Misunderstood Mission First Baptist Richmond, April 14, 2019 Palm/Passion Sunday Luke 19:28-40

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, saying, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!”

Some of you were here for the “Old-Fashioned, Foot-Stomping, Down by the

Riverside Revival” that was held in this very room on Martin Luther King Day. It was

Bessie Taliaferro’s idea, and although I had my doubts at first it turned out to be a great one. We invited Mount Tabor Baptist Church to join us. Their Gospel Choir sang, our

Sanctuary Choir sang, Dr. Ponder and I took turns in the pulpit, and our combined choirs ended the evening with a spirited rendition of “Total Praise” that was totally…awesome.

It was different, although not necessarily better, than our experience with Mount Tabor two years ago, when we gathered on Martin Luther King Day to watch the movie

“Selma.” Have you seen it? It’s the story of how Dr. King led a Civil Rights march from

Selma, Alabama, to the state capitol in Montgomery in the spring of 1965. I was born in

Selma just a few years before that march, but as I say when anybody raises the question,

“I didn’t stir up all that trouble down there.” I would contend that not even Martin Luther

King stirred up all that trouble. He was trying to lead a peaceful protest. But there was

trouble all the same:

Big trouble.

Near the beginning of the movie there’s a scene where a woman named Annie

Lee Cooper tries to register to vote—for the fifth time. She hands the application to the

1 white registrar and says, in a hopeful voice, “It’s all right this time.” He barks back, “It’s right when I say it’s right!” And then he looks up from his desk and asks her to recite the

Preamble to the Constitution. She begins slowly, “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare…” He cuts her off by asking,

“How many county judges in Alabama?” She pauses and then says, “Sixty seven.” He smiles a cruel smile and says, “Name them.” Her shoulders sag. She knows she’s been defeated. He brings out a big rubber stamp and slams it down on her application.

“Denied.”

I felt the injustice of that moment the first time I saw the movie, but when I watched it with the members of Mount Tabor I felt it all the more keenly. I could hear some of them groaning as they identified with that woman. The Fifteenth Amendment

“prohibits each government in the United States from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” and yet in those days, in the South, it was happening all the time. Martin Luther King went to Selma to protest that fundamental injustice, to lead a march from Selma to Montgomery to demand voting rights for Annie Lee Cooper and thousands of others like her.

And that’s when the trouble really began.

There’s a scene in the movie where a large group of demonstrators starts across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, determined to walk to Montgomery, fifty miles away. Dr.

King is not with them; he’s been detained in Atlanta. But the marchers decide to go ahead without him. They feel the moment is right. When they get to the middle of the bridge they can see what’s waiting for them on the other side: an army of Alabama state

2 troopers and local law enforcement officers, many of them on horseback. Those on the ground are wearing helmets and holding gas masks. A white bystander wraps barbed wire around a baseball bat, getting ready. The marchers slow to a stop. They are told to turn around, to go home, but the Reverend Hosea Williams, who is leading the march, respectfully asks for permission to pass.

That’s when the gas masks go on, the command is given, and the troopers rush forward with a shout. The marchers turn to run but it’s too late. The troopers bring their billy clubs down on innocent heads. They toss canisters of tear gas into the fleeing crowd. One of them, on horseback, uncoils a whip and brings it down on the back of a man who is running for his life. Much of the violence was captured by television cameras and newspaper reporters. The images were broadcast on the evening news and printed on the front pages of the next day’s newspapers. The headlines screamed,

“Bloody Sunday.”

Which is not what we call this day.

There was a bloody Friday later in Holy Week, but on this day we commemorate what we have come to call “Palm Sunday,” and usually it’s a very joyful celebration of

Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, when the crowd that was with him waved palm branches and shouted “Hosanna! Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!

Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!” That was on this side of the Kidron

Valley, on the Mount of Olives, but on the other side, in Jerusalem, the authorities were waiting, and they weren’t joyful at all. Some of the Pharisees in the crowd, who seemed to be looking out for Jesus’ best interests, said, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop!”

They knew that if they kept it up that way there would be trouble—big trouble—in

Jerusalem, but Jesus answered, “I tell you, if these were silent the stones would shout

out.”

I can’t remember who said it, or where I read it, but I seem to recall a movie critic

saying that in “Selma” the Edmund Pettus Bridge functions as a character, as much a part

of the drama as Martin Luther King or Sheriff Jim Clark. And there is one scene in

particular where the camera focuses on that name attached to the front of the bridge,

dripping rust, and then cranes upward so that you can see the marchers coming from the

other side, making their second attempt, this time with Dr. King at the front of the

procession as they come toward the waiting troopers. For some reason that line has

gotten stuck inside my head—“the bridge functions as a character”—and I’ve thought

about how, in today’s story, the city of Jerusalem functions as a character:

It, too, is a place of conflict and confrontation.

A few weeks ago the lectionary gave us an option when it came to the Gospel reading. We could either read a passage from Luke 13 where Jesus talks about Herod

(“that fox”), or we could read a passage from Luke 9, where Jesus comes down from the

Mount of Transfiguration and heals a boy with an unclean spirit. I went with the latter passage because I wanted to talk about “Misunderstood Healing,” but today I’d like to circle back around to that passage in Luke 13. It begins with some Pharisees who, like those in today’s reading, seem to have Jesus’ best interests at heart. They say to him,

“Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” And Jesus says, essentially, “Go tell that fox to get in line. Everybody wants to kill me! But it’s not going to happen here, not now, for it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside Jerusalem” (Luke 13:31-33).

