Keepers of the Flame (John 14:22-31)

Ever since Easter, we’ve been dipping into the Gospel of John. The first couple of readings were post-resurrection appearances —one in the upper room with Thomas and the others, the other on the beach where he cooks his followers a little fish breakfast. The last two weeks have given us pre-resurrection stories, motivated in part by the need to squeeze as much of a fourth Gospel into a three-year lectionary as possible. But in addition, these scriptures provide a look at what Jesus’ ministry is all about from John’sperspective, which is very different from that of the other three Gospels.

One of the reasons it’s so different is the time in which it was written: some ten to twenty years after the other three. The Christian landscape had been changing rapidly since the crucifixion; many, diverse interpretations of the Jesus phenomenon were floated and many sects—some small and some larger—rose and fell. We think there were many gospels written during that period, some—like the Gospel of Thomas—with very different conceptions Jesus and his mission.

Because of all this change, the environment in which Matthew, Mark and Luke were written was very different than when John was written, only a couple of decades later. The first three were written just before and just after the failed Jewish uprising of 70 C.E. As one Biblical scholar put it, they are war-timedocuments—within them, you can read material anticipating and reacting to this tragic and cataclysmic event. The Gospel of John is a very different animal, in part because it was written in Ephesus—far from the Jerusalem nexus— afteranother critical event: the eviction of the Christian house-church communities from the Ephesus synagogue. This conflict with the Jewish religious establishment provides the context for the Farewell Discourse, the teaching Jesus gave at the last Supper, which appears only in John. The disciples’ questions in the discourse reflect questions members of John’s community had, and Jesus addresses members of the house churches at the same time he does his own disciples.

And none of the questions reflect that situation better than the one from Judas—notthatJudas, he’d already left—which begins our passage: “Lord, how is it that you will reveal yourself to us, and not to the world?” It must have been a question much on the minds of John’s Ephesus community, especially in the face of Jewish non-acceptance of the gospel—why did they reject you, Lord? More to the point, how is it that you reveal yourself to us, but not to everyone else? His disciples had believedbecause he’d revealedhimself to them; why hadn’t he done so with everyone else?

Another way to put this question, and it makes more sense in terms of an excluded minority: why do you favor us, Lord? What makes us special enough to receive your special blessing? It must be ‘cause we’re more righteous, more holy, more faithfulthan those whom you have not favored by this revelation. After all, it was their own communitythey’d been cast out of, they were all Jews, there must be somereason . . . John’s Ephesus community needed the answer at leastas much as Judas did sixty years before. They were trying to construct an identity that was different fromand superior tothose who’d thrown them out. It was about community self-esteemas much as anything.

But Jesus doesn’t answer either Judas or any future member of John’s community, at least not directly. The disciples are speaking on one level—that of the kosmos,the world, the powers and principalities—and Jesus is speaking on another, a more spiritual level. This happens a lotin John. And the effect here,as it often is, is to undermine the question by ignoring it—there’s something more important than strengthening egos, than building up walls between us and them. And it’s what those who love him—aka, his followers—do when they arehis followers.

Another way to put it is: Judas asks what sets them apart, what makes them worthy to be chosen, to be revealed-to, and Jesus turns it around and tells them what they will do if they are his followers. Never mind those others, he’s saying, never mind what they might do or what they might lack, that’s none of your business. Whoever truly loves me, whoever is my disciple, keeps my word. And notice that it’s not a command, particularly, not a “you’d better keep my word or else,” it’s simply descriptive. Those who are like thatdo this,like if they’re horses, they run; if they’re accountants, they count; if they love me, they keep my word.

Of course, Jesus isn’t stupid, he knowsthat this will set his disciples to fretting about how well they’re keeping his word: they thinkthey love him, they feellike it, anyway . . . and hadn’t they followed him all over kingdom come?Isn’t that a strong indicationthat they love him? Doesn’t that proveit in a way? And just what does he meanby “keep his word,” anyway? “Keep” can have several, overlapping meanings . . . it can mean “guard,” as in “protect” or “preserve,” or “hold onto” as in “I’m keeping this for myself.” But it can also mean “obey” or “observe” as in observe the law. Only in John does Jesus use the term “keep my word,” and it seems to encompass all of these senses, with the emphasis on “observe” or “hold to.” Thus, Jesus seems to be saying “those who love me follow my teachings,” and since so much of Jesus’ teachings are encoded in his ministry, in his actions,keeping his word amounts to “live as I taught, both in word and in deed.” Those who love me live out my teachings.

But even though what Jesus says no doubt makes his disciples—both in Judas’ and John’s times—a little nervous, I don’t think that’s Jesus main purpose here. I think his primary purpose is pastoral,he’s consoling his disciples—both during his own time and in John’s—who have been confronted with the fact that he is soon to leave them. Remember last week? In our discussion of the “great commandment?” He knewthat even though his disciples didn’t fully understand, they would be bereft and bereaved, saddened and grieving at the news. They’d had such hopes, such dreams, even if some of them were misguided . . . and Jesus had compassion for them so that he called them his “little children . . . I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me, but . . . where I am going you cannot come.” And much that comes after can be read as Jesus’ compassionate reassurance that (a) they will see him again eventually and (b) he will not leave them without resources.

And that last is the theme of our passage today: Jesus is telling them how it is to be after he has physically left the planet, and reassuring them that they will notbe—and in the case of John’s Ephesus congregants, that they are not at the time—alone. In fact, God and he will come to them and make their home with them. Jesus will say this in different ways in the remainder of John’s gospel: he urges his followers to abide in him as he abides in them. He tells them that he is in God the Father, and in the same way God and he are in them.It speaks of a radical mutuality, an intimateindwelling of God and Jesus and human beings.

And what is the vehiclefor this indwelling, this stunningly close relationship to the divine? It’s theParaclete, whom God will send, and in our version it’s translated as “the Advocate,” but it could just as easily be “Comforter” or “Helper.” The Greek word “Paraclete” means “one who goes alongside to help;” Jesus identifies it as the Holy Spirit, and can you see the beginnings of the Trinity? That doctrine, famously notin the Bible, pictures the God-head as consisting of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Here, the Father and the Son—Creator and Savior—make their home within one who loves the Son, and the Holy Spirit advocatesfor them, mediates between them. And the Spirit, this indwelling entity, sent by God the Father, will teach them everything and remind them of all that God the Son has taught them. After all, as Jesus has told them already the Spirit is the Spirit of truth, and abides within them.

