A – Palm Sunday: 16 March 2008
** MATTHEW 21: 1 – 11;**; Isaiah 50: 4-92;
Luke 19: 28 – 40
Who Is That?
A Sermon by John C. Bush
Guest Preacher
Hope Presbyterian Church
Huntsville, Alabama
Everybody loves a parade. Bands and floats; air filled with fanfare; children squealing with delight. And car after car filled with celebrities of one kind or another. The mayor, the governor, candidates for this or that office, lots of vaguely familiar faces and names – and quite a few you never heard of.
“Who is that?,” people whisper as a black Lincoln convertible eases past. I’ve sometimes wondered if the celebrities could hear the question. But they never give a hint of self-doubt, riding along, waving and smiling as if all the people lining the streets were among their closest friends.
Jesus arrived at last in Jerusalem. If you have been following the Gospel readings during Lent you know that it has been a long journey. The route he has followed means that the last leg of the trip has taken him from Jericho up to Jerusalem along a road familiar to us from the story of “The Good Samaritan.” A steep road, sometimes nothing more than a narrow trail, through rugged and often dangerous terrain.
Any trip to Jerusalem from out in the provinces revived nationalistic hopes in the ancient Jewish heart, renewing grand memories of the good old days when David and Solomon were kings who commanded respect throughout the world. Painful memories for a people long subjected to the rule of foreign powers like Rome.
And so, today, the crowds along the roads into the Holy City carried these hopes with them. Memories and aspirations of a ruler who would fight for a return to the glory days. “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” It was a nationalistic salute with intense political overtones, implying nothing less that the overthrow of the government of Roman occupation. The word means “Save us! Save us now, please!”
It was not to be the last time followers of Jesus aspired to political power. This past decade or so, we have seen advocates of the Religious Right in the country expressing their disillusionment with that movement’s reach for political power. Even such power brokers as Cal Thomas – who, with Jerry Falwell, created the erstwhile concept of a “Moral Majority” – now confess that “For Christians the vision of worldly power is not a calling but a distraction.” In the beginning, he says, “the marriage of church and state was looking better all the time. If God was slow bringing about the reforms we sought, perhaps we could help him out a bit.”
But that was not how it has worked out. As Thomas says, “That was twenty years ago. … Politics has failed to deliver what we thought it promised.” It seems that he and others in that movement have finally understood what Jesus meant at his trial before Pilate, when he said “My kingdom is not of this world … my kingdom is from another place.”
Now, I want to be clear about this: it is not that there are not religious overtones to political and social issues. It is good and right for Christians to be engaged with issues that affect the quality of life. Participation by believers can help humanize even oppressive political systems. It happened in East Germany immediately before the fall of the Berlin Wall. In other words, results matter; it makes a difference what happens. Bad means can contaminate good ends so that they are no longer good, just as good means do not justify bad ends.
It is well for us to remember what the theologian and ethicist Reinhold Niebuhr found out early in the twentieth century: first, that all political solutions to our problems are provisional and limited; and secondly, that no political contest can ever be reduced to a struggle between the forces of righteousness again the forces of evil. Nobody holds the privileged high ground in the political order.
That is what I think is meant by the old saying that “religion and politics don’t mix.” Not that Christians should never have anything to do with things political, but rather that we should not be surprised when we get mixed results. Again, as Niebuhr says, the best we can hope for is to ameliorate some of the most negative effects of raw political power.
What is called for as Christians approach political and social questions is a healthy respect for the reality of human sinfulness, and the potential of political power to exacerbate it. I encourage every Christian to take your faith with you into political decision-making, but do so modestly, and with respect for the limited good that is likely to come from it.
It was raw political power the crowd wanted in the streets of Jerusalem that day. Jesus knew he was walking toward his death. The signs were everywhere that there was a plot against him – a plot perpetuated by both religious and political leaders acting in collusion. Inevitably, there would be a showdown – one of cosmic significance.
At the village of Beth-phage they found a donkey for Jesus to ride. And so, the messianic king approached the Holy City “humble and mounted on an ass,” the garments of the disciples serving as saddle, with tree branches laid by pilgrims as a carpet upon the road.
