Palm Sunday 2026 at Sunshine Cathedral MCC, Fort Lauderdale, FL 

Isaiah 50.7-9; Psalm 118.19-26; Matthew 21.1-11

Welcome to the Streets: How Did We Get Here? (A Homiletical Exposition of Jesus and that Ass)

How did we get here? Matthew begins with a genealogy but does not tell us:

Sarah [who abused Hagar and handed her body over to be abused] was the mother of Isaac,
And Rebekah was the mother of Jacob,
Leah was the mother of Judah,
Tamar was the mother of Perez.
The names of the mothers of Hezron, Ram, Amminadab,
            Nahshon and Salmon have been lost.
Rahab was the mother of Boaz,
            and Ruth was the mother of Obed.
Obed’s wife, whose name is unknown, [gave birth to] Jesse.
The wife of Jesse was the mother of David.
Bathsheba was the mother of Solomon…
The sum of generations is there: fourteen from Sarah to David’s mother;
            fourteen from Bathsheba to the Babylonian deportation;
            and fourteen from the Babylonian deportation to Miriam, the mother of the Messiah.

A genealogy of [Yeshua HaMashiach], Jesus Christ, the son of Miriam [called Mary],
the daughter of [Hannah called] Anna

.[1]

Let us pray:

My prayer is Miriam’s prayer,
Mother Mary’s prayer – Let it be.
Let it be with your woman-servant
according to your word.
On this day, as on that day,
let your daughter
bring forth your word again. Amen.

How did we get here? How did we get here on this death march with Jesus? This trail of barely restrained tears building up to the bursting point began when the blossoming embrace of the Holy Spirit, wound herself around a young woman promised to another and, just as she had fluttered over the waters of chaos become creation, she fluttered into female flesh. For it was in her womb that he became ours and we became his, sharing one flesh, her flesh; back through the mothers to the Mother of All.

Mary’s baby was marked for death from before the moment of his birth. Jesus walked with death, towards death, without fear. He had walked the length and breadth of the northern part of what had once passed for a united nation. He lived and worked in the DEI part of the conquered and colonized kingdom without a king, with its own history of immigration and forced relocation to the land that would come to be called Galilee.

Jesus did not walk alone. He walked with folk who came and stayed. He walked with folk who came, turned tail and left. He walked with women Matthew will not name, women who knew how to make a dollar holla. They would stay. He walked with children running at his heels. Everyone was coming home to the holy house on the hill. Jesus walked with and in a cloud of witnesses. He is accompanied by his mother – for whom Matthew will have no use until he broadcasts the lynching of her son on the socials and cuts to her terror and trauma for the 5 o’clock Roman Review.

His sisters and other siblings who came running to see about him that one time when somebody told them he had gone out of his mind, they would have been there too. And perhaps, Peter’s mother-in-law oh he had raised up from her death bed, and the woman who had only been known by what her genitals were doing whose faith he recognized in that body that was a problem for everyone else, surely she would have been there and he would have called her by name and, in my sanctified imagination the little girl he snatched from death to life, giving her a little wink. They were all there, because everyone was going up to Jerusalem whether they were Jewish or not, everyone, including his faithful and fearful disciples. They would not stay.

For the Jewish leaders the festival of flatbread was cultural continuity and commitment to the covenant in whatever context they would find themselves, captive or colonized. For the merchants, this was the biggest convention on their calendar. [For my Deep Space 9 fans, Quark ordering double the dabo girls when he finds out there’s a religious convention.) For the Jewish people, this was homecoming and family reunion. For the mamas and the aunties it was cooking more for many more, more often and, finding places for all of those out-of-town relatives to sleep.  For the Romans, the feast was potentially a problem but they permitted it as an act of pacification. For the rebels, radicals and revolutionaries the festival was cover for clandestine conspiracy against corrupt conquerors and colonized crowns and, a whispered claim of continuing sovereignty.

