Sermon: The Reconciling God

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The Reconciling God

By Charles Rush

April 1, 2007

[ Audio (mp3, 6.2Mb) ]

are entering into the Holy Season, not only the most profound season of the year, but also the most complex and difficult, which is one of the reasons that we sing about it more than we preach and one of the reasons we let our children lead us, as we will after service this morning, to hear the story. Children have a way of telling us adults the full truth, whether we want to hear it or not like the young lady cashier at my grocery store. I bought $19.06 worth of food and handed her a twenty. "Do you have six cents?" She asked. I fished around in my pockets for a moment and mumbled. "Actually, I have no cents." After a pause she said, "finally a man who can admit it."[i]

In our story this morning, we are told that Jesus rides into the city of Jerusalem on the back of a donkey. He is preceded by some of his followers and the ordinary residents of the city line the streets waving palm branches. [ii]

Now every year, at the beginning of Passover, The Roman Governor would make a big procession to Jerusalem with a large contingent of soldiers. Then, as now in the Middle East, religious celebrations like Passover, had the potential to whip up nationalist enthusiasm, and a large number of people gathered in Jerusalem could fairly easily develop into a protest mob, perhaps even a small revolutionary movement. Anarchy was a regular threat. The Roman Governor was not in Jerusalem on a regular basis. Their post was in Caesarea, a port city on the Mediterranean.

So just before the beginning of Passover, the Roman Governor would bring in a huge legion of troops in a grand processional, the foot soldiers followed by the chariots, a large retinue of horses, with the dignitaries all at the rear of this grand entrance. You have spears held high, draped with ceremonial flags, weapons glinting in the sun, maroon cloth, fitted black leather, the golden eagle mounted in the middle of the procession. It was a big deal.

And the Romans soldiers would immediately set up guard duty around all the entrances to the city, establish command structure at key intersections, and control the situation so that things went in an orderly fashion. They were very good at these big processions and quite effective at establishing a certain fear and respect for the violence that they could unleash if things got out of hand.

Right outside the Western entrance to the city, as you come up the huge hill that leads up to Jerusalem, they had a series of crosses set up, and on these crosses hung insurrectionists, runaway slaves, and would-be revolutionaries. This is the regular routine that Jews experienced at this time of year, organized power, military might, swift and brutal justice if the laws of Rome were violated.

So on one side of town, you have the crowds watching the Romans enter with pomp, power, and force of will. On the other side of town, you have this prophet that rides in on a donkey. What does that mean?

It calls to mind a tradition of peace. There is a verse in the Hebrew Scriptures in Zechariah 9:9-10 that says, "Rejoice Jerusalem. Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious, yet humble, riding on a donkey, on a colt. He will cut off the chariot coming from the north and he will command peace to the nations." It is a symbolic gesture that remembers the promise of God that one day… one day… in the place of military might and organized power, we shall have a season of peace in the land. We shall have political leadership that is built on peace and extends peace and prosperity across the nations. This is what God wants for us. Or should we say, this is what God hopes for us, that we will become a people of peace.

Jesus comes into Jerusalem as a prophet, not in the sense that he predicts what is going to take place in the future, like that show on TV last week that wondered if we are living in the 'last days' and looked to a cryptic meaning of ancient texts to ferret out if they refer to our era. That is not the primary function of prophets in the Hebrew Bible. They don't speak so much to what God wants for some obscure future as what God hopes for us eternally now. Jesus started a demonstration of sorts that juxtaposed the real peace that God hopes for us with the compromised Imperial order that the Roman Empire imposed for itself.

The very next day, Jesus returns with a group of his disciples and followers and he goes into the inner court of the main Temple in Jerusalem. It was covered with throngs of worshippers and vendors. As part of the Passover celebration, lots of people would be coming to the Temple to make a sacrifice and to buy a dove or a lamb, to sacrifice part of it as a pledge to God and to eat the rest of the sacrifice with their families and friends, not that differently from the way was have holiday meals around Christmas or Thanksgiving.

