Sermon Transcript: April 13, 2025
Our scripture reading today comes from Luke 19: 29-44:
When he had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, 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. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it.’ ” So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?” They said, “The Lord needs it.” Then they brought it to Jesus, and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. Now as he was 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 the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”
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. Indeed, the days will come upon you when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.”
For the Word of God in scripture,
For the Word of God among us,
For the Word of God within us,
Thanks be to God.
***
The Palm Sunday story always reads like street theater. And indeed, it is. All of the Gospels tell the story of Jesus entering Jerusalem the week before his death. All of them have crowds crying out and spreading their cloaks.
Matthew and Mark and John mention palm branches being waved. Mark and Matthew and Luke have a donkey—although Matthew hilariously misunderstands a Hebrew pattern of repetition in poetry and has Jesus simultaneously riding a donkey and a colt. That’s a mental picture.
And John—I didn’t notice this until recently—the animal is just implied but not directly mentioned. John just says Jesus entered into Jerusalem.
By my reading, Luke contains only one detail that the others do not. And it’s really easy to
miss. It’s a very subtle one.
You see, Mark and Matthew tell us that Jesus gets on the donkey—or the colt—the traditional way. He puts himself on it. But did you catch what Luke said? He says that the disciples lifted Jesus onto the donkey. Why does Jesus need to be lifted onto the donkey? The answer is, of course, he doesn’t.
Luke is drawing our attention to this little detail—maybe an allusion to Jesus being lifted up as an infant in Mary’s arms, or maybe it’s foreshadowing—inviting us to look forward to Jesus being lifted up on the cross at week’s end.
By the way, did you notice what else is missing in Luke’s version? Did anybody catch it?
I’ll give you a clue: some of you are holding one right now. There’s no palms in Luke. No palms. Did you ever catch that?
One possible reason for this is explained by Professor Robert Williamson, who says the waving of palms in the book of Maccabees was a sign of loyalty to the Maccabean king—a nationalist, pro-Israel, over-and-against-the-Greek-empire symbol and act.
The other Gospel writers are okay with this. But for some reason, Luke doesn’t want to include this. It’s not that Luke is pro-Roman so much—it’s just that he seems to want to avoid the political connotations altogether, so that we focus elsewhere.
In other words, Luke wants us to focus on God’s agency and not our own.
Will Willimon from Duke writes, “We are forever getting confused into thinking that scripture is mainly about what we are supposed to do, rather than a picture of who God is.”
Earlier in Luke’s Gospel, John the Baptist proclaims, I tell you that out of these stones, God can raise up children of Abraham.
And in the Hebrew scriptures, in the book of Habakkuk, we read: The very stones will cry out from the wall, and the rafters will respond from the woodwork.
We read scripture from our point of view. We tend to think God cares only about us humans—and perhaps, maybe, to a slightly lesser degree, other living creatures. But scripture is quite clear that it is the whole of creation to which God attends. And it is the whole of creation which responds to God. And you and I can be a part of that response—a part of that parade—or not.
Barbara Brown Taylor writes: “People encounter God under shady oak trees, on riverbanks, at mountaintops, and in long stretches of barren wilderness. God shows up in whirlwinds, starry skies, burning bushes, and perfect strangers. When people want to know more about God, the Son of God tells them to pay attention to the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, to women kneading bread and workers lining up for their pay. Whoever wrote this stuff believed that people could learn as much about the way of God from paying attention to the world as they could paying attention to scripture.”
Professor Williamson writes: “Luke paints a picture of the cosmic world, the animal world, the human world—even the stones—shifting in alignment to point to one thing. To one moment. To hold this wildly powerful moment of this paradigmatically holy man coming into a paradigmatically holy city. As Jesus holds up the fate of the city, we notice that it’s not actually so different from the impending fate of his own body.”
We can get so wrapped up into our own worlds—the way that we see things, what we think is important. Even as Luke describes this very particular scene with particular people at a particular time and place, he is sure to indicate that something much, much bigger is happening.
God is not just interested in first-century Palestine. God does not just care about Jerusalem and its people. God does not just care about these things. God’s plan is for the whole of creation.
We are living in a moment that is not dissimilar to when Jesus first entered Jerusalem. We are living in a time when religion and nationalism are again colluding to threaten so much of what we hold dear. A time when the powerful are looking to exert their will and reshape the world according to their desires and whims. A time when people like you and me feel helpless to combat these mighty forces.
Again, Willimon tells the story of a church that removed the American flag from its sanctuary. The pastor explained the flag’s removal: “There may have been a time when this national symbol, positioned so closely to Christ’s holy table, might have been innocent. But in our day, when it’s becoming increasingly difficult for Christians to keep their symbols straight—and when we are asking too much of this flag—we don’t want to confuse people about the dominant signifiers of Christian reality. As you know, our hope is not in the flag of any nation. Our hope is in the cross. In the broken bread. In the shared cup.”
I take Luke’s omission of the palms and his mention of the stones as a similar reminder—shifting our attention, our focus, from all of the doings and goings-on that you and I occupy ourselves with every day, to what God is doing in and through us, with us, and even despite us. Because, friends, God does care about what is happening. God does care about our country, our people. God cares about our city and its people.
But God’s care is not limited. And it surely isn’t exclusionary. So you and I can boldly proclaim our faith—without belittling that of others. And we can be proudly patriotic—without being nationalistic. We can be pro-human progress—without devaluing and destroying the rest of creation.
Because, you see, by coming to us in the person of Jesus, God shows us that the universal is in the particular—and that every stone, every branch waving, every cloak laid down, every person crying in praise or crying out in pain or confusion—is part of God’s world. God’s kingdom. Where love reigns over all. Where love is lifted up.
Friends, this week—this Holy Week—when we look to the cross, we see God’s love meeting the violence of our world. And for a moment, it seems that the violence wins.
But only for a moment.
Amen.
