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Luke 19:
28-40
March 28, 2010
HOSANNA: THANK GOD FOR THE LIVING STONES!
I love that part of the Palm Sunday story where the Pharisees, the religious authorities were trying to quiet all those who were shouting, “Hosanna”, saying to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples,” but Jesus said, I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out. These words almost invite a Walt Disney kind of animation. Use your imagination and perhaps you can see large stones and little stones dancing and singing their praises to God. I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out. These words from our Palm Sunday narrative are a reminder for me that we should not allow ourselves to be rebuked or stifled or compromised by the Pharisees of today, that we should take our faith out into the streets, such that what we believe and the principles for which we stand, the gospel by which we live can be heard by others, but of course there are always those – both inside the church and outside the church – who do all they can to silence those who endeavor to follow the life and teachings of Jesus, those who do all that they can to intimidate or silence voices of conscience, those who would do all that they could to build a firewall between the church and the world, those who would have the church be nothing more than an insipid monument to irrelevancy, those who would take the gospel of Jesus and turn it outside-in, such that what we do and what we say as a church always and only stays within the narrow confines of our church building. These are the Pharisees of today. Recently, for example, the Fox News commentator, Glenn Beck has aligned himself with those who rebuked the disciples of long ago. Perhaps you heard him say that if church members hear their churches speak of such things as “social justice”, they “should leave their churches” immediately, saying, as he did and I quote: If you have a priest that
is pushing social justice, go find another parish… I beg you look for the words
social justice I don’t know how one can be both a communist and a Nazi at one and the same time, and if there were an Emmy to be offered for irresponsible journalism, then surely this would be worthy of consideration. But please, do not construe from this that Glenn Beck would not be welcome in this place. On the contrary, if he were here I would love to offer him a front row seat and I would love to introduce him to some of the “living stones” I have known, for whenever the church of Jesus Christ has been rebuked, the best response has not been a sermon, such as this, or a statement of theology or a petition with many names on it but rather the quiet and persistent examples of those who refuse to be silenced, those such as Oscar Romero down in El Salvador who was shot and killed even as he served the Sacrament of Holy Communion because he dared to be an advocate for the poor, because he dared to dream Jesus’ dream that someday all would have a decent place to live. I cannot help but think of how 20 years after his death, 28 people from a small church in a small town in Old Lyme, Connecticut traveled down to El Salvador and despite stomach ailments and incredibly hot weather, they built houses with and for the poor. Would this effort fall under the category of “Social Justice?” Unabashedly it does! And if an assassin’s bullet silenced the prophetic voice of this Archbishop, thank God there were 28 Living Stones who 20 years later carried on with his work of “social justice.” Before his untimely death, Archbishop Romero
said, Peace is not the silence of cemeteries. Peace is not the result of violent repression. Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all. Peace is dynamism. Peace is generosity. It is right and duty. If this is Social Justice, if this is that from which our social commentator would have us run away and hide, I would be proud to have our church associated with these words. Teacher, rebuke your disciples. But Jesus answered, If these were silent, the very stones would cry out. Over in the Holy Land, there are of course a lot of antiquities, and archeologists sometime have a hard time differentiating between where one civilization ends and another begins, so many are the ancient walls. While there are many tourists from around the world that love to go to the Holy Land to see these antiquities, I very much appreciate how the religious leaders over there sometimes refer to their children – Muslim, Jewish and Christians – as the “living stones”, those on whom someday a new and more peaceful civilization might be built. If these were silent, the very stones would cry out. On our most recent journey to Israel and the occupied territory of Palestine, we met with many of those who have distinguished themselves as “living stones”, voices of conscience crying out for justice. I am proud to say that there are an abundance of Jews, Christians and Muslims who have exemplified themselves in this way, some showing incredible courage in doing so. While I would like to share with you many of the stories of those with whom we met, this morning I would prefer to share with you the story of one we did not meet. A young Jewish woman, 19 years of age, and her name is Sahar Vardi, and we were to meet with her at the YMCA in East Jerusalem on Thursday, March 11th. However, on that very day, I received a message from Sahar, apologizing for the fact that she would not be able to meet with us, as just that morning her home had been hit by some very ugly graffiti. Hateful slurs on her character were written on her family’s home, saying, among other things, that she was a “traitor” to Israel, saying with their graffiti that this defamation of her character was a direct result of her participation in demonstrations on behalf of the Palestinian people. Imagine the trauma this would cause, to wake up in the morning to see your family’s home spray-painted with angry threats and slurs, being called a traitor to your own country. When asked about it a few days later by a newspaper reporter from Haaretz, the leading Israeli newspaper, Sahar said this, Well. Of course it’s a little scary and it’s not true either. Everything I do is because I care and because I want to continue living here, and because I believe that there is injustice and we have to fight it to change the situation…. (Nevertheless), (she goes on to say) everything will be fine in the end. In the historical perspective such struggles succeed, but it can take decades and even hundreds of years. The occupation will finally end.. but many people will pay the price before it ends… Indeed, she comes from a