“A Hope-filled Crowd”based on Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29, Mark 11:1-11(…

March 25, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

One of the most repeated myths about Jesus’ death is that the crowd who celebrated him on Palm Sunday turned on him and demanded his death on Good Friday. This one isn’t true at all, and its repetition keeps us from seeing clearly what did happen in the last week of Jesus’ life. It has been useful to those who want claim that humans are fickle, and crowd mentality is dangerous, to claim that the same crowd changed sides, but that isn’t reflective of the story we’ve read.

Instead, the crowds remained incredibly excited about Jesus and loyal to him. Their presence and their fidelity to him was the largest part of his threat to the empire. I mean, he also engaged in two really emphatic demonstrations of nonviolent resistance, but no one would have cared if he hadn’t done so with many, many people watching.

In fact, throughout the end of Mark, we’re told repeatedly that the authorities were trying to figure out how to take out Jesus without creating a riot by crowds faithful to him.

11:18 “And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching.” 11:32 “they were afraid of the crowd, for all regarded John as truly a prophet.” 12: 12 ”they wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowd. So they left him and went away.” 14:1b-2 “The chief priests and the scribes were looking for a way to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him; for they said, ‘Not during the festival, or there may be a riot among the people.‘”

John Dominic Crossan in God and Empire, suggests that the Good Friday crowd wasn’t really a crowd at all, but rather 9-10 people who were advocating for Barabbas, likely his followers. They weren’t the same people, and there weren’t many of them.

Throughout the Gospel of Mark there are tensions with crowds. Jesus keeps attracting crowds, and then tries to get away from them!! When he can’t, he teaches them, heals them, feeds them, then he tries to get away again. In Mark, the crowds are seen as a little bit dangerous, because they feed into the fear the authorities have that Jesus is going to start a violent revolution. The tension is ALWAYS there.

Of course, Jesus wasn’t going to start a VIOLENT revolution, he was starting a nonviolent one, but the difference didn’t end up mattering. Jesus was killed by the Roman Empire on the charges of inciting a violent revolt, EVEN THOUGH he’d only engaged in nonviolent actions. (Two notable ones: Palm Sunday and then on Monday the Temple Cleansing.) It seems that the fear the authorities had of the crowds and their power made the difference between violent revolution and nonviolent action less important to the authorities. They were too scared to pay attention to their own laws.

So, why were so many people following Jesus? What was it that was so attractive about him, or so irresistible? From what I can tell from the stories about him, his teaching was certainly mind-blowing, after all we’ve been struggling with it for 2000 years without coming to many answers. He also seems to have been a good healer. But those two pieces don’t quite explain the power he has in the stories about him. They don’t explain why the crowds were SO passionate for him that they protected him. They don’t explain why people were willing to walk away from the lives they’d known just to follow him.

I think he must have been profoundly rooted in God’s own love, AND very charismatic, AND incredibly empathetic, AND insanely insightful while also clear spoken, AND profoundly gifted at knowing what people needed and finding ways to fulfill it. The sort of live changing experiences people had with him, instantaneously, are really shocking. So is the story of Palm Sunday.

The story says that the crowd showed up at an anti-Imperial procession, that functionally named Jesus King, while shouting King-supporting phrases that were blasphemy and sedition in the Roman Empire, WHILE waving the national symbol (Palm Branches) of Israel, AND they laid their cloaks on the road in front of him. The Jesus Seminar thinks this is an expression of early Christian imagination, rather than historical memory. Historically speaking, at best, they think Jesus MIGHT have ridden into Jerusalem on a donkey as a symbolic act. That seems very likely, and it may be helpful for some among us to keep that in mind (and for others to ignore completely).¹

For those of you who have heard me preach on Palm Sunday before, you may remember that it is said to happen just before the celebration of the Jewish Passover. The Passover is the celebration of God’s actions to free the Hebrew people from slavery and give them new life together, eventually in the Promised Land. This central story of Judaism is of a God who cares about the oppressed and acts to free them.

Thus, the Roman Empire which had colonized the Jewish homeland, got a little nervous around the Passover celebration, all the more so because 200,000 people came to Jerusalem to celebrate it, swelling the city that usually had 40,000 residents. Thus, before the Passover began, the representative of the Empire entered the city through a formal processional with full military might on display. This wasn’t subtle, at all! It was a direct threat of violence, should any revolts or riots break out. The Empire was there to remind the people that they’d be crushed if they attempted to reenact their history of being freed from oppression.

