“Rock-King
Jesus: If the Stones Cry Out, and Nobody Hears . . . .”
Especially for those who cannot or
will not come back before next Sunday, as we come for communion, we are
invited to drop our palms at the altar and to touch the waters reminding
us of our baptisms into Jesus’ death and resurrection. While
communion hymns are sung, the passion story from Luke will be read.
Storytelling helps us think, brings
us together, often leads us to change. Powerful examples of that
abound in “The New Americans” series on PBS last week. (www.pbs.org/kcet/newamericans
- 17k) (Thank you, Channel 5!) A young Palestinian
named Hatem, working fulltime, and more, as an organizer for the
Arab-American Action League in Chicago, confesses to us, “I always
wanted a job that begins the moment I wake up in the morning and ends
only the moment I go to sleep at night.” I found myself saying,
Yeah, it’s like that! Then I found myself reflecting, as Julie
will tell you I always do, And it’s like that with life, too! I
always wanted a life that begins the moment I am born and ends only the
moment I die! It is said cowards die many times, the brave only
have to die once. I don’t know. But it’s something like
that.
Our sister Mim Davis and our brother
Sam Song are in hospice care. Mim is in her daughter’s home,
where she is attended not only by two daughters and a son-in-law but by
a host of foster grandchildren and some very loving members of this
congregation. Sam is in the Progressive Care Center of Washoe Med,
where we are his only family. Sam is still wheeling about in his
chair, still getting out to church when he can, -- He’s here this
morning, thank God! – and still asking for lots of Korean food!
Mim is sleeping deeply now, but as of two weeks ago she was out getting
her nails done, and a week ago she insisted on going shopping for
something to wear! I think of Mim as an “Auntie Mame” of our
lives: “Life is a banquet, and most poor fools are starving to death.”
Holy Week. Holy work. Holy life. You go, Mim.
You go, Sam. You go, Jesus.
Most poor fools are starving to
death. Not Jesus! Jesus is going the distance this
week. No life-support systems for him. No extraordinary
measures to keep him from the fullest possible embrace of the whole of
life, clearly including the pain of remaining so true to himself.
Dr. King, who also organized dangerous demos, peaceful parades, martyred
in Memphis, murdered in faith, 36 years ago this very day, said on the
night before, with respect but without illusion, “I’d like to live a
long life. Longevity has its place. But it really doesn’t
matter with me now. I have been to the mountain-top. I have
looked out over the promised land. I may not get there with
you. But we as a people will get to the promised land!”
A few short Sundays ago, the Sunday
we observed with prayer for healing and anointing with oil, Jesus went
to the mountain-top. He joined by the founders and prophets of his
faith, Moses and Elijah. Jesus looked out over the promised
land. God spoke again the words that blessed his baptism to the
life and the work of a “servant-king,” -- a king who would not so
much, as worldly kings do, serve by ruling, by deigning to take the
reigns of control, domination, over others. Rather, Jesus, the
servant-king, whose witness and service become so intensely focused for
us, if we let them, in this week, rules only by serving! All of
his life is serving -- serving justice, serving joy, serving food,
serving feet, serving love, serving life – even when that requires
serving by suffering, serving by death.
Jesus is not serving death!
There are plenty of leaders doing that. But the opposite.
Serving by death. Refusing to kill! Refusing to grasp at equality
with God. Refusing to lord death over others, though Jesus could
have! His death-denying disciples were willing to pull out their
swords for him. He could have called upon legions of angels even
while gasping for breath on the cross. But Jesus is serving, even
by death. Taking the all-too-human form of “servant-king,” humbled,
thus exalted. Choosing to die before he ever would kill
anyone.
Laying down life for others,
especially for others no one else knows, or cares, are there. All
the anonymous, ignominious others who greet and follow him into the city
this day. Between whom he dies on the cross, instrument of
execution. For Jesus believes, and asks it of us, only the life
freely offered in death for others becomes so emptied of all our
defenses, all our pretenses, that it may be filled, that the God of Life
may fill it again with life resurrected, life everlasting.
Part of life everlasting for us must
be memory. Creating good, faith-giving memory is a lot of the work
of the church, from baptism, through confirmation, -- Whenever we
receive members, as we are pleased and privileged to do today, we
remember baptisms and confirmations, -- one of them in the river just
yesterday! -- through marriage and holy union, -- Think of the huge
importance of that ministry in this place! Every week persons stop
by to look at the sanctuary because someone important to them was, or is
to be, married here! -- even to dying and to death itself. What
are our memorial celebrations of one another but creations of memory to
keep alive in us the best of those who have gone before?
Memory is what this whole week,
beginning with this least-forgettable possible of all parades, -- Was
that not a great parade? -- is all about. The flowers at the table
today, in memory of the wedding of Ed and Marilyn Hewitt, make me think
of Ed’s memorial service, and of the parade of the tow trucks such as
Ed owned and drove! It makes me wonder what kind of parade I would
want in my memory? What kind would any of us want? We
remember Jesus this week for this day. I call it day of the
circus, week of the cross.
As we say in our “Words for
Meditation,” this week brings out all the poet, all the teacher, all
the artist, all the organizer, as well as all the servant, all the king,
in Jesus! Here he has come, all the way “downtown,” – Talk
about “downtown ministry!” Walter Wink says Jesus comes “farcically,
on a donkey!” “Lampooning the Davidic kingship by paradoxical
reversal!” Clearly a king more committed to giving life than to
taking it! Wink continues, “The human being who has no place to
lay his head is the same ‘king’ who owns nothing and must borrow –
not even a horse – an ass!” Makes me think of Gandhi, another
great “parader,” who possessed when he died a pair of glasses, a
robe, a book or two, a walking stick, perhaps a spinning wheel.
