April 13, 2024

Luke 19:28-40

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.”

This Sunday is Palm Sunday. We heard about the triumphal entry into Jerusalem. We heard about Jesus riding a colt into the gates. But I feel compelled to make three apologies this morning for our reading from the Gospel of John.

Firstly, there are no palms or branches in our reading. There are cloaks. The people placed their cloaks upon the road to honor the passage of Jesus, who was entering the city like a newly crowned king. But still, no palms. I chose not to hand out bandanas for the occasion.

Secondly, there was no donkey. The gospel readings offer different configurations of elements in their presentation of the story of that day. Sometimes a donkey. Sometimes a colt. There is even a version in which Jesus rides a donkey and a colt, which would have been a sight to see. That is, by the way, a translation issue. It is likely because of a phrase being repeated for emphasis, like saying the man, the myth, the legend when you are obviously talking about one person.

And thirdly, I must apologize because of the political nature of our reading. Some Christians get worked up if the topics on Sunday morning are too political. And this reading is very political.

If that last apology confuses anyone, let me explain. The triumphal entry of Jesus into the city of Jerusalem is an entirely political event. Jesus is being treated like he is a king. As if a battle has been won or a coronation ceremony has just occurred. The adoring crowds covering the roadway with cloaks and palms, the donkey as a symbol of kingly humility. It is completely political imagery suitable for a ruler of this time. And if politics in church offends anyone, I am sorry.

How might we define politics? The activities associated with the governance of a country or other area, especially the debate or conflict among individuals or parties having or hoping to achieve power. The people were looking to Jesus as the newest messiah (small “m”), the man who was going to free them from their imperial overlords the Romans.

And so, this display and the people’s reactions are politically motivated. That does not mean that Jesus was trying to be their new king or that he had any intention of overthrowing the Romans. What Jesus represented to the people need not be the same as what Jesus intended to achieve.

The question might then be how we navigate between that which is political and that which is religious or moral or ethical. How do we keep those aspects of our lives segregated into their proper spheres? That question assumes that such segregation of issues is possible and that to do so would be a good thing.

Every Sunday, I bless the President of the United States and the Governor of this Commonwealth. You may have noticed. And I do so regardless of who graces those particular offices. I have done so since 2009 over the course of several different federal and state administrations.

Why do I do this? Because it is in the book. It is in our prayer book. I doublechecked and it was also in our prior prayer book of 1924. That prayer is substantially the same as the 1789 Book of Common Prayer for the Episcopal Church, though they did not include the Governor as it was a national edition. You could fill in the blank I suppose. Simply put, this prayer of ours is old.

You might also notice in the fine print of our prayer book that there is an instruction. “The Minister may also say one or both of the following prayers –”

Well, whew, I get to avoid being political if I choose to do so. But, then again, choosing not to do so could also be construed as being political. What to do, what to do?

What I do is to say the prayer. I say it regardless of whether my candidate won last time. You might have noticed that I say it with some nuance, a little English on the ball to use a billiards term. I do not say it to bless what they have done or not done. I say it because it is an old tradition, and I say it in what might be a vain hope of bringing divine guidance down to people in power. I say these prayers over there at the lectern, the place for prayers. And then I walk over here to the pulpit, where I am free from such concerns of tradition. Mostly free.

Some people might judge what I have to say as being more political than it should be, more worldly minded than they would prefer. And yet my personal logic when preaching is simple: if it is in the book, I get to talk about it. The book meaning the Bible—if the Bible touches upon the issue or the idea, I get to talk about it. And, funnily enough, the Bible covers a lot of ground.

Now someone might walk into church and hear me start to talk about some current topic of interest. Immigration or the economy, government policies or international troubles. And they might lament the subject matter thinking, isn’t there a single place I can go to without having to hear about political debates and struggles. And, I will confess, that I also crave time away from the worries and anxieties of the morning papers and the nightly news.

But my vocation is not about being comfortable and it is not always about making you all comfortable. There is an old line about a minister needing to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Striking the balance is the hard part.

I do not see that a boundary can easily be drawn between that which is political and that which is religious, moral, or ethical. Again, politics involves the activities associated with the governance of a country or other area, especially the debate or conflict among individuals or parties having or hoping to achieve power. How then might we as civic individuals meet our responsibilities as citizens while also as religious individuals meet our moral and ethical obligations as followers of Jesus? Implicit in that pair of questions is another—which role, the civic or the religious, should win out in the end?

When Jesus was riding into Jerusalem, he was being hailed as a leader, as a deliverer, as a messiah. Not the Messiah as we have come to understand that term. Not Christ, which is simply the Greek version of messiah. The people wanted Jesus to free them from the oppression they were suffering. That was probably a mixture of the oppression of the Roman Empire and the oppression of their local collaborators, King Herod and the Temple leadership. Jesus was seen as the one to save them and he was also seen as the one who threatened those in power. We know how this story ends. And we know the cost of Jesus being seen as political.

Not that Jesus wanted that. Not that he went out of his way to be political. But because the things Jesus taught and the actions he took were seen as politically motivated. He turned over the tables of the moneychangers in the Temple courtyard. That was a direct attack upon the priests because they were in partnership with the money changers.

You see, Roman coins could not be paid to the Temple or used to buy sacrificial animals—these coins were embossed with the face of the emperor who was worshiped as a god and were therefore forbidden. And so, the moneychangers would trade Roman coins for Temple coins. The Temple essentially sold the coins to be used and made a profit off the transactions. Jesus disrupted that beneficial economic arrangement.

