Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Please join me in prayer.
Lord, open our hearts and minds by the power of your holy spirit. That as the scriptures are read and your word is proclaimed, we may hear with joy what you say to us today. Amen.
This reading comes from Luke, chapter 19, verses 28 to 40.
After he had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. When he had come near Bethphage and Bethany at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples saying, go into the village ahead of you and as you enter it, you will find tied there a cult that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, why are you untying it, just say, the Lord needs it. So those who are sent departed and found it as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, why are you untying the colt? They said, the Lord needs it. Then they brought it to Jesus. And after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they sent Jesus on it. As he rode along. People kept spreading their cloaks on the road. Now, as he was approaching the path down from the Mount of olives. The whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice. For all the deeds of power they had seen, saying, blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest heaven. Some of the pharisees in the crowd said to him, teacher, order your disciples to stop. He answered, I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out, this is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
[00:01:52] Speaker B: If it's okay, I'm going to read a few more verses that come right after what Eliza has read so well.
As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, if you, even you had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace.
But now they are hidden from your eyes.
Indeed, the days will come upon you when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave within you 1 st upon another.
This, too, is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
In the apostles Creed, we say, we believe in Jesus Christ, God's only son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried.
What happened from when Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary until he suffered under Pontius Pilate and was crucified?
What happened in that gap in the creed.
It's common today for christians to imagine that Jesus was born only to die, that Jesus is simply the one who died for our sins.
Sure, we remember some of our favorite stories from Jesus life.
How he walked on water, how he fed the 5000, healed the sick, lifted the poor.
We often read these stories as independent fragments that support our conviction that Jesus was God in the flesh.
They inspire some of the commitments of our lives as christians. These stories do, maybe our commitment to justice or to speaking the truth.
But typically it's not very clear to us how these favorite stories of ours relate to the death of Jesus, which, as the creed seems to say, is what is most important.
After all, we believe in Jesus as the one who died for our sins. Everything that comes before that seems to fade to the margins.
The little clips of Jesus and the gospels that are our favorite stories are not in fact independent fragments, even though they seem that way in the children's bibles many of us grew up reading or listening to.
They're in fact moments in an unfolding drama that culminates in Jesus suffering under Pontius Pilate.
Do we have any sense of what Jesus did in that drama? To get himself killed, and by crucifixion no less.
He died for our sins. But what did he do with his life so that he died the way he did, so that he died the death that was somehow for our sins?
Our passage in Luke that Eliza has read gives us a window into the drama that led to Jesus death.
As he is riding into Jerusalem to shouts from a large crowd of his disciples.
Why would some of the authorities call out to Jesus, teacher, order your disciples to stop what has happened leading up to this moment in the capital such that Jesus can answer them?
If these people were silent, the stones would shout out what has shaken the land and the people so much as to make the stones shout out if the people don't.
What we may not have considered carefully enough with the gaps in the apostles Creed can allow us to neglect is that by this point in Jesus life, according to Luke's gospel, Jesus is heading a sizable jewish movement in the land.
Much of the enormous gathering around the prophet John the Baptist at the Jordan earlier in his life gravitated to Jesus, especially after John was arrested and imprisoned by the ruler Herod, who is sponsored by Rome.
Jesus has since been announcing and enacting the same kingdom of God that John had proclaimed and prepared the people for at the Jordan and for some time in Galilee to the north of the land. He has been gathering disciples and teaching and healing, clashing with certain local and regional authorities. And now he has come with a large following of disciples to Jerusalem for the Passover, for what turns out to be the Passover of all passovers.
So widespread is this movement around Jesus now that when he comes to Jerusalem and when his disciples start leading someone else's cult away from the village on the mount of all. As for Jesus and the owners ask what they think they're doing with their cult, the disciples say, only the Lord needs it.
And the owners apparently say, oh, by all means, the cult is yours.
That's the sort of enthusiasm and support for Jesus that has amassed by this crucial point in the story.
The disciples throw their cloaks on the colt. They set Jesus on it and walk around him. As he crests the mount of Olives and descends into the Kidron valley at the foot of Jerusalem, throwing their cloaks on the ground before him as a royal carpet into the holy city, the large crowd of his disciples start chanting loudly and joyfully, after all the deeds of power that they've seen to this point in Jesus life. Blessed is the king.
Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest heaven.
The deeds of power that they have seen, what they're seeing now before their eyes, mean peace in heaven that has come to the earth and will keep coming.
And Jesus does not stop them.
He doesn't tell them that they misunderstand.
He doesn't tell them that he's not the king that they think he is.
He doesn't quiet them or attempt to quell what this clearly is to the authorities in the city.
The threat of revolution.
A large crowd of his disciples are acclaiming him. King on the doorstep of the capitol at Passover. And they are manifestly opposed by the current rulers of his people.
And soon by Pontius Pilate, the roman governor.
The city is swelling with Passover pilgrims, and Jesus is claiming a throne that is currently occupied by others.
Have you thought of Jesus that way?
Are we following that sort of Jesus?
