Delivered by Rev Dr John Evans
on Sunday 28 March, 2010
Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29
Luke 19:28-40
As long as I can remember Palm Sunday has been a day of peace activism by Christians. Indeed it has been a day of peace activism, generally. When I lived in Canberra in the 1980’s, there were huge rallies and marches on Palm Sunday calling for nuclear disarmament. Indeed do you remember the Nuclear Disarmament Party – formed in 1984, at the time of an arms race, especially with regard to the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons. The US and Ronald Reagan and the “evil empire” of the Soviet Union pushed us to the brink. Peace appropriately has been a feature of Palm Sunday; and peace has always had a political edge in these Palm Sunday events: whether it has been nuclear disarmament, or Iraq wars 1 and 2 or Afghanistan.
The original Palm Sunday also had a profound political edge. So my spoiler alert: this is a political sermon!
The triumphal procession into Jerusalem took place at a very tense time. I think, we readily overlook the significance of the timing of this first Palm Sunday. Jesus and his followers were coming into Jerusalem for the celebration of the Passover. This was the holiest and most significant of the Jewish festivals. It still is. Now we know that – the last supper – probably a Passover meal itself, is related to our sacrament of Holy Communion or the Lord’s Supper. The bread and the wine – as we will recall at our Maundy Thursday celebration this coming week – are Passover related. Our “Passover talk” has become for Christians so related to Holy Communion, we have forgotten what this occasion was actually about. It was about an oppressed people gaining their freedom; about a rabble of slaves and others being given by God a new life and the chance in freedom to form and establish a new nation. Freedom, national identity let alone the religious significance of God acting in history – this is what the Passover is about.
If you were the imperial power – would you be happy for your subject people celebrating such a festival? I wouldn’t think so. Well, as it happens, the Romans weren’t either. As Jesus and his band of pilgrims approached Jerusalem in one direction, scholars have surmised that from the other side of town, Roman soldiers in huge numbers were probably approaching from the provinces. Military reinforcements were always sent to Jerusalem for the Passover festival. This was inherently a tense time for the Empire. The Passover had a significant political edge.
Now our gospel writer Luke adds to that tension. Luke is the most political of all the gospels. There is Mary’s song – the magnificat; there is the first sermon in Nazareth about freedom for the oppressed and the like. There is now this account of the entry into Jerusalem. Luke has the multitude of followers of Jesus not saying, or singing loud Hosannas, as in the other gospel accounts of this event. The followers of Jesus are saying
“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”
Here is not – Blessed is he, or the one, who comes in the name of the Lord. Rather, “Blessed is the king – who comes in the name of the Lord.”
This ups the ante quite considerably in an already charged situation. This was inflammatory. An oppressed people – like they were back in Egypt – are now saying one of their number was a king! True he was on a donkey, but Rome would have smelt rebellion and revolution.
However, in this context the response is not from the Roman officials or some military spy. As Luke says, “Some of the Pharisees in the crowd, said to him, ‘Teacher, order your disciples to stop.’” It was the religious leaders who spoke out. “Shh, shh – quieten them down. Don’t you realise the whole city is on a knife edge. We don’t want a scene. It will jeopardise our Passover celebrations. Just cool it.” Let alone any animosity they might have had against Jesus personally.
The last few weeks have been disastrous for the Roman Catholic Church and sadly, by association, the church generally. Child sex abuse again has been the issue. The sexual abuse of the vulnerable is just abominable, wicked, evil. There are no other words to describe it. It can never be rationalised away. The sexual abuse of children destroys lives.
Why the Catholic Church, indeed all churches are in such strife over this issue, especially in the West, has not been that an individual priest has failed. That is bad enough. Rather it has been what we would call the cover-up. The Church has been caught out. It has been shown that it has a greater desire to preserve its own reputation (and wealth) than address the sin, or help the victims. Effectively, the church has said to the victims of child sex abuse – shh! shhh! Don’t rock the boat. Go quietly. We know best. We don’t want to damage the place and position of the church. Shh!
What did the Pharisees say to Jesus? ‘Order your disciples not to be so provocative with all of this shouting and carrying on; triumphal processions and the like. Particularly stop saying “blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord.” The sub plot would have been – don’t rile the Romans.
However, Jesus would have nothing of it. He makes a telling rebuttal.
“If these were silent, if his disciples were silent, if his followers were silent as to who he really was, the very stones would shout out!”
Injustice, abuse, oppression – and here the truth about who I am and my ministry – will come out. The very stones will shout out. To take another contemporary example – you can pull the plug on the messenger, say like Google in China, but you will not stop the truth from emerging. The very stones would shout out. There is something about deep and ultimately indomitable about the truth; and Jesus’identity.
Jesus would have none of the Pharisees attitude. He almost accuses them of complicity, collaboration with the Roman Empire. Their cry is for the quiet life, compromise, collaboration, in their world of religious ritual. They need their reputation as religious leaders preserved. Please don’t damage this festival that is coming up. That was their priority, not understanding who Jesus was; what is mission was; what his new kingdom of God might look like.
However, here the whole story of Palm Sunday takes a surprising twist. Jesus presents a new understanding of kingship. He is not a king to rival Caesar, or even Governor Pilate – he is to coin a phrase, rather the “prince of peace”. He is a king who rides on a donkey – or as I have said before, like the Queen riding on a bicycle in some sort of procession. Here at the end of this ministry – his followers provide the bookend to what the angels said at his birth. When he was born –
“Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favours!”
As he came into Jerusalem
“Peace in heaven and glory in the highest heaven!”
In other words – peace everywhere. . . peace in the face of the might of the roman Empire.
Jesus, as it will unfold in this last week of his life – unpacks a different sort of kingdom to which the Pharisees and many others thought he was promoting. For Jesus, his reign is not based on military power or might – it is based on peace. A vision of a world in which God’s children live in a harmony and experience the fullness of life.
Luke continues immediately after his Palm Sunday account, with two further incidents that help us understand more what Christ’ peace involves. The first is Jesus despairs, actually weeps, over Jerusalem – for not getting his message of peace and understanding who he is. It would seem that the only dimension that the residents of Jerusalem understood was political and military power. His speech at this point – no doubt embellished with the hindsight of the Gospel writer after the fall of Jerusalem around the year 70, notes that the residents of Jerusalem will be crushed to the ground, and their enemy, read the Roman Empire, will not leave one stone upon another. They did not rightly perceive that nature of Jesus’ kingdom and his peace. They did not, according to Jesus “recognise the time of their visitation from God.” They just do not get the way to a full life. And by the sword they will fall.
The second thing Jesus does, again it would seem immediately on entering Jerusalem – in Luke’s very shortened version compared to the other gospels – Jesus cleanses the temple, he strips the temple of money changes. He weeps over the people for not understanding his mission, he attacks the failure of organised religion, even the temple to understand his message. Somewhere here we are included.
As we know in this coming week, the prince of peace is not accepted, he is even mocked as being a king – and for this he will die.
Palm Sunday is set in context of political power and a new way of living, a way of peace, a way that even has a political edge. Jesus comes with a message for Empire, for religious authorities, and for ordinary folk. Sadly, by weeks end will any of us hear and understand?
