|
Back to Sermon Archives
March 16, 2008
The Rev. John Auer
Scripture: Psalm
118:14-29, Matthew 21:1-11
“A Donkey Fit to
Be Tied: Untie Us and Bring Us to Jesus”
Every preacher should issue fair warning this
morning – If you are planning to run for president anytime in the next twenty
years, anything I say, anytime I preach – albeit (God forbid!) I preach 36 years
in one place, and build an African-American mainline Protestant congregation up
to 6000 members! – anything I say can and will be used against you! Jesus would
be right at home this week in a church that is under surveillance – as I guess
in some way all churches are. In fact, I guess in some way all people are.
This is the age of surveillance.
Some of us will not see one another again until
Jesus is risen. Some will not see these palms again until they are ashes
beginning next Lent. Otherwise they will be left where they are to wither and
die with our hopes for Jesus this week. 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 dos this week mean? From temptation
embodied in triumphal entry and Jubilee enthusiasm of this day? Through
cleaning of the Temple, anointing for death, with expensive perfume, plotting
arrest for pieces of silver, praying for some other way? Betraying, denying,
abandoning? Arresting, trying, convicting, condemning, torturing, taunting,
exhibiting, executing? Grieving, despairing?
This week is about “remembering Jesus,” as he
asks us to do every time we meet in his name. It is remembering the leader we
say we follow, doing what Jesus would do. Jesus uses every moment and every
event of this week to plant a memory in our minds and hearts, our bodies and
souls, our total lives and beings. Jesus is such an artist/creator, working
with such imagination and with elements of life itself. Remembering him, we
find ourselves “re-membered” – re-connected, re-constituted, made new and made
whole – over and over again.
By this “remembering Jesus” death no longer has
the last word about life!
Remembering and being remembered by Jesus now
trumps every other power. It gives a power the world has not seen before or
since – a power that works as we give it away, a power to die --stronger, more
enduring than any power to kill. This week is marking the passingness,
therefore the preciousness, of every last thing about us! What makes this week
“holy” is how every moment, every experience – every thought, every word, every
action, every reflection – it all counts for God. Every last thing makes a
difference to everything else.
We may say it all begins today with the children
– the children of our own Hosanna Arch – their faces amid the palms! The
children follow Jesus into the Temple this day – cheering and clapping for joy
in his acts of mercy and healing! All the chief priests and elders and
“gatekeepers” do is complain of noise and disruption. Jesus rebukes – not the
children but the elders! Jesus asks us, do we not remember? We taught the
children to bring forth perfect praise! The children – those who respond with
such hope for the future! – simply are taking us at our own best words! Even
as some of us taught them in Sunday School!!
We chief priests and elders may see the very
same acts of mercy and healing the children see. But without the faith, the
trust, the hope of the children, we cannot receive what we see! How do we learn
to let good works just be what they are? Shouts of joy for the world? When the
children start praising the new works of God through Jesus, we chief priests and
elders choose not the “new order” but the old – the order of discipline and
decorum, propriety and procedure.
We choose a limited sense of “obedience” to the
established order, the status quo – in place of the new thing God may be doing
and calling us to do with God.
We have seen all the powers of Jesus at work so
dramatically in our gospel stories this season – Empowering Nicodemus to be
“born again!” The woman at the well to evangelize! The blind man to see!
Lazarus to rise from the dead! His is the power of word, not of war – the
power of spirit, not of sword. But we disciples are ready to use swords in
defense of Jesus! Even on the cross Jesus could call down armies of angels to
protect him. But the mark of true power, God’s power this week is knowing when
and how to use it, when and how to give it up. Jesus trusts with God there is
more power in a single nonviolent witness of dying before killing than there is
in all weapons and wars before Jesus or since.
My image for church this Palm Sunday comes from
the gospel description of this “tethered colt,” this tied donkey. Jesus orders
us disciples to liberate it from its owner! No wonder he’s under surveillance.
We are to “untie” it and bring it to him. We all know the jokes about how we
Methodists are more often “untied” than “united!” Well, sometimes “untied” --
unleashed, unbound, set free -- can be a very good thing! Especially if then we
are brought to Jesus! So that Jesus can use our “un-tiedness,” our freedom to
do a new and different thing in our history!
We talk so much about bringing others to Christ
and the church. I think the church needs to be untied and brought to the Christ
in others! If we will only follow our leader -- do what Jesus would do --
others will see and will join with us!
In Matthew’s version of this story, Jesus claims
God has need of both the old tethered donkey and a new foal. We get a bit more
tender a picture of Jesus -- riding the older donkey and leading the younger
foal. Maybe it is reminiscent of Joseph and Mary arriving in, or fleeing from,
Bethlehem. Jesus chooses not the sign of the general on horseback going to
battle. He chooses the sign of royalty coming from war at peace -- offering
justice and peace with all peoples. Jesus is not so much doing battle this week
as declaring the battle already won! As in the words of Phil Ochs, “We declare
the war is over. It’s over. It’s over.”
