And they were on the road going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them; and they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid. And taking the twelve again, he began to tell them what was happening to him, saying, "Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem; and the son of man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death, and deliver him to the Gentiles and they will mock him, and spit upon him, and scourge him, and will kill him; and after three days he will rise.
And when they drew near to Jerusalem, to Beth-phage and Bethany, and the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, and said to them, "Go into the village opposite you, and immediately as you enter it you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever sat; untie it and bring it. If anyone says to you, `Why are you doing this?' say `The Lord has need of it and will send it back here immediately.'"
And they went away, and found a colt tied to a door out in the open street; and they untied it. And those who stood there said to them, "What are you doing, untying the colt?" And they told them what Jesus had said; and they let them go. And they brought the colt to Jesus, and threw their garments on it; and he sat upon it. And many spread their garments on the road, and others spread leafy branches which they had cut from the fields. And those who went before and those who followed cried out, "Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the kingdom of our father David that is coming. Hosanna in the highest!
Sermon
The high drama of the traditional Palm Sunday story from the Gospel of Mark
combined with the earlier prediction of death at the hands of the temple
priests captures me as I reflect on Jesus' last trip to Jerusalem. Knowing the
tremendous risk of leaving Galilee where he had some relative safety, Jesus
goes to the very center of the Judaic religion, makes his statement by
overturning the money changers' tables and teaches in the outer courts of the
Temple until he is betrayed by Judas and arrested by the Romans. Jesus does
not come to Jerusalem timidly, he leads his amazed disciples walking before
them with strength and determination. When Jesus arrives at the gates of the
city he fulfills the prophecy found in Zechariah (9:9-10):
The story of the triumphant entrance into Jerusalem is the only time Jesus presents himself publicly as a savior-king figure. In most of the rest of the synoptic gospels he is a preacher, a prophet, a teacher of parables and a healer of the sick. While he has gathered large crowds and performed miracles which amaze everyone, he rarely says he is anything but the Son of Man.
When asked by the Chief priests and scribes, "By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?" Jesus answers the question indirectly by posing his own question about the source of the authority of John the Baptist. Any oppressed person will recognize the method in Jesus' cagey response. Rather than confront power directly and risk destruction, one must turn the tables and make the authorities answer to themselves. Jesus' question, as explained in the text, is a trick question since the chief priests must say either John the Baptist's authority was legitimately from heaven or he was just a man which would inflame the people who believed in him. By posing this question, Jesus claims his authority from John the Baptist without saying it.
Jesus also makes a claim to authority by riding that colt, leafy branches laid before him as he passes by hearing the shouts of Hosanna. And by making that claim to authority and teaching in the outer courts of the Temple, he puts his life at risk. Jesus knows he is living in the shadow of death. The emotions of joy, apprehension, and determination must have flashed hot and cold as he entered the city gates.
Jesus is hardly the first or the last person to feel caught up in the call of destiny. Jesus is hardly the first or last person to suffer and die while operating from that sense of calling. In American history, the signers of the Declaration of Independence didn't exactly have it so easy either. I found this vivid description by Charles Youngkin of Morgan Hill, California who researched their fates for daring to defy the Brittish:
Five signers were captured by the British as traitors, and tortured before they died. Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned. Two lost their sons in the Revolutionary Army, another had two sons captured. Nine of the 56 fought and died from wounds or the hardships of the Revolutionary War. What kind of men were they? Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists. Eleven were merchants, nine were farmers and large plantation owners, men of means, well educated. But they signed the Declaration of Independence knowing full well that the penalty would be death if they were captured. They signed and they pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy planter and trader, saw his ships swept from the seas by the British navy. He sold his home and properties to pay his debts and died in rags. Thomas McKeam was so hounded by the British that he was forced to move his family almost constantly. He served in the Congress without pay, and his family was kept in hiding. His possessions were taken from him, and poverty was his reward. Vandals or soldiers or both looted the properties of Ellery, Clymer, Hall, Walton, Gwinnett, Heyward, Ruttledge, and Middleton. At the Battle of Yorktown, Thomas Nelson Jr. noted that the British General Cornwallis had taken over the Nelson home for his headquarters. The owner quietly urged General George Washington to open fire, which was done. The home was destroyed, and Nelson died bankrupt. Francis Lewis had his home and properties destroyed. The enemy jailed his wife and she died within a few months. John Hart was driven from his wife's bedside as she was dying. Their 13 children fled for their lives. His fields and grist mill were laid waste. For more than a year he lived in forests and caves, returning home after the war to find his wife dead, his children vanished. A few weeks later he died from exhaustion and a broken heart. Norris and Livingston suffered similar fates. Such were the stories and sacrifices of the American Revolution.Living our values and beliefs means inviting the shadow of death to hover over us. Those who have been attending our morning class on the leaders of the Reformation have heard how they had to face death to speak their truth. John Hus, a sincere priest and national hero of the Czech people who believed the Bible is the ultimate source of authority for the Church not the pope was burned at the stake. He died singing. Uncounted lives were destroyed during the Inquisition for espousing impure doctrine. The suffering continues today. Around the world, Amnesty International tracks the imprisonment and torture of those who speak truth to power.
