This Fortress Around Your Heart

THIS FORTRESS AROUND YOUR HEART The Rev. J. Donald Waring Grace Church in New York March 24, 2013 Palm Sunday “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” (Luke 19:38) Any historian who sets out to describe the mid to late 20th century will be hard pressed to avoid the words, Cold War. As most of you know, the Cold War refers to the political and military standoff between the Western Bloc nations, led by the United States, and the Eastern Bloc nations, led by the Soviet Union. For over forty years the world’s two superpowers regarded each other with distrust and disdain, and stockpiled enough nuclear weapons to assure mutual destruction should either power ever fire upon the other. One of the strangest incidents during the Cold War was the flight of Mathias Rust. Rust was a 19-year old West German youth who cared passionately about world peace. He was deeply disappointed when, in October of 1986, a summit meeting between the Soviets and the Americans failed to achieve any progress towards nuclear nonproliferation. Thus he determined that he himself would have to do something. Rust was an amateur pilot, so his plan was to fly himself to Moscow and personally deliver to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev a 20-page peace manifesto that he’d written. The only problem: making an unauthorized, solo flight to Moscow would be suicide. Moscow was probably the most heavily defended city in the world, and the Russians were known to shoot down any planes that strayed into their air space, including a Korean Airlines jumbo jet full of passengers a few years earlier. Nevertheless, Rust concluded that undertaking his mission was worth risking even life itself. So on May 28, 1987 he turned his rented, single-engine, four-seat Cessna airplane toward Moscow. Deeper and deeper he flew into Soviet airspace. Along the way several MiG fighter jets checked him out, but remarkably never fired. After five hours Rust had miraculously slipped through all Soviet air defenses, and approached Moscow. He circled the city until he found Red Square. Muscovites on the ground looked up, and saw through the mist a small private plane descending from the clouds. It was an odd sight, to say the least, as ownership of private aircraft was extremely rare in Soviet Russia. Some thought it might be Gorbachev himself. But no, it was Mathias Rust. He came in low looking for a place to land so as not to injure any pedestrians. With each pass he drew more and more attention from excited Muscovites below. When he finally touched down he taxied his little craft essentially to the steps of the Kremlin. He climbed out of the cockpit and received the welcome of a crowd that gathered around the plane to cheer and greet him. It took over two hours for the police to figure out that something was amiss, and come to arrest the pilot. The flight of Mathias Rust to the very heart of Soviet power stunned the world, and some say it hastened the end of the Cold War. When Jesus entered Jerusalem on the first Palm Sunday, in or about the year 29 AD, the city was a heavily defended, hostile place. Jerusalem was occupied by the Romans, the undisputed superpower of the world at the time. The Romans had a means for dealing with insurrectionists. It was called crucifixion. They would line the roadways outside the city with crosses to make a public example of guilty rebels. As Jesus drew near he may well have passed by the dead and dying victims of Roman justice. Jerusalem was also the seat of religious power, with a huge Temple hierarchy that was heavily invested in maintaining the status quo, even if it meant colluding with the Roman occupiers. Jerusalem was a tinderbox of revolutionary fervor. It was the time of Passover, when the population of the walled city would swell from fifty- thousand to as many as two-million pilgrims, many of whom didn’t like the Romans, and were looking for a messiah to spark the rebellion. It’s no wonder that when Jesus drew near and saw the city he wept over it, saying, “Would that even today you knew the things that make for peace! But now they are hid from your eyes.” (Luke 19:41-42) In 1987, when Mathias Rust flew right through Soviet air defenses and touched down in Red Square, he did so not in a Stealth bomber, not in a supersonic fighter jet, but in an unarmed private plane with a top speed of 140 mph. It’s not that the authorities didn’t notice Rust. They did. They tracked him on radar, they pulled up alongside him, they tried to radio. Some say the military was skittish about shooting down another civilian, and causing more international outrage on top of the Korean Airlines disaster. Likewise, the Gospels tell us that when Jesus entered Jerusalem he did so not in a war chariot, not astride a mighty steed, but riding on a donkey. It’s not that the Romans and Temple officials didn’t notice him. They did. On the long journey to Jerusalem the Jews had sent delegations of Scribes and Pharisees to monitor his progress, and hopefully trick him into saying something that would be cause for his arrest. But the soldiers and Temple guards were skittish about seizing the popular preacher, fearing that doing so might incite a riot. Somehow, Jesus managed to pass through the midst of them every time, especially on this day when great, cheering crowds welcomed him through the gates of the city. Later he would clear the Temple of the money changers, hold court there with his teachings, and by week’s end come face-to-face with the local ruling powers: face-to-face with the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, face-to-face with the puppet king Herod, face-to-face with the High Priest Caiaphas. Fearsome figures, indeed. What were they thinking? What did these two high flying daredevils hope to accomplish? Mathias Rust said he wanted to build an imaginary bridge between East and West. He wanted a personal audience with Mikhail Gorbachev in which he would speak to the world leader of the things that make for peace. To get there he chose to ride a humble little airplane because that was all he knew how to fly, and nothing else was available to him. Was he idealistic? Of course. Rust himself thought he had about a 50-50 chance of getting through, which were odds no bookmaker would have given. He never did get a meeting with Gorbachev, but the Soviet President used the incident to clean house, and fire the recalcitrant members of his military who were stuck in Cold War ways. Thus, it can be said that Mathias Rust’s mission was more successful than he ever could have hoped it would be. As for Rust himself, he was convicted of malicious hooliganism, and spent 15 months in a Russian jail before being sent home. He later had run ins with the law back in Germany before settling down as a Yoga instructor and a financial analyst. So end the comparisons between Mathias Rust and Jesus! What about Jesus and his mission? What was he thinking? With Jesus, we encounter not an idealist who gave himself a 50-50 chance, but rather a realist who seemed to think he had a 100-percent chance of being nailed to a Roman cross. What is more, he chose a humble beast to ride into the city not because nothing more impressive was available, but instead for its symbolic value. The Gospel writers reveal how Jesus took great care to secure the particular donkey he rode in order to fulfill the ancient prophecy of Zechariah (9:9): Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of 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. Jesus didn’t come as an idealistic emissary of peace, but as a king making a royal claim in the face of Pilate, Herod, Caiaphas, and all who cheered him. But what kind of a king? Did he want to wield Pilate’s temporal power? Did he want to wear the robes of the Temple High Priest, or the crown of the King of the Jews? I don’t think he did. “My kingdom, “ he would say to Pilate, “is not of this world.” Ultimately, the defenses that Jesus worked to slip through were not the visible battlements, barricades, and checkpoints of a city, but rather, the fortress around the human heart. Palm Sunday should worry us. Most of the time we in the church tend to think of ourselves as co-pilots with Jesus on his mission to bring peace and reconciliation to the earth. I would say that for fifty-one weeks of the year, the metaphor works. Fifty-one weeks, mind you, not fifty-two. Holy Week turns the tables on us. On Palm Sunday we look up and Jesus comes with clouds, descending through the mist of time. Suddenly, Jerusalem is us. Jerusalem is the inner depths of the human heart, yours and mind. We are Red Square. The heavily defended fortress that Jesus is circling is us. At the beginning of the service the procession of palms went around and around the church.

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