Can you see now why the authorities cry out from this boisterous crowd of Jesus followers? Teacher, order your disciples to stop.
You are unleashing chaos. You're courting disaster.
Teacher, order your disciples to stop.
Not only does Jesus refuse to stop them, he doubles down.
The threat is worse than you can imagine. He tells them if these people were silent, the swell of power bursting from their bodies and loud chants would erupt from the watching stones.
The authorities are part of a dying regime that is in the midst of being dethroned, there is no stopping the kingdom of God. That is bringing it down.
What is so stunning that his disciples could never have imagined it is that Jesus is going down with it.
He does not refuse for himself the destruction that is coming to his enemies, to Jerusalem, to the people of his generation and beyond.
He will tell his disciples just a little further on in Luke's gospel, when they're admiring the magnificent temple and the generous gifts being offered to God there, that not 1 st will be left upon another.
All will be thrown down. And when such colossal stones are being thrown down in the coming destruction of Jerusalem, stones the size of semi trucks knocked loose by the stones of roman catapults at the end of Jesus generation, in the midst of a civil war, those colossal stones will shout.
And mingled with the shouts of stones will be the shrieks of horror of human beings who are being destroyed in the falling rubble, or worse, watching that happen to others, watching as the impregnable house of God itself is cast down.
On Friday, we'll listen to Jesus gather up this shout in his own body as the curtain of the house of God is being torn in two. And Jesus heaves forth the terrible sound. Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. His head falling limp, his last gasp released, he suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died.
What has led to such terrible suffering for Jesus and his people and so many others, suffering in which all of us are finally implicated?
The whole epic story is about that question, the whole story of Luke's gospel.
How has this happened? What has caused something so terrible to take place? It's a question that requires far more than one answer.
But as Jesus was approaching Jerusalem, in the passage right before what Eliza has read, Jesus warned his disciples with a parable against treating others fearfully with the gifts that have been entrusted to them, warn them against living for a kingdom that refuses the risks of service and only fears what we will lose, a kingdom of rushing to avenge and to be proven right rather than aching with our neighbors for a future together.
A future not a vindication at others expense, but of peace at a shared table that we cannot imagine if we know only a vindictive God and crave only a predatory vindication for ourselves.
The estrangement and violence of vindictiveness is what we will reap a little further on in the gospel of Luke. Before his death on Friday, Jesus will predict to his disciples that the mighty and beautiful stoned fortress of the temple will fall just before he does, he warns them against the fearful self righteousness of their rulers, who crave public acclaim, who crave places of honor, who are hungry to be elevated in their society with little thought of the fallout for others and for themselves over time, whether they know it or not. Those authorities, Jesus says, are devouring widows houses and are obsessed with appearing to be people of justice.
They have fostered a culture of wealthy people, putting their expensive gifts and piles of money into the temple treasury, admired by all and celebrated on CNN for their generosity and their charity.
No one notices. The widow, who, starved by a culture of self righteousness and massive wealth disparity, places her last two copper coins in the same treasury.
While the spotlight and the cameras are trained on those who are giving out of their abundance, holding back plenty for themselves, the authorities make those two coins so heavy they will bring the whole temple to the ground as the self righteous destroy one another in war. Later in the disciples generation, Jesus tells them, Jesus is warning us, warning us today against competing with one another to be right, to be best, to be wealthier, to be safest.
He says these words to his disciples. The kings of the Gentiles. Lord their rule over their subjects, and those in authority over them are called benefactors.
Not so with you.
Rather, the greatest among you must become like the youngest and the leader, like one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table?
But I am among you as one who serves.
How has Jesus served? By writing into Jerusalem on someone else's cult as the king of his people, to the loud acclaim of his disciples, their voices echoing through the stones, he has not risen above the fray as if he could avoid it. He has not refused the hopes of his disciples or the rest of his people. He has not refused ours.
He is indeed the king who dethrones the corrupt rulers of our world, including the Jerusalem regime, including Rome, powers that in time fall by their own weight. As he exposes their injustice with his fierce love, his solidarity, his service, service even to them, his enemies, he does not call down on them any condemnation. He does not face and endure himself.
He shows us what our hopes for peace must finally entail.
Jesus craves no future for himself at the expense of his enemies without being at his own expense as well.
He destroys bad governments and habits of self righteousness and our own predatory cravings to be honored and vindicated at others expense.
How?
By serving, not by self inflation.
By giving, by telling and being the truth. In solidarity even with those that are apt to be despised, and doing that without self righteousness, by struggling only for a future that he means to share with those who oppose him, no matter how unimaginable the path to that sort of peace from heaven.
Sisters and brothers, divisive days lie ahead of us this year.
Divisive days that will tempt us to disown people that we despise, to crave only to win, and to be proven right to build our sense of righteousness on the backs of those we long to defeat.
Let us not wish upon others harm that we do not expect to face and endure ourselves.
Let us live only for a future together, somehow beyond what we can imagine. Let us shout with the stones, peace in heaven that is coming to the earth.
But let us learn that that peace comes not through winning, but through serving.
Amen.
