Saturday, March 28, 2015

"The King Who Comes" -- March 29, 2015 (Palm Sunday)

John 12:12-16

When Queen Elizabeth was dying – that’s the Queen Elizabeth that Shakespeare worked for – one of her chief advisors told her that she must go to bed, to which she responded, “’Must’ is not a word to use to princes.”  She died, not in bed, but on the floor.

I tell that story because few people in human history, even monarchs, have really and truly had such power.  Even Elizabeth, for most of her reign, had to play off various factions against one another, a talent she inherited from her father, Henry VIII.  Even so, she was quite clear about the true nature of monarchy, which means a ruler who does not need to answer to the subject.  In theory, the subject is supposed to behave with that same understanding, but that rarely if ever happens.

            Shakespeare had a lot to say about how fragile royal rule truly is.  In Richard II [Act 3, scene 2], King Richard has been deposed and says to his few faithful followers,

“… let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poison'd by their wives: some sleeping kill'd;
All murder'd: for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be fear'd and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable, and humour'd thus
Comes at the last and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!”

Kingship looks better to people who are not kings.  Keep that in mind.

When Jesus was riding into Jerusalem on what we now call Palm Sunday, the crowds gave him a royal welcome;

“they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, shouting,
‘Hosanna!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord—
   the King of Israel!’
[John 12:13]

which was, of course, exactly the thing to shout if you wanted to bring him to the attention of Herod, the official King of Judea, installed as such by the Emperor Tiberius.  When Pilate, acting on behalf of the Senate and people of Rome, had Jesus nailed to a piece of wood to die,

“Pilate also had an inscription written and put on the cross. It read, ‘Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.’” [John 19:19]

 It’s clear, when you cut to the chase, that the crowds had expected Jesus to act against the Roman occupation, which is why the Romans saw him as a threat, but that Jesus had not taken up their call to arms.  He disappointed them and they felt betrayed and turned on him very, very quickly.

            They knew what a king must do.  A king must fight.  A king must destroy his enemies and the enemies of his people.  A king must be ready to shout, “Off with his head!”  A king must sit on his throne and give orders and rule with a nod of the head or a twitch of his finger.

            But look at Jesus.  Every one of the gospels says that when they came to arrest him, he didn’t put up a fight.  In fact, when one of his disciples did try to protect him and drew a sword and cut off the ear of one of the posse, Jesus told him to put his sword away and he healed the man’s ear before he went with them.  Later, when he was in front of Pilate, being interrogated, he declared,

“‘My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.’ Pilate asked him, ‘So you are a king?’ Jesus answered, ‘You say that I am a king.’” [John 18:36-37]

Yes, he was a king, but not one of the usual sort.  He was a real one.  That is one of the hard things to recognize as his follower.  Since he truly is a king, it is not for us, like the crowds in Jerusalem, to try to tell him what to do and when and how to do it, no matter how certain we are that we know what he, the king, must do. “’Must’ is not a word to use.”

            We are not much different from the crowd in Jerusalem.  We, too, want him to give orders and exercise authority with a strong hand – as long as it accomplishes our ends, and puts our enemies in their place, and does everything on our timetable.

            If we pray for healing, and we don’t see it happen, we turn away, convinced that he doesn’t care for us.  So why should we care about him?  In fact, healing takes a lot of forms and sometimes it happens slowly.  At other times, we may be whole in ways that we overlook.  Sometimes, too, our weakness leads to someone else’s strength.  Yet we are sure what Jesus must do, and when he must do it.

            If we pray for a loved one who is going through trouble, and things don’t improve for them, after awhile we give up.  That’s always a mistake.  We have no idea what may be going on in someone else’s soul, and all the time we see nothing, his or her life may be changing.  Or perhaps the Lord is holding out some good for them that they, for their own reasons, fail to take.  There’s this pesky thing we call “free will” or “choice” that he insists on leaving to us.

            Or maybe we pray for peace but expect that the King will bring it about without our having to offer forgiveness to our enemies, or even speaking to them.  We pray for an end to poverty, but are content to soothe our consciences with a few cans of cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving and never get around to looking at the ways that the whole economic system favors us and locks others out.

Thomas More, a man with great insight into human nature, wrote a wise prayer:

“Give us, good Lord, the grace to work for the things we pray for.”

If we really and truly see Jesus as the King, we also really and truly have to understand ourselves as his subjects.  Quite honestly, we aren’t very good at that.  In fact, we are very bad at that, so bad that we can twist his kingship in cruel ways.  As Austin Lovelace wrote,

“To mock your reign, O dearest Lord,
they made a 
crown of thorns;
set you with taunts along that road
from which no one returns.

In mock acclaim, O gracious Lord,
they snatched a purple cloak,
your passion turned, for all they cared,
into a soldier's joke.

A sceptered reed, O patient Lord,
they thrust into your hand,
and acted out their grim 
charade
to its appointed end.
They did not know, as we do now,
though empires rise and fall,
your Kingdom shall not cease to grow
till love embraces all.”

There will be more about that next week.  Come back and we’ll pick things up there.  But for this week, this Holy Week, we have to learn first to stare straight into the eyes that we don’t really want to see and to hear words that we don’t really want to hear.  They will be eyes that cry, not for themselves, but for us – and that cuts deeply.  They will be words that speak of what we have done and reveal the worst about us – and that at the same time offer us pardon.

“Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord – the King…” [John 12:13]


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