God who has need of this donkey and foal surely
has need of us! Jesus enters Jerusalem – seat of all worldly powers – even this
day desperate site of hopes and dreams of the world! No peace and justice in
Jerusalem -- no peace and justice in all the world. The whole city is in
turmoil, asking about Jesus “Who is this?!” Jesus leaves the answer, the naming
of him, to us! Who Jesus is to us this day may well depend on who we are, on
what we can see from wherever we stand, and what we are willing to stand for, on
whom we are willing to stand with.
No matter who or where we are this day, this
week, Jesus is setting us free even now to make of him who and what we will –
who and what we need him to be for us – and for others our lives touch, this
week and beyond. Even as Jesus is arrested and tried through Thursday night, he
steadfastly refuses to answer in his own behalf. Believe it or not, Jesus
leaves everything up to us – to God in and through us. Jesus will not offer up
any defense of his good words and actions. He will not appeal to any authority
other than to the fruits of his own works.
If we do not believe – if like the children
shouting and praising this day -- we do not trust what we see and hear and know
for ourselves -- then nothing else Jesus offers can help us. The question, as
always, falls back upon us: Not by what authority Jesus does his good words and
works? But what authority do we give Jesus with us?! His words and his works
in our lives? For Jesus says our words and works – for justice and peace --
will be even greater than his. What authority do we give Jesus as our “Lord” –
as our Liberator and our Leader in life and in love? Even love that gives up
all power except to die on a cross?
Do we accept in this week how other-than-God
defenseless we really are? How stripped of all premise and pretense, at last?
How vulnerable to sheer disaster, depression, defeat, despair -- even death?
Death happening not just to one we can scapegoat, or some we can blame – but
happening across the full range of all humanity? Death to every last one of
us? What do we have to lose? . . .
Peter knows, of course – the first loser, the
first denier. Peter is furious with all Jesus’ talk of rejection and failure –
of humbling, serving, and washing of feet! Yet we know already how Peter gets
through this week – under heavy surveillance and three times accused of
following Jesus. Peter gets through this week by denial. And Judas knows what
he has to lose, of course – another first loser, the first betrayer – tempted
and bribed by desperate powers that be. The news from New York this week we
reminds us even those in highest power can become so easily, quickly
self-compromised and self-condemned. Who knows how or why Judas becomes
infiltrator and informer – maybe even attempting to force Jesus to violent
rebellion against Roman invasion and occupation.
We know how Judas gets through the week – by
betrayal. We know how the rest of disciples get through – by abandonment, by
fear that drives them back into hiding – back into dark rooms behind locked
doors – where Jesus has to come find them next Sunday evening. Except for a few
of the women – perhaps so accustomed to tragedy – like any mother watching any
child go to their death and being helpless to stop it. The women only to come
to the tomb the third day to cleanse and anoint for the body for permanent
burial. Denial, betrayal, abandonment, fear, resignation – we get through this
week the best way we can.
Please, let us not talk cheaply and easily, even
evasively – wallowing in our own misery -- this week about Jesus dying “for us
and our sins” – because we are so guilty and shameful. As Cecil Williams did
when he became pastor at Glide Memorial, San Francisco -- with the cross that
had hung forever above the communion table! – this week is for taking down all
the nice crosses on all the nice church walls -- and planting them in our own
hearts! Holy Week is all about getting a cross in our hearts. Getting a cross
in our hearts. Letting that very instrument of agony and execution, of torture
and humiliation, live in us! All Jesus has to hope for this week is somehow his
death will awaken our lives.
Awaken our lives, as children amid the palms, to
the faith, the trust, the hope of this day for this world. Shouting and
praising for Jesus in ways overcoming denial, betrayal, abandonment, gear,
resignation. Riding so boldly into the heart of God’s city today, Jesus has
long since decided to face the world, not to stay hidden – to speak to the
world, not to keep silent – to act on the world, not to give in to his fears.
Jesus puts all his faith, trust, and hope in God this week – will we?
Sister Joan Chittister says in such a culture of
death and destruction, so materialized and so militarized, every faith community
must, of course, pray for peace – not just so God might save us from “our own
insane sinfulness!” But so that we might become this week more “receptive to
God’s in-breakings in our lives and culture.” She calls us faith communities to
become “centers of peace –where strangers can become sisters or brothers in
Christ.” And we do that – this congregation does that – thank God! And we even
open ourselves to “peacemakers” – to signmakers, for instance, preparing to
witness the fifth anniversary of the war this week. Thank you for serving as a
“center of peace!”
Then Sister Joan comes to the “crunch” of the
matter – like the crunch of the palms that wither and die with our loyalties
this week. She says we faith communities must become “models of disobedience!”
Shouters of praise when everyone else is silent. Untiers of donkeys that are
not our own. She speaks of a “revolutionary personality” we can only see in
Jesus this week – utterly free of everyone else about him – yet with “the
capacity to identify deeply” with all humanity – starting right where we are.
And with “the ability to disobey” powers of death and destruction in higher
loyalty to powers of life and love.
Sister Joan says the prophets, Christ, the early
Christians all had this. It is up to our faith communities – of every faith
tradition – in highest loyalty to God of all – “to reclaim and recall a
conforming world to the burning burden of that promise” – the burning burden of
that promise of peace. Amen.
top of page
Archives
|