People at the Roman procession yelled, “Hail Caesar, son of God; Praise be to the Savior who brought the Roman Peace; Caesar is Lord….” Those were the shouts appropriate to the Empire. And, that’s what makes the shouts said to happen at the Jesus parade so significant. They defied the power of Rome. They were blaspheming against the Empire, and doing so while seeking God’s help in overthrowing it! They also shouted “Hosanna”, a contraction of the Hebrew phrase “save, we pray.” The word, which we use as praise and adoration, to the people yelling it as Jesus rode the colt, literally meant ‘save’. Thus it meant “Hosanna!” Be our savior! Rescue us! Deliver us from our enemies! You are like the great King David! You come in the name of the Lord to bring us salvation from above!² They were speaking to YHWH, in Hebrew, seeking salvation from the Roman Empire.³

Jerusalem wasn’t just the capital city of the former Jewish empire, according to Crossan “it was a capital city where religion and violence – conservative religion and imperial oppression – had become serenely complicit.”⁴ Jesus choose it as a place for his demonstrations because it was the center of this complicity with violence. Crossan says, “Jesus went to Jerusalem because that was where his deliberate double demonstrations against both imperial justice and religious collaboration had to be made. … It was a protest from the legal and prophetic heart of Judaism against Jewish religious cooperation with Roman Imperial Control.”⁵

The day after this peaceful, but POWERFUL, protest (Palm Sunday), Jesus went into the Temple and had another peaceful and POWERFUL protest. Crossan writes, “In Mark’s story, attention is focused on the demonstrations as twin aspects of the same nonviolent protest. … Each is quite deliberate. Each takes place at an entrance – into the City and into the Temple. Together, and in the name of God, these demonstrations are a protest against any collaboration between religious authority and imperial violence.”⁶

In all of this, the crowds stayed with him. Whatever it was that attracted them to begin with, there was substance under it that kept them there when things started getting dangerous. It is one thing to listen to a teacher in some field in Galilee and glean hope that life could be better than it is now. It is quite another thing to follow a leader who is protesting the Empire that has military might that has never been seen before, and to keep him safe with your sheer numbers. What kept them there?

In part, I suspect the crowds stayed because life outside of the Jesus movement was hopeless, and Jesus offered real and substantive hope for a different life -if not for those who followed him, then for the ones who came after them. Maybe the Spirit was there too, and the people could feel God at work, and wanted to be a part of it. Maybe the energy of the crowd was empowering and uplifting as few things were. Still though, I think Jesus just offered something no one else did – he saw them, he loved them, he wanted good for them, and he taught them how to work together to change the world so things could get better. People need to be part of something more than themselves, and the beaten down Jewish people KNEW in their hearts and in their bodies that there was more goodness in life than they were getting to experience. They knew God and God’s vision for them, and that the domination and oppression system wasn’t God’s will at all! In addition, I think Jesus’ love of them made it possible to see their own worth and to live it!

I ask about that crowd, because I think as later followers of Jesus it is worth wondering why we follow him too! While the disciples were all killed by the Empire for continuing the work of Jesus, for most of us there is much less of a cost in following. At the same time, there are a whole lot more distractions to following Jesus than there ever have been before. There are ways to numb ourselves out to the pains of life, options ranging from the simple distractions of smart phones, YouTube, and TV to the terrifyingly common addictive substances that pervade our society. There are other ways to “build community” and feel connected: sports teams, political groups, non-profit boards, game nights, and the list goes on. Following Jesus isn’t the easiest option. It calls us out of comfort zones, it prods us to love God’s people even when they drive us NUTS, it asks a lot of us.

It also gives a lot back. Following Jesus gives us an alternative vision: one where all of the people on the planet are God’s beloved children (not commodities and means of profit-building); one where there is incredibly important work to do together – building the kindom of God (not just individuals fighting to make it through day by day) ; one where there is hope for a truly good system of life together (not just Band-Aids on mostly broken systems); one where the nonviolent power of connection and community dominates (not violence or the threat of violence); one where HOPE dominates (not fear). It still sends shivers down my spine, how different God’s vision for the world is from how the world is at the moment, and the idea that God is working through us to make the vision into reality. May we join that hope filled crowd around Jesus, the ones following his vision, the ones making it possible for his work to continue, the ones who trust in his way. Amen

1Robert W. Funk and The Jesus Seminar, The Acts of Jesus (USA -HarperSanFransicso: Polebridge Press, 1998) 230.