And you know? Maybe this gives an idea of what it means to love Jesus . . . he hinted at it over in Matthew: “Just as you did it to the least of these . . . you did it too me.” Here in John, he fleshes it out a bit: if God—Christ, Creator and Comforter—is in each of us—in allcreation, as Paul put it, holding it all together—then is not loving one another, loving all of creation,loving Christ? Howsoever you’ve loved the least of these, you have loved me.

Jesus is drawing a pictureof what life will be after he is gone. It’s one of radical unity, stunning intimacywith the divine in all its aspects—God the Creator, God the Savior and God the Advocate, dwelling within the believer, within those who lovehim. Far from leaving his followers orphans—in his own time, in John’stime and in our own—we are endowed with a divine light, a holy fire, that can help us to see and do the Lord’s will. Those who love him keep his word, but we’re not to do it alone, nor are we to do it without help. As Paul said “there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!”

Sothisis the peace Jesus leaves for us, thisis the peace he gives us: that we will never be without his presence, we will never be without his guidance, if we just trust that God is alive and present and within. So, do not let your hearts be troubled and do not let them be afraid. Amen.

One Thing to Rule Them All (John 13:31-35)

Did you ever notice that Jesus speaks about himself in the third person a lot? It’s most apparent when he talks about the Son of Man, as in this passage: “Now the Son of Man has been glorified,” he says, “and God has been glorified in him.” And of course, he himself is the Son of Man, he’s referring to himself. And the phrase is of enormous importance in the New Testament; Jesus uses it some 80 times; he only calls himself the Son of God, like, twice, and it’s in the same place.

But despite the apparent importance of “Son of Man,” nobody really knows what Jesusmeantby it, other than as a reference to himself. The debate among biblical scholars has been going on for almost 200 years: is it a Messianic title,an honorific like “Messiah” or indeed “Son of God?” Or is it descriptive, is Jesus calling himself just another human being, as in Son of Humanity, or perhaps thehuman being, the archetypical, modelhuman being?

In addition, nobody but Jesus—and several times, the author of a gospel, aka the narrator—callshim that. There’s no outside recognition that he is Son of man like there is regarding Son of God. After he walks on the water, the disciples don’t say “Truly you are the Son of Man,” nor do the demons exorcised from the Gadarenes shout “What have you to do with us, Son of Man?” They all call him “Son of God;” Son of Man is an entirely self-described . . . name. Or title. Or whatever it is. 

But whatever it means, Jesus uses it in our present scene, which takes place at what would be called the Last Supper. And it’s kind of a transition between the scene with the foot-washing, and Peter’s reluctance to have his feet washed, and what scholars call the farewell discourse, Jesus’ last teaching before the crucifixion. And just before our passage Judas leaves the table to betray him to the religious authorities for, it is said, thirty pieces of silver. And right after our passage, Jesus foretells that Peter would betray Jesus, denying him not once, not twice, but three times.

So our passage is embedded in betrayal, it’s soaked in it . . . we cannot escape the fact that the commandment to love one another is forever colored by it . . . and when that first betrayer Judas goes to sell him out, Jesus says “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him.” Note the past perfect tense: the Son of Man has beenglorified, and God has beenglorified in him. It’s not, as is often assumed, the crucifixion, which was yet to come . . . was it the betrayal itself? The abandonment? Or was it, as some folks say, all that has come before, all the signs that point to Jesus’ character, and through him, that of God?

At its root, glorymeans reputation, and to be glorified means to acquire good reputation. When it refers to God,it takes on aspects of heavenly splendor and the wonders of God’s kingdom. So when Jesus refers to God’s glorification and his own, he’s referring to the manifestation and recognition by the world of their proper heavenly status. And how ironic isit that it is through betrayal and the cross that this occurs? Thus, Judas’ disappearance into night while plotting betrayal the anticipation of Peter’s denial are not unfortunate, extraneous additions to the story of Jesus’ glorification. Death and betrayal belong to the core of Jesus’ glory.

So it’s only fitting that after announcing his glory, Jesus immediately announces his departure. And such is his compassion for them that he tenderly calls them—grown men every one—“little children.” Where I’m going you cannot come, little chidden, and immediately they start to wonder where that might be: some far off land, perhaps, or another city? They’d steadfastly refused to listen when he’d told them about his arrest and execution, they must’ve thought he meant a physical place.

And in fact, Peter asking that question—Lord, where are you going?—leads to the prediction of his betrayal. But first, Jesus gives them one last command: Love one another, just as I have loved you, you should which has generated debate almost from the beginning. After all, Leviticus 19:18, part of the Hebrew Law, had alreadycommanded Israel to love its neighbor as itself; just exactly what was new?Was it a difference in kind,a different typeof love that Jesus commanded? Augustine thought so . . . another theologian, Cyril of Alexandria, said “no, it’s a difference in degree.” The law said love others as ourselves, Cyril said, but Jesus took it one notch further by telling us to love one another as he loved us.And being Jesus, his love was of coursemuch more intense love than ours . . . 

Another, more practical problem is that the command is to love one another, that is, other believers.This conflicts with other versions—Matthew’, Mark’s and Luke’s say love your neighbor—and stories, like the Good Samaritan in Luke, not to mentionthe love-your-enemy passages. In those texts, Jesus is clearly speaking of, anddemonstrating,a love for those outside the “family,” a love beyond our own backyard.

Perhaps this is a hint as to what’s newin the command: this is a command—a plea,really—to practice love within themselves..Jesus is establishing a new communitywith this command, a community defined and centered around just one thing: love. In fact, it’s how everyone will know that this community is his,that those within it have love one for another.

Almost from the beginning, the church started to move away from that one criterion. The earliest creeds of the Church mention things you have to believe in, but rarely things you have to do. The Apostle’s Creed is the oldest one, put together from sayings in the Gospels and hymns of the early church. Does it mention love, a defining mark of the church community? No.

Over the years, entire listshave been drawn up of things you have to believe to be a Christian. The most famous recent examples are lists of five—or sometimes, six—essential Christian beliefs that circulated in the early 20th Century. These lists were called “fundamentals” and were, in fact, where the term “Fundamentalist Christian” came from. If you didn’t believe all the items on the list, you weren’t considered a Christian. Here’s one such list: the virgin birth, substitutionary atonement (that’s the notion that Jesus substituted for us to satisfy God’s wrath), the resurrection of the body, the miracles of Jesus, and the inerrant nature of God’s Word. Notice that not one of them mentions love at all, much less love thy neighbor or one another.

On the surface, Jesus’ instructions to love our fellow Christians—and our neighbors and our enemies—seem almost impossible. How can we love people who dismiss us, who oppose us, or simply rub us the wrong way? It seems that in any group, there are going to be folks we just don’t get along with, much less like. As always, Jesus shows us the way: what he’s talking about isn’t emotion, it’s action.In John, they’re called signs:changing the water into wine. Feeding the five thousand. Healing the man blind from birth. And here, in the last days of his life, washing one-another’s feet—aka servingone another—and, ultimately, dying for one another.