And then Jesus bursts into full lament. He says: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills

4 the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!

See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

In today’s reading, that time has come. Jesus is on his way down the slope of the

Mount of Olives, getting ready to cross the Kidron Valley and ride up into the city on the other side, and the crowds are shouting, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” But again, not everyone is happy to see him. It’s like the Edmund Pettus

Bridge. Jesus is headed into sure and certain conflict. He knows it, and he knows how it’s going to end. He’s known it since chapter 9 of this Gospel, at least, when he first whispered to his disciples, “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” But it didn’t have to be that way. Jesus’ mission has been clear from the beginning, from his inaugural sermon in the Nazareth synagogue: he has come “to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-

19), or as he puts it elsewhere in the Gospels, to establish God’s kingdom “on earth as it is in heaven.”

And that’s the problem.

In order for God’s kingdom to come on earth the people would have to acknowledge God as king, and welcome Jesus as his representative. Some people—those who have been with him from the beginning, those who have watched him help and heal, those who have heard him teach and preach—are willing to do that. They are the ones

walking with him as he makes his way into the city. They are the ones shouting

“Hosanna!” and saying, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!” They

know they can trust Jesus with their lives. They know they can trust him with the future.

They would be more than happy to hand over all earthly rule to him. They are like that

crowd marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge with Martin Luther King, ready to go

with him all the way to Montgomery. But on the other side of the bridge the authorities

are waiting, and they don’t trust him at all. The religious and political leaders of Israel

don’t trust Jesus. They can see the way the crowds are going after him and it makes them

nervous. They know that if things keep going this way they will lose their positions and

their power. Something has to be done about Jesus.

Someone has to stop him.

In my daily Bible readings last week I came to that passage from 1 Samuel 8

where the people of Israel ask Samuel to give them a king like other nations. Samuel

tries to talk them out of it. He goes on and on about how a king will be a taker, not a

giver. He will take their sons and daughters, their flocks and herds, their houses and

lands. But the people insist; they say, “No, but we are determined to have a king over

us!” And the Lord tells Samuel to go ahead and do it. He says, “They have not rejected

you, but they have rejected me from being king over them” (1 Sam. 8:7). It is one of the

saddest moments in the Bible, and Jesus seems to be feeling it as he makes his way down

the slope of the Mount of Olives. In the verse that follows today’s Gospel reading Luke

says, “As he came near and saw 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” (Luke 19:41-42).

What are “the things that make for peace”? For Jesus, on that day in Jerusalem, the things that make for peace might have been to receive the king instead of rejecting him! To welcome Jesus into the city of Jerusalem as the king that he was, and is!

Suppose the Alabama state troopers on the other side of the Edmund Pettus Bridge had welcomed those marchers. Suppose they had said, “Let us give you an escort to the capital, so you can get the voting rights every American deserves!” If they had done that the story might have had a different ending. Not that it had a bad ending. A district judge ruled in favor of the protestors. They were not only allowed to march to

Montgomery they were given protection by the National Guard. And when they got to the state capitol Martin Luther King made a triumphant speech and ended by saying,

“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, he is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword. His truth is marching on! Glory, glory hallelujah!”

It was a great moment.

If the religious and political authorities of Jerusalem had been able to welcome

Jesus that would have been a great moment. Palm Sunday would have had a different ending. But they weren’t, and it didn’t. As soon as Jesus came into the city they began to look for an opportunity to arrest him. Eventually they succeeded. They paid Judas to betray him in the Garden of Gethsemane. They trumped up some false charges against him, brought him before the religious authorities, and tried him. They found him guilty of blasphemy. And then they brought him before the political authorities who tried him and found him guilty of insurrection. He was mocked, and scourged, and nailed to a

7 cross, and as he hung there he might have heard God whisper, “They have not rejected you, but they have rejected me.”

What are the things that make for peace? Receiving Jesus rather than rejecting him. The place of conflict and confrontation doesn’t have to be a bridge over the

Alabama River, it doesn’t have to be the ancient city of Jerusalem: it can be the battleground of the human heart. You can decide here and now whether you will receive

Jesus or reject him, and I would submit that until you receive him you will never know true peace. There is something beautiful about saying yes to him, something beautiful about laying down all your stubborn resistance and all your reasonable objections and simply saying, “Yes!” You can feel the joy bubbling up inside you as you do it. You can feel the word “Hosanna!” forming on your lips. On this day you may even find yourself wanting to shout, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”

Your heart is a character in this story. God’s heart is a character in this story.

And what Jesus makes clear in his ministry is that God’s heart has always been after yours. In that sense it is a love story. God has always wanted you to say yes to him.

Maybe you did it once, a long time ago, and need to say it again. Or maybe you have never done it. Maybe today is the day. What are the things that make for peace?

Receiving Jesus rather than rejecting him; letting him ride into the center of your life on this Palm Sunday as he rode into the city of Jerusalem long ago; giving up your claim to power, and handing it over to him, letting him rule—until God’s kingdom comes, and

God’s will is done, in your heart as it is in heaven.