“Ministers,
Not Messiahs: Leaving Our Names, Speaking Our Truth/s with Power/s”
Some of us will not see one another again
until Jesus is risen. That’s OK, but we have got to take some of this
morning to get the feel of the whole week. Some of us may not see these
palms again until they are ashes for the beginning of Lent 2006! Otherwise
we will leave some of them scattered around the chancel to wither and die
with our hopes for Jesus this week. Some will even be saved for us to walk
on next Ash Wednesday. One of my favorite confirmation students used to
say, “I love the sound of dried palms crunching!” And, “Put my ashes on
thick, I want people to ask what they mean!”
So what does this week mean? First there is
the temptation of Jesus’ triumphal entry today. I have to admit, the
original liturgy said “May his Way be victorious.” We are such a “victor”
and “victim-“crazed culture. We really do seem to believe, “winning” is not
just everything but the only thing. We are a culture on steroids. So I
changed it to “May his Way endure to the end.” May we want to be faithful
to the end more than successful by any means. The temptation seems stronger
than ever today to “lord” Jesus over others, to impose “our” Jesus on
others, whereas the Jesus of gives up every pretension to triumph. As
Archbishop Romero puts it, we are “ministers, not messiahs.” The miracle of
this Jesus is he never stops changing and growing for us. Not even death
can stop him! So if he is still being revealed to us in our lives, how can
we possibly tell someone else who and what Jesus must be to them? There is
a certain refreshingly child-like enthusiasm that fits this day. That is
what lives for us in the “Hosanna Arch” over the chancel, with the faces of
children of this congregation among the palms!
From here Jesus cleanses the temple of those
who would use the faith to further the exploitation of the poor and to
compound the damage already done by those who expect the poor to remain
docile, dumb and dominated forever. But this is the day Jesus prophesies,
if the children and poor who welcome him are silenced, the very stones will
cry out for justice and for peace! By Tuesday night Jesus is being anointed
by the women who love him and see through all the men’s delusions of
grandeur this week but who cannot keep him from suffering and death. Do we
know the horrible depth of that feeling? That we cannot keep a loved one
from being destroyed -- even by their own decisions and actions?
Come Wednesday night Jesus is being betrayed
by one of his very most trusted disciples. Perhaps seeing that Jesus is
failing in worldly terms, Judas is tempted by the argument of the high
priest: it is better that one person die, scapegoated, sacrificed to the
state, than to bring down the wrath of the state upon all. Forces of
occupation under such pressure as Passover brings can turn very nervous and
nasty. The slightest spark can set off a riot and lead to repressive
retaliation.
Even as Jesus on Thursday night is praying
for God to find some other way than crucifixion among traitors and thieves
for Jesus to live out the witness of nonviolent, life-giving love for the
world, all his friends are sleeping, denying, betraying, abandoning. In
effect, we are, the leaders of both state and church are, in our names,
arresting him, trying him, convicting him, condemning him, torturing him,
taunting him, exhibiting him, executing him – anxiously burying him in a
borrowed grave, this same one who rides in this day on a borrowed donkey.
Coming, at best, to claim and to cleanse the body next Sunday; cowering, at
worst, behind our locked gates and bars . . . What is this week all about?
One way to say it is as John Proctor does in
this scene from Arthur Miller’s drama about the Salem witch trials, written
while Joseph McCarthy and others of us were, and are, in our own ways,
rooting out “witches” and “subversives” and whatever other “threats” to our
“homeland security” in the early 50s. We got such a powerful witness from
Bob Olmstead last week, remembering his time with Dr. King and the civil
rights movement in Selma, of how it is to live, even briefly much less all
the time, and especially as a Galilean and “outside agitator,” under
pressures of such suspicion and surveillance. John Proctor, though clearly
no “angel” himself, clings even heroically to the dignity of his name, his
essential identity and calling to be a decent human being – which is so much
of what Jesus means to leave us this week, the model and inspiration for
living faithfully, freely and fully, to the end As the state presses him
to use his name to attack others, Proctor cries out, “You will not use me! .