Maybe that’s why Christians have taken to measuringour Christian-ness via sets of dry, sterile beliefs. Maybe this loving one another business is just too hard—or in the case of foot-washing, too icky. But of course, that’s just another sign, a pointer to the kind of self-effacing, self-sacrificing action Jesus is talking about. And besides, we don’t have to do it by ourselves: Jesus is with us, around us and most importantly, within our hearts. Amen.

Plain Talk (John 10:22-30)

Americans love the idea of “plain speaking,” of not-beating-around-the-bush, of saying what you mean . . . if you Google the phrase “plain talk” you get all kinds of responses, as people invoke the aura of straight-forward communication for whatever project they’re pushing . . . you get “Plain talk on Ecology,” “Plain talk about spanking,” “Plain Talk about Child Immunization” . . . then there’s “Plain Talk on Investing,” “Plain talk on the genetic issue” – whatever thatis – and “Plain talk about Plain talk.” Ok, I made that last one up.

The point is, we all value straightforward speech, unadorned language, to-the-point communication . . . and it can be exploited, can’t it?  The most obvious example are politicians . . . they know we fancy it and try to exploit it so that the “plainest talkers” – or those who can simulate it – are sometimes the ones who get elected, whether they have any ideas or not.  Of course, the reality in political speech is usually the just the opposite, with artful obfuscation and devious run-arounds not only the rule but almost an emblem of honor.

So.  Is that what we’re dealing with here?  Do the religious authorities – or the Jews, as John calls them – really want Jesus to tell them plainly whether he’s the Messiah or not?  Do they really want to be told yes or no, yay or nay, da or nein?  Or could it be that they’re trying to set him up, to trap him and get him to say something that’ll get him in trouble, or even worse?  You have to remember that when John says “the Jews,” he’s not referring to the Jewish people as a whole, but to their leadership, to the chief priests and scribes . . . and in those days – as well as today – you didn’t get to be in the hierarchy without playing the politics just a little bit . . .

John’s not going to tell us straight out, that’s not his style, and in the few lines just before our passage, he indicates it could go either way “the Jews,” he says – again referring to the leadership – “were divided because of Jesus’ words.  Many were saying he has a demon and is out of his mind . . . others were saying “these are not the words of one who has a demon.  Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?”  It seems that the religious authorities were not all of one mind, that some considered him a demon-possessed crackpot and other thought he might really besomebody, that he might have some merit.

One thing was certain: they were afraid of Jesus, either that he’d siphon off some of their power or—perhaps more realistically—that what they saw as his rabble-rousing ways would bring the Roman authorities down on them.  After all, Caiaphas, the high priest that year, would later tell their high council that it’s “better to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.”

The setting of the story is rife with political overtones . . . it all takes place at the festival of the Dedication—Hanukkah, in Hebrew—which celebrates the Maccabean revolt, when the brothers Maccabeus retook the Temple from the Syrian King Antiochus Epiphanes by military force and rededicated it to the Hebrew God.  And to top it off, Jesus is walking along Solomon’s portico, named after one of their greatest kings, second only to David, of course.  So things royal and revolutionary are certainly on everybody’s minds, and when they ask Jesus to tell them plainly if he’s the Messiah, Jesus gives what seems to be a plain answer: “I have told you and you do not believe.”  But . . . just when has he told them? Up until that point, the only person to whom Jesus has acknowledged it straight out has been the woman at the well.  So perhaps he’s not given them as plain an answer as it seems.  In fact, it’s not inwordsthat he has spoken but inworks: when Jesus says “I have told you,” he means with acts of healing, feeding, and restoration, “signs” that, for those with eyes to see and ears to hear, clearly declare who he is.  These signs testifyto him—and there’s that word we talked about several weeks ago, martyr, which by the time John was written had come to be associated with sacrificial death, and is this a little artful foreshadowing, reminding the congregation for which John wrote about what deed would ultimatelyshow who Jesus was?

Whatever the case, the word testifyis also a legal term, so Jesus is implying that the works he does in God’s name makes a case strong enough to stand up in courtabout who he is.  His works are evidenceabout who he is.  It reminds me of the time over in Matthew and Luke when John the Baptist’s disciples come up to him and ask him straight out “Are you the one who is to come?”  Jesus says, “Tell John what you see and hear.” Talk’s cheap, he’s saying, it’s my actions that tell the tale.

Well.  The folks asking Jesus to give them a plain answer have seen all the signs, they’ve seen all the evidence yet they stilldon’t know the answer, they still don’t believe, and why?  Jesus says it’s because they don’t belong to his sheep, they aren’t members of hisflock.  And here’s where it pays to have a sense of what has come just before this passage: it’s the shepherd discourse wherein Jesus declares himself the “good shepherd” who lays down his life for his sheep.  The sheep follow him because they know his voice, because theyknow himjust as heknows them, just as God knows him and he knows God.  It’s a profoundly relational metaphor, and not exactly a royal one, as would befit a messiah in the line of the house of David.  It’s not exactly a king-and-subject relationship . . . 

And it may be that that’s why they want him to tell them once and for all: we’ve heard all this gobbledygook about you being the shepherd and your flock knowing you and you knowing the flock, and so let’s cut the bull: areyou or are you notthe Messiah?  And the answer Jesus gives them is that they cannot understand, they cannot believe, because they are not members of his flock.   Jesus knowshis sheep and they know him, and here, knowing means much more than just an intellectual acknowledgement of a fact. It’s a deepknowing, a trustful-knowing.  Sheep knowtheir shepherd and so will follow him. 

Somebody asked Louis Armstrong to define the rhythm known as “swing,” and he famously replied, “If you have to ask, you’ll never know.”  His point wasn’t to exclude anyone from understanding swing; rather, his point was that “asking about it” isn’t the path to understandingit.  On the contrary, the way to understand swing is to hear it, to move with it, to get a feel for it. In the end, swing really isn’t something that can be explained; it has to be experienced.  I think Jesus’ point in this story is similar.  When it comes to his messiah-ship, for those with eyes to see and ears to hear, there’s plenty of evidence on the table—his teaching and feeding and healing.  But that’s just it: without those eyes and ears, no amount of evidence or argument will do.