2 From http://www.processandfaith.org/lectionary/YearA/2004-2005/2005-03-20.shtml, Commentary by Rick Marshall, accessed on March 16, 2008.

3Marcus Borg and John Dominc Crossan, The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Final Days in Jerusalem (Harper Collins: 2006)

4John Dominic Crossan God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now(USA: HarperOne, 2007), 131.

5Crossan, 131-132.

6Crossan, 134.

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

March 25. 2-18

Sermons

“Image of God” based on Isaiah 45:1-6 and Matthew 22:15-22

October 22, 2017February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

The Bible often sounds
so… Bible-y that it can be easy to tune out. Or, at least, it can
be for me. Sometimes when I’m reading I’m tempted to “yadda yadda”
the stuff that feels like its been said over and over. This is
similar to trying to read legalese and make sense of the actual
point, which I know is there somewhere, but I have to break through
ALL the words that don’t actually mean anything to me.

I mention this because
I’m not entirely convinced I’m the only person with this problem, and
because I think many a normal person might have had this issue with
our Hebrew Bible text today. Yes yes, God opens doors, God levels
mountains, God gives riches, God calls us by name, God chooses the
chosen, God is the only one. We’ve heard all this before, it is
practically a chorus.

The big difference in
this passage, the part that makes it not at all redundant nor boring,
comes in the very beginning. “Thus
says the LORD to his anointed.” (I KNOW, you are half tempted to
zone out the Bible-ese already, but I promise, you want to hear the
next two words) “to Cyrus”. This, my friends, is some crazy turn
of a phrase.

A
quick set of historical reminders is in order to make sense of it
though. Around 587 to 586 BCE the Jewish people living in Jerusalem
were defeated by the Babylonian army, and the city and temple were
destroyed. The leaders and the educated were taken to Babylon as
slaves and the rest of the people were left behind without defenses,
food, or hope. This is known as “the Exile” and we believe that
the Hebrew Bible as we know it was written down during and after the
Exile, which means the stories were told in particular ways to try to
answer the question “Why did this happen to us?” In fact, the
very idea of a Jewish Messiah developed at the time of the Exile, as
a person who would right the wrong of the Exile itself and recreate a
vibrant Jewish Empire.

The
Exile ended when the Persian Empire defeated the Babylonian Empire in
battle, and took it over. The Emperor of the Persian Empire then
decided that he didn’t much care about the Jewish captives, and freed
them to go home as they wished. It had, however, been 48 years,
which is several generations without birth control, and not everyone
went home.

Back
to our passage, do you know who was the Emperor of the Persian Empire
in 539 and let the captives go free? Cyrus. So, this passage, which
is the first one to claim anyone as the Messiah (“God’s anointed”),
claims that role for a FOREIGN, NON-JEWISH, EMPEROR. Well, now,
that’s pretty curious, isn’t it? This stuff isn’t all just
Bible-ese. 😉

The
idea here is that by freeing God’s people, Cyrus was doing God’s
work. But the claims are rather radical. First of all, Cyrus is
called the messiah, then Cyrus is said to be called by name by God,
and to be given a last name by God EVEN THOUGH Cyrus doesn’t know or
worship God. So, the work of freeing the people was done through the
work of Cyrus, and God helped Cyrus along the way to make it happen.

The
most curious part is that God used an EMPEROR, which doesn’t tend to
be the way God works, at least when we get to the Gospels. However,
the fantastic thing we can take from the Isaiah passage is this: God
doesn’t limit God’s work just to people who believe particular things
or speak of God in particular ways; God is willing to work with and
through anyone who is open to working with God! The fact that this
was clear enough in 539 BCE that the people of God thought Cyrus was
God’s chosen messiah is very good news indeed. Inclusivity runs deep
with God, and God’s people have known it for a long time.

