"Stones Crying Out"

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.”