It would be very easy for anyone to get an inflated ego after being treated with that much pomp and circumstance. I’m sure we’ve all heard stories and seen evidence of celebrities who have gotten carried away with their fame. The very definition of celebrity is someone who is celebrated by many people. So, in order to be a national or international celebrity, you have to be known and liked by millions of people. One of the ironies is that, that many people can never really know you – they can know of you, know your image, your work, but they can’t really know who you are inside – and so staying popular shifts from actually being known and liked to having the right image of yourself known and liked.

Isn’t it also ironic that the more popular and famous celebrities become, the more separate they seem to get from the general public and common living. Even going out among the people that made them celebrities in the first place starts to require bodyguards whose job it is to keep the general population at arm’s length.

It would be extremely difficult to live a life that separate and removed without it leading to a significant change in your mindset – the way you see and think about yourself – without it leading you to believe that you are somehow at an elevated status, better or in a higher station than most of the people around you and actually needing to be protected from contact with them. Whenever I fantasized about what it would be like to walk the red carpet I never considered the danger of where it might lead, to a mindset of thinking I was better than others and needing to live a protected and separate kind of life.

Today’s service is focused on the story of what we call Palm Sunday, when many churches like ours include some re-enactment by waving palms from our seats or as part of a parade – all part of imagining the brief time that Jesus was treated very much like a celebrity. They didn’t have the Red Carpet back then, so instead the people threw their own cloaks onto the dirt road and cut large branches from the palm trees to give him a special and separate path to come down. They treated him as if he were royalty, shouting his name and singing loud praises. All expecting the parade and palms to lead to Jesus becoming a great king who would takeover the current oppressive government and end the injustices that were part of their everyday life.

If Jesus had only taken the hint, he could have used this moment to his advantage. He could have really cashed in on his fame and got himself separated from the people – keeping them at arm’s length and thereby preserving his celebrity image a little longer. Then, he could have taken bodyguards with him the next time he went out in public; they could have taken on the Roman guards and kept his opponents at bay. Why not? After all, he was a real celebrity, he had earned special treatment. The palms could have been his red carpet leading him away from what we know actually happened.

Instead, Jesus follows the palms without regard for his own status and prays for God’s guidance. If he hadn’t, he never would have been able to have dinner with his disciples later that week, he never would have been vulnerable to the course of events that would lead him to the cross, and none of us would be here right now.

Palm Sunday is the entry to what we call Holy Week beginning with the story we read from Mark, when Jesus entered Jerusalem, was welcomed like a celebrity and given the “red carpet treatment.” By the end of the same week, the scriptures tell us those same crowds call for his execution as if he were the worst kind of criminal, leading him from the “Red Carpet” to alone on a cross.

Through all of it, the attitude of Christ toward the people and toward himself remained the same – he stayed true to who he was, not any image that others may have held. His thoughts were always focused on God and God’s purposes, no matter if they led him to fame and a parade or to being despised and stripped of all dignity. His mind, his thoughts, his attitude remained steadfast – unchanged by either the temptations of popularity or by the stress of torture. This is the kind of mind, the kind of attitude described by the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Philippians, which is part of the broader scope of readings for today.

In that letter, Paul says to the congregation in Phillipi – 5 Let the same mind be in you that was[a] in Christ Jesus,” Another translation from the original Greek is that we are to have the same attitude of mind as Jesus did. Eugene Peterson’s The Message puts it this way: think of yourselves as Christ thought of himself.

We often hear Paul and other leaders in the Church encouraging us to be like Christ, to have his kind of heart, to care for others with sincere compassion, to give generously to those who are in need, to comfort those in distress, and to include those who have been left out – all part of the language of heart.

But here, Paul uses the language of thought, which was also used to talk about attitude – in other words the way a person thinks about themself, others and the world around them. When Paul says to have the same mind as Christ or to have the same attitude, he is not, in this instance, talking about how Christ treated others, although Jesus’ attitude directly led to the way he treated others. Instead he is talking about the way Jesus thought about himself and that this is the way we should think of ourselves as Christ’s followers and imitators.

The key to understanding the way Christ thought comes in later verses of that same letter: Though he was in the form of God (and therefore of equal status with God), Jesus did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, 7 but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, 8 he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death — even death on a cross. (Phil 2:6-8) In other words, Christ never elevated himself to a special status, but instead put all others above himself even the poor and wretched, the ill and outcast, even those who betrayed and denied him and those who nailed him to the cross.

Because he was “in the form of God,” Jesus’ actions revealed not simply his own character, but God’s as well. In those actions we have the perfect revelation of the grace and compassion of a God who gave up everything to be with us on earth, to reach out to us in self-emptying humility and unconditional love, no matter where it would lead.

If we say that Jesus is Lord for us, then we are called to follow him on the same path of self-emptying. We must go down the road that leads to his suffering and strive to understand his attitude of grace and his mindset of humility in order to be transformed along with him. The attitude of Christ’s mind is to be our own.

This holy week is about seeing the very essence and nature of God revealed in Jesus. We are to look closely at what he did and did not do to see the nature and character of the God we worship and follow wherever it may lead. Despite celebrity status at the beginning of the week, Jesus did not think of himself as above or more important than anyone else. He did not use his fame to build a wall between himself and the people; he did not use his popularity to escape the law or to acquire luxury. When he was betrayed, he did not abandon his friends; he did not betray them back or run for cover. He did stay true to the mind of his heart, to the true essence of God in him, through all the pain, shock and grief.

This week is about the humility and self-emptying of Jesus and how it is to be our own. May each of us have the faith and courage to follow where the Palms lead throughout this holy week, striving for the same mind and heart, the same thoughts and prayers as the One who gave up everything so that we might know and embrace the fullness of God. In whose name we worship and pray, amen.