And how does one acquire those eyes and ears, how does one become one of Jesus’ flock,so that they will know whether he is the Messiah or not?  Well, just as would-be swing aficionados have to experience the music, so do would be believers: they have to listento Jesus, movewith him, get a feelfor what he is saying.  They have to spend time with his word, live as he lived, followwhere he leads.  And once they do that, once they’ve gained those eyes to see and ears to hear, they don’t have any problembelieving the evidence.  Just look at Simon Peter, who’d tramped all over Palestine with the master: when Jesus asked him who does hesay that he is, he replied “You are the Messiah, the Son of God.”  (He didn’t understand what that meant, but that’s another sermon.)

And what is engendered by all this tramping and following and living?  What is it that his sheep acquirewhen they give themselves over to the Christ, that Jesus called eyes to see and ears to hear?  Why, its nothing more than faith, nothing more than trust. And for those who don’t have it, no amount of evidence or argument will do. Claims have their counterclaims; signs have their skeptics.  And after all, faith really isn’t a game of “evidence” in the first place. Wisdom and wonders can point us in helpful directions, but in the end everything comes down to this: a vital, profound sense of love and trust.

Well.  Jesus gives his followers eternal life, and no one will snatch them out of his hand.  Not the powers and principalities, or the governor or the emperor or anyone else.  His sheep are safe in his hands.  And his mandate, his remit, his power, if you will, is from God’s own self, and nobody can take thataway either.  Jesus’ authority is from God, and everything he does is from God above.  In these things, the Father and he are one.

And it’s tempting to read this, in English, at least, as an affirmation of the doctrine of the Trinity, aka that Jesus and the Father are one and the same entity.  Alas, the Greek original doesn’t permit that; what Jesus is talking about is that in their actions, in their loveand regard for the sheep of their flock they are one.  And nothing, nothingcan take that away.  Amen.

The Right Side of the Boat (John 21:1-19)

John begins his epilogue here, or at least that’s what biblical scholars call it, an epilogue, because it’s almost like he’s starting a new storyline . . . last week we read the end of chapter 20, and it sure soundedlike the end of the story: ”Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.” It’s almost as if you could add a “The End” to it, or an “Amen,” like it’s the end of a sermon.

Now we find out that it’s not over after all, and in fact scholars think Chapter 21 was added at a later date, perhaps by John himself and perhaps by someone else. And what I like about it is that whoever addedit doesn’t carewhether we know it or not.  For better or worse, he lets the seams show, something that in our days of artistic finesse is a big no-no.  

Of course, it’s always possible that the original ending was really obvious, something like “and so endeth the tale of Jesus, his life, death and resurrection, the end,” but I don’t think so I just think whoever it was didn’t care one way or another. Or maybe—just maybe—the disjunction is part of what the author is trying to say, that it has some intrinsic theological value, like see: this is an ongoing, dynamic faith, with different remembrances, different stories, but it’s still the same never-ending tale . . . the faith will goon.

Whatever the case, John begins the epilogue to his Gospel with a deceptively simple statement: “After these things, Jesus showed himself again to the disciples” and the phrase “these things”—ambiguous though it is—is one of the biggest understatements of the last couple of thousand years . . . what a lot of “things” they are . . . a tiny thing called the crucifixion, a small event we call the resurrection, multiply-attested appearances by a supposedly-dead rabbi, little things like that . . . and it’s likely John had many other “things” in mind . . . the miraculous birth, the tramping and teachings in Judea and Galilee, and all those miracles, all those seven signs.

And one of the biggest of “these things” had happened after the crucifixion in the upper room, where the disciples were gathered for fear of the Romans and the religious authorities, and at that time, Jesus appeared to them—twice, on successive weekends—and the big “thing” he did thenwas commissionthem as apostles (from the Greek apostolos, “person sent forth”), conferring upon them the Holy Spirit in the process. And does it seem a little weird to you all that after all this, Peter and the others say “I’m going fishing?”  It’s like they’ve simply returned to their old lives.  Did they lose their nerve?  Are they confused and unsure about where to begin, and so retreat to the place they know best, to get their bearings?

Or maybe they’re ashamed at how badly they messed things up when it mattered.  They alldeserted Jesus in the end, but Peter is the deserter in chief.  After vowing he would never deny Jesus, he did it exactly thatthree times, and his shame must have been deep.  And Jesus’ resurrection may have made it even worse, because it highlighted Peter’s lack of faith and brought him face to face with the one he abandoned.  Perhaps that’s what sent himhome to more familiar shores.

Whatever the case, just as Mary didn’t know the risen Christ at first—she mistook him for the gardener—Peter and company don’t recognize him, at least at first.  And in fact, this is a themeamong the post-resurrection stories . . . Luke tells us two of Jesus’ other followers spend a whole trek to Emmaus deep in conversation with him and still don’t get who he is, and all this has led to speculation that Jesus didn’t look like he did before the crucifixion.  And here in John, it’s stranger still . . . first of all Peter and his buddies had seen the post-resurrection Jesus before, twice! And they stilldon’t knowhim?  What . . . did he change how he looked between his upper-room appearances and there on the beach?  Did he shave off his beard or cut off his hair?  Does he disguise his voicewhen he calls from the beach?

But wait . . . it gets even more weird.  After the disciple whom Jesus loves recognizes him, sending Peter naked into the water in his excitement, and after they’d hauled a record one hundred and fifty-three fish out of the boat and Jesus cooks them breakfast, John tells us that “none of the disciples dared to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ because they knew it was the Lord.” HUH?  If they already knew who it was, why would they even think to ask“Who are you?  And why would John feel the need to tell us this in the first place?  It only makes sense if the risen Jesus looks significantly different, so asking, “Who are you?” would arise as an option in the firstplace.  And yet, different as he may appear, he’s nevertheless recognized by his companions over a breakfast of fish and bread– was that they remember the bread and fish with which they fed a crowd of five thousand?

All this has led some scholars to think that Jesus looked very different now that he’s been resurrected.  It’s especially apparent here in John where it seems that Jesus’ resurrection is more than mere resuscitation, which makes sense, in a way: the resurrection, the eighth sign in John’s gospel, blows all the others away, especiallythe seventh sign: the resurrection of Lazarus, which John is at pains to make clearisjust that: the reanimation of a physical body. Jesus’ resurrection is of a completely different order; he’s back, but in a completely different way.

His followers don’t recognize him by how he looks, but by what he does:In Emmaus, it’s in the eucharistic breaking of the bread; in the garden he calls Mary by name;in the upper room he shows them his wounds and breathes upon them the Spirit of Life; and here on the shoreline, he provides for them miraculously andabundantly, before sitting down to anothereucharistic meal.  Now we understand a little better what Jesus might have meant by “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”  What is it that they have not seen, and how have they nevertheless come to belief?

