Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

All Sermons are © Copyrighted and may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the express permission of the author.

And some of the Pharisees in the multitude said to him, "Teacher, rebuke your disciples." He answered, "I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out." Jerusalem is a rock pile. It's streets are narrow canyons pinched between ancient stone walls -- walls with openings all along which are the doorways of tiny shops, and the shops' merchandise spills out onto the narrow street (so that, if there is a shop on both sides, there's hardly enough room to pass), and the shop owners stand in the doorways and try to entice the passers-by. It's always been that way.

We inched along the Via Delorosa (where Christ carried his cross). A large group Indonesian tourists, all wearing day-glow orange caps, clogged the street ahead of us. So inconsiderate, they stopped at each station of the cross and chanted their ancient, western prayers. ("Hail, Mary, full of grace….") I turned to our guide and said, "It would be nice to see these streets without all the tourists, to see them as they were when Jesus was here." He said, "Oh, no. It was Passover, remember. It would have been just like this." And I suddenly gained a new understanding of what it would have been like to carry one's cross, to go to one's death, through such a mob, in such a confined space. To be jostled, and mocked, and spat upon by strangers at such close range. I also gained a new understanding of why a riot, in such a place, would have been an enormous threat.

That's what the Pharisees feared, on Palm Sunday, when they told Jesus to hush up his disciples. For the most part, you remember, Rome let the Jews run their own show….so long as they did nothing to upset Rome. (It wasn't true sovereignty, of course, but it permitted a modicum of self-respect.) The Romans, however, became especially touchy around Passover - too many Jews together in one place, too much opportunity for trouble. So, when this pitiful little parade began to wend its way through Jerusalem's narrow streets, during Passover week, the Jewish leaders rushed out to say, "Keep it down! Keep it down! We don't want to provoke the Romans." These Pharisees were peacemakers, were they not? And hadn't Jesus said, "Blessed are the peacemakers?"

But, you see, real peacemakers are not simply avoiders of conflict. That can't be what Jesus meant - he wasn't that himself! Yet he is called "The Prince of Peace." To be a peacemaker is not simply to smooth over differences, not (certainly) to ignore evil in the interest of "keeping peace." To be a peacemaker is to live by the Word of God, which alone leads to that peace which Jesus said "passes all understanding."

"I'm afraid he won't like me," the young woman said. "I don't want to cause trouble," said another. "I'm afraid she'll get angry," said one beleaguered husband of his demanding wife. "I just go along to get along." People who say such things think they are peacemakers, but truthfully they are cowards. And I worry about them. There are times when, if we really love peace (or, if we love real peace), we have to say and do the hard thing. For peace never comes by appeasement. It comes by truth.

Here, on this special day, we see a man, Jesus of Nazareth, called the Prince of Peace, who has made up his mind to put his head into the lion's mouth. Palm Sunday is about life and death. There is nothing we cling to more dearly than life. Yet we know, from experience, that the line between life and death is a thin one, and, in fact, life is inevitably taken from us, by this or by that. Once in a while someone does not wait for "this or that" but gives life away voluntarily -- goes against all the programming on his hard drive, rejects every instinct, every genetic urge. And when that happens, the whole world remembers - for it is so freaky.

Jesus carefully reminded his disciples (because it was so important for them to remember), "Nobody takes my life from me. I give it away." Holy Week is not the story of good guys and bad guys. We mourn Jesus' death only in so far as we mourn our own sinful condition which we see reflected there Holy Week is the story of one who, as St. John said, "having loved his own, loved them to the end." That's why Palm Sunday is important. Here, for Jesus, the die us cast. He could have continued to teach out in the country, in the one-horse towns, and gotten away with it, probably forever. But when he rode down that hillside, from the Mount of Olives, and through that gate into Jerusalem's crowded streets, he was "downtown." When his disciples shouted, it couldn't be ignored, not now, not here! The enemies of God would not be able to tolerate him in this place, at the heart of things. Today, also, we are comfortable with Jesus on the fringes of our lives but not in the center. As long as he's out there, he's quaint. When he's in here he's a problem. For he asks us to die.

Some years ago ABC television produced a beautiful and sensitive documentary about a monastery in up-state New York. It was called, "The Abbey." The monks of this Abbey took as their particular vocation to hold spiritual retreats for groups that would come from the outside world. The group that came while the documentary was being filmed was a group New York City firemen. (And this was long before September 11.) The monk who was leading the retreat began by saying that monks and firemen had a lot in common. "What," I thought? They both lived on the edge between life and death, he went on. "Maybe firemen," I thought, "but not monks." Firemen confronted death every day, the monk said, and laid their lives on the line time and again. Monks, by giving up all worldly possessions, all ambition, all pride - by giving up self, died every day. Both did it voluntarily. They were dying on purpose, or perhaps I should said they were dying with a purpose. ("Nobody takes my life from me," Jesus said. "I give it away.") He rode to his death. We all must die. The question is not only "when" and "how" (the scientific question) but, also, "for what purpose" (the moral question). Holy Week is about life and death. If we don't talk about these things in the next few days, when will we talk about them?