He goes into the Temple court and does another prophetic action, he begins knocking over tables and chairs and says, "Is it not written, "My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations? But you have made it a den of robbers." (Mk. 11:15-17).

There is nothing in particular that the priests have done wrong. His line actually combines two passages from Isaiah and Jeremiah. Isaiah says that the 'Temple is to be a house of prayer for all nations' (Isa. 56:7) and Jeremiah says that reminds us that real worship changes our actions in the world towards justice and peace. Says Jeremiah, "if you truly amend your ways, if you truly do not oppress the alien, the orphan and the widow, or shed innocent blood, then I will dwell with you.' (Jer. 7:5-7).

I should hope that you have a chance to go to Jerusalem one day. I hope to go with a group of you. It really is a spiritual place, even in spite of the division. You have a palpable sense that this division breaks the heart of God at the moment. For at the moment, only Muslims can enter the Mosque that built over the ruins of the Temple. It is not a place for all the nations. And the Jews gather outside the Temple wall, in front of the ruins, what is called the Wailing Wall. And the Christians gather at in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, literally down the block. They are so close, so divided. At the moment, this division is literally a root cause of the division of our world.

In this season, the sad fact is that Muslims go to Mosque to hear sermons that promote Islam as exclusive, Christians will hear sermons that promote Christianity as exclusive and Jews will hear sermons that promote Judaism as exclusive. It is not a message of reconciliation but us against them, us converting them, us at war with them.

Jesus cleanses the Temple in a prophetic gesture that God wants actual worship that changes peoples hearts and their actions so that justice is done in the world that makes for peace. God wants all the people of the world to live in reconciliation. It calls to mind the prophet Amos who once told us that God despises our solemn assemblies and our beautiful liturgy when it is not accompanied by changed lives because what God wants from us is for 'justice to flow like rivers and righteousness like a mighty stream.'

If we allow ourselves a moment of honesty, we realize just how duplicitous we actually are and how limited we really are to substantive change. It is a tweak here and there around the edges rather than a reorientation

The next day Jesus returns to the Temple and he is confronted by the Temple authorities, probably because he has whipped up a fair amount of popular support among the people who love to see the duplicity and hypocrisy of leaders exposed. They ask him in public by what authority he does these things. That is the kind of question designed to lure you into saying something that 'can and will be used against you in a court of law'. And they come close.

But Jesus instead asks them back 'John the Baptist, did he come from heaven?' The tables are turned. If they answer 'yes', they would immediately be hanged for sedition since John the Baptist was executed. And if they answer 'No' the people hate them because the people loved that John stood up to the Roman occupation. So they give the tepid, compromised, evasive answer that most of us have given at some point in our life when we were genuinely worried about the legal implications of a difficult situation that we find ourselves in. They say, "We don't know." Plead the 5th. Safe, but spiritually and morally feeble.

Then the gospels report, the authorities began to talk among themselves about how they might get rid of him. It is a very practical decision, like the ones we make all of the time, that the institution of the Temple is paramount, that it is not feasible to stand up to the Romans directly and risk their wrath and so we must dispose of this self-righteous prophet before things get out of hand.

And the rest of the week features ever constricting circles of spotlights. We cut to the 12, presumably the most faithful. They are all gathered to take the Passover meal together that remembers the Exodus and tells the great story of Freedom from bondage. Jesus is sorrowful. He tells them, "One of you will betray me". And they all get indignant and say 'surely it is not I' and some with great bravado, "I will never betray you". Tell us 'who is it?' Jesus gives them an enigmatic response, "one who dips his bread in the wine with me." Later tradition would lift up Judas but everyone dips their bread in the wine with Jesus and they all fade away.

Luke retains the touching scene that follows the Passover meal. Jesus knows that he is to be arrested. This was pretty obvious, just as it was pretty obvious to Dr. King that he was likely to be killed, just as it was pretty obvious to Mohandas Gandhi that he was likely to be attacked. He takes his disciples up to pray. Like me, they all fall asleep.

