jesus carried into Jerusalem that day so long ago was not the hope that God will miraculously fix our world but the hope that if we truly embrace the life that Christ calls us to, the world God and we so desire will come to pass. The miracle of Palm Sunday was that Jesus was willing to face the worst the humanity can do and still remain true to God’s call to love and forgive and seek peace.

A man named Vedmar Smailovic was a cello player living in Sarajevo in 1992 when that city was torn apart by war. One day, a mortar shell exploded in the middle of a market place right near Smailovic’s apartment and when he saw the blood and rubble so close to his home, he realized that something had to be done. The next morning, he dressed in his concert clothes, carried his cello to the square still stained with the blood of his neighbors, and he sat on a stool and played. For twenty two days – one day for every person who had died, Smailovic would go to the square at 4:00, the same hour that the shell had exploded, and play his music. Sometimes bullets would fly past his head, sometimes the sounds of explosions would overwhelm the sound of his cello, but still he played on. He played to ruined homes, he played to smoldering fires, he played to scared people hiding in basements. He played for life, for peace, and for the possibility of light even in the darkest hour. Asked by a journalist if he was crazy doing what he was doing, Smailovic replied: “You ask me if am I crazy for playing the cello; why do you not ask if they are crazy for shelling Sarajevo?”

Jesus walked into Jerusalem, and when the authorities beat him, and the crowds mocked him, and the soldiers drove nails into his hands, he continued to play a song of peace. He played to the hungry on the streets begging for bread; he played for the prisoners in their cells dreaming of freedom; he played for the lost and the lonely; he played for the wounded of heart longing for healing; he played for love, and for the dignity of all people, and for peace. He played out his hope for his people; he played out his hope in his people.

For this is where our hope lies, in the words of Christ to his disciples as he turned his face toward Jerusalem and the cross: “Follow me.”