Sermons

Who Is This?

Palm Sunday

John Wilkinson	Third Presbyterian Church
March 16, 2008	Matthew 21:1-11

    
All along, it is the central question. Jesus asks it much earlier to Peter: “Who do people say that I am.” He then puts Peter on the spot: “Who do you say that I am?” In the week to come, both Pilate and Herod will ask their forms of it. “Who are you?” All along, it is the central question. 2000 years later, it remains the central question.

Just this week, Time magazine proposes that scholars are answering it in a new way, by taking more seriously than ever the Jewish context of Jesus’ life. Jesus did not abandon his Jewish identity, so the scholars say; he rewove it, reconceived it, and one cannot understand who Jesus is without understanding his Jewish identity.

Who is this? The city asks it today, somewhat oddly, on this Palm Sunday. We know the story well. The disciples procure a donkey and a colt, as they had been directed. They enter the city and a large crowd recognizes them. “Hosanna.” The city itself is in turmoil, filled with angst. They are not sure what is happening, and they are not sure that they like what is happening, or the one causing it. “Who is this?” They wonder. The adoring crowd responds, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”

In a sense, we have been addressing the question throughout Lent. We have read extended portions of the Gospel of John, and each time, we have learned something more about Jesus. Each time, a piece of the puzzle has been filled in, and a more crucial piece at that:

* To Nicodemus, the Pharisee who comes to him at night, Jesus is a teacher of the tradition, who tells the devout Jew that entering the kingdom is not about moral achievements, as important as they are, but about transformation, something like a new birth.
* To the unnamed Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus is living water, the one who knows her clearly and completely and invites her into a transformed life where she will never thirst again.
* To the unnamed blind man, Jesus restores. He restores sight, but more so, he restores dignity, by paying attention to one whom society and religion had ostracized, had cast to the side of the road.
* To Lazarus, laying dead in the tomb, and by extension, to Mary and Martha, Jesus not only brings powers of healing, but the transforming power of compassion.

As we have been reading these stories, we have noticed other things around the edges. We have noticed the crowds growing. We have noticed the religious authorities paying attention both to the growing crowds and to their own uneasiness at the threat posed by Jesus.

And note that time after time, the gospels provide narrative summaries, hints along the way. They usually take the form: “This is written so that you may believe.” “You” being “us,” anyone who follows the actual unfolding of the story, then or now.

It remains the central question. Theologians and biblical scholars answer it as many ways as they can, as many ways as you and I could answer it. William Placher, in his fine book called The Triune God, offers several portraits in summary. “Jesus keeps transgressing boundaries,” Placher writes. “He touches lepers, demoniacs, unclean women and corpses; heals and approves of plucking grain on the Sabbath. His relatives think he is mad; the scribes ascribe his power to demonic possession. If so radical a challenger of the status quo is not crazy or possessed, then there must be something wrong with the status quo.”

Placher continues: Jesus is the unrecognized son of God, recognized only at the last moment, by a Roman guard at that, at his moment of complete powerlessness. He is, as the crowd says today, a prophet, come not to abandon the Jewish tradition, but to fulfill it. He is a meal sharer and eater, to be sure. He shares many significant meals, and he often shares them with outcasts and outsiders. He is obedient. He is a teacher, a teacher of many things but most primarily and centrally of God’s love and of love for neighbor. He is an agent of conflict, with religious and political authorities. He anticipates “the approaching end of the current order of things.” Placher concludes: “It is (also) clear that he is God in that he is the one enacting God’s redeeming love.” (Placher, pp. 65-72)

Marcus Borg paints a portrait of Jesus with what he calls five “brush strokes.” Jesus was a Jewish mystic, Borg offers, who “lived a life radically centered in God.” He was a healer. He was a wisdom teacher, talking of a way or a path. At the heart of Jesus’ alternative wisdom, Borg says, is the “path of death and resurrection…involving dying to an old identity and being born into a new identity, dying to an old way of being and being born into a new way of being.” Jesus was a social prophet, a prophet of the kingdom of God, “of what life would be like on earth if God were king and the kings and emperors of the world were not.” As such, Borg writes, “he was a radical critic of the domination system that channeled wealth to the few and poverty to the many.” And he was a movement initiator, the initiator of a radically inclusive movement. (See The Heart of Christianity, pp. 89-91)

It is safe to say that Jesus was a leader; but it is not always so clear to know what kind of leader he was. “Lift up your heads, O gates.” We will hear that today and affirm it. “Who is the king of glory – the Lord, mighty in battle.” That is the model of leadership the tradition has embraced, is it not? A strong political leader who will establish right rule among the nations and a strong religious leader who will establish proper piety among the people. Powerful indeed. But power of what kind, and to what end?

