No, when I ask, “Was Jesus a hick?”, I mean it in a good sense.  Was he a hick in the way that the late Walter Cronkite was?  That prince of television anchormen, as you know, DIED last July at the age of 92.  You didn’t know that Walter Cronkite was a hick?

    He WAS!  David Halberstam, in his best-selling study of the American media quite some years ago, entitled The Powers That Be, says this about Cronkite, that even when he was a young news announcer: “ . . . he had an enthusiasm for life and for his work which still smacked of an innocent country boy let loose in the big city, it was all wonder and enthusiasm.”

    At Cronkite’s funeral last summer his son Chip recalled how his father often, as he passed his beloved wife Betsy in the kitchen or the hall, would cry, “Shall we dance?” –And then he would take her “for a few turns around the room.”

    Those of us who are old enough can NEVER FORGET Cronkite’s wonderful reporting, back in the 1950’s, 60’s, and 70’s, on the American space program.  Yes, we can still picture him, standing up at the Cape, before, during, and after the launching of the various manned rockets to the moon, almost  jumping up and down in his enthusiasm.  It was CONTAGIOUS!   WE would get excited, too!

    And a few of us, who can remember that terrible day in Dallas, in 1963, when President Kennedy was assassinated, will ever forget the near-weeping Cronkite -- the sadness in his voice and his very manner, yet never making him lose control -- that helped record that event for all time!

    Halberstam, elsewhere in his book on the American media, declares, “Our best editors have always been at least partly hick, everything is new and fresh and possible for them, they take nothing for granted.”

    Friends, can THIS be part of the secret of Jesus’ charm? -- The fact that he, like Walter Cronkite, was a hick in this good sense?  The fact that Jesus was no effete sophisticate, bored with life?  But that life continually thrilled him?  Yes, even here, less than a week before Good Friday, Jesus can stage a kind of happening in tribute to life!  --Indeed, a divine DRAMA – a happening complete with donkey and palm branches and shouting children and glad procession!
 
    Yes, in the very face of death itself, Jesus takes joy in celebration!  Here in Luke’s version of the Palm Sunday story, when the Pharisees tell him to rebuke his disciples for their shouted praises, he replies:  "I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones [themselves] would cry out!"
       
    Yes, Jesus was a hick -- NOT in the country bumpkin sense, but in the good sense -- the Walter Cronkite sense.  If he was, on the one hand, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, he was, on the other, the leader of the PARADE, the One whose wonder and enthusiasm were CONTAGIOUS!

    And, friends, doesn’t God want all of us, God’s children, to be hicks -- in this good sense?  Doesn’t God want us to share the divine joy?

    Once Jesus said, “I am come that they may have life, and have it ABUNDANTLY.”  So, in the words of Sydney Carter’s folk him, God’s command to you and me is:


    Yet how few of Jesus disciples today seem ever to have learned to dance the dance of life!  In the year 1523 William Tyndale translated the New Testament into English.   (Later he would die a martyr’s death for doing so.)  But in his introduction to his translation of the New Testament in English, he declares this about our precious Christian faith: “It is good, mery, glad and joyfull tydings, that maketh a manne’s hert glad, and maketh hym singe, dance and leepe for joy.’

    But in the Church today, do we see folks dancing for joy over Christ?  Look at almost any congregation in the mainline churches of North America today.  Look at the people’s faces.  Are they radiant in the knowledge that the Savior lives, that Christ leads the PARADE of life, that he loves us?  No, I’m afraid that the average person inside the Church today is bowed down with just as much worry and care, pops just as many barbiturates and tranquilizers, suffers from just as much tension, as the average person outside the Church.

    And what about you? –You’ve known moments of real joy, haven’t you?  That time when the surgeon announced, “The tumor is benign!”  That time when that young woman, or that young man, declared for the first time, “I love you!”  That  time when the obstetrician cried, “It’s a girl!” or “It’s a boy!”

    You’ve known moments of true joy.  But perhaps they’ve been few and far between.  You don’t know that deep and rather constant, peaceful joy that God wants ALL of us, God’s children, to know -- and that God PROMISES to us, in Christ.

    Can it be you’ve never joined the PARADE?  Never really picked up that palm branch and waved it with abandon?  Never followed Jesus’ example and become a hick yourself?  Never allowed yourself really to celebrate Christ’s victory, which is yours as well?

    I pray that today you WILL join the parade!  That you’ll LET yourself be a hick.  That, as you walk the Christian way, you’ll NEVER tire but ever THRILL with wonder and excitement as you march beside the Master!

Prayers:
    Almighty God, we praise and adore you that on this day our Lord entered in triumph into the holy city of Jerusalem.  We thank you for glad disciples, who greeted him with praise and spread branches in his pathway.
    Give us your grace that we, too, may welcome and crown him our Lord and King for evermore.  As he comes again and again to enter our lives by faith, grant that we may ever recognize him as our Lord and Master, and by our lives, proclaim our own Hosannas.
    As on that Palm Sunday he began his painful walk to the cross for our salvation, so may we enter this world of sin and death and destruction, bravely to follow him, obeying you, Almighty God, and trusting your power, willing to suffer or die, if necessary, through the strength of Jesus Christ.
    Hear now our prayers for all the nations on this earth, that so desperately need the good news of the loving Savior.  Especially do we pray for the governments of the United States, of Canada, of the United Kingdom, and the Commonwealth of Nations. May peace prevail everywhere, and especially in the Middle East.
    God of all eternity, accept our thanks now for those who have greeted Christ BEFORE us, followed him as King throughout their earthly lives, and now sing Hosannas to him face-to-face, in heaven.  Keep us in fellowship with them until we, too, join the triumphal procession throughout eternity.
    For we ask it in his strong name.  Amen.