proud family of those that Glenn Beck would call meddlers in “Social Justice.” Her own father was shot by an Israeli settler when he tried to help Palestinian farmers with their grape harvest. Nevertheless, Sahar continues on with her family’s proud tradition of being a “living stone.” At only 19 years of age, she has already been imprisoned 3 times for refusing to serve in the Israeli army. “If these were silent, the very stones would cry out.” And indeed they do. Daily, all over the world, “living stones” are crying out for our humanity, crying out for justice, singing the songs of promise, crying out not only with their words but also with their deeds of kindness and compassion, writing their gospels not only with a pen or a pencil, but sometimes also with their blood, doing everything they can to allow themselves to be a response to those hateful words of graffiti that Sahar found on her home. I think of this young Jewish woman by the name of Sahar, and I like to think of her as being a sister to a young Jewish man by the name of Yeshua ben Joseph. Maybe you’ve heard of this man, for he also was one of those “living stones.” He grew up in the small town of Nazareth and as a child he had fallen in love with the prophecy of Isaiah. Where others may have collected baseball cards, this young man collected the wisdom of his elders, and so it was that he came to dream noble, even, some might say, impossible dreams, dreams of how swords would finally be beaten into plowshares, dreams of how Jews and Samaritans would live in a beautiful state of interdependence, dreams of a great feast in which no one would be left out, dreams of how collaborators with injustice would be transformed by the renewal of their minds, dreams of how those who had been spiritually blind would come to see themselves as beautiful children of God. He dreamed of a time when enmity and tribalism would be finally overcome. He dreamed of a time when all would have a sufficient amount of food for their children. He dreamed of a time when “liberty and justice” would be more than just a slogan, but a Way of life, and little by little people got to know about this young man who spoke of such high and lofty things as Justice and Peace, and they began to follow him. But, there were social commentators in those days as well, and they called this young man a trouble-maker and a traitor, and yet unable to silence him in any other way, they finally had him arrested and crucified, and yet, as we will celebrate next Sunday, the spirit of Yeshua ben Joseph could not be defeated, and his spirit lives on in those of you who refuse to be silenced by the voices of repression and despair, those who are sufficiently stubborn and hardheaded they could be categorized as “living stones”, those rock-solid in their convictions, those who dare to cry out the same message as that of Oscar Romero, Sahar Vardi, Martin Luther King, Jr. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Dorothy Day, Mother Theresa, Clarence Jordan, and Yeshua ben Joseph, otherwise known as Jesus of Nazareth, and while on this Palm Sunday, some might say, “hosanna” to something that happened a long time ago, I say “hosanna” to the living Christ, the Christ that is present wherever, whenever there are those who dare to speak of such things as justice and truth. Be that as it may, perhaps I need to say a word or two about what it is when we speak of Justice. When Jesus spoke of justice, he wasn’t so much talking about a legal system, crime and punishment or retribution – divine or human -- for things that one may have done wrong; he wasn’t talking about the justice one might receive in a court of law, and neither was he talking about divine retribution. Rather, I think, he was talking about the delicate balance of God’s Creation. As a young Jewish boy, he would have been very familiar with the beautiful simplicity in the prophecy of Micah: What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. He also would have felt a kindred spirit with the Hebrew words: “Tikkun Olam”, words that mean “to repair or to mend the world,” and in this regard, I think he would have had a feeling of affinity with the Native Americans who speak of “mending the sacred hoop of God’s Creation.” Where things are out of balance, where some have plenty, more than enough, and others live without anything at all, not even a roof over their heads, this fractures the wholeness and the harmony of God’s Creation. Given how interrelated everything is, a fracture here or there, ultimately throws everything out of whack, and so those who speak of justice or social justice or economic justice or environmental justice are those who want to restore the delicate balance of God’s Creation, and I would defy anyone to read the scriptures, read the stories about Jesus, read the parables and not see that Jesus was very much concerned about such things. Indeed, think of the very first words that Jesus said when he came out of the wilderness. If first words are important, if they give you a picture of what someone’s agenda would be, see how Jesus very carefully chose to use the words of the prophet Isaiah when he spoke in his synagogue in Nazareth: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because God has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. God has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim that this is the year that the Lord has chosen. My prayer is that these words might be our words as well, and even though those in authority did and continue to do their level best to silence the voice of Jesus, my hope and my prayer is that we all might feel the hand of God upon us, the anointing, the animating power of God that can take those with a stone-cold heart, even Pharisees and cynical social commentators and turn them into a living stones, a passionate voice for justice. For I believe that the Spirit of God is like a March wind, strong and wonderfully unpredictable, able to move us in ways we never would have thought possible, able to bring order out of chaos and a renewed sense of meaning and purpose for those who have lost their way. My hope and my prayer is that we all might feel the warmth and the loving power of that spirit, such that we too might become the Living Stones such that Jesus could say, “go ahead, do your worst; silence me, write graffiti on my mother’s house, hang me on a cross and silence my brother Oscar Romero and Dietrich Bonhoeffer and all my other disciples, but I tell you if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.” That’s where you and I come in. I hope! Amen.
David W. Good Old Lyme, Connecticut
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