If Jesus didn’t look like . . . Jesus . . . if he didn’t look like the guy who’d tramped around Palestine with them for three years, changed water into wine and healed the blind man at Siloam’s pool, who did he looklike?  A random Emmaus-road stranger?  A cultivator of Gethsemane’s garden?  How about a wandering vagabond, camped out on a Galilee beach?  Hmmm . . . is this a symbolic way of showing the reality of Jesus within each and every one of us?  What if it’s like this: the disciples meet a stranger and only afterhe acts like Jesus—feeding them, creating abundancefor them, loving them—do they seeJesus in them?  After all, Jesus doessay that he will be in us and we in him . . . 

Unlike Matthew and Luke, John does not have an ascension scene, he doesn’t show Jesus physically leaving the earthly plane to be “at the right hand of God the Father” as they do.  I wonder: is it John’s intention to show Jesus living on in each and every one of us? And if so, what does that say about Jesus’ present-daypresence in the church? Do people only see the resurrected Christ when we allow him to live through us?

After feeding his disciples Jesus takes Peter aside and asks him if he loves him, and Peter—feeling guilty and more than a little defensive—answers “Yes, Lord; you knowthat I love you.”  Jesus answers “Feed my lambs.”  A secondtime Jesus says, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” and when Peter againanswers “You know that I do,” Jesus says “Tend my sheep.”  And a third time: “Do you love me?”  “You know I do.”  “Feed my sheep.”  And it’s not a coincidence that three times, Peter denied Jesus, and now, three times, Jesus asks him to profess his love.  Jesus knows very well what’s going on, that Peter is a flawed vessel, but he nevertheless tells him: tend my flock.  He nevertheless makes him the shepherd—like Jesus, the leader—of the nascent church.

This is John’s version of the scene over in Matthew where Jesus declares Peter the rock upon which he will build his church; there, it’s based on Peter’s declaration, his acknowledgementthat Jesus is “the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”  Here, it’s based on something else: it’s based on love.  Three times Peter messes up and denies the Lord, three times he declares his love, and three times Jesus names him shepherd.  With this three-part—trinitarian?—declaration, Jesus is saying that not only does he choose Peter in spite ofhow he’s messed up but because of it.  Only one who knows failure, only one who knows fallibility, only one who knows doubt can ever hope to be a compassionate shepherd of thisflock.

And that’s how it is with us today.  Jesus comes to us where we are, aswe are, and he says “You’re worried you’ve let me down, that you’ve been disqualified, but on the contrary: you’rethe ones I’ve chosen.  Do you really think I didn’t know your weaknesses when I called you? I knew you better than you knew yourself, and I called you and taught you and sent you, and now I send you again.  Stop thinking in terms of limitations, of empty nets, and what you can and cannot do!  I come that you might have life, and have it abundantly!  Look at all these fish, filling the net to overflowing!  Gather them up, take courage, and go!”  Amen.

Witness (Easter 2C, John 20:19-30; Revelation 1:4-8)

One of my seminary professors taught us—it might have been Anna Carter Florence—that preaching two lectionary passages in the same sermon is risky. First of all, the lectionary creators—bless their hearts—often create false correspondences.  That is, they group passages together for certain reasons, and those reasons are often not germane to the text.  The various books and passages of scripture were written by a diverse bunch, for various reasons, and—we were told—we should respect that as we preach.  Which sounds reasonable to me … there are a lot of things we impose on scripture—like capital letters, verse numbers, and in the Hebrew text, vowels.  So I took my professor’s words about preaching only one lectionary text at once to heart—I have a hard enough time figuring out what onepassage means every week, much less two . . . and all I can say is “thank God for the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.”

But as they say, rules are made to be broken, and I find myself talking about our two New Testament passages this morning: the one Phil read, from Revelation, and John’s story of Jesus’ first appearance to the disciples, there in the upper room.  And by doing so I’m breaking another of my own rules: never preach from Revelation, the reasons for which are too long to go into, but suffice it to say that it takes too much energy to explain why it’s nota prophecy of the end times, and that it almost certainlywasn’t the same John wrote it who wrote the Gospel. But maybe I ought to preach from it at least oncein a while, seeing as how it is, you know, part of the Bible.

So I grumblingly started looking at the Revelation passage, with plenty of time to spare—I think it was yesterday afternoon—and one part stood out, and it’s not what you think:  it’s not alpha or  omega, not the beginning orthe end, as famous as that line is.  Nor is it the vivid, strange imagery of we—his followers—as the kingdom of God ourselves.  No, it’s one word:  witness. Witness—that Janus-headed, double-meaninged word that is so important to Christians, both of that time and this time, although sometimes I wonder if it’s lost a bit of its luster lately.

Of course, it’s mightily misunderstood these days, at least popularly . . . I know everyone here understands perfectly what it means, but just in case, let me remind y’all that the Greek for witness is marturos which in English, of course, ismartyr.  And to us, this word—martyr—has almost entirely the connotation of death: specifically, death for a cause.  It’s entered large into our language: we say somebody has a martyr complex if they’re always emphasizing how long-suffering they are.  We say “don’t play the martyr with me” to our annoying acquaintances who persist in playing that game. I am proud to report that we Olsons are extremely good at it—I think my great-grandfather won a prize for it at the county fair.  “That’s ok,” he’d say “use me for a doormat.  That’s just my lot in life.”

But the thing is, in the New Testament, the noun marturoswithout fail is translated as “witness”—I know because I used my handy-dandy Bible software to do a word search.  Except for one instance where it is converted into its verbal meaning of “testify.”  And that brings up an important connotation of the word: it is legaljargon, as in a courtroom.  Of course, “witness” has that meaning today too, a witness in court testifies about something they have seen.  And the thing is, when someone is a witness to an event, when she testifies in court, it becomes a kind of truth, at least as far as the court is concerned. I swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me who?  So help me God.

So the noun witness—marturos—and it’s corresponding verb to witness or testify to has a very important role in the New Testament.  It implies truth,veracity, and the thing that caught my eye is that in this passage from Revelation reverses the natural order of things.  We usually think of ourselvesas witnesses to the Gospel, but here it’s Jesus who is the witness.  And this must have been a striking thing to the folks at the time this was written, close to the beginning of the second century C.E. Because the persecution of Christian witnesses, Christian martyrswas just hitting its bloody stride at about that time, and in fact that’s when the association of the word with sacrificial death began.