There have been three primary interpretations of this event we call “the triumphal entry” of Jesus into Jerusalem. One holds that Jesus intended this as a public acknowledgement that he is Messiah – the promised one. Soon, standing before Pilate, he would say it plainly.
A second view says that, despite Jesus’ wishes and better judgment, the disciples rushed forward with their proclamation, mixing the spiritual and political hopes of the people in a way that borders on treason against Rome. This is the interpretation put on it by his enemies. The political charge for which Jesus was crucified was treason against the Roman state.
A third interpretation says that the procession, coming at the Feast of the Tabernacles, honors Jesus as a prophet who might usher in the long-expected reign of God.
However we see it, it is clear that the procession did not represent a mass conversion of the people to the teachings of Jesus. Religious faithfulness has never been a mass market product. The reality of that should inform the aspirations of the church as we seek to call people to faith. I strongly believe that those who follow the Lord need to more free than we usually are with our witness to God’s goodness and grace. It is a fact that 79% of people who return to church after a long period of inactivity – or who find their way here for the first time – do so because they are invited by a friend, relative, neighbor or co-worker. Statistically, each of you knows (on average) five people who would welcome an invitation from you to visit your church, and three of them would actually show up if you asked them; and one would stay. On the other hand, only one in twenty will come is a pastor invites them.
The talk on the streets of Jerusalem that day was, I think, only marginally about this poor, ragtag parade. For the most part it was about the price of wheat, the oppression of the Roman authorities, or the beauty of the Temple whose gold leaf façade was gleaming in the sun.
This spectacle moving up the street was far from impressive. Most would have responded to the unrecognized dignitary in the convertible: “who is that?” “Oh, I think it’s that strange prophet from Nazareth,” would be the reply, as attention returned to some other subject.
Perhaps only a few gave much thought to the scattered shouts of “Hosanna!” The word means “Help us, we pray.” For some, it was broadened into a political slogan: “Liberate Israel, O God.”
If only they had understood and actually prayed that prayer. If we could understand this Palm Sunday, and pray that prayer: “Help us, O God.” But soon the crowd, instigated by shouters planted by religious and political enemies of Jesus would change the cry from “Hosanna” to “Crucify.”
The church throughout the ages has chosen the right mood for the celebration of Palm Sunday, I think. Below the surface of the celebration, this is a token of the blindness and fickleness of our human loyalties. We know, of course, what happened to him in that city in the week that followed. Christians will gather again on Thursday to commemorate and re-enact his last meal with his friends, and will gather again on Friday in a darkened and desolate church to renew our memory of his death and burial.
But let’s not pick on Jerusalem. What place is there today, do you suppose – with its own values, its centers of power, its established institutions of religion and politics, its familiar social and cultural patterns and self-interest – what place is there today, do you suppose, that would not resist the realignment of those values and relationships, it priorities and commitments along the line that Jesus taught and modeled for us? Where justice and righteousness are valued above power and self-interest? Into what relationships are strangers welcomed as friends; enemies reconciled; outcasts befriended; the unjustly imprisoned liberated?
Which human soul is not capable of moving quickly from “Hosanna” to “Crucify” when it’s hatreds and greed are stirred, when its prejudices are inflamed, when its loyalties are challenged?
Beyond these cries; beyond this crowd; beyond these paths strewn with garments and branches, there is to be yet another parade through these streets, dragging the heavy load of a cross to a place called “The Skull.” And hours of agony and death at last. And then, as the Sabbath approaches, yet another little band bearing a shrouded corpse to a borrowed tomb. And then – well, then something one can hardly imagine on a day like today. Something you just can’t see from here, caught up as we are in the turmoil that surrounds us.
So, for now, we can only wait and hope. Wait, and hope, and pray, “Hosanna.” “God, help us, please!”
Copyright 2008, John C. Bush
NOW TO THE RULER OF ALL WORLDS,
UNDYING, INVISIBLE, THE ONLY WISE GOD,
TO GOD BE HONOR AND GLORY,
IN THE CHURCH AND IN THE WORLD,
UNTO AGES OF AGES, NOW AND FOREVER. AMEN.