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April 1, 2007
The Rev. John Auer
Scripture: Luke 19:28-36,
Philippians 2:5-11, Mark 15:1-47
“April Fools: Who
Else Would Parade through Detourtown?”
I understand Mike Cleveland
as choir director would choose particularly challenging anthems for this day --
then call it “Sweaty Palm Sunday!” We know what he means. It is a day of some
false security in a week full of nerves. By the end of the week we have lost it
completely. Even today there may be the feeling we have had around our church
with all the recent road closings -- that “you cannot get here from there!” We
live in the land and the life of detours – false starts, quick stops, wrong
turns, dead ends. Our hopes for March Madness may have died with our beloved
Wolf Pack. April Fools gives us another chance!
All the stuff in the
bulletin serves the purpose of some do-it-ourselves Holy Week. Take it with
you. Read it over as you can. So often we do not see one another again until
Easter. We need reminding what all’s going on. Many of us are missing from
here already today – doing the vital work of Holy Week to be with our sister
Sharon Stephenson for a healing vigil at the San Ramon Valley UMC.
Sharon embodies the agony and the ecstasy of this week. We would not
long so for her comfort if she did not give us so many reasons and ways to love
her!
Last Sunday was such a
springboard to this day – with Sharon doing the children’s time – thanks to
Claire. With John Dodson opening wide his generous heart to us. With the
Tongan anthem and special music. Some of us cried ourselves out. Are there
tears left for this week? Do we laugh to keep from crying? Or cry to keep
from laughing. I mean, who is this guy on the donkey, and what does he think
he’s doing? A king to be crowned with thorns? A rag-tag army of children?
Like those whose faces are mixed among palms in the arch?
So this is the week when
kings are fools, and fools are kings. We’ve had occasion to ponder the infamous
“separation of church and state.” We testified for a bill in the Assembly to
relieve non-profit organizations including churches from local taxes and
assessments – such as we have paid for police protection, for the train trench,
and may now face for the Virginia Street bridge and flood control. On the one
hand we play the king’s game. We pay to play as well as to pray, to be part of
the action to build strong community here in Detourtown. On the other hand we
play the fool’s game. We are in the world, yes, but not of it. Our citizenship
comes from heaven not earth. We do not live by the usual rules or observe the
usual limits and borders and how to enforce and protect them.
We insist that the public
interest, the common good, is served when those who can pay, pay! Those who
cannot pay, give away! We hear Paul say of Jesus this week: He was in the form
of God, equal with God. But he emptied, broke and poured himself out – as in
communion -- becoming not only human like us but a slave! Like those portrayed
in the film “Amazing Grace,” and those yet exploited all over the world today.
Obedient even to death! Robed in rags! Crowned in thorns! Sceptered
in reeds! Crucified between thieves!
Following him, how can we
help but stand among the casinos and condos as those, like Jesus, who give
themselves -- up and over and out and away? Remember John Dodson! All he wants
is to give himself all away! Let those who profit give taxes and assessments.
Let those who do not give life! As we lose everything else, every illusion, this
week, all we have left to give is our lives.
This week for Jesus, and
for any who would his body, is all about making himself such an irresistible
threat to both “church and state” that they cannot help but respond to him –
with the means of coercion and force, to the end of security and control – as
nation-states and we, their collaborators, always seem to rely on. Jesus has
been a “marked man” for some time. The biggest challenge to those in charge is
getting him in a position apart from the crowds where they can seize him without
an uproar. Otherwise, he’s surrounded by mobs -- riding into the city,
attacking the money-changers exploiting the poor at the temple, engaging in
public debate with the scribes and Pharisees and traditional patrons of “law and
order” – while slipping back out of the city at night to stay among friends in
Bethany. Until Thursday evening. When Jesus deliberately sets up the Passover
and historic liberation meal with his disciples in a room by the garden of
Gethsemane. Jesus knows at least Judas is ready to give Jesus up as more fool
than king. He may be seized alone in the garden as we disciples fall asleep.
The recorded events of this week are the longest and earliest parts of the
gospels. Without the events of this week we might never have heard of
Jesus. When we get real self-centered about it, we call this week “Jesus
dying for us,” for our sins – as if there is something so inherently awful about
us that someone has to suffer the worst that can happen to us to make up for all
that is lacking in us. I think that way of seeing this week -- usually
called “atonement” -- exaggerates our importance and steals the attention from
Jesus and God. This week is not about how Jesus dies. This week is
about Jesus living so boldly -- so freely, so fully, so recklessly and
rebelliously while facing certain death! That is a story we can tell of so
many we know and love – in our families and congregation and larger communities
– who are living bravely with whatever threat to their lives. In fact,
none of us, if we are honest, pretends we do not live with death.
This is a week to celebrate
such “death-living,” life-giving heroes among and beyond us! Sharon Stephenson
is a good place to start! Gandhi! Whose life and work we can watch on video
after worship both Thursday and Friday nights! Sadako! Whose “peace cranes” we
fold every Saturday! Archbishop Romero! Shot down the Monday of Holy Week
because he stood with the poor. Cesar Chavez whose birthday was yesterday. Dr.
King who forty years ago this Wednesday shunned all safe advice to speak out
against the war in Vietnam a year to the day before his own murder. Molly Ivins
who lives in “pots and pans brigades” banging to end the war!
Friday we’ll be
distributing prayer leaflets for “Conscience and Courage in Times of Public
Struggle.” They will be available for vigil as we come and go between one and
three that afternoon. They will provide the context for our various witnesses
to the “Seven Last Words” Friday evening – we still need a witness to “I
thirst!!” Some of those better known death-living witnesses we will lift up in
our prayers include -- Mary the Mother of Jesus, Joan of Arc, John the Baptist,
Pope John XXIII, Maura Clarke and Companions in El Salvador, Stephen Biko,
Philip Berrigan. These are the true “holies” of Holy Week.
Jesus does not die for us
this week. Jesus lives against all the odds for us and for everyone else this
week – especially for those with no one else to live for them but Jesus! The
only question is what will the God of life and death say to Jesus’ life at the
end of this week? At the beginning of next week -- if there is even to be one
for us who claim to belong to him! Through all our ways of betrayal, denial,
abandonment, hopelessness and despair. Jesus’ “passion” this week means to
become our “compassion” – to open us to accepting, embracing, engaging, enduring
this world – not in passive victimization or brutal revenge – but in active
nonviolent resistance to every last power of death we can find the courage to
challenge and change. Never to be “detoured,” never to be deterred.
Amen.
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