Unexpected Grace: Jesus Makes His Move
Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
March 28, 2010 Palm Sunday
Luke 19:28-40
I don’t know about you, but whenever I hear the familiar Palm Sunday story, a certain song comes to mind Rolling Stones. (Play the first part of the Rolling Stones song You Can’t Always Get What You Want) What? Palm Sunday doesn’t make you think of Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones? Jesus did say: the stones would cry out. “You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.” For me, that’s really not a bad summary of the events of Palm Sunday. Did the crowd get what it wanted? I don’t think so. I mean, look how it all unraveled by Good Friday. It didn’t take long for a whole lot of people to get disillusioned with this Jesus of Nazareth. The talking heads of Fox News and MSNBC just kind of gave up on him. They didn’t get what they wanted. Ah, but did they get what they needed? Do we get what we need? Could be.
In Dostoevsky’s, The Brothers Karamazov, there is a haunting story within the story, a story of a visitation. The story is told by Ivan, one of the book’s characters, and he tells of Jesus making a surprise visit to earth in the 16th century. The story is set in Spain, during the dark days of the Spanish inquisition, in the town of Seville, where the Catholic cardinal, ninety years of age, is also the Grand Inquisitor, charged with restoring and protecting the purity of the church, no matter what the cost.
One day, out of the blue – Ivan’s story goes – Jesus himself appears in Seville. And the people recognize him and flock to him: they throw flowers to him and shout, “Hosanna!” – rather like Palm Sunday revisited. But off in the distance stands the old cardinal, the Grand Inquisitor. He also knows who his visitor is. But instead of joining in the celebration, he has Jesus arrested and thrown into a dungeon. As Ivan tells the story, the subsequent interrogation goes like this:
“In the pitch darkness, the iron door of the dungeon is suddenly opened and the Grand Inquisitor himself slowly comes in with a light in his hand. He is alone. He stands in the doorway for a long time, gazing into Jesus’ face. At last he sets the light on the table and speaks: ‘Is it you? You?’ But receiving no answer, he says, ‘Don’t answer. Be silent. Indeed, what can you say? Why then? Why have you come? To hinder us? For you have come, haven’t you, to hinder us? And you know that. But do you know what will happen tomorrow? I will condemn you and burn you at the stake as the worst of heretics. And the very people, who today have kissed your feet, tomorrow at faintest sight from me, will rush to keep up the embers of your fire. Do you know that?’”
The Grand Inquisitor goes on to explain that the reason for his rejection of Jesus’ visitation is really quite simple. Jesus is a threat to his power and control and to his belief as to what is best for people. Jesus, he says, promises a freedom and dignity to people that he, the Grand Inquisitor, does not think people can bear and of which he does not want the people to hear. And so he concludes, “I choose to join the ranks of those who have corrected you!”
Great line, ‘corrected you.’ The radical message of Jesus needing to be corrected – changed, softened, watered down and certainly controlled – by the church, by the world, maybe even by us.
Ivan concludes his story within the story with these words: “The old man longed for Jesus to say something, however bitter and terrible. But Jesus suddenly approached him and in silence softly kissed him on his bloodless, aged lips. That was his answer. The old man shuddered. Something trembled at the edge of his lips. He went to the door, opened it and said, ‘Go, and come no more. Come not at all. Never! Never!’ He let him out into the dark squares of the town, and the prisoner left.” The visitation was over. Rejected – missed – gone. The old man, unchanged, clinging to his old ideas. And how about us? What might this day of Jesus’ visitation mean for us. “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.”