Jesus was perceived as being political, or in this case rebellious. It is why he was executed. And it did not matter if Jesus saw this money changing practice as morally corrupt because the priests did not seen Jesus as being in a position to make such moral or ethical decisions. But please note that what the Temple was doing was legal. It was legal because the Romans allowed them to do so, which is all that mattered at that time.

In 1935, a series of laws was passed in Nazi Germany. These were known as the Nuremberg Laws, so-called because they were issued at a political rally in Nuremberg during a special session of the Reichstag. One of the laws defined German citizenship and required that all citizens have at least half “German blood.” Others were not entitled to citizenship, particularly those deemed to be Jewish. That law was later amended to exclude those with Black ancestry and over time others were added. There were also laws restricting marriages and childbirth that might reduce the purity of the German race. And these policies were legal, whatever that truly means.

So, let me ask: would arguing against these laws about citizenship and racial purity be political? Yes, I think that is clearly the case.

Does that further mean that religious communities should not have spoken out against them? Does that mean that people of faith should have let them be? Looking back over nearly a century of tragic events and historical interpretations of those events, I think most people would now say that it would have been morally and ethically appropriate to speak out against Nazi Germany.

That is a judgment with a heavy dose of hindsight, but I think it is safe to say that the practices of Nazi Germany can be classified as morally bankrupt. Anyone brave enough to oppose them is now lifted as a paragon of virtue, though many did not survive their brave political stances at the time. And, of course, neither did Jesus.

We can look back across history at other legal frameworks that were morally questionable. There is the case of slavery which again was perfectly legal in the United States for centuries. Many Boston abolitionists spoke out against the practice. Some representing fugitive slaves here in Boston courts. Some even engaged in legally questionable tactics, such as smuggling former slaves to the North.

And please recall that slavery had Biblical precedents, religious passages used to authorize the practice. But again, like the moneychangers, the fact that something is legal, that something has been politically authorized, does not make it religiously or morally or ethically sound.

Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.”

Why did the Pharisees ask Jesus to order his disciples to stop? Because of what they were shouting:

“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!”

We repeat these words as a religious affirmation of what Jesus means to us as Christians. But the Pharisees were not fools. They were not even necessarily opposed to what Jesus was doing or saying. The Pharisees were worried that proclaiming someone a new king would lead to violence. Violence against the people. Violence against Jesus. I think it is not too far a stretch to say that the Pharisees were warning the disciples not to be political. Not to be disruptive towards the powers that be.

And they were correct in their understanding of the situation. Jesus was arrested and summarily executed. The apostles went into hiding and many were later executed. After the crucifixion, only the women could venture outside without fear of being arrested. The Pharisees were right. But it did not matter.

He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”

The stones would shout out.

Is there anything that might make you shout out these days? Is there any situation facing our nation that gives you pause? Any troubles on the horizon or maybe troubles in the morning paper? What might they be?

Recently, I have experienced an uptick in the number of people asking me what should be done about any number of situations. Mark, what should we do about this? And, to be honest with you, most of the challenges facing our country right now were not covered in seminary. Frankly, they were not covered in law school because we are in uncharted territory, legally and politically. So, I do not have ready answers. I do not know more than any of you here this day about what to do, legally or politically.

And yet, I am not up here every week to speak legally or politically. I am here to speak religiously, to speak Biblically. And as I said before, if something is in the book, if something is in the Bible, I have no problem speaking about it from up here in the pulpit.

So here goes.

It is immoral and unethical to seize people off the streets of the United States without any due process, without a chance to obtain legal counsel, without even the opportunity to let family know where they have been taken. And I profoundly do not care if that series of immoral or unethical practices can be justified under some strained legal theory or executive fiat. It is against the teachings of the Bible and it is against the teachings of Jesus.

It is immoral and unethical to abandon the people of Ukraine to the invading authoritarian government of Russia, a government that has not a scrap of international law or moral authority behind it to justify its actions. This same behavior also threatens our allies across the region and destabilizes the world while also inching us ever closer to a global war, the likes of which we have not seen since the 1930s. And I profoundly do not care if that assessment has political aspects because I think the killing of thousands of people in the heart of Europe is a moral question. It is against the teachings of the Bible and it is against the teachings of Jesus.

And it is immoral and unethical to allow the slaughter and wholesale displacement of the people of Gaza. And I say that acknowledging that the organization Hamas has committed unspeakable acts of violence against the people of Israel and it still holds innocent Israelis hostage to this day. But you cannot balance the scales of justice by flattening cities and forcing two million people to leave their lands. And I profoundly do not care if that assessment sidesteps complex historical and religious aspects of this endless conflict because I think the killing of tens of thousands of people in the Middle East cannot be justified even in light of the terrible events of October 7. It is against the teachings of the Bible and it is against the teachings of Jesus.

There are so many other events I could rattle off. Many other morally dubious and ethically challenged moments in the past few years and even the past few months. But I will stop there and let you sift through the pressing problems in your minds, whether that might be about the environment, the economy, or otherwise.

In our reading this morning, Jesus said that he could not quiet the disciples because even if he tried the stones themselves would shout out what was happening. Well, I do not think we can rely upon the stones this time. I think we need to do the shouting. I think we need to make our voices heard.

There are things that we can do and ways we can bring about change. I do not know what all that will look like, frankly, because again this is beyond my expertise, legally or politically.

But morally, things are not right. Ethically, things are not right. And if we have any hope of remaining a morally and ethically upright nation, we must be prepared to speak out. For the stones aren’t going to do it for us. We need to speak out in the name of God and in the spirit of Jesus. And we need to do so now. Amen.