Saturday, March 19, 2016

“The Troublemaker Comes to Town” - March 20, 2016 (Palm Sunday)


Luke 19:28-40


            Have you been trying to avoid politics recently?  Have you tried to keep your opinions to yourself?  Good luck.  Wherever you stand on the current situation in this country, it will become clear sooner or later.  Jerusalem during that last Passover feast of Jesus’ earthly life would have made the Republican primary debates look like a love feast.  The city was like a shark tank where nobody
y could escape becoming part of the struggles among political and religious factions.  And, yes, politics and religion were completely entangled, and bullying had reached the point of assassination.

The Romans’ main concern was to maintain security so that they could

a) collect taxes to maintain their occupation;
b) maintain secure passage for both commerce and Roman forces traveling
between Egypt or Arabia and Greece and Rome; and
c) maintaining military bases that could be used to strike east against the Persian
Empire from time to time. 

A sign of their success in their eyes was the degree to which subject people were willing to recognize the authority of the Emperor and the power of the Roman gods.  The Jews had no choice but to recognize the Emperor’s power, but they refused to see things from the Roman perspective: that their one God had not protected them from invasion by Roman legions backed by Roman gods meant that their God was clearly not the almighty, all-ruling divinity that they believed.  This Jewish stubbornness was a problem.  They were stirred up from time to time by prophecies of a ruler who would restore their former independence.  “Make Israel great again!” 

When Jesus showed up, with people calling him “Son of David”, a royal title, it did not sit well with the Romans.  It would have been even worse if they had understood, as the crowds did, what he was signaling by riding in on a donkey the way he did.  He and his disciples might not have lasted even that week if the Romans had known the words of the prophet Zechariah:

“Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!
   Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!
Lo, your king comes to you;
   triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on a donkey,
   on a colt, the foal of a donkey. 
He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim
   and the warhorse from Jerusalem;
and the battle-bow shall be cut off,
   and he shall command peace to the nations;
his dominion shall be from sea to sea,
   and from the River to the ends of the earth.”
[Zechariah 9:9-10]

No government, no political system, no party then or now likes to be told that it is not the be-all and end-all.  Nobody in power can stand to be told that they do not have all the answers and never will.  Have you ever tried to tell someone grasping for power to be quiet and listen to someone else?  The Romans worshiped a god called Jupiter Optimus Maximus – Jupiter the Best and Greatest.

            The enemies of the Romans would have cheered loudly for Jesus, or anyone, who was ready to condemn the ruling regime.  Here he comes!  Riding on a royal donkey! 

“Hosanna to the Son of David!”

That’s why the Pharisees, who for all their failings were mostly good people, and very practical, tried to get the crowds to calm down.  The Pharisees were no friends of Rome but they didn’t want to see rioting and insurrection break out because Roman retribution would be bloody.  The Romans were people who would, if they suspected anyone of terrorism, kill that person on suspicion and often their whole family or village, just to play it safe.  Jesus, who normally shared a lot of their viewpoints, did not agree with them this time.

“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.’” [Luke 19:39-40]

Clearly, this Jesus would prove a security risk.  One highly-positioned official would remark that it would be better for one man to die for the sake of the nation.

            Then there were the business and religious interests that come together in any city whose main attraction is pilgrimage.  Jerusalem may once have been an important place from an administrative standpoint, but by Jesus’ day the Romans were running things out of newer cities that they had built themselves closer to the coast, places with patriotic names like Caesarea.  What was left in Jerusalem was the Temple, but that was enough.  It was the heart of Judaism and drew visitors from throughout the Empire.  With the visitors came a steady income.  They couldn’t carry sacrificial sheep or doves with them from, say, Spain or Libya so there was both a need and an opportunity to sell them right there on the spot, right at the Temple.  Not long after Jesus showed up, he went berserk on them, and started chasing the sellers of livestock and the moneychangers out, shouting something about the Temple being a place of prayer.  He would have to go.

            Jesus was a troublemaker.  He didn’t stick to the implied rules and that the world throws out and the compromises that it reaches.  It got him killed.  The Messiah rode into Jerusalem to cheers and waving palm branches and was dead within five days.  He was killed because he was a threat to all kingdoms but the kingdom of God.  He called all kinds of systems into question and proclaimed that it is not by the acquisition or use of power that the Kingdom of God comes.  It comes by the gift of God and with humility such as the world neither knows nor understands.

            It has been almost 2,000 years since that became clear, at least to some people.  Even so, others continue to try to co-opt Jesus for their own ends.  He doesn’t let us do that.  He does not fit our boxes any more than he fit theirs.  He stood up to Pontius Pilate and refused to recognize the legitimacy of empire, but long before that, he had healed the daughter of a Roman centurion.  He condemned the injustice that devoured the living of widows and orphans but he called tax collectors like Levi and Zacchaeus to follow him.  He counted Simon the Zealot, a member of a group pushing for armed rebellion, among his inner circle, but he refused to take up the sword. 

            To this day, all kinds of rulers claim that Jesus backs them and all sorts of people commit all sorts of atrocities in his name, forgetting how he said to forgive your enemies and pray for the people that misuse you.  Demagogues claim that by purging all kinds of other groups they are only setting up a society where Jesus is honored.  It doesn’t work like that.  His mother was found to be pregnant before she and Joseph were married.  As a child, Jesus had been a refugee in Egypt.  His family at one point wondered if he had gone off the deep end and tried to get him to go home to rest and give up all his wandering.  A society that honors Jesus is going to have to be one that makes room for people whose backgrounds are sometimes embarrassing, who come from other places, and who don’t always follow the usual course in life.  A society that honors Jesus is going to have to be one that doesn’t just put people to death because they are inconvenient or turn easily to war-making as the answer to every problem.

            Jesus has shown us how to live, free of the political posturing and power-grabbing.  The Messiah has already come, and it is Jesus – nobody else.  He has given us directions and hope, hope that not even death can silence.  He has shown us that the grave itself is no impediment to the Kingdom of God.  In that hope, we can reject the wrong and see through its deceptions, and get on with the work of living out a living message of good news that is about peace and goodwill that comes from God.

            To be fair, there are even politicians who see that.  Bob Edgar, who was also a United Methodist pastor, served in the House of Representatives from Delaware County for several years.  He died three years ago, so he does not have any horse in the current race.  But what he said in a book published ten years ago is still true:

“God is calling each of us, I believe, to be modern-day prophets, to care for the least of these, to work for peace, to preserve God’s creation.  To accomplish those goals, we must reclaim the mantle of faith from those who have co-opted it.  For America’s faithful majority, the millions of us who are eager to reassert the values of compassion and peace and preservation in public life, we are the leaders we’ve been waiting for.  And our moment is now.”[1]





[1] Robert Edgar, Middle Church: Reclaiming the Moral Values of the Faithful Majority from the Religious Right (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006) 15.

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