. It is no part of salvation that you should use me! . . I have given you my
soul; leave me my name!”
When we say in everyday life that someone
has “left their name,” it means they want us to know they have been here.
Jesus is “leaving his name” this week, planting the subversive seed of his
memory among us – in our minds, our hearts, our bodies, our very souls –
even as the image of a seed falling into the earth to die and to bear more
fruit was the last text Archbishop Romero, Martyr of the Americas, preached
of his own life and work before he was assassinated 25 years ago this week.
Jesus desperately hopes to plant in us this week such a memory of every
detail – after all, the parts of the gospels about this last week are the
earliest written and longest parts – that through “remembering him,” as he
asks us to do whenever we gather “in his name,” we might find ourselves “re-membered,”
re-minded, re-hearted and re-souled, -- made new and made whole, not just
once, but again and again . . . as we carry on, even now, the work of active
nonviolent life-loving resistance to the powers of death in this world.
Somehow this “holy week” is about every
moment, every experience -- every thought, feeling, action, reflection –
counting in God’s sight, making a difference to everything else. This holy
week is about no one suffering, whatever their nature, whatever their crime,
beyond the reach of God’s redeeming hope and love for our lives. No one
this week is lost to God – not even Caiphas the condemner, not even Pilate
the executioner, not even Judas the betrayer, not even Peter the denier, not
even the women the anointers, not even us and all the abandoners – those who
admire Jesus from a safe distance when we find time, but have not always
found ways to follow him at the risk of our everyday lives.
In the end this is not about Jesus so much
as it is about us. Jesus’ whole life is “for us” – that even here, even
now, Jesus himself might live, and work, and witness, and serve, and speak
the truth of each one of us -- by the power of the same Holy Spirit, to all
“the powers” of church and of state in this world. No matter who we are, or
how we are, or where we are on this day, this week, in our lives, Jesus
gives himself fully to us and frees us to make of him who and what we will!
Even as he is arrested and tried through the night, Jesus steadfastly
refuses to answer in his own behalf, to offer up any defense of his words or
his deeds, to appeal to any other authority than what we, and any one of
good will, open mind, broken and mending heart, may see and may hear for
ourselves. In short, he refuses to “save” his own life. The question, as
always, comes back to us – Not by what authority does Jesus do and say what
he does – that’s the question that finds him “guilty” of “blasphemy” and of
“treason” -- but rather, what authority do we give Jesus, his words and his
deeds, in our own lives, that we might say and might do as he does, and not
only what he says and does, but, says John’s gospel of this week, even
greater things than he says and does??
Where are we as we wait and watch for spirit
and truth on this day? Are we in the procession with him? As followers or
as disciples? Are we lining along the roadway? Uncertain of him but
hopeful? Beginning to wave and to cheer? Or peeking out from behind the
lines? In the shadows? Cautiously curious but conspicuously circumspect?
Where are we? Are we aloof from the mob and the masses? In the party of
the Pharisees? Repulsed by all the rabble? Or wary, like Sadducees,
loyalist priests and elders? Fearful for our own power? Or even angry,
like Zealots, fiercely opposed to all occupation? Ready even for violent
resistance? Or are we just resentful of the intrusion and gross
interruption? Like one of the Roman soldiers or temple guards? Tired of
keeping the peace? Or lost amid visiting pilgrims? Or tourists? Wondering
what in the world is going on here? Are we really “here,” with Jesus, at
all? Where are we? . . .
And the word is, wherever we are, on this
day, in this week, wherever we are in our own life-in-faith, love-in-faith
journeys – none of us ever is lost to God! Ever! Even now, remembering
Jesus, we ourselves are re-membered, made new and made whole. Thanks be to
God. Amen.
Rev. John J. Auer