We don't know what he said but it is probably like the touching prayer he had when he entered Jerusalem. "If you, even now, had only recognized the things that make for peace! But they are hidden from your eyes. Indeed, the days will come upon you when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in from every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another, because you do not recognize the time of your visitation from God (19:41-44). It is touching because it is not a conditional threat. It is the humane observation that if you live your lives based on compromise and violence, eventually it engulfs you. As it turns out, only 30 years later, the Romans indeed razed the city and tore down most everything and today we gather around the ruins.

Again, what Jesus lifts up for us, what he says that God wants for us, is to learn the things that make for peace, to find another way of living.

But this is not what we choose. The authorities conspire to have Jesus handed over. Pilate is not convinced that this is a good thing. They have to coerce him and finally Jesus is arrested. The disciples all flee.

Jesus is tortured but he says nothing. This story is told to remember that power smashed truth and goodness. Technically, he has done nothing wrong. So before his public sentencing, Pilate won't sentence him. Even the corrupt practioner of realpolitik sees this as unjust and unwise. He offers to release Jesus. And the crowd, which just a few days earlier were for Jesus, has now been persuaded and they all cry out 'Crucify him, Crucify him'. In the plays in the Middle Ages when we got to this part in the story, it is all of us who cry out 'Crucify him' and that is really the point.

The spotlight is very narrow. Jesus is all alone, led to his death, only his mother watching at a distance. All of the other followers having either betrayed him, melted into the mob, fearful, or indifferent.

That is what we are left to reflect on. Why is it that we kill the good ones? What is wrong with us? I was watching the PBS special on Bobby Kennedy when he was running for President. I'm not old enough to remember him but the documentary says that he was genuinely changed after his brother died. I certainly had forgotten the degree to which he reached out to Blacks in the middle of those very racially charged times. We had riots in all of our major cities, including Newark. Bobby Kennedy was visiting rural Mississippi, Detroit, the South Bronx.

I did not know that the night Dr. King was killed, Bobby Kennedy had a rally in the black section of Indianapolis. His staff wanted him to cancel the event as they were literally driving to the podium and got the news. But he didn't. In fact, he took to the podium and announced Dr. King's death to the crowd for the very first time.

You may not remember but riots broke out that night from LA to Boston and buildings were set on fire across our country. But when Bobby Kennedy asked for silence, this whole sea of African-Americans had so much respect for him that they bowed their heads and there were no riots in Indianapolis that night.

Bobby Kennedy was no Jesus figure, but he was onto something important about the things that made for racial peace in that era. He was in rural Mississippi talking to tenant farmers. He regularly stayed too long and listened too much and it annoyed his staff. This time they were urging him to get to the next event, a fundraiser, where he would be meet more of 'his people'. One of his staffers never forgot that day because he got in the car and said, 'you don't understand, these are my people.'

I did not know that after he was shot, the President had his body put on a train and brought from California to Washington. They filmed that train ride. What you saw was that train going slowly through small town after small town across our country with thousands of people coming out, 50% white and 50% black, men taking hats off their heads as the train went by. What I do remember as a child living in Little Rock, Arkansas and visiting my grandparents in Memphis is that kind of peaceful integration never happened, not in my world.

Bobby Kennedy was no Jesus figure, but you can't help watching that slow procession, people being brought together, without wondering, 'why do we kill goodness when it is in our midst? What is wrong with us?'

[i] Ibid. p. 85.

[ii] What follows is taken from Marcus Borg's latest book, Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary (New York: Harper Collins, 2006), pps. 23-243. On one level, Borg's work is obvious since it is the plain reading of the text. However, his importance resides in the fact that he was willing to peel back the layers of traditional exegesis that focused on the substitutionary salvation of the death of Jesus and simply see the last week of Jesus as an ordinary prophet addressing power. These other layers may also be true, they may also be important, but there is a simple powerful juxtaposition of the ways of Rome and the ways of God which ordinary peasants would have understood immediately.