Recognizing Peace

4/1/07

Rev. Dr. Jon Smoot

 

Just off of the wild and forsaken northern tip of Scotland there is an extremely dangerous body of water called the Pentland Firth. There, the warmer, saltier Atlantic Ocean slams into the colder, less salty North Sea. Dangerous cross-currents abound, huge waterspouts, whirlpools, and gigantic freak waves come out of nowhere. The fishing villages along the coast tell many tales of large fishing boats disappearing in these turbulent waters with all hands, never to be seen again.

 

Palm Sunday is like that – a day of powerful ironies and turbulent undercurrents. At the head of our holiest of weeks stands this day. A bittersweet, painfilled, joyfilled day of children and followers singing and palm branches waving, but mixed with a profound confusion as the hosannas quickly die on our lips, and someone dies at the end of the week, someone we were just getting to know.

 

I had my Palm Sunday this past Thursday as I struggled to compose this sermon. I was a study in avoidance behavior: I ran errands, did 4 loads of laundry, rearranged books on the bookshelves – I even spent time playing with my step-daughter’s 13 year-old incontinent, cranky cat, and I intensely dislike cats to begin with. Such was the measure of my desperation. By 4:30, I felt furious enough to punch a hole in the wall, and then wept in frustration. Two sermons were slamming around in my head like the Pentland Firth: the first – a classic Palm Sunday sermon along the lines of “Here comes King Jesus bumping into Jerusalem on a donkey and isn’t it too bad that we killed him at the end of the week.” The second sermon won out: “Who is this Jesus, and why should we care?” I went this way, because after seven months of working and living among you, I am convinced that we need this – especially as we are perched on the edge of Holy Week.

 

Let’s be direct with one another: Jesus is baffling, confusing, irritating – then and now. He is also dangerous. He is dangerous to the social order, which we applaud – and which would be a softball sermon with you to hit out of the park. But that would be a cheap shot, for it would leave you vaguely yearning for more than just another moralistic sermon about how Jesus got out there, rolled up his sleeves, confronted the powers, now you do it, too.

 

Of course Jesus is dangerous to the social order. That’s what got him killed. But Jesus is dangerous to us, too. He has left us little wiggle room with regard to his identity and mission as Lord and Messiah. Jesus is dangerous to our upper-class sensibilities, our cool logic, our armchair theories about his humanity or his divinity or his relevance. Even with our 2,000 years of hindsight and Christian experience, we still struggle with calling this man Jesus, King of the universe, King of our lives. He is dangerous to our pride and our intellectual snobbery because, embarrassingly, he acknowledges as true the praise of people as Lord and God. He is dangerous to our self-sufficiency, because he acknowledges as true the praise of people as Savior. And do we really need one?

 

The Pharisees, who are a part of our story today, made a point of the fact that they were able to see life more clearly and discriminately than the common folk – that was their stock-in-trade. They sure as heck didn’t feel the need for a savior. In their contented self-referencing, and their self-sufficient short-sightedness, they lacked the grace and humility to acknowledge their need for a savior for their prejudice, insular thinking, and superior attitude.

 

But then again, look at us. Are we so removed from the Pharisees? We’re smart people, educated people, leaders of others – top scientists, medical professionals, educators, and administrators in an enlightened town. We have a reputation for seeing clearly and discriminately. So why would we need something so crude as a savior? Why would we need something so limiting as a Lord when we have first-class brains and a good moral compass to steer our ship by? I’m reminded of the character Hazel Motes, preacher of the self-founded “Church without Christ” in Flannery O’Connor’s novel, Wise Blood, who proudly said: “A man with a good car don’t need no redemption.”

 

The Pharisees ordered Jesus – out of fear of the Romans, or disbelief or embarrassment – we don’t know the tone of their voice: “Rabbi, will you please for God’s sake tell your disciples to shut up?”

 

Is there a voice inside of us - out of fear of looking foolish or intolerant, fear of embarrassment, or disbelief - ordering us to stop shouting praises to this strange King from God? Jesus says that even the rocks know better than the Pharisees, or ourselves, that to listen to and believe in him is to listen to and believe in God.

 

Does it matter whether or not we believe that the full divinity of God is united with the man Jesus? Yes, it does. Because there are some things that just have to be said about God’s way in the world, which Christians believe is known through Jesus, the Christ. The stakes are too high for our world and our community, and our lives, to keep silent about the way of God in Jesus Christ, which is the way of peace.

 

Listen closely to the words from Zechariah 9. This is God’s promise concerning the coming ruler - a prophetic word from 2,600 years ago that Christians believe to be the prophetic word about Jesus, the Messiah of God:

“Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Behold, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall command peace to the nations; his dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.”

 

Peace: The universal yearning of the human heart. How would we recognize peace – peace such as the world cannot give, as Jesus says? We as Christians have only one starting place to look – Jesus, the Son of God. In our story today, the masses that are shouting “hosanna” do not have the benefit of hindsight. They have hardly finished their song, “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest heaven” when Jesus looks up, sees the city before him, and weeps, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day that things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. Indeed, the days are coming when your enemies will crush you to the ground, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.” Jesus was broken-hearted. He is still broken-hearted, but un-bowed and undaunted, because some things just have to be said, and believed and lived, today, about our visitation from God.

 

 

 

 

These earliest Passover disciples in our text did not have the advantages that we have of recognizing the peace that Jesus brings – they didn’t have 2,000 years of reflection on the reconciling cross of Christ, they didn’t have resurrection stories, no New Testament, no Hallmark Christmas Cards, no Easter Sunday lilies and trumpets to fall back on. So, how do we recognize and act upon the kind of peace that Jesus brings?

 

He has said: “Put away your sword – don’t you know that those who live by the sword will die by the sword?” “Love your enemies, do not hate them, and pray for them.” “Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called the children of God.” “If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, do not resist the evildoer, turn the other also.” “And if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well.” “Do not judge so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.” “Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?”

 

St. Paul expands on Jesus’ vision of recognizing and making peace: “Do not repay anyone evil for evil.” “Do not be overcome with evil, but overcome evil with Good.” “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.”  

 

Do these not ring with authority with something inside of your soul? Do these not sing with the ring of truth and clarity from a God who is worthy of our complete adoration and trust and who deserves our laying our lives down before this God and for God’s world?

 

Preacher Barbara Brown Taylor says: “There is nothing sentimental or the least bit easy about any of this. There is not even a guarantee that it will work, but one thing is for sure: When we repay evil for evil, evil is all there is, in bigger and more toxic piles. The only way to reverse the process is to behave in totally unexpected ways – blessing the persecutor, feeding the enemy, embracing the bully – breaking the vicious cycle by refusing to participate in it anymore. It’s about plain old imitation of Christ, who took all the meanness of the world and ran it through the filter of his own body, repaying evil with good, blame with pardon, death with life. Call it divine reverse psychology. It worked once and it can work again, whenever God can find someone willing to give it a try.”

 

And if disciples are silent, the very stones will shout out praise for the way of God, the Prince of Peace. Let’s not leave it to the stones. Amen.