We are watching models of leadership parade before us – Senators McCain and Clinton and Obama. What are we learning about what we want in a leader, in relationship to what they are offering? And more than that.

Judge not, lest you be judged, we have heard this week, and let those without sin cast the first stone. I desire neither to be a judge nor a stone-thrower. We have heard, cynically, that this week’s scandal is just one more in a long list of them. Perhaps it is, but a dizzying one nonetheless. We have heard words like hubris and arrogance, and, especially, stupid, a word we’re not allowed to say in our house.

I don’t know about any of that. I do know, though, that power can corrupt, and perhaps absolutely. I know that power makes us susceptible. I now that we are all broken and weak, which is why judgment should not be a part of our understanding of this week’s sadness.

But I do worry about two things. I worry about our ability to take the call of politics seriously, that this is one more nail of disillusionment in the coffin, in a time and place where the best and brightest of our leadership is needed to transform the world for the common good, globally, nationally, across the state, in this city.

And I do hope as well that our sons and our daughters, and our daughters especially, in our homes, in our church, will not look at this week and be taught that sex and power go hand in hand, or that love and sex can never go hand in hand, or every wrong thing about body image.

Our church and society has been having the wrong kind of debate about sexual ethics, a legalistic one, all the while inundating us with images in print and over the airwaves and in cyberspace. It is clear we need a good discussion about sexuality. Perhaps that can be one lesson of this past week.

But I digress. But maybe not. Who is this? All of the things that the scholars say, and more. Historian Garry Wills, writing out of his lover’s quarrel with the Catholic church, talks of the “radical Jesus,” who had radical things to say about wealth, about egalitarianism, about violence, and yes, about power. (See What Jesus Did, especially chapter 3, page 40 and ff.)

Former Baptist minister and former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, whose run for the White House became more than a passing curiosity, was asked what Jesus would do in a particularly complex and tricky political situation. “I don’t know,” he joked. “Jesus would be too smart to run for office.”

That may be true. But it also may be too easy. We cannot see Jesus driving from state to state on a chartered bus, holding debates, kissing babies. Not quite. But today he does enter a town and is greeted by a crowd, even one that is not quite sure who he is or what his movement is about. This is political leadership, in that it moves the people to action. It is religious leadership as well. It is transformative leadership. It is radical leadership, carrying with it all the values that Jesus has taught and manifested, as he has touched the unclean ones and eaten with outcasts.

“Christ came to introduce a break with logic,” Robert Frost once wrote. I like that. His kind of teaching is not logical, nor is his kind of associating, nor healing. His kind of love does not calculate. His path will not lead to riches or high public office. We know, in fact, where his path will lead, even as we happily wave palm branches this morning.

I hope you will be present as often as you can this week, for worship on Thursday and Friday as well as next Sunday. Not just to pad the attendance rolls, which we really don’t do anyway, but to grasp the fullness of the story and the story’s full grasp on you.

We will consider the “who is he?” question next week – the one who rose for us. But we must consider it fully, in as much as he is the one who enters the city for us, and with us, ahead of us and along side of us.

He is the one who reaches out to us so that we may in turn reach out to a broken and fearful world. He is the one who challenges power for us – political and religious – and by so doing, shows us true power’s transforming possibility.

And by exploring the question of who he is, we begin to make tentative, provisional answer to the question of who we are – you, me, all of us together, as we will wave our palms shouting “hosanna,” as we will stand at the trial shouting “crucify him,” as we will gather at the foot of the cross, and even to resurrection day.

That is to say: who we are is because of who he is. The journey does not begin today, nor does it end. It continues, into the city, into the very heart of the gospel, and the love of a prophet and teacher and healer, and so much more. Amen.