King Jesus

Luke 19:28-40

Preached by Rev. Trina Zelle

March 28, 2010

Take just a moment to settle in and think about it; try to get your mind around the notion of God –  the creator of this immense universe -- entering it; becoming part of it; being subject to the same laws of nature we are subject to and experiencing what we all experience:  the struggle and vulnerability of birth,  the law of gravity – let go of a stone and it will fall to the ground, no matter who drops it.  The inevitability of death.

And think about the entrance itself that God makes -- so quiet, so simple – a least the way Luke tells it. Shepherds, in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by nothing but rocks and sheep, hear angels – or maybe it’s the stars – singing: “Glory to God in the highest heaven and peace on earth.”  And when they go to find this savior the angel has told them about, they stumble onto a simple scene that couldn’t be more basic.  A man.  A woman who has just given birth.  A baby whose ordinary swaddling blanket serves as proof of his deity. 

A simple account.  Because the story is so strong, the truth so powerful, there’s no need for embellishment. 

Luke’s description of Jesus’ final entry into Jerusalem has the same disarming simplicity and the same kind of power.  It’s a continuation of the song begun by the angels on that long ago Bethlehem night – back then, it welcomed baby Jesus into the world; now it is accompanying the grown man on his journey to death. 

According to Luke, Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem begins as a fairly low key event. No mention here of waving palm branches – the symbol of Jewish nationalism. And that wonderful greeting that echoes through our hymns and liturgy, “blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord”? It’s simply a traditional Passover phrase, offered by pilgrims to each other as they enter the city of Jerusalem.  Words of hospitality to people who have been through some hard traveling to get there.

And yet the power of the moment is so real, God’s presence in Jesus so evident, that the extraordinary bursts through the ordinariness of the scene the way light shines through a great cathedral window.  It moves through the people standing there leading them to sing new words to the old greeting:  from blessed is the one to blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord.  And then it moves them from blessing to proclamation:  Peace in heaven! Glory in highest heaven!  The time of fulfillment is near.  From peace on earth – your savior is born -- to peace in heaven – the two are about to be reconciled. 

Who wouldn’t shout hosanna!?

Apparently the religious authorities wouldn’t.  Even standing at the edge of the crowd, they can sense the massive shift in the order of things that Jesus’ arrival seems to have triggered.  Their irritability betrays their discomfort.  Can’t you shut those people up, they say to him.  But Jesus knows that one way or the other, the glorious truth will stream through. It really doesn’t matter if the people stop singing, if they did, the earth would pick up the tune and amplify it.  The stones would shout out.  Listen to that!  The stones would shout out. If we don’t or won’t recognize God in our midst, the rest of creation does – even those elements we consider to be nothing more than inanimate objects.

Luke may not have heard the stones shout out that day, but years later he hears them speak of a different reality.  Writing his gospel some forty years after that first Palm Sunday, Judea’s final rebellion savagely crushed by the Romans, he is surrounded by stones from the destroyed temple. Burned black and soaked with blood, they speak to the dark and terrible consequences our human addiction to violence always brings down on us.  The stones that once might have shouted in joy at God in their midst, testify instead to our allegiance to aggression and vengeance. Peace in heaven may be what is proclaimed when Jesus rides into Jerusalem, but what he meets there is our dark compulsion to unravel it all.  To unmake creation into our own broken image.

Twenty one centuries later the stones still testify to the sad reality of that compulsion -- not just in Jerusalem but everywhere.  From broken bricks and rubble to desert outcroppings, they speak of lives that has been diminished or completely lost to human self-destruction:  from Ground Zero in lower Manhattan, the ruins of Afghanistan; the pock marked roads of Iraq, the stones speak.  From destroyed apartment buildings in Palestine and charred buses in Israel, the stones speak.  From the cobblestone courtyards of Rwandan churches and the stony fields of Bosnia.  The stones speak.

They are speaking here as well – can we hear them?  Do we listen?  You wouldn’t have to travel too far from this place to encounter stories of desperate people risking – and sometimes losing their lives in foolhardy desert crossings.  Attempting what we probably would too were our life circumstances like theirs.

Other desert rocks tell of the ancient peoples who came before us.  Here for hundreds of years and then one day, they weren’t, and we still don’t know where they went.  Evidence of their presence is sketchy – they tended to adapt themselves to their environment.  If the people of Phoenix were to disappear overnight, how long would it take for the land to recover? 

Our surroundings will inevitably testify to our choices, our behavior, how we live with each other and our environment -- whether we’re talking about polluted skies or desperate people.  The earth is a porous place – injustice and violence pollute as surely as coal fires and their damage reverberates far beyond destroyed buildings to generation after generation of seething resentment.  Have you ever gotten a package in the mail from someone who smokes?  The box itself and everything in it reeks.  There’s no escape.  You have to air it out before you can bring it into the house.  It’s no different for us.  For good and ill, creation absorbs and testifies to who we are.

At the end of the day and time itself, what do you think they’ll say about us, the stones – and the rest of creation too?  We claim the prince of peace as having authority over our lives, but who hasn’t resorted to violence or the threat of it when we’ve felt that our interests were threatened?  We can recite the words of the golden rule without thinking twice, but who hasn’t privately thought that survival of the fittest is a more realistic outlook.  If the stones were to speak here and now, would it be to join us in praise of our mutual creator, or to testify to our misguided lives?

Riding into Jerusalem, Jesus just might have heard those stones shout for joy, beneath the roar of the crowd.  We can be certain he had no illusions about the power of violence and the likelihood of blood soaked stones. Despite the shouts of peace in heaven he knew that dark and terrible events were waiting for him. Suffering and finally the silence of the grave.

But he also knew a deeper truth -- something that would take Easter for his disciples to realize; something that we have to learn over and over again.  Jesus knew that his own willing submission to the power of this world would, in turn, release something even more powerful that would turn known reality upside down and inside out.  He knew that his peace – which is beyond our ability to comprehend – would eventually overwhelm the violence we still crown king.  And that his kingdom, so elusive, so fragile in the cold light of the world’s belief system, is actually the rock that will endure while all other ways of living disintegrate under our feet.

The parade is over, the people are silent in the terrible silence of his death.  But beyond that silence, a simple stone waits to shout out the good news; waits to be the first thing in God’s creation to proclaim the triumph of peace over violence, love over hatred, life over death.  And that stone,  rolled to the side and casting a giant shadow will stand witness to the truth that blazes through the angel’s question:  “Why do you seek the living among the dead?”  Ride on King Jesus.  Amen.