So the the hearers of this verse—the New Testament was written to be heard—would likely know very well the double meaning, and it would comfort them thinking that Jesus—like folks they knew, like perhaps even they themselves—had suffered for his faith.  But one thing that’s hard to figure out is just what it is that Christ is a witness to.  To what truth does he testify?  He is a faithfulwitness, we’re told, and Christ faithfully told the truth, faithfully testifiedby his actions . . . Christ himself is a witness, in himself a testimonyto that truth.   And to what truth does he testify?  He is firstborn of the dead, and ruler over all the kings of the earth . . . and so it is this that he witnesses to: the twin foundations of the kingdom of God.

And as Paul points out over in first Corinthians, the gospel to which he witnesses is captured in paradoxes.  He captures it perfectly when he says the wisdom of God is foolishness to the world; the world’s weakness is the strength of the Lord.  Here, John of Patmos captures it equally succinctly: he is firstborn of the dead . . . how can the dead be born?  Well, the firstJohn—the gospel-writing John—said we must be born from above.

The gospel is  that Christ has conquered death, he is the first-born of the dead, the first of the dead to be born from above, to be resurrected by God, and whether the powers and principalities know it or not—and they generally don’t—this first-born is the ruler of all other rulers. It is no longer they that rule the world, no longer the minions of death, but Jesus Christ, the first-born, or as Paul put it, the first fruitsof the resurrection, is ruler over all.  See?  The grave has lost its victory, and death has lost its sting!

The testimony of Jesus Christ, embedded in his life, death and resurrection—is that there is a new creation, and the rule of death is fading away, whether it looks like it or not, whether it feels like it or not.  And that kingdom of God, that just rule over all, is created in love, bought by Jesus’ martyrdom, and embodied in us. We have been made a kingdom, a protectorate, a state, because we are ruled over by God through God’s son Jesus Christ.  Further, we are priests to the God of Christ, or as John puts it “to his God and Father.”

This kingdom consists in part of our being priests to God . . . sounds Roman Catholic, doesn’t it? Or at leastEpiscopalian . . . but Paul again puts it in a more familiar way: we are the body of Christ, Christ embodied upon the earth.  And just as we are priests to god, stand-ins forGod, we are the embodiment of God’s son.

And in our secondpassage, the one from the gospel-writingJohn, we get a glimpse of how that is to work.  The disciples are fearful, huddled together in the upper room, in the candle-lit dark . . . they should have been jubilant,joyfulfor they have been told that Christ lives . . . that first witness, Mary Magdalene has seen the risen Christ and testified to them.  But they have not believed her testimony—there’s that word martyr again—and Jesus greets them as he has promised: peace I give to you, my peace I bring to you . . . not as the world gives, not as the powers and principalities, which give death, and war and destruction, but peace . . . his witness, his message, his testimony is a testimony of peace.

Peace be with you, he says.  As the Father has sent me, so I send you.  Christ is the faithful witness, the firstwitness, first-born of the dead, who was in the beginning with God. Christ is the eternal witness, and he bestows upon us through that witness the role of witness ourselves. As God has sent me, he says, so I send you.  The faithful witness, through his life and death and resurrection, through his faithfulness, has made us witnesses, made us martyrsto the truth as well.

But note well: it isn’t solely upon we as individuals that this is bestowed . . . Christ sends the group, the whole of them trembling in the upper room. Although there is only a second-person pronoun in English—you—for both a plural and singular, in Greek that is not the case.  And here, in the original Greek, he bestows witness-hood not upon individual disciples but upon the lot of them . . . in that upper room cowered the first church, and that’s whom he sends.

That’s one example—there are others!—of the superiority of the Southern version of English.  In the South we have a second-person plural, and that’s what Christ passes on his witness-hood to.  As the father sent me, he says, so I send y’all, as a group.  If y’all—if you the church—forgives the sins of any, they are forgiven them.  If y’all retain the sins of any, they are retained. We, the body of Christ, the church are his faithful witness on earth.  Just as Jesus was the faithful witness to God, the church—this body in this room, this body of all Christians in Cincinnati, in Ohio, in the world,is that witness as well.  Because the human named Jesus is no longer on earth—though he has left us the holy spirit, the advocate, the Spirit of truth, breathed into the mouths of the church there in the upper room—but because the physicalJesus is no longer on this earth, the Church is now the witness, we are now the kingdom of God on earth.

Sermons for me are often difficult to end, without a resorting to a pious platitude or two . . . sometimes I do that anyway, when I can’t come up with anything better.  And in this case, the standard thing would be to end by saying something like Brothers and Sisters, how good a witness is Greenhills Community Church, Presbyterian?  How faithful isit to the call of that firstfaithful witness, Jesus of Nazareth, who in this Easter season has been crucified, died and resurrected as the Christ?  If somebody from the outside were to look in on us, what kind of witness would they see?  Would they see a typical U.S. congregation, accommodated to our acquisitive lifestyle and nature, a reflection of the world’s values with a thin overlay of Jesus? Or would see committed witnesses, in both senses of the original Greek?  Would they see a congregation committed to Jesus’ ministry of sacrifice and service, and, in a word, peace?

What kind of witness is this congregation?  If this were a typical sermon on witness, I’d end by asking that, but in our case, in the case of Greenhills Community Church, Presbyterian, I don’t have to.  Because I think all of us know the answer.  Amen.

Dawn (Luke 24:1-12)

Dawn was still a ways off when the women set out . . . Luke doesn’t tell us who they are, until the end . . . In Matthew, it’s Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James, in Mark it’s Mary and Mary and Salome, and over in John, it’s Mary Magdalene alone. Here in Luke, it’s Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James and “the other women with them,” women who had been witnesses to the crucifixion, who’d stayed with Jesus and seen the tomb and how his body had been laid. Note the conspicuous lack of male disciples in the mix . . .

After the women had seen and done all that, after they’d faithfully follow Jesus to the end, they’d gone out and bought and prepared the spices required to anoint the dead. It’s not something they wanted to do, they were still grieving the loss of their beloved, and wanted nothing more than to hole up with their sorrow. In addition, the whole purpose was to disguise the stench of decay, but by Sunday morning—they couldn’t do it on the Sabbath, which began at sundown—by Sunday morning, that ship would have sailed, so it wouldn’t be a pleasant thing to do. And because it was Mary Magdalene, among others, who did the job, it helped fuel centuries of speculation about the relationship of Jesus and Mary Magdalen because, you see, normally it was the task of the wife to anoint the dead.

Be that as it may, sometime before dawn on the first day of the week, the women creep through the Jerusalem streets . . . they’d left as soon as they could see to walk, as soon as they could make out shapes in the gloom. Occasionally, they pass houses flickering with light and movement, as shopkeepers and artisans prepare for their day’s work . . . dogs yip out their morning greetings and warnings as they pass, cocks crow in anticipation of the sun, and a fine mist swirls around their feet. It isn’t far to Joseph of Arimathea’s garden tomb, where they’d laid him, but the women take it slowly, gliding through town, in no hurry to do their distasteful deed.