And here we come. Here at this festival of faithfulness, we meet the ancient procession with palm branches of our own, transcending the limits of space and time and we join that crowd at the intersection of hope and horror. That is the drama we act out every year

Not all of us are in that crowd. Not all of us are in the streets. Some of y’all quit after a couple of pink pussy hat protests against your own vote. Others supported BLM right up to the point that it cost you something then you pulled up your yard signs and rolled up your corporate initiatives. But some of you were acting up and dying in and throwing bricks over stone walls. And some folk crawled up steps in order to open doors a little wider, wide enough for wheelchairs.

Some folk found their way to the streets when they discovered that they too could be snatched up, dragged out and put down like a dog. Some folk are coming to terms with the fact that whiteness can be rescinded if it is not being used to shore up the scabrous cadaverous animated carcass of whiteness with more white power and privilege. And when whiteness is rescinded, white women are beaten down and murdered by presidential possees in these same streets and, white queer folk are sometimes shocked by how fast their white privilege can be eroded, undermined and erased in some spaces. While some trans women who move in the world as they were taught to move, find the same words spoken over a conference table that would have been heeded pre-transition are now ignored as little women speech post transition.

And black folk, black women and black trans folk put our hands on our hips and look at some of y’all in a no kings rally on Sunday but columbusing black culture on Monday and voting for fascists on Tuesday.  

Whether you are here to party, pray, protest or process, participate, instigate or infiltrate, welcome to the streets. You are not alone and you are welcome here. But know your place. Some of us been here and some of you asking how did we get here? This is not the Galilee we know. This is not the America we know. Baby, welcome to the streets. This is your America. You’ve just never had to see it from street level before.  #BlackWomenTriedToTellYou

In my sanctified imagination, the disciples of Jesus were asking the same question. How did we get here? They were feeling some kind of way, remembering what Jesus said on the way, “Mira, we are going up to J-town, and the Son of Woman, is going to catch a case on the word of a snitch and will be shuffled through the system; it’s a set up and they’re going to lock your man up, and the verdict is already in before court even begins and death has already been decided. They going to let someone else do the dirty work and beat me like Tyree Nichols and string me up but after a three day weekend I will be back again.”  (Matthew 20:18–19) They came anyway, just hoping not to catch a stray.

They came, the disgruntled ten and the embarrassed two, all up in their feelings because Mary the mother of James and John had the gumption to ask Jesus to place her boys at his right hand and his left. They came too, the folk with newfound vision; their dangerous cries, “Son of David,” echoing in the ears of all climbing up this pilgrim pathway. And as it became more and more apparent that death was walking with them and to them, those who came to Insta their protest began to slide away and those who didn’t have to get ready because they stayed ready gave the head nod to the bandits on the Jericho Road as they walked the last mile of the way, but no ways tired from the 3000 mile climb in elevation over the course of the last 13 miles.

The ancestors walk with them, his mother’s mother’s mothers back to the womb of earth in which the flesh that would become his flesh was molded into a pattern that contained the possibility of every human shape and gender

And, after walking more than 100 miles towards his death and, rather than blending into the crowd of pilgrims and fellow travelers, Jesus set himself apart by climbing onto an animal’s back where he is even more likely to be seen and, rides straight into the ravening and rapacious mouth of the empire. Without a sword, without a go-fast horse shining in battle armor with hooves shod with sharp edges to rend flesh from bone.

But on a mama donkey, with her baby donkey tied to her tail because Matthew was dropping bars he did not write and the remix wasn’t quite as smooth as the OG. And Jesus, living rent free in Herod’s head, is having a whole conversation with without uttering a sound. Jesus whom the scripture portrays as walking every day of his life and every other day of his life, rides an animal that is almost cuddly compared to the warhorse of the miscrowned king. Yet with every step, Herod hears, “I could snatch your crown if I wanted to.” Jesus had Cardi B condos up in that man’s head.

