"So What?" Sermon for Palm Sunday, 28 March 2010

Luke 19:28-40
After he had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. 

When he had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, saying, “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. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it.’” So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?” They said, “The Lord needs it.” Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. As 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, saying,
    “Blessed is the king

        who comes in the name of the Lord!

     Peace in heaven,

        and glory in the highest heaven!” 



Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”

“Hosanna, heysanna, sanna, sanna, hosanna, heysanna, hosanna.”  I must admit that I like Andrew Lloyd-Weber’s and Tim Rice’s amalgamation of the Palm Sunday story from “Jesus Christ Superstar” quite a bit.  They tie it all together fairly well and maybe give us a sense of what was going on at the time including villains singing the bass part and the hero on the tenor line.

But if we were among the original audience of Luke’s gospel, almost 2,000 years ago, this narrative would also sound very familiar most likely.  But the familiarities would bring with them enough differences to caused a raised eyebrow or two among us. 

It would sound familiar because it was very similar to how a returning general might enter a city and be fêted for his victories.  Triumphal arches would be erected and in fact in Rome, many of these arches still remain.  Troops would march in, crowds would cheer and there in the midst of all this adulation and glory would be the general on his fine steed.  In fact, not that long ago in our country, George Washington would be greeted in such a way.  I’m not certain when the custom went out of favor--maybe with the onset of gasoline vehicles, it just seemed silly to have the general riding in the back of a jeep through an erected arch.  Once the steed was gone, something about the romance of the event disappeared, I suppose.

And so we have Jesus, the itinerant, backwoods preacher, entering Jerusalem today.  We’re all very familiar with this story; we hear it every year from one of the gospels, not to mention the ‘Jesus Christ Superstar” version.  And of course, such familiarity may not necessarily breed contempt but it may breed instead a certain ho-hum factor in the hearing.  We hear this story, today from Luke, and we add in details to make it fit with what we know happened.

But Luke’s account is a little different.  First off, there’s no palms.  Did you notice that?  Not even any branches of any trees.  Just cloaks on the road in front of Jesus.  Second, no one says “hosanna” which is so associated with this story.  Instead, they sing a song about how great Jesus is and call him the “king who comes in the name of the Lord!”  Third, the crowd, if you notice, wasn’t really a group from Jerusalem, but instead the “whole multitude of the disciples”.  Certainly, since Jesus’ ministry to this point had been conducted out in the hinterlands, his disciples would not be residents of Jerusalem but Galileans.  Somehow, that makes it a different narrative from one of the other gospel accounts, doesn’t it?  Or at least the account that’s in our heads.  Additionally, Luke is also the one who adds in the part about the stones crying out if the disciples were quiet, in response to the Pharisees’ complaints about the noise. 

So we have cloaks and songs and disciples and Pharisees complaining and stones potentially crying out and where does that leave us?  Like I said at the start, this sounded familiar to 1st and 2nd century ears but enough of the details are awry to cause some dissonance. 

To Jesus, for whom the Kingdom of Heaven was a primary part of his preaching, being proclaimed and compared to an earthly king coming in the name of the Lord would be an important moment, even if it’s by his disciples, maybe especially if it’s by his disciples who would know him best.

The references are clear though there are enough changes that the original hearers of this tale would get it.  Instead of a fine steed, Jesus is on a colt.  Jesus’ kingdom of heaven is not going to be like earthly realms.  Some of the paintings that were in the slideshow we just saw got it right: Jesus looks almost ridiculous on the small horse.  No fine Arabian for our king--just a simple colt; enough of a similarity to what the crowds would have seen had Jesus been an earthly ruler or conquering general but enough of a difference too in order to pique their interest a little.

And naturally, all this makes the Pharisees nervous; nervous enough that they ask Jesus to calm his disciples down.  This, by the way, is the Pharisees‘ last mention in the book of Luke.  They disappear from here on out not heard from again through the rest of Luke’s narrative of the events of the coming week.

As I struggled to wrestle my thoughts to the mat as I attempted to get ink onto paper...or pixels into letters...I kept asking myself “so what.”  We have a story about Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem that is told, with varying details, in all four of the gospels.  We know that this event, told in this story, is very similar to other events of the time; events likely much more grand and glorious with soldiers and fanfares and horses and yelling crowds.  We know though that there were differences, important differences, between this event and those other grand events.  And I have to ask “so what?”  Where does that leave us?