And as they go, they wonder how they’re going to move the huge stone disk away from the tomb’s mouth. Will there be grave-tenders about this early, or would they be forced to wait till later in the day to attend to their task? The dawn is breaking as they reach the tomb, the sun’s already beginning to heat up the air. Imagine the relief when they see the stone already rolled away, relief and confusion that this should be so, confusion that only increases when they see that the tomb is empty . . . And they stand around worrying . . . did bandits carry off the body of their beloved? Worse, had it been it a pack of the feral dogsthat haunt the countryside? Not once do they consider a third explanation, that he’d been risen from the dead . . . as good Jewish women, the thought doesn’t even cross their minds.

Tears spring up in their eyes, and they turn to go, when behold! Two young men in dazzling white are there before them, and the women throw themselves trembling on the floor of the tomb . . . and are these the same guys who would appear at Jesus’ ascension? When he returns to the side of God? Hard to know for sure, but they dosay something similar: “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” And they remind them of what they already should know: that he’d told them he must be arrested, crucified and raised again.

But the way it’s phrased is more than a reminder. For one thing, it’s not a question,it’s not “Remember what he said to you?” It’s “Rememberwhat he saidto you.” In other words, they’re toldto remember, commandedto do it. And another thing and the Greek word we translate here as “remember” implies more than just the retrieval of a memory. It implies bringing past actions to bear on the present, resulting in new power and insight. The same word appears in Mary’s Magnificat with reference to God helping Israel “in remembrance of God’s mercy,” and in the crucified thief’s plea, “Jesus, remember me.” It’s a tangible, consequential form of remembrance, a kind of remembering that is also a kind of action. The women at the tomb are told to bring to recollection what Jesus had told them, and then let that combineor interactwith what they are witnessing. It carries the force of both an epiphany anda commission: they remember his words, they take stock of them and, in light of what they experience at the tomb, they return from there and tell all this to the eleven and to the rest. The past recollection colors what they experience, and together they form what they do in the future.

That’skindof how it’s supposed to work for everyone, isn’t it? What we’ve been told in the past impingesupon the present, it informsour view of what’s going on, and then interactswith our present experience to determine a course of action. Like the women, we’re to remember what we’ve been told, especially with regards to how we are supposed to live as children of God. And what we’ve been toldcomes from a variety of sources, doesn’t it? It comes from Scripture, from the combined wisdom of fellow believers who were on the ground floor, so to speak, who were thereor close tothe seminal events of our faith. And there are other sources . . . there are the accumulated teaching of the church. The written wisdom of the Desert Fathers and Mothers. The livedwisdom of ordinary Christians, distilled and passed down in written and oral form. All of this is what Christians have been told.

But as the Greek word implies, there is anothercrucial ingredient: our own, lived experience. We can’t take any of these sources in isolation, including scripture, despite Luther’s famous dictum sola scriptura.Even thatwas a remembrance, in this passage’s sense: Luther took what he’d been told, the holy scripture, and let it inform what he’d experienced as excesses of the church, and voilá:ninety-five theses, nailed to a church door. We Presbyterians have even codified the command as “Reformed and always being reformed by the Word of God.” In practice, this has meant that the church is always to be reformed by what it has been told—aka the Word of God in all its forms. Including, of course, the Word as expressed in science, history, the arts . . . all influenced by the church’s present experience, what it sees and feels in the world.

Well. The women remember Christ’s words to them, there on that first Easter morn, they experiencethe empty tomb, and they are driven to action: they return from the tomb and tell the eleven—cowering somewhere in fear of the authorities—about what they had experienced. And they scoffed and laughed at them, and refused to believe them, because were they not women? And were not women subject to hysteria, to anxious thoughts and deed? And besides, even though all of them had heardJesus’ words—that he’d be handed over to be crucified, and on the third day rise again—none of them had experiencedthem. None of them had seen the empty tomb, none of them had talk to the shining men.

But now Peter—who embodies both the best and the worst in the apostles, both you-are-the-Messiah faith and deny-three-times doubt—Peter gets up and runs—runs!—to the tomb, sees the grave-clothes by themselves, and goes home amazed. And does he also believe? I think so. I think that like the women earlier, he has remembered what Jesus had said: he’s recalled the words and experienced the reality of the empty tomb, and it has sent him flying home in amazement.

Brothers and sisters, we are Peter . . . Peter who expresses doubt and who also expresses great faith. And like Peter, we do not really believe, do we not really knowuntil we’ve experienced the empty tomb. I know, I know . . . despite what the song says, we were notthere at the empty tomb, any more than we were physicallythere when they crucified my Lord. And yet, just as we crucify him by our doubt, by our stubborn refusal to give our lives as totally as he gave his, we experience the empty tomb, we experience the resurrection, every day of our lives? Is it not there in the Spring, as life arises anew after the barrenness of winter? Is it not there as despair is turned into fragile, unlooked for hope? Is it not there as sorrow is resurrected into joy?

Friends, resurrection is all around us, in the overwhelming good that’s in our world, in the life that is everyday snatched from death’s bony grip. That’s what the resurrection represents, isn’t it? It’s what we, like the women at the tomb, are commanded to remember. The ultimate banishment of darkness, the ultimate realization of Pau’s cry: Death, where is thy sting, grave where is thy victory. And it’s all summed up by one phrase: He is risen; he is risen indeed. Amen.

I Love a Parade (Palm Sunday; Luke 19:24-40)

Pontius Pilate, governor of Judea, staggered out of his tent into the cold dawn. It was the Sunday before Passover, and the second day in a row that he’d been up with the sun, and he didn’t like it one little bit. It made him irritable—more than usual, anyway—and he snapped at the attendant who was trying to hold his horse still so he could mount. It was a big brute, 16 hands tall, and pure white—a fitting mount for such a powerful man. Of course, he would have preferred to ride in a cart, or a palanquin carried by slaves, sheltered from the fierce sun, but one must keep up appearances, one must put on a show of power for the peasants along the way.

Pilate had left his villa at the shiny new city on the Mediterranean a couple of days before, and that didn’t help his mood any. Caesarea Maritima—Caesarea by the Sea—was all carved, Corinthian marble; his villa was lavishly appointed and almost obscenely comfortable, as befitted the biggest fish in that small Palestinian pond. And Pilate hated to leave it behind, especially since his destination was that poxy, backwater town called Jerusalem, home of a people so backwards they only worshiped one god. But it had to be done, Pilate had to go to that pestilent place, because it was Passover week, and the locals—always unfriendly—could get downright belligerentat festival time. Many was the time anti-government violence had sprung up during those times, and Passover—the celebration of Jewish delivery from an earlierset of oppressors—could be one of the roughest.