You have heard me before talk about Dominic Crossan’s description of Palm Sunday. He speaks of Palm Sunday as really a day of two processions. Remember, it is Passover in Jerusalem. Pilgrims from all over Israel, crowded into the city around the Temple, no doubt, shoulder to shoulder. It’s a political tender box. Relationships between the Jews and Romans are not good. All these Jews, all this tension. And so, says Crossan, from his seaside villa, here comes Pilate leading his procession of Roman soldiers. Weapons, horses, shields, armor, power as the world understands it. Rome entering the city and making it very clear, there will be no trouble this week. There is no doubt who’s in charge, who is the Lord and who can rule by violence, if necessary. All the pomp and circumstance on the other side of town coming down from the Mount of Olives is Jesus on some beast of burden with a few rag tag followers shouting his name, putting clothes and branches in the street. Now, if you were a third-party observer witnessing these two processions coming together for a confrontation, there is no doubt in your mind who is going to win. When the dust settles there will be one king left standing and it won’t be Jesus. Palm Sunday – at times it can feel like some great cosmic joke. This is a king? Sure doesn’t look like a king! C’mon Jesus, how about a little pomp and circumstance! Where’s the swagger, where’s the power? At least, can’t we have a few bands of angels singing or some heavenly pyrotechnics. Beast of burden? That’s it? This is what we’ve been waiting for? You’re telling me this is the one that’s going to change the world? Well, Yes.
Renee Ahern of Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, Ohio, shares this reflection: “Nearly every Sunday I watch Amanda come up for the children’s sermon. Amanda is a child of slight build, always dressed in a beautiful little dress, always smiling. Amanda is fighting mightily with cancer. She has no hair due to chemotherapy. She often has a pale look which shows the scars of her struggle. Yet, she is a child – with a smile, with joys and giggles, with her hand eagerly raised to answer the questions of the preacher
“Amanda lives on the edge of life and death. She battles daily with the cancer that is ravishing her body and the chemotherapy that is striving to preserve her life. Even at the tender age of seven, she knows the tragedies and triumphs, the pain and passion, the struggles and the strengths. There are no guarantees for Amanda. There are no immunizations against her suffering. Yet she’s filled with hope. She will wear her shiny new shoes on Easter Sunday. She will hunt Easter eggs and eat chocolate and laugh and languish in the joy of a child’s Easter. Amanda sings “Jesus Loves Me” with all her heart and mind. She knows that in the midst of her pain, God knows about suffering. She knows that in the midst of her joy, God’s promise will not fail her. At the tender age of seven, Amanda is grasped by the love of a God who came humble, riding on a colt, so that Amanda and all who are here this day are grasped, strengthened and sent on the road to Jerusalem with quiet confidence and sure and certain hope of resurrection..”
Concludes Ahern, “There are no guarantees, but on this first day of holy week, we are reminded of a promise. We are reminded of a promise that redefines hope. We are reminded of a God who would stoop to our bending frames in order to embrace us, who beyond the ride into Jerusalem, opened himself to ridicule, suffering and death.”
So Pilate moves into town in his way; Jesus moves into town in his, confronting the powers of evil and death with nothing but a disarming love. He will not intimidate, destroy, threaten or humiliate those who would oppose him. And he will not meet violence with violence. Evil seeks to overwhelm him and he responds with peace and truth and love. Again, not necessarily what we and our world expect or maybe even want. We respond so much readily to shock and awe. But, as young Amanda has discovered in her struggle, while Jesus way may not be what we want, he could very well be precisely what we need:
· to be visited with mercy:
· to be touched with freedom:
· to be accompanied and cared for until the wounds we bear from inner and outer bondage are healed.
· To find our pre-occupations re-occupied until we begin to let his presence re-set our agendas.
· To find ourselves being pulled out of ourselves until we become liberators for others.
· To discover that we are a people on the brink of a new life.
Of course, the Grand Inquisitor couldn’t take that – the new life, the new expectations, the new way of being in the world, peace, not through victory, but through justice and compassion and self-giving. It was way too threatening to everything he believed about the world. So his job was to correct it…or crush it. His job was to conform Jesus to the opinions of minds already made up. But, you see, that’s why Jesus does what he does, why he makes his move in the way that he does. His almost comical entrance is a powerful statement that he isn’t about to conform to anyone’s opinions and expectations, and so, we had best be ready for something new, for a transformation of our opinions and ideas about life and love and God. We had best be prepared for something new probing our hearts and pulling at our minds, for a stern challenge to our hopes that are too small, our expectations which are, so often, misguided, for our vision which is often too limited. For make no mistake about it, what’s riding down that road today is nothing less than the face of transformation. And his goal is nothing less than to ride straight into our hearts.