Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland |
March 24, 2013 -- Palm Sunday
Scripture
Reading: Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29 and Luke 19:28-40
28After Jesus taught in parables, he went on ahead, going
up to Jerusalem.
1O give thanks to
the LORD, for he is good;
his
steadfast love endures forever.
2Let Israel say,
"His
steadfast love endures forever."
19Open to me the
gates of righteousness,
that
I may enter through them
and
give thanks to the LORD.
20This is the gate
of the LORD;
the
righteous shall enter through it.
29When he had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the
place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, 30saying,
"Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied
there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 31If
anyone asks you, 'Why are you untying it?' just say this, 'The Lord needs
it'" 32So those who were sent departed and found it as he had
told them. 33As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them,
"Why are you untying the colt?" 34They said, "The
Lord needs it." 35Then they brought it to Jesus; and after
throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. 36As he
rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. 37As he
was now 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 that they had seen, 38saying,
"Blessed is the king
who comes in the name of
the Lord!
Peace in heaven,
and glory in the highest
heaven!"
26Blessed is the one
who comes in the name of the LORD.
We
bless you from the house of the LORD.
27The LORD is God,
and
he has given us light.
Bind
the festal procession with branches,
up
to the horns of the altar.
28You are my God,
and I will give thanks to you;
you
are my God, I will extol you.
39Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him,
"Teacher, order your disciples to stop." 40He answered,
"I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out."
21I thank you that you have answered me
and have become my salvation.
22The stone that the builders rejected
has become the chief cornerstone.
23This is the Lord's doing;
it is marvelous in our eyes.
24This is the day that the LORD has made;
let us rejoice and be glad in it.
Sermon:
“Stones Crying Out”
Jesus is
a little weird. He says confusing things
like “the last will be first” and has a habit of calling the faithful “a brood
of vipers.” But what he says in this
triumphant entry story is especially odd:
the Pharisees complain that his followers are making too much noise and
he replies, “I tell you, if these were
silent, the stones would shout out.”
Huh? Stones shouting out? Is Jesus inventing rock music? What in the world is he talking about this
time? Well, it helps to look a bit more
closely at the language he used. This “shouting
out” is not the sweet refrain of Amazing Grace, though most pastor-types have
described it that way.
It is
pronounced in the Greek krazo, because it’s meant to sound like the piercing
cry of a raven.
When
Peter tries to walk on water and begins to sink, this word describes his
fearful crying out to Jesus to save him.
When
unclean spirits encounter Jesus, this word describes their shriek of fear,
saying, “You are the Son of God!”
And
after the waving palm branches have been forgotten, this word appears again as
an angry mob, worked into a frenzy by politicized fear, shout with one voice,
“Crucify him!”
Jesus
later uses that same word himself from the pain of the cross moaning, “my God,
my God, why have you forsaken me?”
So, when
we think of these stones “crying out” as sweet, placid praise to God, we tame
them. When Jesus heard those children
and disciples on that dusty road through Jerusalem crying out those ancient
words:
“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!
Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!"
…he
heard the raven’s squawk beneath these cries.
He heard the anxiety behind those words: the piercing longing for a king
and the hope that heaven’s peace would come down to earth. He heard the maniacal edge to that praise,
knowing that it would take only the slightest of political and religious
manipulation to tip their cries of praise to cries of “Crucify him!”
So if the stones are to cry
out, when the praise of this fickle crowd goes silent, it is going to sound
like something that shakes heaven and earth.
It will sound like the groan of an earthquake and the crash of waves
hitting unmovable, worn boulders.
That cry will be a matter
of life and death, just as the cry of Peter sinking, of evil spirits seeing
their end in that Messiah, of a ravenous crowd choosing death because it was
popular, of a world-weary Savior’s moment of human and divine exhaustion on a
cross, questioning the point of it all….were all moments of life or death.
When I discussed this
passage with Dot McDonald this week, she reminded me of a time in scripture
when stones did cry out. It comes from
Matthew. He wrote: “Then Jesus cried
again with a loud voice and breathed his last.
At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to
bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks
were split.”
I wonder if Jesus knew this
would happen when he told the Pharisees that, when the disciples fell silent,
the stones would cry out. Being the Son
of God, it’s reasonable to think he did.
Perhaps that’s why he bothered to use the work krazo, instead of a more
tame, comfortable word. He wanted to
capture this mortal shout, this earth-shattering and heaven-breaking-in cry of
pain mixed with praise, of life found beyond death, of joy mingled with sorrow.
I think his use of this
word teaches us something: Jesus does not want our words to him to be stale,
half-hearted mumbling or ecstatic, showy words of praise that last only as long
as that Palm Sunday moment.
I believe that Jesus
prefers words that are authentic: even if we are startled to hear our own voice
among the crowd shouting “Crucify him!” because he comes in a way that
threatens our carefully ordered way of life.
Even if the evil spirits of pride and self-focus within us cry out in
fear when faced with the One who casts them out.
You see, Jesus welcomes all
of our cries: those of praise as well as those of lament, those of guilt as
well as those of anger, and those that join all of these together.
We often think we need to
censor our voices to come before our Savior (because after all, we do this with
each other all the time). This is why
many have sanitized the “stones crying out” in this morning’s passage to only
mean the sweet refrain of nature praising its Creator and not the groaning of
an earth plagued by violence and environmental disaster, calling to its Maker
for salvation.
Jesus does not want our
sanitized words: Jesus wants our real words.
Jesus does not want worship that only falls safely within the carefully
placed time we give it on a Sunday morning.
Jesus wants our worship to be the spontaneous cry for life in the midst
of death all around us, every single day we are given.
So what is the true cry,
the krazo, of your soul?
What does that worshipful
cry sound like when you hold your grandchild for the first time, or when you
hold the hand of your soul mate for the last time? What does that cry sound like when you sit in
a waiting room, hoping for wholeness?
What does that cry sound like when you hear it in the desperate eyes
behind the automatic response “I’m okay” or in the fearful groan of a parent
for whom more cold weather means children shivering without heat?
We are entering a week
where the hope of Easter only comes after the horror of a wrongful
execution. This is the time to lay bare
our true struggles, to give voice to our fear and regret, to finally see
ourselves and this world as what we are: the way our Maker sees us.
Once we hear our own voice
for what it is, speaking to God and each other with authenticity and
vulnerability, we can begin to echo the words of Peter, sinking in his own
doubts, shouting to Jesus in desperation, “Save us!”
And with those words of
trust in the king of all there is, in the One who makes the peace of heaven a
reality in the conflict of earth, we will see that a Savior is already
coming. He is humbly riding on a donkey,
trampling palm branches and fear along the way, willfully going down the path
to the cross. His cry mingles with the
cry of all those who are forsaken, until he silences the voice of death once
and for all, by rolling away a stone.
And do you know what? That stone cries out, with each grind of its
ragged edge on a weary earth, with each turn away from the cold death of a
tomb. Can you hear it? We all will soon: it cries out with the one
Easter word this world and our souls most long for, a word that silences all
voices of doubt and injustice, of guilt and complacency, a word God calls us to
speak again and again and again with every breath we are given. That word is “life.”
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