Sermon Archive
The way that leads to peace
Sermon preached by Donald Reid at Matins on 4 April 2004, Palm Sunday
Isaiah 52.13-15, 3.1-2 ; Luke 19.28-48
The Judean desert is a barren rocky wilderness of east of Jerusalem. This is where Jesus spent the forty days preparing for his public ministry facing his own demons, the so called 'Temptations' we heard about in the readings on the first Sunday in Lent. But it is only when you visit the Judean desert for yourself that you realise something the texts do not tell you - that from the Judean desert, you can see in the distance Jerusalem, the city of peace, shimmering on top of the hill like a lamp on top of a lampstand.
It is a powerfully attractive image: Jerusalem, the place of political and religious power beckoning you - and it reminds you how the city of David stood as a symbol of the aspirations of the people of Israel to preserve Jerusalem as a light to the nations, a great city of peace through faith in the one true God who had liberated his people from slavery.
This must have been a visual taunt to Jesus, as he wrestled with his temptations to pursue the path to worldly power, to enter Jerusalem as Messiah and claim his crown. How understandable it would have been for Jesus to seek earthly power and as ruler in this world to usher in the just and gentle kingdom of God: a kingdom of love and freedom. What other way can there be for someone who would change the world than to have the power to change it?
But as we know Jesus rejects this temptation to seek power as we understand it and by the means we understand as normal. Instead he pursues a path which takes him in the opposite direction - away from the centres of power to the edges of society, indeed even beyond the pale.
Nevertheless, throughout his ministry we are occasionally made aware that his journey will in the end lead to Jerusalem and it is today that we finally hear of his entry into Jerusalem and his apparent bid for power.
Luke doesn't make much of a secret of this and we are to suppose neither did Jesus. He rides into the city on a colt, the foal of a donkey, on which no one has ever ridden: a clear statement that the rider is a king and a fulfilment of a prophecy in Zechariah. And in case we still don't get the point, Luke has the crowds saying not just 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord' (which is what Matthew and Mark report) but 'Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord' - and when the Pharisees want Jesus to rebuke his disciples for acclaiming him in this way he flatly refuses saying that if even if the crowds were silent, the rocks and stones themselves would cry out.
And if this is not confrontational enough he adds for good measure a prediction that Jerusalem would be destroyed and not one stone left upon another - why? - we almost miss the reason in the drama of all the action - 'because you did not know the time of your visitation'. This King is not just claiming royal kingship but divine visitation.
Then we hear a summarised account of Jesus driving the traders out of the Temple and of Jesus teaching day by day in the Temple, in open defiance of the authorities who could not arrest him - because the people hung on his every word. A powerful man at the height of his powers.
So Luke, in a few paragraphs, paints a gripping backdrop to the drama of Holy Week so that we can feel the heightening tension and the febrile atmosphere: so much so that to the worldly wise among us, the terrible events which follow become, even without hindsight, almost inevitable. It is not hard to foresee, as we are told earlier in the Gospel that Jesus himself did, that such a provocative attempt to claim power will lead to only one outcome. With this entry into Jerusalem a series of events are set in motion - events which will lead inexorably to brutal defeat and death.
But it is important for us who see all this with hindsight to try to suspend our knowledge and try to understand the intoxication and exhilaration his followers must have felt as Jesus entered the city. They had seen his power, his words, his miracles, his authority and his irresistible effect - and they expected this to be so in Jerusalem too. Their expectations of Jesus had become aligned with their longings for a Messiah who would deliver a tangible victory over the Romans and the religious authorities. A heady atmosphere.
As we all know this gives way to a gathering foreboding and disaster as the events take their course. We can only imagine the sheer disorientation and confusion which his followers must have felt as the brother they had acclaimed (and loved) as King today ends the week executed as a criminal and his followers hunted down. What a shattering of hopes, of faith and of futures and what a bitter crushing of the spirit awakened in his followers individually and as a group, indeed as a force. After that how could one ever believe again - in anything? anyone? Even in oneself?
They must have asked themselves 'What use are Messiahs - is this Messiah - to anyone but to delude us and destroy our hopes?' And as the poor on the earth for millennia ever since might well ask, what use is this Messiah to us? What use is this just King who claims his throne but when confronted by the unjust rulers of this world (who have no intention of giving up their privilege and comfort) allows himself to be arrested and to be led, like a lamb, to the slaughter. His followers entering Jerusalem expected him to deliver that tangible victory and we are still waiting for it. It is a wonder - a wonder - he has any followers left, especially among the poor.
So why is it that this failed bid for power has nevertheless brought this Jesus an earthly throne in the hearts of countless millions since? This is not the day to attempt to explain how the world was changed on Good Friday or Holy Saturday or Easter Day and what the deep meaning of these climactic events is. We are still at the beginning of the story. How today can we glimpse what meaning there is to be found beneath the surface of the events described to us?
Walter Wink, an American theologian who has written a theology of power, provides one key to unlock this mystery: and one maybe enough for now.
He reminds us of that the Greek word 'kosmos' which we translate into English as 'world' could also be translated as 'system'. So substituting it in a few key sayings throws some light on what Jesus is doing in making his audacious bid for power today.
So instead of 'I am the Light of the World' we have 'I am the Light of the System'.
Or instead of 'Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the Sin of the World' we have 'Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the Sin of the System'
And listen to these uncomfortable words: 'For God sent his Son into the System, not to condemn the System, but that the System might be saved through him'.
(And so on: I can give you a list of sayings where this substitution casts interesting new light on familiar phrases revealing new meaning)
So, in entering Jerusalem, Jesus is not falling into the temptation to seek power he had rejected in the desert but rather completing the course he set himself as he contemplated Jerusalem, the shining city on the hill, from the desert. He is engaging with power not in the way that people normally compete for power but in a way which is revealing and transforming.
He is throwing light into dark corners and showing us what our world is like - and what our inner worlds, in each of us, are really like.
He is also revealing what God is like: not only that he is a God of the poor and the suffering but that he is so involved with the poor and suffering as to enter into everything that means.
And somehow by taking it all upon him, by, if you will, acting as a lightening conductor for the storm, which allows the forces of evil to run to earth and be discharged: he has shown us a true path to peace which we can occasionally glimpse in truly great people: people like Francis of Assisi, Gandhi, Mandela. People who know how to confront - and transform - power. Would that we had people like that leading events in Jerusalem today, or in London and Washington or Baghdad or Jeddah for that matter.
Jesus, when he came in sight of the city, wept over it and said 'If only you had known this day the way that leads to peace! But no; it is hidden from your sight'. The events of Holy Week reveal the way of peace and we must all work for the peace of Jerusalem and of the world.
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