Psalm 118:19-29
19 Open to me the gates of righteousness, that I may enter through them and give thanks to the LORD. 20 This is the gate of the LORD; the righteous shall enter through it. 21 I thank you that you have answered me and have become my salvation. 22 The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. 23 This is the LORD’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes. 24 This is the day that the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. 25 Save us, we beseech you, O LORD! O LORD, we beseech you, give us success! 26 Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the LORD. We bless you from the house of the LORD. 27 The LORD is God, and he has given us light. Bind the festal procession with branches, up to the horns of the altar. 28 You are my God, and I will give thanks to you; you are my God, I will extol you. 29 O give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.
Luke 19:29-40
19 When he had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, 30 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. 31 If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it.’” 32 So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. 33 As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?” 34 They said, “The Lord needs it.” 35 Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. 36 As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. 37 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, 38 saying, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!” 39 Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” 40 He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”
A number of years ago a man came to church by himself. His wife just wasn't up for it and didn't feel like coming. And when he came home, he had palms in his hand. And the wife said, “Well, why are you bringing home palms? What happened today?”
He said, “Well, Jesus showed up. And when Jesus showed up, everybody waved palms in praise of Him.”
She said, “Great... The one time I miss church, Jesus actually shows up”
We all love getting Palms and celebrating Palm Sunday but Luke’s version of the story is a little different than we usually remember especially that there are no “Hosannas” but I’ll get to that in a minute. More importantly is that in Luke's account, the whole event is actually carried out by the disciples, from beginning to end. They secure the colt. They place their cloaks on the colt. Then they set Jesus on the colt. And others then follow suit to give their best for Him and to soften the rocky road ahead. The disciples praised God, proclaiming Jesus as king. And yet, it wasn't to compete or be adversarial to the political king of Rome. No, they were proclaiming the deeds of power that they had seen Jesus do to others and even to themselves.
It's interesting, in this particular reading, there are no general crowds. Jesus is being praised and honored by his followers. They were, in the moment, creating this special event. No passersby or curious locals, just the disciples beyond the 12 that numbered probably 70 to 100. It was really an insider event, only for his believers. Yet for most of us, when we remember or imagine this story, we tend of make an amalgam of the three accounts in Matthew, Mark and Luke, including imagining massive crowds, right? But not in Luke. In Luke’s version, Jesus kicks this off. He's by himself with a couple of disciples. And then the closer He gets to Jerusalem the rest of HIS disciples are the only ones following and praising.
Luke says it was only the A-team that was with Jesus, accompanying Him on His journey. And…there are no hosannas in this scripture. No hosannas which translated to: “Save us.” No, they were not pleading with Jesus, they were praising God for all that Jesus had done and was doing and proclaiming Jesus as the Davidic king who brings power through peace. This is antithetical to normal Kingship activity and the disciples proclamations are a threat to some of the Pharisees and they really don’t like it.
The text doesn't tell us what they were feeling or what their objections were, but most scholars think it was probably a mix of fear, because Jesus, a king, might actually have serious political repercussions. The Pharisees, demanding Jesus to silence the disciples, is akin to “Sshhhh, keep this under wraps. We don't want to lose the things we already have--the basic privileges that the Romans are giving us. You're going to mess this up for all of us!!!!.” Maybe they didn't believe Jesus was a faithful Jew. Even if they agreed with the fact that he was a teacher—they couldn’t get to savior and a king. In part because they're still waiting for their messiah to come. They don't want to join this boisterous, motley crew, proclaiming Jesus as king. They want to hold fast to what they know, what they've been taught and what they’ve been taught to believe.
Again, the disciples, not only the original 12, but probably 70-100 are proclaiming and exalting Jesus above just being a teacher. He is their future King. And the more these acclamations continue the more anxious and angrier the Pharisees become. After all It's one thing to call Him a leader and a teacher, but to call Him a king who comes in the name of the Lord? Who comes in the name of Yahweh? That's a quantum leap. And it's a major shift. A tectonic shift.
