Pasadena Presbyterian Church
Sermon Text
 

WHAT MAKES FOR PEACE? 

Sermon preached by Dr. Mark Smutny

Palm Sunday, April 5, 2009

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.”  As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, "If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace!  But now they are hidden from your eyes.”                 - Luke 19:28-42

My earliest memories of Palm Sunday evoke two images.  One image is of children joyously waving  palm branches and parading down the center aisle of the sanctuary shouting “Hosanna!” celebrating Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem.  The second image is of a children’s sword fight, after church, using those very same palms.  There in the courtyard of the Presbyterian Church in my hometown, two decades before our denomination adopted “Peacemaking the Believer’s Calling,”[1] committing Presbyterians to peacemaking as a central priority of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, my brothers and I, the McKinney children, the Ruffing children, the Petersen children, and the Harvey children (that would be the pastor’s children), waged war with Jesus’ very own palm fronds.  Two images:  children waving palms celebrating the arrival into town of the Prince of Peace, and a palm-frond sword fight just sixty minutes later.

To the best of my knowledge, no blood was ever drawn, no eye gouged out, no skin lacerated, despite the fears of parents and, to my knowledge, no ironic connection ever made between loud Hosannas praising the hoped for Prince of Peace, and a dozen bratty church kids with green stilettos engaged in battle. 

It’s not only children who have confused the Prince of Peace with the gods of war.  For generations, Christianity and war-making have blessed one another with little appreciation for the irony of it all. Ever since the Emperor Constantine in the 4^th Century saw the opportunity Christianity could provide to unite a disparate empire, war and Christian faith have been joined, far too often, in unholy matrimony.

The earliest church was undeniably pacifist, believing any form of violence violated the teachings of Jesus.  Later, as the church moved into the mainstream and, some would say, accommodated itself to power, its views changed.  Some uses of state-sanctioned violence became good.  In time, theories of just war emerged.  And when people and their leaders felt particularly messianic, or under siege, or in need of something emotionally compelling to unite them against a common enemy, the God of the cross became the God of the crusade, a development with disastrous consequences in a multi-faith world.

Whether you believe pacifism is hopelessly naïve or absolutely faithful to the teachings of Jesus, and whether you believe wars can adhere to principles of justice or not, it is undeniable that peacemaking is a central dimension of the Christian gospel.  Teachings about peace permeate the New Testament from the Gospels to the letters to the Book of Revelation.  Peacemaking permeates our Palm Sunday story from Luke.  However, in every church I’ve been a part of or known about, the tradition is to focus on children and the festive parade.  Palm Sunday is children’s day in church, isn’t it?

If we look more closely at the Palm Sunday story in the Bible we discover the day is about more than children waving palms.  Indeed, another irony hides behind the corner.  While the crowd shouts hosannas joyously, Jesus weeps.  Jesus weeps as he enters the city lamenting, "If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.”

It’s fascinating.  We easily see in Palm Sunday a children’s parade with cloaks and palm fronds being spread before Jesus accompanied by shouts of jubilation, but it’s far more difficult to hear Jesus’ sad lament or see Jesus’ streaming tears.  We tend to see what we want to see.

There’s even more irony beneath the surface.  In ancient times, a colt or a donkey was the animal conquering princes rode into town when they wished to signify that under their authority, backed by military power, there would be peace, or else.  The crowd spreading branches and cloaks and shouting hosannas is everything a victorious military leader might expect after victory.  They are symbols of honor, expressions of patriotic fervor.  Of course, from the point of view of the Empire, they’re also treasonous because the focus of their adulation is not Caesar but a Jew from Nazareth.

When Jesus enters the city, he rides into town on a symbol of military power with all the trappings of great military procession for a triumphant hero.  He brings peace, but there is no implied threat.  The peace he brings comes not from the power of a sword, not by resisting the forces of his own destruction, but allowing them to gather their strength against him.

The ironic twist is that Jesus is turning imperial notions of power and authority on their head.  No military leader weeps at the time of his triumph.  Yet Jesus weeps. Jesus comes into town in a dramatic act of ironic street theater.  It’s political satire.  Jesus is thumbing his nose at all the emperors who have ever lived who surround themselves with armaments and worldly power but still tremble in fear, while he enters without fear, but is utterly defenseless.  In his triumphal entry he lampoons the powers that be and their pretensions to greatness and glory.  Riding on a colt, his feet dragging the ground, Jesus comes not as one who lords it over others, but as one who humbly rejects any form of domination.  He comes not with pomp and wealth, but as one identified with the poor.  He comes not as a mighty warrior, but as one who is vulnerable, as one who weeps, as one who refuses to take on violence.

“Now who has power,” he asks?  Is it Caesar with his legions or is it God, armed with nothing but love?  It’s like holding a jazz festival under Hitler’s nose or sticking a flower in the muzzle of an AK-47 or M-16, or holding a Bible study next door to a dictator’s cabinet meeting.  On Palm Sunday, Jesus is being comically subversive.  God weeps when the crowd is joyous.  God laughs in the face of dictators’ threats.  Palm Sunday is really one of the most politically explosive acts in Jesus’ whole ministry.  Palm Sunday is a reminder that Jesus’ ministry, in part, is fundamentally a political challenge to every kind of capricious power the world has ever invented.

Within a week, the acclaim of the crowd will turn to humiliation and mockery.  The joy of Palm Sunday leads inevitably to the abandonment of Good Friday.  But through the week, the power of God in Jesus grows.  Jesus enters Jerusalem with full publicity.  Nothing is hidden.  He’s taking them on. They arrest him.  “Now who has the power?” he says.  They mock him and scourge him.  “Now who has the power?” he says.  They nail him to a cross.  “Who has the power?”  They kill him.  “Who has the power?”  

The honored Jesus becomes the humiliated Jesus and in the space of three days, there is a revelation of dignity so sure, so immutable, so eternal that it finally overwhelms whatever contradicts it.  It’s God’s laughter in the face of dictatorship.  It’s God’s victory in the face of Holocaust, injustice, poverty, warmongering, religious pretension, human sinfulness and the propensity of every one of us to desecrate what God created holy.  

Jesus enters Jerusalem filled with the power of God to make a mockery of the world’s love affair with arbitrary power.  Jesus enters Jerusalem to teach us what makes for peace.  He comes to teach us that the dignity of all people is not built by the forces of suspicion and fear, violence and torture, intimidation and terror, but by integrity, decency, and respecting the universal rights of all humanity. 

For this they arrest him, torture him and kill him.  But even then he did not give up the struggle.  The proclamation of the faith is that through the death of Jesus, all death is overwhelmed; through the humiliation of Jesus, all humiliation can be transformed; through his suffering, all suffering can be redeemed.  This is not because of the humiliation or the death or the suffering.  It’s because love was not broken.  Love held fast.  In the face of capricious power, religious hegemony, and people who fled in cowardice, love’s power endured.  Love never gave up.  Love stood up before a world in need of truth and love bore witness to a power so great that neither death nor anything else can destroy it or render it silent.   

Wave your palm branches.  Sing hosannas!  Be filled with joy!  Do so knowing the full story.  For this day of triumph is a day of irony: a day of children’s songs and Jesus’ tears; a day of loud hosannas and gathering clouds.  Palm Sunday inevitably leads to Good Friday.  The power of God grows even as it leads to mockery, humiliation and death—but most of all love.  Love endures all things.

What makes for peace?  Love!  May you bask in God’s love.  Absorb it into your being.  And even when you abandon him, know that his love never abandons you.  Then in the fullness of time, may you celebrate love’s final triumph in the joyous power of the glorious resurrection.  Amen.