The people spread their clothes in the road just as their ancestors had done for Jehu when Elijah told Elisha to anoint him king while Ahab was still on the throne. And Herod hears, “I’m coming for you.” But Jesus never said a mumbling word. Then the people cried out for help using an ancient word from a wise woman to a warlord king  recorded in their scriptures: Hoshiah! Hosannah! Or as my folks say, “Help us Holy Ghost!” And Herod who would have killed to have the lineage Jesus had – he got it from his mama – Herod couldn’t imagine that Jesus wasn’t coming for his crown even though he knew Jesus was already marked for death.

How did we get here to this moment when a person is marked for death for proclaiming a radical word of love, welcome and forgiveness? For opening their doors to their immigrant neighbors, for documenting police brutality against black and brown folk, for holding the hand of the person they love in public, for wearing something that makes them feel pretty, for peeing when they have to pee, for being the kind of Christian who doesn’t hate, for being a religion they do hate.

How did we get here? An insecure tyrant propped up by a system that profits from violence surrounded by greedy folk who would sell their grandmother for a taste of the power he has convinced them he holds over them, not understanding that they gave him that power and can take it away. We can take it away. Empires fall when people rise up.

How did we get here where the fool who would be emperor and the emperor who would be God have found themselves incompetently competent at butchery and slaughter. How did we get here where returning home bears the risk of banishment, beating, butchery and burial, with broken bodies often lost in the binders of the bureaucracy? How did we get here where cartoon tyrants play war games murder their way across the world, lying and denying as the corpses of children stack like cordwood in their wake? How did we get here where despots amuse themselves remodeling sacred architecture, stamping their name on the oversized additions from Herod’s Temple Mount to the bastardized ballroom hot glued onto the east wing of the White House built by Black hands cemented with red blood.

How did we get here where the rituals of our faith and traditions of our families and who we are at the very heart of us are weaponized against us, our very identities rendered illegal, nonexistent, impossible or, dangerous, depraved and deficient and we are blamed for our own dispossession, destitution and demise? Where pregnancy is used to trap women in patriarchy who are then blamed for their poverty. Where our histories are white washed and straight washed and mansplained. Where holy words are rendered unholy by demonizing, denying and defacing the divine image of the fabulous and the fierce.

How did we get here? We got here together. And we will get through it together. That’s it! That’s the good news. You were expecting something more profound? More profound than the breath of God within us, the spirit of God around us, the grace of God before us and the Child of God with us?

Our ancestor Howard Thurman taught, “Wherever [Jesus’] spirit appears, the oppressed gather fresh courage; for he announced the good news that fear, hypocrisy, and hatred, the three hounds of hell that track the trail of the disinherited, need have no dominion over them.” They got here choosing hate, fear and death.

We got here connected by a love that transcends death, stands firm in the face of fear and chooses not to hate ‘cause ain’t nobody got time for that. Because our ride and die is riding on with or without us. Will you ride with this Jesus? Is this a Jesus you can rock with? A Jesus who goes to his death without swinging, without a testosterone filled performance of manhood? Can you roll with this? I know you can get down with Jesus the son of David. But can you weep before Jesus the son of Bathsheba? Mary’s son is not just the descendent of a line of kings and warlords but he is also the descendent of a line of women who lived and died according to choices other folk made about them and their bodies.

How did we get here? Together.

How will we get through this? Together.

Beloved, you are never alone, not even when death enters the room. From Bathsheba’s bloody womb to rumors of an empty tomb. That’s how we got here. Welcome to the streets.

In the name of the One who waded in the waters of Miryam’s womb, walked the way of suffering as one of the woman-born, and woke from the grasp of death in the deep darkness of the morning. Amen.

[1] “A Genealogy of Jesus Christ,” Ann Patrick Ware, the Women’s Liturgy Group of New York, public domain, 1990 (earliest ref identified). Adapted, Wil Gafney.