Today is about our willingness, even our courage, to go “public”
with our faith! to be so openly identified, -- as even
Peter, the Rock, this week tries and fails to do, -- with this
outlandish, outlawish one from Galilee, and with all the noisy “rabble,”
very much including the children, he attracts! It’s like
following King, or Ghandi, or Cesar Chavez, or Dorothy Day. Paul
says elsewhere it is to make “spectacles” of ourselves, to be as
fools for Christ’s sake!
Christ comes here from the wilderness
margins. Jesus learns there to choose limits upon his own
powers. That’s what his time of testing is all about: disempowering
himself, who could have been equal with God, that others may be
empowered through him! Isn’t that what he’s all about?
Disempowering himself, in ways that empower others. So here he
comes, to the Jerusalem center of “powers that be,” powers of
church, powers of state, powers of marketplace, powers even of
empire. What “powers” does Jesus have to bear over against all
their deadliest weapons?
Only the power of palms! Just
the power to capture hearts and imaginations! To create, to
improvise beauty and hope each day, to make up life of faith and trust
as we go along! Knowing from jump-street, says Luke through
Gamaliel in the Book of Acts: Only if God is in what we say, only if God
is in what we do, in all we offer for others, is there any chance we
will make an enduring difference. So that becomes the ultimate,
even the only question this week: Is this power of palm and passion, of
circus and of cross, -- this power to capture hearts and imaginations
– Is it equal to all of the powers of death? . . .
What we remember most about Jesus
this week is his capacity to forgive us all. Not just to
forgive all of us, but to forgive all of us EVERYTHING! Theologian
Carter Heyward reminds us, forgiving is not forgetting! Forgiving
itself is an act of re-membering, an act of recalling and reconfiguring,
as much and as far back as we can possibly bear to bare, -- to reveal to
ourselves and to others, -- so that the fabric, the quilt, of our common
life may be pieced back together again in ways that are new and
differing, -- This time life-loving, life-serving, life-giving,
life-sustaining. Archbishop Romero was preaching John 12 when he
was shot down the Monday of Holy Week, 1980. John 12 says to carry
on the fight of this week as Jesus does, strictly by power to capture
hearts and imaginations, is for a single seed, -- this Jesus of our own
personal life and faith, -- to fall into the soil of our minds and
hearts, our bodies and souls, and to die to its singularity, our
separation, our isolation from others, in order to bring forth much
fruit of all kinds!
We, -- forgiven and forgiving,
remembered and remembering, -- follow Jesus as we come freely, fully
alive to our own peaceful and just, nonviolent, resilient, persistent
powers to capture hearts and imaginations in all the persons, all the
relationships, all the circles, all the communities, all the worlds, all
the ways of life all around us! As we follow Jesus as clearly, as
nearly, as dearly as we possibly can this week, -- and our life together
is resplendent with such opportunities! – beginning with this wild and
crazy day. Jesus the “Rock-King,” Jesus the “Super-Star,”
taking the city by gathering, gossiping storm, -- Who is he? Where
on earth is he coming from? What in the hell is he riding
on?! What in God’s name does he think he is doing? Jesus
rides in, Jesus rides on, -- not death-denying but death-defying all
those who would silence him, or his disciples, or the children of the
“Hosanna Arch” -- all who “get it,” as children everywhere,
everytime do, -- that with God life meant to be good, and getting even
better, for ALL of God’s children! That’s why we must be so
noisy this day. The silence, our deadly silence, the silence even
of Sodom, so soon will so overwhelm us.
Jesus, King of the Crying-Out Rocks,
who rolls with the tide of all history, all of creation, into the heart
of the city this day,
- confronting the money-changers and faith-mongers,
- hiding-out each night in the home of his friends,
- debating each day with all those in power,
- re-interpreting all they/we have come to take so much for
granted about our God and about ourselves,
- preparing in every detail for Passover, living memory of
liberating promise to all the oppressed and exploited of
earth,
- which becomes as preparing in every detail also for death, his
death,
- new-living memory for all, of what saves and sets free, what
heals and makes whole, in our lives and our life together!
Sisters and brothers, we are so
gifted, so grateful, for all who ride with us, with Jes-us, this day, --
not only for new members, in such wide and such wondrous variety,
-- though we know, if we are honest, we are only and always in
process of preparing the mind and heart, the body and soul of this
congregation to be truly accepting, truly embracing, truly receiving,
truly rejoicing in and with all those whom God may be leading to join
with us! We found we had to leave somebody out yet today.
But also for visitors, this Sunday and next, and for all the friends of
both church and community who surround us and sustain this day with life
against life, love against love, faith against faith, hope against hope
itself!
And so, no matter who, no matter
where, no matter how, in what way, we find ourselves in this day of the
circus, week of the cross -- no matter what we find worth dying for,
therefore what we are living for, -- Let us stand up, stand up, for
Jesus, one more time! Let us lift our hearts! Wave our
palms! Shout “Hosanna!” one more time! Lead us,
Jesus! Lead us, Lord! Where and how you would show us to
go! Hosanna! Ride on! Rock on! Roll on, King
Jesus! You are the king of the rocks! Hosanna! The least we
can do is cry out for you on this day! Hosanna! Thank
you! Thank you, Jesus! Thank you, Lord! Hosanna!
Amen.
Rev. John Auer
