Powers and Principalities

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
March 28, 2010; Palm/Passion Sunday, Year C
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Luke 19:28-40) -- the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday

(Luke 23:1-49) -- the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Luke

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A couple of weeks ago while we were exploring beneath the south wall of the Temple in Jerusalem, Suzanne came across a palm branch that had been left behind by someone.  It was lying on the ground next to our passageway.  She picked it up and began to wave it, like what we might imagine happened at Jesus' entry into Jerusalem on that original Palm Sunday.  The palm branch was huge – around ten or twelve feet high.  It made our little slivers that we use in church look a bit timid.  It had a long central stem, with fronds extending up to three feet in either direction.  It took a good bit of energy to wave it, and the movement was visible from a great distance.  It's important to know that the palm is an ancient symbol of the nation of Israel and of its hopes for freedom.

I looked back, across the Kidron Valley and up near the top of the Mount of Olives to the place where we had started a day before, the village of Bethphage – the village Jesus walked from.  I looked across the Temple Mount to the minaret that now stands at the place of the Roman Fortress that Herod had built and named for his friend Mark Antony, the Antonia Fortress.  It was obvious.  The Romans saw the whole thing – this procession with giant waving palm branches and clothes strewn and revolutionary rhetoric: "Blessed is the King who comes in the Name of the Lord."

No wonder the Pharisees told them to be quiet.  This is the kind of demonstration that could only bring a punishing response from the Romans.  This was a planned demonstration.  Jesus knew what he was doing, and the evidence tells us he was very intentional about it.  You see, you don't find palm trees in Jerusalem.  These large branches had probably been carried all the way from Jericho, the oasis city in the desert, 850 feet below sea level. 

As Jesus' group neared Bethphage, a climb of more than 3500 feet from Jericho, Jesus made arrangements for a donkey, the traditional mount for the Kings of Israel.  When King David was dying, while his elder son Adonijah was feasting, having claimed the throne of his father, the prophet Nathan anointed the younger brother Solomon as king and placed him on David's donkey as a sign of his authority.  Solomon's claim to the throne prevailed.  He rode the king's donkey.

Among the treasured verses of Jewish Messianic expectation are the words of the 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. (9:9)  On that day, (the Lord's) feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which lies before Jerusalem on the east. (14:4a)

So when Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey from the Mount of Olives, it is an act of profound symbolic speech.  He is announcing that the Messiah is returning to the Holy City.

If he wasn't already on the radar of the Roman Legion in Jerusalem, they immediately went to work to investigate who this was who stirred up potential political unrest.  The Sadducees and other Jewish collaborators with Rome recognized the volatile potential of this entrance, and they must have begun their strategies to nip this imposter in the bud before he incited an uprising that could provoke a violent, even catastrophic response from Rome.  Soon thereafter, when Jesus entered the Temple and disrupted their commercial interests, it was an obvious necessity for them that he be quashed.  For the Sadducees, the only question was "how?" 

But there were others who might have greeted the entrance of this potential Messiah.  The Zealots were Jewish nationalists, intent on driving the hated Roman occupiers out of their land.  But their hopes that Jesus might be the catalyst for a new independence movement were dashed when Jesus answered wrongly the question about taxes, "Render to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's."  He wasn't the kind of militaristic Messiah they were looking for.

Most of Jesus' support had probably come from among the ranks of the party of the Pharisees – good, observant Jews, who promoted the practice of the Torah by everyone, not just the professional religious.  But standing on the "teaching steps" on the south side of the Temple, within earshot of the Jerusalem headquarters of the Pharisees, Jesus railed against them, calling them hypocrites, as inwardly unclean as the whitewashed tombs of the decaying bodies in the crypts of the cemetery visible across the valley.

Within days of his entrance, Jesus had alienated himself from every structure and institution of his day, offending what Paul calls the "powers and principalities" – the institutions of government, religion, business, military and society – the institutions that give structure to our corporate life.  We need those structures.  We can't live without them.  They are foundational to the ordering that is necessary for community to exist. 

But those institutions are fallen.  And they tend to magnify their self-interests.  Ultimately, they are idolatrous.  Eventually they all demand our highest allegiance.  And in the conflict between Love Incarnate, the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and the self-interest of law, government, religion, business, military and society, the powers and principalities can't handle pure love.  They always crucify God.  We always crucify God. 

It is common for Christian preachers to interpret the cross of Jesus as God's embrace of our personal sin, an embrace that absorbs our violence and evil, returning only love and forgiveness, overcoming death with life.  What happens in Jesus' passion is more than personal, it is also systemic.  In the cross of Jesus, God also embraces our corporate sin, our fallen and broken structures of society and religion, the powers and principalities that give order to our common life, but which also create violence and evil.  Jesus absorbs the worst they can do, and returns only love and forgiveness. 

Today we see him, a victim of their injustice.  Condemned for sedition, blasphemy, and for "perverting our nation," Jesus is legally tried, convicted, sentenced to capital punishment, and executed by people and systems believing they are acting in the best interests of all.  "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." 

We walk the way of the cross this Holy Week to see what God will do when we and our institutions do our worst.

Hens and Foxes

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
February 28, 2010; 2 Lent, Year C
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

    (Luke 12:31-35) – Some Pharisees came and said to Jesus, "Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you." He said to them, "Go and tell that fox for me, 'Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.' Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, 'Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.'"
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"Go and tell that fox..."  Jesus sets his face for Jerusalem, "the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it."

When I first met him, Bob Hood wouldn't give me the time of day.  He was a professor.  An Oxford educated African American.  I was just a seminarian.  But his dismissive air toward me seemed more than mere rank.  It had an edge, I thought. 