By the way, this praise language is not new to any of them, the Pharisees included. They were familiar phrases from Psalm 118 that we just read together. They read and knew this psalm as part of their worship and prayer on a regular basis. But as always, when we look deeper into a text, there are subtle clues that are worth paying attention to before we get to the big finish.
The first clue that you'll notice in the text (and it's right there in front of you), says, “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”…
So, all the disciples were moving in the same direction, doing the same thing together. They're praising God joyfully with a loud voice and proclaiming all the deeds that they have seen Jesus do: the healing, the teaching, the preaching, the loving, the caring, the feeding. And it makes sense, because they've witnessed it for themselves, they’re praising Him and ready to head into Jerusalem with Jesus and show all of Jerusalem “who's the boss”.
But at the same time, the text also says “some of the Pharisees”. Pharisees often get a bad rap because they're often known for believing in their own superiority and often calling out Jesus for his ‘warped or watered down’ theology. Therefore at least some of the Pharisees are getting a little more than uncomfortable with what's happening. And now they're ordering that Jesus do something to ‘stop all this nonsense’, again, for fear of repercussions with Roman rule and/or maybe disbelief that Jesus has gone off the reservation and is no longer a faithful Jew.
So here's the tectonic shift: Jesus is more than ready to handily respond to the complaints, the murmuring, the arguing and the egregious demand by some of the Pharisees to shut up. Why? Because Jesus knows fully who He is and whose He is and who He's going to be in salvation history, even in the universe… Jesus knows He's about to create a tectonic shift. As Paul writes in Romans, “All of creation is groaning in labor pains”, waiting for the consummation in Jesus Christ.’
Scholar and teacher Fred Craddock outlines this in a really cool way. He says from the beginning of scripture, we see that all of creation is involved in the consummation of Jesus. In Genesis, because of Adam and Eve’s disobedience, the earth produces nothing but thorns. In Isaiah, we hear that the lion and the lamb, will lie down together. In Matthew, we know that as soon as Jesus is born, a star appears in the East. And when Jesus is dying on the cross, the sun is eclipsed for three hours. And when Jesus breathes His last, the whole earth shudders and the rocks split. My friends, all of creation is leading up to this place where salvation history gets changed forever, for you and for me.
So the Pharisees are fearful and in disbelief of Jesus’ power and authority, and sometimes, if we’re honest, we are as well. We have our own fears and our own disbelief about the holiness and the kingship of Jesus; because, let's face it, it's easier to think of Jesus as our friend. But he is the one who died right here (pointing to the cross on the chancel) because of everything we have done through our lives that is unloving to God and one another. And we also aren’t always comfortable bowing down to a king, because we feel good about ourselves and we don't want to make ourselves ‘less than’. And, yet, that is exactly the appropriate and ONLY response for what Jesus did for us. He was hung between two criminals and tried and crucified as a criminal himself.
So, while the Pharisees are fearful and in disbelief (and sometimes we go along with them in our fears and disbelief) it’s ok. When the Pharisees (and sometimes we) mistrust the full power of Jesus in the role of Messiah, it’s OK. Because when our praises are muted, and delayed or we are stuck in our self-centered ways, when our doubts start to rise, the stones will sing praises and shout out the name of Messiah for us.
Let's pay attention to the fact that even when our faith fails us, all of creation can cry out praises to Jesus including an inanimate object but part of Creation…stones.
I'm going to invite us now to take a moment and think about what you are crying out for or in need of, either in your life or in this particular Holy Week, so that when you don't have the courage to cry out or name it all or confess it all, a stone can do it for you.
In our font, there is a stone waiting for each of us. I'm going to encourage each of us to come forward as we feel called, (while the choir sings a perfectly connected anthem to this) and find, and take a stone, so that when we cannot shout out our praises, because we're ashamed or we're tired or we're just not sure, the stones can do it for us.
May it be so. Amen.