I think it leaves us back where any good and careful reading of the gospels will leave us; with the recognition that the Realm of God is unlike any earthly kingdom.  In God’s realm, power is inverted: the last shall be first.  In God’s realm, justice reigns supreme, in spite of Glenn Beck and his off kilter pronouncements of late.  In God’s realm, the truly powerful come riding in on a small horse or donkey.

The “so what” of the Palm Sunday story is that the Kingdom of God is here and if we want to be part of it, we can.  We can be citizens of this topsy-turvy kingdom by following the one who is called the Prince of Peace, a title that surely inverts power itself.  We can be part of the adulating crowd that looks forward to a reign of peace and justice if we choose. 

Of course, we would be remiss if we didn’t stop for a moment and recognize that Palm Sunday is the start of what we call Holy Week, when humanity dishes up some of its worst all to the nodding agreement of the powers that be in the world.  God’s realm, this Kingdom of God that the disciples sang about, does not come without cost or ease.  But certainly, this Kingdom turns on its head all expectations of how power is allocated.  For a time, though, at the gate to the capital of an insignificant puppet nation thousands of years ago, God’s kingdom shone forth.

Prodigal, a sermon from Sunday, 14 March 2010

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” So he told them this parable:

“There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.’ So he divided his property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”’ So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.

“Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.’ Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’”

The Prodigal Son.  We’ve heard this parable many times throughout our lives.  And we’ve heard it called “the Prodigal Son” just as many times at least.  I know I have.  And it took me until this past week to realize I had no idea what the word “prodigal” means.

So, of course, I had to look it up in a dictionary.  And according to the dictionary on my computer prodigal means: spending money or resources freely and recklessly; wastefully extravagant and having or giving something on a lavish scale.  So it refers not, as I once thought, to the returningness of the younger son, but to the fact that he goes off and spends away his inheritance.  In many ways, the father of this tale is as prodigal if not more so than his wayward younger son.  But that’s getting ahead of our story.  First let’s look more closely at this parable.

We have a family made up of a father and two sons.  No mention is made of other siblings or a mother in this case.  So we deal with this triad at face value.  In the culture in which Jesus told this tale, the oldest son automatically inherited the lion’s share of property, perhaps up to two-thirds of it.

This younger son, not willing to wait for the death of his father for his inheritance, asks for his share early.  That in and of itself is of course unusual, unusual enough for Jesus’ original hearers to sit up and take notice and, if their attention had been drifting, to pull them back into the story.  You just don’t do such things, now do you?  Ask for your inheritance early?  It’s just not done.

But he does it, presaging perhaps his untoward behavior later, and the father acquiesces.  Whatever percentage of the property the younger son is due, he gets and off he goes whereupon he takes part in that untoward behavior I just mentioned.  And he spends down his inheritance until there is none left.

And that’s when things go from bad to worse--a famine hits this foreign land where the young man has landed himself.  He’s able to get a job feeding pigs--pigs of all things. To a Jewish audience, there couldn’t be anything worse.  He’s hit rock bottom in other words.  And he’s so destitute he’d gladly eat what he’s giving to the pigs.

That’s when repentance comes into the story.  Now whether it’s a repentance of heart or stomach, as one commentator says, we’ll never know.  What drove him to repentance and whether it was truly a change of heart, we just can’t tell.  All Jesus said was that he repented, and in fact rehearsed his speech before his father.  In fact, it’s that speech rehearsal that increases our suspicion about the depth of the repentance, isn’t it?  Instead of returning home and spilling his heart out, he practices the speech until he gets it right.  I’m a little leery, frankly.

But be that as it may, the son returns, having prodigaled himself out of all that he owned.  He returns penniless and destitute, uncertain of the reception he’ll get.  He could get laughed out of town leaving him with few other choices.  I sincerely doubt that though that he could have envisioned the reception he did get.  His father comes out to greet him; no, he RUNS out to meet him, something a man of that social standing and age would never do in that day and time.  He gets him out of the rags he’s wearing and gives him a new coat; not just a new coat, but the finest robe in the house.  Father orders a party, a gala feast to celebrate the return of this wayward son.  Talk about prodigal; this parable could just as easily become known as the Prodigal Father.  The words from that definition come back to our minds here:  freely, recklessly, extravagant, lavish.  The Father, in his joy, goes all out to welcome home his second son.

