The Things That Make for Peace
Luke 19:28-40
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Over the last five weeks of Lent, we’ve taken a detour from the usual lectionary to travel more slowly through Christ’s final week.
But today is Palm Sunday, and so we need to rewind the story a little bit. Before the betrayal, before the denials, before the prayers in Gethsemane and the trial before Pilate, we have the strange event we curiously refer to as Christ’s ‘Triumphant entry’ into Jerusalem – a strange day full of contradictions. “Hosanna!” feels weird to shout when you know what happens next.
In chapter 9 of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus turns his face to Jerusalem and there’s no looking back. By the time we reach chapter 19, the pace picks up and the verb “to draw near” shows up every few verses as Jesus draws near to Jerusalem and draws near to what it holds in store. Jerusalem is at the center of this story and Jesus is almost there.
Hear now, God’s word for you this morning as we join Jesus in his drawing near,
Luke 19:28-40
28 After he had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem.
29 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.”
The odd thing about Luke’s account of Palm Sunday is how few palms there are. In fact, not one mention. In Luke’s telling of events, the people laid their cloaks on the dusty road to make a royal path for their Lord.
Today is Cloak Sunday, friends!
And here’s the thing: the multitudes who lined the road that day were probably not the kind of people who had a couple extra cloaks in the closet, so this welcome was a little more costly than a mere palm branch.
I considered correcting our practice today to make it more in line with Luke’s account by lining the center aisle with the dozens of donated coats we’ve collected for our asylum seeker guests we’ve been welcoming each Monday here, but I’m sure it would have been a tripping hazard…so in the name of safety, let us just imagine it this morning and notice how that symbolism might bring the meaning of Palm Sunday into sharper focus than palm branches.
The road that Jesus is welcomed on lined with coats for the cold ones,
paved with care for the vulnerable,
rolled out with the red carpet of justice for the oppressed.
I think that’s the kind of welcome Jesus would want.
Back in chapter 7 of Luke’s gospel when Jesus was just getting started – right after he’d healed a Centurion’s servant and raised a widow’s son from the dead – John the Baptist sent his disciples to inquire about his identity –to see if he was the one who was to come or if they should wait for another, wondering what kind of king they were looking for, and Jesus responded by saying: “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them”.
Jesus’ Lordship is not confirmed by pomp and power, but by compassion and justice – by peace for the oppressed. These are the ones who have followed - the ones who have been healed, welcomed, and liberated. These are the ones who know Jesus as Lord – these are the multitude laying their costly cloaks on the road as Jesus drew near, declaring “peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!”
Their praise, echoing and bookending the praise offered at Jesus’ birth when Luke describes:
“suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,
14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”
As one commentator put it so perfectly this week: “heaven sings of peace on earth (in Luke 2). Earth echoes back ‘peace in heaven’ (in Luke 19), and as the church gathers this day we are caught in the crossfire of blessings.”
Just as the word “peace” (shalom) is at the root of the name Jerusalem, so peace is also at the root of Jesus’ Kingship and at the center of this Palm Sunday story.
Peace is why Jesus rides in on a donkey instead of a warhorse, conjuring up in the imagination of all who were there that day remembering the words of the prophet Zechariah who said:
Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!
Lo, your king comes to you;
triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
10 H] 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;
Perhaps even more powerfully, Jesus’ entry to Jerusalem on a donkey also conjures up images of Solomon riding in on a donkey on his way to be ordained King.
Long before this moment, King David had desperately wanted to build a temple for God, but God had denied him the honor because he’d been a man of war, instead he promised that his son, a man of peace, would be the one to do it – and thus, Solomon, whose name literally means peace, rides in on a humble donkey to signify his peaceful reign.
And so Jesus too, rides into Jerusalem, the King of Peace. The King of a different peace than the ‘peace of Rome’, the pax romana that ruled the day through imperial power which prevented conflict and uprising through fear and power, more concerned with order than with justice.
Jesus rode into Jerusalem with a different kind of peace in mind, …and it was dangerous. It valued compassion over order, it did not bend to fear or earthly power, it lifted up the lowly and sent the rich away empty and made the complacent nervous.
This Palm Sunday procession was not a parade, it was a protest!
Jesus scholars Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan intensify the whole scene by suggesting that the Palm Sunday procession was one of two processions that day, they write:
“On the opposite side of the city, from the west, Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Idumea, Judea, and Samaria, entered Jerusalem at the head of a column of imperial cavalry and soldiers. Jesus’ procession proclaimed the kingdom of God; Pilate’s proclaimed the power of the empire. The two processions embody the central conflict of the week that led to Jesus’ crucifixion.” (The Last Week, Borg and Crossan)
Pilate was not coming to town that day to celebrate the Passover holiday being observed that weekend. He wasn’t there out of respect, he was there to maintain order, to remind the people of who is in charge, to remind the people that Caesar is Lord.
Passover was a nervous time for imperial rulers. The celebration of Hebrew liberation from a previous empire might spark unrest that could get out of hand quickly.
Jerusalem was a political tinderbox (could you imagine?), and Pilate was there to keep an eye on things.
So, there were two processions that day. Jesus on one side of the city, the bringer of God’s peace. And Pilate on the other side, enforcer of the pax romana.
And the question put before us this day as we draw near to Holy Week, is: which procession are we in? Which procession do we want to be in? What kind of peace are we working for?
Of course, we all want to say that we’d be on Jesus’ side of town that day. But do we say the same thing when this choice is costly? When it’s not done decently and in order? Do we waver when Jesus’ procession isn’t the safest choice?
When I consider this question of the two processions, the words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King challenge and bring this choice into sharper relief.
From a jail in Birmingham, Dr. King wonders if the biggest threat to freedom is not the extreme member of the Ku Klux Klan, but might actually be the white Christian moderate, who as he describes, is “more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice”
These are the two processions of Palm Sunday, a negative peace and a positive one. One that maintains order, and one that restores the broken and lifts up the lowly – do we choose order and absence of conflict, or do we choose the kind of peace that means justice, even if it’s messy and disorderly. Do we close our doors or do we welcome the stranger? Do we hold on to wealth or do we make sure others have what they need? Do we hoard our privilege or do we spend it on others? Do we keep our cloak on or do we line the dusty road with it?
Which procession are in?
….When Jesus drew near the city, he wept over it, saying, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes”
The things that make for peace. They can be hard to see. That way can be hard to walk.
As we enter Holy Week, as we join Jesus and draw near to Jerusalem, let us carry this question with us. Let us wonder about what peace looks like in our world. Let us wonder what it might cost us. Let us wonder what gifts it might hold.
And as we draw near, let us also carry Zechariah’s song from the beginning of Luke’s Gospel:
By the tender mercy of our God,
the dawn from on high will break upon us,
79 to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
By the power of the Holy Spirit, may it be so. Amen.