So it was the custom of the Romans to beef up their presence in Jerusalem at Passover, to make an imperial show—one reason for the column of imperial cavalry and soldiers that rode along—and that meant that the governor himself needed to be there, along with all his assorted courtiers and toadies, and didn’t they make a grand sight, livery jangling, pennants snapping in the sun, impassive faces of the troops . . . it said to all they passed: “You can’t stand in the face of the glorious might of the Roman Empire.”

Meanwhile, on the opposite side of town, the east side, another procession was getting underway. The star of thatparade was an itinerant Jewish teacher named Jesus, who was a powerful preacher and a compassionate crusader for social justice and—in the eyes of the Jewish religious establishment, at least—a dangerous subversive. He’d been running around Palestine, preaching about the kingdom of God which, to hear him tell it, was a place where all were welcome, nobody was hungry, and, best of all, nobody oppressed anybody. A place where the first were last and the last first, where God's good gifts were not amassed by a minority of wealthy landowners in their cities and palaces and villas. A place, in short, the exact opposite of the Roman Empire, and—critically—the exact opposite of the scribes and priests of the Temple hierarchy who, through creative interpretation of Hebrew law, were able to become wealthy landowners themselves.

So it’s appropriate that this secondprocession came from exactly the oppositeside of town as Pilate’s. It’s staging area was the Mount of Olives, across the Kidron Valley from the city, and Jesus—born in the nothing town of Nazareth and definitely notof the ruling class—gathered his followers and laid out the plan: “Go into that village over there, and you’ll find a colt—a young donkey, to be exact—tied there that’s never been ridden.” And how did he know it would be there? I have no idea. Maybe he sent somebody ahead and planted it, maybe he “saw” it with that otherworldly insight he seemed to possess. However it happened, it’s clear that Jesus planned it, and what’s more, he planned it with prophecy in mind: listen to this passage from the Old Testament prophet Zechariah: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter 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.” It’s clear from all the stage-management that he wants both his disciples and Jerusalem onlookers to see the fulfillment of that prophecy.

And if he isthe symbol of that prophecy, if he is indeedthe humble king riding on a donkey, what kind of monarch would he be? The rest of the Zechariah passage tellsus: “He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war-horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall command peace to the nations.” This king, riding on a donkey, will banish war from the land—no more chariots, war-horses, or bows. He will be command peace to the nations; in fact, he will be a kingof peace. Not exactly the play-book of the Roman Emperor. 

And did Jesus plan hisentry into the city to coincide with that of Pilate? Biblical scholars Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan think so—in their book The Last Week,they write that it was a “prearranged ‘counter-procession,’” designed in deliberate contrast to the one on the other side of town. Whatever the case, it certainly did the trick: Jesus’s procession proclaimed the kingdom of God; Pilate’s proclaimed the power of empire. The two processions embodied the central conflict of the week that led to Jesus’s crucifixion.

You often hear this dichotomy referred to as the “ways of the world” versus the “ways of the kingdom,” but I think that’s didactic and over-simplified. It’s dualistic, and displays one of the major problems with that kind of thinking: it encourages us in the impression that the world is “evil” and the kingdom “good.” Paul’s habit of referring to it as the “ways of the flesh” versus the “ways of the Spirit” doesn’t help—a lot of folks read “flesh” as “sex,” and it gets conflated with the human body, once again encourages us to think that the body is inferior and sinful as opposed to some spirit that is pure and separate from the flesh. Dualism at its finest, pf course: God made the world and all that is in it and how can it be bad? As the old saying goes, “God don’t make no trash,” and I believe that to be true.

What Pilate’s procession symbolized—and what Jesus’ countered—was not “the world” or humanity or even Pilate himself. It was what social scientists call a “domination system” and Paul—who knew all about such things—called the “powers and principalities.” Borg and Crossan write that a domination system is the most common form of social system and is marked by three major features: first, political oppression, where the many are ruled by the few, the powerful and wealthy elites. The second characteristic is economic exploitation, where a high percentage of the society’s wealth goes into the coffers of the wealthy and powerful. The third characteristic is religious legitimation—the systems are justified with religious language. The rulers are there by divine right, because God ordains it, and the social system or order is the will of God.

In Jerusalem, you actually got two domination systems in one: the local one, legitimized by the religious establishment and ruled by wealthy landowners—some of whom were the religious authorities themselves—and the Roman one, with the emperor—Tiberius, at the moment—as the divinely-ordained ruler. And Tiberius was sodivinely ordained that he was called Son of God—God, of course, being his predecessor, Caesar Augustus.

And so that’s what Jesus and Pilate rode into on that fine spring day, one in a procession that was the embodimentof the domination system, and one in a procession that was almost a parodyof it. I mean, pictureit in your mind: here’s Jesus, on an untrained donkey—though the word colt can mean either a young horse or a young donkey, Mark makes it clear it was a donkey—here he is on an untrained donkey, probably shying away from the onlookers . . . cloaks being thrown in front of it would have sent it over the edge—here he is, on an young animal that was all over the road, his feet practically dragging the ground, and his disciples—notice that Luke doesn’tsay the crowds—his disciples,were hollering and carrying on: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!”

And so the story of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, so often portrayed as a triumphal entry, can be viewed in an entirely different way: his followers shouting “Blessed is the king” and that kingon a runaway donkey, feet dragging the ground, looking about as much like an earthly monarch as Ido. Which, as y’all know, is not very much. And Jesus’ appearanceis contrapuntal to the message of his followers—and could that have been the point?—and especiallyso to what was happening on the other side of town, where the very kingly Pilate was riding in on a very kingly horse.

And so you can see that it was a very political scene on that first Palm Sunday, it couldn’t helpbut be that. But one of the marvelous things about 

Scripture is that it works on so many levels. And of course, one of those levels theological one, and it’s the same point PauI would make twenty-some-odd years later: the wisdom of God is foolishnessto the powers that be. What Jesus was s doingthat day was demonstrating that principle in graphic, no-uncertain-terms, that the last will be first and the first last, and he was playing the last and you-know-who across town was playing the first.

And at the start of Holy Week, the time we observe the passion of Christ—his trial, degradation and crucifixion—it’s good to remember that this is only the beginning of Jesus’ demonstration of that theological fact. On Maundy Thursday, at the last Supper, he washes the disciples’ feet like slave, like the servant that he was, and on Friday, which Christians call “good” he is nailed to a tree in the ultimate demonstration, the ultimate statement of God’s true nature. Amen.