And that’s when things get good: the most interesting character in this drama then enters the scene--the older brother.  He adds intrigue and conflict.  We can see him standing outside the house, with all the festivities going on inside, pouting and grimacing better than any petulant child could ever do.  The older brother is, simply stated, put out. 

And he’s not really peeved about his brother’s return.  No, not really.  Fred Craddock, famed Disciples preacher, puts it best: "It is that party which is so offensive. The older brother has a point: of course, let the penitent come home. Both Judaism and Christianity provide for the return of sinners, but to bread and water, not fatted calf; to sackcloth, not a new robe; to ashes, not jewelry; to kneeling, not dancing; to tears, not merriment".  (as found at http://www.ucc.org/worship/samuel/march-14-2010.html) It’s that party that rattles the older brother’s cage.

Father of course steps in and explains away his prodigality: that which was lost is now found.  In fact it’s hard to miss that point if you read the two parables directly before this tale.  They’re both about lost items and great celebrations when they are found.  This story is just a further exposition on that theme.

So where does that leave us?  Just because the inheritance laws and social mores of Jesus’ time are vastly different from ours does not mean we should automatically discount this story.  Because, if we think about this parable closely, we might get a bit uncomfortable.  I know I do.  Because of all the characters in that tale, the one who is most like me is the older brother.

Think about it--we’re the good ones.  We’ve stayed in the church as it has shrunk and changed.  We’ve given time and money and talents and countless other gifts to the church.  We expect something back from it of course; a goat to share with our friends for instance would be nice, wouldn’t it?  But then we hear that God’s grace is for everyone….everyone, can you imagine?  God’s best stuff, God’s grace, is given freely to one and all.  All that hard work of ours isn’t going to mean a thing.  Not even a goat.

And so the choice is ours.  We can stand outside pouting, in our petulant, childish ways or we can go in and take part in the feast, rejoicing in the return of a lost one, for whom the party is put on.   We can worry and upset ourselves about whether our brother’s repentance is sincere or not or we can join our father and all the others who are celebrating.  The sincerity of his repentance isn’t our problem--it’s already been taken care of.

This is not a parable about watching our backs or being on our guards; it is a parable about profligate giving.  It is about being prodigal--giving in joyous celebration.  Go in and join the party!

Sermon, Sunday, 7 March 2010 -- Drink!

Isaiah 55:1-9
Ho, everyone who thirsts, 
    
come to the waters; 
and you that have no money, 
     
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk 
     
without money and without price.
Why do you spend your money 
     
for that which is not bread,
and your labor for that which 
     
does not satisfy?
Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, 
     
and delight yourselves in rich food.
Incline your ear, and come to me; 
     
listen, so that you may live.
I will make with you an everlasting covenant, 
     
my steadfast, sure love for David. 

See, I made him a witness to the peoples, 
     
a leader and commander for the peoples.
See, you shall call nations that you do not know,
     
and nations that do not know you shall run to you,
because of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, 
     
for he has glorified you.
Seek the Lord while he may be found, 
     
call upon him while he is near;
let the wicked forsake their way, 
     
and the unrighteous their thoughts; 

let them return to the Lord, 
     
that he may have mercy on them, 
and to our God, 
     
for he will abundantly pardon. 

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, 
     
nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. 

For as the heavens are higher than the earth, 
     
so are my ways higher than your ways 
     
and my thoughts than your thoughts.




Drink!

I’ve never been to the Grand Canyon though certainly I hope that I’ll see it someday.  I understand though that there in the humidity-free heat there are signs that remind people of the need to hydrate which evidently say “Stop! Drink water! You are thirsty, whether you realize it or not!”

And so it might be, this Lent, that we could see the same signs posted along our spiritual journeys:  “Stop! Drink water! You are thirsty, whether you realize it or not!”  And those signs could very well have been posted by the author of our passage from Isaiah this morning.

