A friend and I were talking the other day about preaching that text. And I have a confession to make: I hardly ever preach on Palm and Passion Sunday. So preaching from Mark 11 isn't something I'd be thinking about today. Normally, I allow the text to do its own preaching today, so I always fashion a dramatic reading of one of the gospel texts -- and since this is the year of Mark, we'd read from Mark 11.1-11, but we'd continue through, with selections from chapters 11, 12, 13, and pick up at 14.1 all the through 15.47. Hearing the Story unfold, on its own terms, is heart-wrenching and formative, in a way that no preaching can do.
So I don't normally preach on Palm and Passion Sunday. It's that rare Sunday of the Church Year, in fact, that I resist preaching.
The Story itself does something that my words can never do.
We hear too much preaching in Holy Week, as it is. Too many of our words try to gloss over too much of the Story.
It's a difficult thing for me to do, surrendering to the Story and allowing these words to do what these words will do. But that's the task of preaching week-in and week-out. Today, though, the preaching is done, not by what we say, but what we see.
All of that began a conversation. My friend asked, "If it were up to you, which gospel would you preach from more than the others?"
And, to be honest, I'd have to say Luke. Luke's vision of discipleship -- how open and broad that discipleship is meant to be -- resonates so much with how I envision Jesus.
So if you took my Greek Testament -- the book I read from devotionally -- and dropped it on the ground, I'm sure it'd automatically open in one of three places. The Gospel of Luke. The Letter to the Romans. The Book of Revelation. Those three texts from the New Testament are more formative on my spirituality than lots of folks realize.
That's not to say I quote from them often. In fact, most of my quoting in preaching comes from the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew's version) or Philippians or 1 Peter.
Mark, though, is a gospel that leaves me breathless. Each time I read in Mark, I find myself clueless and just trying to keep up. Jesus goes everywhere, nearly all at once (how many times does Mark use εὐθύς, "immediately"?), says a few terse things (that always require hearing and meditating), and leaves me, more often than not, scratching my head. I'm not alone; the disciples are as clueless at the end of Mark as they are at the beginning. Mark is a difficult gospel for me to read. I'd be really glad not to be preaching this morning. Mark 11.1-11, for those who read it closely, is always a difficult text to preach. This is the "triumphal entry" that's anything but triumphal.
My friend guessed that I'd read from John's gospel most often. But John is, among the gospels, the one that takes the most time for me to read. John is a gospel that demands attention and intention. John doesn't give away his spiritual treasures easily. When I read John, I'm having to spend more time with the text than I normally spend with the other gospels. John is a struggle, like Mark, but for different reasons. Mark leaves me breathless -- like cold water just thrown in my face. John makes me take deep breathes, and plunge in to swim around, to look deep in order to find meaning.
Matthew and Luke, though -- those are the gospels I find myself drawn to devotionally and temperamentally. Luke's vision of discipleship -- coupled as it is with corporate worship -- and Matthew's vision of catechesis: Those captivate what I think it means to preach. And to be Church. I find myself drawn to them more often that to the other two.
That's not to say, though, I preach from those two more often than I preach from Mark or from John. I trust the wisdom of the Lectionary for just this reason: It keeps me challenged by a word I'd only domesticate if given half the chance.