One day we were seated at the same lunch table, and I was cutting up a bit.  Sometimes I do that.  Dr. Hood looked at me and said, "Grisham.  I don't believe I've ever sat with you.  You're pretty clever."  "Yes, Dr. Hood," I said.  "I've been pretty clever for nearly two years here, but you've never noticed because I'm a white boy from Mississippi and you're a black racist."  Then I grinned real big.  After the sharp intake of breath around the table, he said, "I'm going to have to get to know you better.  I'll have you over for sherry some afternoon."  "I'd like that very much," I said.

He did.  And we became fast friends.  When he knew me well enough, when we had built some trust and affection, Bob told me why he had ignored me so intentionally.  "It was your accent.  When I heard you speak, it brought back memories.  Bad memories.  I was afraid of your voice."

Then he told how he had been sent to Mississippi as a young person with the civil rights movement.  Bob was sent to Philadelphia, Mississippi in 1964 to replace one of three voting rights workers who were missing there.  No one knew yet what had happened to them. 

Bob told me stories of diving to the floor when gunshots came through the window during one of their meetings.  Of lying on the floor for more than an hour, hearing sounds through the blown second story window, listening to a mob, a mob with fire, deciding whether or not to torch the house.  He told of being picked up when he was alone, taken to a windowless, underground jail cell in a nearby town.  No one knew where he was.  This was how people disappeared.  Unaccountably, they let him make one phone call.  The Harvard Law School had an 800 number he had memorized.  A few hours later one of their graduates showed up on his behalf and he was released. 

My voice, my accent frightened Bob Hood.  No wonder. 

Bob didn't live to see a black man elected president, but when I saw the faces of his generation watching the inauguration with tears and wonder, I remembered Bob and imagined his joy.

What makes a young person, any person, move intentionally into the face of danger? 

"Get away from here [Jesus], for Herod wants to kill you."  Tell that fox that I'm going to keep on confronting the demons.  I'm going to do my work of healing until I finish, and I'm coming straight for the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it.

For thirty years the Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo walked around the plaza for a half hour every Thursday to bear witness to their missing children, grandchildren, brothers, sisters, aunts, and uncles who disappeared in Argentina during that military regime's Dirty War from '76 to '83.  They had no hope of finding their loved ones, they only believed that asking for the truth is a way to resist violence, oppression and despair. 

I spoke with a woman here in Fayetteville who told of the incredible courage of a friend who left every security she knew, with nothing more than the clothes on her back, to get away from an abusive spouse and to file charges against him.

Friday night I heard a story of a friend who had her graduate research stolen by her professor who planned to publish it under the teacher's name without crediting it to the student.  My friend confronted the teacher and turned her in.  I've heard similar stories of teachers victimizing international students who felt too insecure to seek justice, afraid they would be deported if they accused a professor.

I know a man who left his tenured, named chair at a prestigious University to work full time with a non–profit trying to curb carbon emissions.  I know someone who left the fast track on the corporate ladder for a low-paying job with less stress and more time for family.

I know a mother who insisted on getting her teenager drug tested and into therapy despite the threatening resistance of her husband who said it would be too embarrassing.  I know of a young person who risked violent reprisal to help police bust a drug ring that was supplying children and teens.  I know someone who left a gang.  I know someone who gave up drinking even though it felt like the only balm for his sad and anxious life.  I know someone who confronted his boss for the boss's unethical behavior, knowing it would cost him his job.

I've heard two theories about why people take action in the face of danger.  Some say we do so when we feel there are no other options, we feel must act or speak a truth because there is nothing else we can do.  Others say that we are more likely to take a risk when we feel safe enough to let go of the known in order to embrace the unknown. 

There is something about Jesus that speaks to both of those motivations.  Jesus give us an ethical foundation on which we can stand when we see threat or wrong.  Jesus' ethic of compassion and love forces us to recognize when things are not of love and compassion, when things are damaging or oppressive.  Jesus helps us to see them for what they are.  And the resurrection power of Jesus endows us with a certain security that can embolden us to face the threat, to speak the truth, to risk to act in order to bring life and light, because we know we are loved and safe in Christ.

My friend Bob Hood was so incensed by the injustice of racism and segregation that he felt he must act to oppose it.  His training for activism and his faith gave him strength enough to leave the safety of his Northern home to go to Mississippi in 1964, facing the possibility that he too might disappear like James Cheney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman.  Thanks in part to their courage, our nation passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, against determined opposition from those who were fearful of such generous change.

"Jerusalem, Jerusalem...! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!"  There's an old story of a sudden fire in a barnyard that caught everything by surprise.  When the fire had finished the farmer surveyed the damage.  There was a mother hen, her wings spread out, feathers black and charred.  She was dead.  When the farmer picked up her body, six young chicks ran out safely from beneath her.

In this world there are hens and there are foxes.  Jesus shows us how to confront the foxes, to speak truth to power, to walk courageously into danger for the sake of good.  He is our model.  We are the Body of Christ.  We are to continue his work of casting out demons.  We are to continue his work of healing.  We do that in his Spirit, knowing that he is with us.  Jesus does not leave us alone to face our threats. 

We are to be brave hens, who spread our wings to gather all who are threatened or afraid under the security of the truth and light that Jesus manifests. 

Stand up to wrong.  Stand up to wrong when you can't take it any more.  Stand up to wrong because you are safe and strong.  You are empowered with God's life and light.  Tell all the foxes that we are continuing Jesus' work to confront the demons, to bring healing to all, and to gather the vulnerable under the wings of his everlasting arms.

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