Six hundred years before Jesus, most of the citizens of Judah were in exile, living in Babylon after the Babylonian Empire came through and destroyed Jerusalem.  And those Jewish exiles were at a crux in history.  They could have stayed in Babylon and just dissolved into the population there.  Or they could hope and pray for a return to Jerusalem.  Many of them were settling in quite nicely in Babylon.  Some of the men had taken Babylonian wives.  Some were worshiping foreign gods there away from the center of their worship.  Some had never seen Jerusalem, having been born in Babylon.  In fact, those who remembered the old days were indeed old themselves.

Into this mix comes the prophet who wrote the words we heard today.  Most scholars agree that the book of Isaiah is actually the work of at least two, perhaps three, prophets.  One, whose name was indeed Isaiah, wrote the first part of the book, prior to the fall of Jerusalem.   He warned of impending doom and was, appropriately so, rather a downer.   The remainder of the book, from which our scriptures were taken this morning, was written to the exiles, after the fall of Jerusalem, encouraging hope, reminding them that they are not home, helping them to look forward to a better day.

Food without price?  Wine and milk for free?  Anyone can have their thirst quenched.  It sounds really good, doesn’t it?  It is indeed something to look forward to, something to keep you going.

God’s going to give you whatever you need.  God’s going to provide.  God’s going to hand out food and drink for all.  And it’s good food--we’re not talking about USDA surplus here.  Fine food and good wine is promised to those who are living in exile.

But did you notice the catch?  Did you hear the question in the middle of it?  It almost slips by without getting noticed, but ignoring it takes away the very core of this passage.  The author asks, “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?”  As I said, that sentence almost speeds by, but put on the brakes a second and let’s think about that question for a moment.

Why are you wasting your money on junk food?  Those chips aren’t really going to assuage your need for nutrition. you know.  They may fill you up, but it’s not the food you need--not that food that will full allay your hunger.  “Stop! Drink water! You’re thirsty, whether you realize it or not.” 

What exile do you find yourself in?  What empire is holding you hostage?  And how are you trying to feed your spiritual hunger?  Sometimes we’re trapped by circumstances; circumstances of racism or sexism or heterosexism or materialism.  Those empires hold mighty sway in our culture among others of course.  But empires they are and they hold many in exile from their homeland.  And we who find ourselves in exile look longingly at a better day wondering where the prophets are who will give us the hope that our author of Isaiah gave to those fellow exiles all those centuries ago.

It seems wrong to be asking exiles why they aren’t going for the good food and quenching their thirst with water that really does slake.  Don’t they have enough troubles; enough on their minds already?   Don’t we have enough troubles; enough on our minds already? 

“You’re thirsty, whether you realize it or not.”

From the confines of our exilic empires, we may not even recognize that we are yearning for food; filling, nutritious food.  Yet deep within us is that ache that craves for the food that God offers, for free.  That ache isn’t going to be filled with the offerings of our culture.  We can’t count on the world to fill that void we feel.  We can’t rely on the offerings of society to truly replenish the lack we feel down in the depths of our souls.

So we turn to God to provide, if we are smart and can pull ourselves away from the shiny offerings that are dangled before us.  And God doesn’t charge.  God gives away all this good stuff without asking for a penny.  That doesn’t sound like the capitalist system that has us in thrall at all.  That goes contrary to everything we’ve learned, doesn’t it?  You pay for what you get.  If it’s free, it’s not worth anything so don’t bother with it.

But that’s so often God’s way--contrary to what we’ve heard and known all our lives; going against the grain of our culture.  The good stuff is free!  That which you’re paying top dollar for isn’t worth a thing.

“Stop! Drink water! You’re thirsty, whether you realize it or not!”

We’re so taken sometimes by that which is offered to us, we miss that God is right there, offering the things we really, truly need.  And all we have to do is show up.  All we have to do is be there.  It’s not even a case of being at the right place at the right time.  It’s just a matter of turning away from the attractiveness of the chips and satisfying the deep, deep hunger and thirst that God can quench.

This Lent, as you journey toward the cross of Good Friday, spend some time identifying your deepest hungers and thirsts.  You’ll likely find that indeed, you are thirsty, whether you realize it or not.