So why do these people, like Jesus, put their lives in jeopardy? Your average person who has the premonition that they will be killed if they go to Jerusalem would stay away. Jesus could have done some great ministry and lived to a ripe old age by staying in Galilee. Of course we could ask the same question of the Protestant reformers. Why didn't they just go along to get along. I imagine there were many priests who did. Why didn't the American colonies just try to strike a deal with the Brittish? How much of the vision of America being the New Jerusalem worked unseen in the nationalistic pride? Was it just a fit of passion, of anger, or was their something deeper inspiring their action?
Why did these great men and women freely put themselves in harm's way? I believe they did it for love.
Jesus, like the prophets before him, had a deep love for his Hebrew tribe and a clear vision of the danger from Rome because the priests were out of touch with the people. Seeing a fire leaping from the roof of a house, it is practically instinctive to sound the alarm and alert the occupants. In the temple, this is what Jesus does. He warns of the clear and present danger to his people:
when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, and let those who are inside the city depart, and let not those who are out in the country enter it; for these are the days of vengeance, to fulfil all that is written. Alas for those who are with child and for those who give suck in those days! For great distress shall be upon the earth and wrath upon his people; they will fall by the edge of the sword and be led captive among all nations; and Jerusalem will be trodden down by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled. (Luke 21:20-24)
Jesus believed he was living in the end times:
Take heed, watch; for you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his servants in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. Watch therefore - for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening or at midnight, or the cockcrow, or in the morning - lest he come suddenly and find you asleep. (Mark 13:33-36)
I think we've been living in the shadow of the end times ever since then. (And some of us would like a little sleep, thank you!) Each generation faces some apocalypse which threatens to destroy us. There are plagues and wars and then social calamities and then imagined religious Armageddons which just never seem to appear. Ministers who suffer from lagging Sunday morning attendance are tempted to predict the end of the world to fill the pews. We have professionalized this doom and gloom preaching and given the job to the lobbyists in Washington. I have spent many years listening to these ministers of misery talk about social and ecological ills to which we must respond and repent our evil materialistic ways. While it is not pleasant to listen to their sour choruses of coming catastrophe, the wise pay attention. Perhaps if the priests had listened to Jesus rather than put him to death, the Temple might have been saved.
I'm reminded of a coal mining accident in the Alleghany Mountains. Many miners escaped with their lives, but three men were still trapped somewhere deep within the earth's crust. Whether they were dead or alive, no one knew. What made the accident even more threatening to life was the presence of intense heat and noxious gases within the mine itself. If the men were not crushed by the rock, they well could have been asphyxiated by the fumes or killed by the heat. Two days went by before a search expedition was allowed to even enter the mine because of the heat and fumes. Even then, there was great danger in store for anyone who would dare descend into what could well be a deep, black, grave. I don't remember what happened to those three men. All I remember is a brief interview conducted with one of the members of the search party as he was preparing to enter the mine. A reporter asked him if he knew of the noxious gases and the extreme danger of the mine. The man said, "Yes." "And you are still going down?" And the man said, "Those men may still be alive." Without another word of explanation, he put on his gas mask, climbed into the elevator, and descended into the black inferno of the mine. He put his life on the line, that others might live.[1]
These grand moments of heroism are very few and far between for most of us. We struggle along doing the best we can within our circumstances. It seems as though the grand moments choose us rather than the other way around. Our challenge is to be ready to respond from our love rather than our fear when the moment arrives.
I came across a beautiful "story of courage" by Daniel Galron about his grandmother Elizabeth Goldschläger[2]. As Daniel was growing up, his family would tell him of the Shoah, the extermination of the Jews and the heroism of his grandmother. On his first visit to see her in Israel, he interviewed her so he could hear her story. Goldschläger was born in Vienna in 1914. Her family moved to Brno, Czechoslovakia, a beautiful town near the Austrian border and this is where she grew up. Her father was a wealthy Jewish businessman who traveled all over the world importing tea from India, Ceylon, and Great Britain. Two weeks before her 19th birthday, she heard on the radio and read in the newspapers about the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany. It wasn't long before Germany took over part of Czechoslovakia and soon after that the rest of the country. Her family tried to arrange a marriage for her with an Englishman to get her out of the country but travel to England closed as they entered the war in 1939 after the German invasion of Poland. Knowing she would be in danger, her family arranged for her to escape. It was not an easy journey and she had to swim across an icy lake in the black of night to secure her freedom in Switzerland and later Liechtenstein.
Towards the end of their time together, his grandmother stopped talking and looked straight into David's eyes. After a couple of minutes she told him softly but firmly: "Always try to remember to stand up for what you believe in, for what you are, and be proud of it; be involved in what happens, and don't let history repeat itself."
Let us be grateful this morning we were not Jews in Palestine two thousand years ago nor one of the many Jews who perished in Germany. And let us also honor the lives of all people who have died putting their love in front of their fear as Jesus did when he triumphantly enters Jerusalem riding on a colt hearing the shouts of Hosanna. Let our faith be renewed that deep within the human heart rests the potential for unrealized and undiscovered courage which a great moment may call out of us--even a simple moment may call out of us--which comes from the greatness that is within us AND beyond us.
Our challenge is to be awake and watchful for the moment and choose the courageous path when it comes.
Copyright (c) 1998 by Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore. All rights reserved.
[1] Dan Johnson, Tucson, Arizona. 85704
[2]
http://aleph.lib.ohio-state.edu/~dagalron/shoah.html Elizabeth
Goldschläger: a story of courage A "History Day" Project by Daniel A.
Galron