Sermons at St. John’s Presbyterian Church

Shouting Rocks

Transcribed from the sermon preached March 28, 2010

The Reverend Max Lynn, Pastor

Scripture Readings: Luke 19:28-40

As we enter Holy seek we are presented with a man who lives non-violent love. As a part of the story there are two different crowds. One groups lays out cloaks on the road before Jesus and sings out “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord.” The other yells, “crucify him!” One scene conveys great hope, the other the violent, self-centered and sinful nature of humanity. I suspect there are some of both groups in each of us. God help us.

To say that Jesus was non-violent is not to say that his entry into Jerusalem has no political implications. It is an entrance of a King, even if a different kind of King. For the Gospels, the entry of Jesus fulfills the prophecy of Zechariah 9:9-10 which reads:

Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion!
Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem!
See, your king comes to you,
righteous and having salvation,
humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
I will take away the chariots from Ephraim
and the war-horses from Jerusalem,
and the battle bow will be broken.
He will proclaim peace to the nations.
His rule will extend from sea to sea
and from the River to the ends of the earth.

He comes humble, on a donkey, not a chariot or a warhorse.

In the March 20, 2007 Christian Century, there was an article by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan entitled, “Collision Course; Jesus’ Final Week.”

“Two processions entered Jerusalem at the beginning of the week of Passover, a tinderbox time in the city, with the Jewish people celebrating divine deliverance from the past Egyptian Empire while under the present Roman Empire. Two very large and lethal riots took place precisely at Passover in generations before and after 30CE. And so, at each Passover, the Roman governor – Pilate in the time of Jesus – rode up to Jerusalem from the imperial capital Caesarea on the coast at the head of a cohort of imperial cavalry and troops to reinforce the Roman garrison in Jerusalem as a deterrent against and preparation for any possible trouble. Pilate’s procession, arriving in the West, symbolized and actualized Roman imperial power.

“Jesus entered the city from the East in another procession, a counterprocession. Whereas Pilate rode into the city on a warhorse, Jesus entered on a donkey.

With knowledge of where the donkey is, it looks like Jesus has planned this event in advance. It is political theater. [29] When he drew near to Beth'phage and Bethany, at the mount that is called Olivet, he sent two of the disciples,
[30] saying, "Go into the village opposite, where on entering you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever yet sat; untie it and bring it here.
[31] If any one asks you, `Why are you untying it?' you shall say this, `The Lord has need of it.'"

Now we know from our journey with Mary and Martha the last several weeks that Jesus has close friends and disciples in Bethany, so we can assume he could know where the donkey was, and then also the owners. And given who Jesus was, they would have no problem loaning him their donkey for such an occasion.

The contrast is clear continue Borg and Crossan, “Jesus versus Pilate, the nonviolence of the kingdom of God versus the violence of the empire. Two arrivals, two entrances, two processions – and our Christian Lent is about repentance for being in the wrong one and preparing to abandon it for its alternative.”

I mentioned at the beginning the two crowds of Holy Week, those who cheer, blessed is the King who come in the name of the Lord, and those who proclaim crucify him. In Christian History, starting with the Gospel of John, the mean crowd yelling, “crucify him!” was labeled as “the Jews.” Such labeling led periodically to “Christian” crowds yelling, “Crucify them.” It appears the nature of human groups to change their state of mind quite quickly, from hope filled to vengeful, from denouncing exclusion and oppression only to turn around and become exclusive and oppressive. We know that the Jewish prophet who rode into Jerusalem on that barrowed donkey can only be sick and angry at all the violence and hate demonstrated in his name.

I suppose, as some would say, we can’t blame the derision of “the Jews” in the Gospel of John for anti-Semitic violence anymore than we can blame Sarah Palen or Glen Beck for racist hatred in the tea party, or the American Christian Right for anti-gay laws in Uganda. But at some point if hate filled people keep rallying around certain propaganda we ought to think again about our choice of words.

We know that the Gospel of John was written in another time, when Christians were largely poor and oppressed people, isolated as a heretical cult among Jews on the one hand, and threatened by Rome for their origin as Jews on the other. This gave John’s church double reason to separate. But such justification is lost as soon as Constantine declared Christianity the official religion of the empire. And it is no surprise that it is with Constantine that Jews begin to be persecuted by Christians as the “ones who crucified the Christ.” Politics is always more complicated in the present than in history, written, preserved and canonized by the winners. With time the good and bad are neatly separated and the nuanced opinions and forces fade away. The danger is that we begin to see the present as we too often see the past; groups are scapegoated and violence and hate become easy. And we dare not assume self-righteousness in the present, pointing out only the folly of those on the other side.

As we try to advocate for equal justice and rights for the oppressed Palestinians, for instance, there is a real danger that in our desire to see ourselves as the progressive minority, we forget our historical role as oppressive majority. This complicates our friendship with oppressed Palestinians considerably, especially when some within their group are militantly anti-Jewish and anti-Israel. I abhor the ongoing colonization of Palestinian land by the Israel my own nation seems to support unconditionally, regardless of the level of disrespect and atrocity. But as we enter Holy week, and read texts which historically have been used to justify stereotyping, exclusion, racism, hatred and violence, we ought first enter with the knowledge that we are sinners in need of forgiveness and redemption, and only secondarily, with humility, by the grace of God as spokespersons for the God of Peace and Justice. Or, perhaps I should say, the best way to represent the one who came into Jerusalem, “humble and riding on a donkey” is with humility, taking the log out of our own eye before we take the speck out of our neighbors.

Moreover, regardless of what side we are on, even if we see ourselves on the side of the oppressed, no matter what our justifications, no matter what nation or cause we claim to serve, at that moment when we decide to employ violence or hate, we cease to be on the side of Jesus, we cease to be on the side of the Creator of all, the Father and Mother of life, the God of love.

Even as there are nations that are better than others, and we are thankful for living in one of the better ones, there is no such thing as a Christian nation or a Christian soldier. The inscribing of scripture and the cross on M-16 rifles or spears and shield is an abomination of Christ. We may not agree with Jesus. We may think, as President Obama noted in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, that the non-violence of MLK or Gandhi, or Jesus is not realistic for all our lives, especially for one who leads or serves a nation.

We may even thank those who carry out our violence and enforce our laws, but we thank them for sinning for us. In employing them we hope we are working for the lesser of evils.

And as individuals who choose where to pledge our allegiance, we may accuse the church of being too corrupt, or too full of hypocrites, of being Patriarchal, exclusive, out of date or boring. Or, with our rational minds we may not want to give ourselves to irrational faith in a God we cannot see, or think that most of the theology of the Church only made sense in a culture we no longer understand. Or we may, as good materialists like Bill Gates, think that there are more productive uses for our time than worship. There is truth in all of these objections.

We may all come up with one good reason or another so that there was no one left to cheer out, and he would still not change, he would still be there, riding into town, humble on a donkey. And deep down we know, the rocks themselves would cry out. Jesus is not backing down, we know he is who he is, ready to go to the cross if need be, to demonstrate God’s radical love. “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

I don’t know about you, but that truth haunts me. The rocks do cry out. Jesus haunts me. He haunts me with crazy, radical hope. He haunts me with hope in me. He haunts me with hope in you. He haunts me with hope for the Church, with hope for human life, with hope for Creation. He lives a truth we cannot escape. It cannot be killed. We are made to love. Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.