Now,
Matthew is distinctly less enamored with foreign emperors than Isaiah
is. Matthew sets up this story beautifully, designing a narrative
around the snappy statement of Jesus which said, “Give therefore to
the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things
that are God’s.” That little saying is one of the very few things
the Jesus Seminar REALLY thinks Jesus said, and Matthew builds a
story around it to make sense of it. The story is well constructed.
The coin described has on it the face of the Emperor, while our faith
tradition has always claimed that people have on them the “image of
God.” Matthew even word plays this, having the adversaries
describe Jesus as a man who shows no partiality, which is literally,
“you do not regard the face of anyone.”¹
The whole story then plays around with faces, and images, wondering
whose matches with whose.

While
Matthew’s story is well constructed, we think the authentic memory is
simply in that statement, “Give therefore to the emperor the things
that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
That statement seems to direct us to a reasonable follow up question:
What is it that belongs to Caesar and what is it that belongs to
God? In fact, I think it is this question that makes the statement
so powerful and memorable. It appears benign, and would have sounded
benign to Roman ears. They might have thought, “Yeah, sure, give
money to the Emperor, that’s really what he wants, and as long as he
also gets the power and respect he deserves, your God can have what’s
left.”

Jewish
ears would not have heard the same thing at all. They would have
heard Jesus and immediately considered, “But, if we are to give to
God what is God’s, there is nothing left for the emperor!” So,
Jesus’ saying manages to totally subvert the power of the empire
WHILE sounding benign to the emperor’s ears. Well played, Jesus.

So,
for a faithful Jewish person at the time of Jesus as today, all
things belong to God. That’s one of the implications of thinking of
God as Creator, God created all things and all things are thus God’s.
The less obvious follow up question is: what does it mean to give
something to God who is already the Creator of all things? I don’t
mean to be trite, I think this is a valid question. We might have a
sense of being able to “give our hearts” to God, but we aren’t
just looking for that. We certainly have the capacity to give money
to the church, and to other groups whose work builds the kin-dom of
God, which can be a way to give to God, but if God is the God of
EVERYTHING and we are to give what is God’s to God, then… how?

Jesus
doesn’t clarify. As the Jesus seminar puts it, he leaves that as
homework, “He does not tell his questioners what to do other than
to decide the claims of God in relation to the claims of the
emperor.”²
As far as I can figure it out, to give something to God is to use it
for the building of God’s kin-dom; or sometimes that’s called God’s
kingdom; that is, to create the world into the world as God would
have it be; that is, a world where everyone has enough to survive AND
thrive; that is, a world of justice that allows for peace; that is a
reality where all people are humanized and no one is left
dehumanized; some call this the beloved community. I know that’s a
lot of rephrasing, but we Christians find this idea important enough
that we talk about it in a lot of ways, and it seems important to
point out that they’re all the SAME idea.

In
seminary I was offered the idea that we are co-creators with God.
That is, God created, but in that creation we received free will and
that free will is a part of creating what is and what will come next.
If the kin-dom is to come, then we need to be co-creators with God
in making it happen, because God will not work without us nor force
it upon us. I’m proposing that to “give to God” is to offer it
for the sake of the kin-dom. Resources I see all us as having
include: our time, our energy, our mental though space, our money,
our gifts, and our passions. None of us have any of those in equal
measure, but we all have the chance to decide what to do with them.

There
is a heck of a lot of work to be done in building the kin-dom as
well, and the work is quite varied. Paul did some good work on
making lists of various gifts that are useful and various work that
is to be done, but the end point is that we need lots of different
skill sets and we need not judge ourselves nor others for what we’re
able to offer.

As
a practical example, when the area I was in flooded in 2011 I was
asked to do some organizing work, because the fire department was
busy emptying basement and the fire auxiliary was busy trying to
distribute food and water. So I sat at the fire department and made
lists: lists of people who wanted to help and lists of people who
needed help. To be honest, I’m not all that useful at most building
or demolishing work, I don’t know all that much about it. However,
it turned out that a deeply necessary job was the one that involved
keeping lists and making phone calls. It was more than a year before
I lifted my hand with anything but a pen or a phone in it for that
recovery, and yet I got enough feedback to know that the work I’d
done mattered. At the same time, nothing I did would have mattered
if there weren’t people willing to do the heavy lifting, nor others
working to get supplies, nor if the people working to restore the
utilities hadn’t succeeded, nor if the basements weren’t drained, nor
if the people hadn’t had food and water in the meantime.

I
think perhaps disaster recovery is a decent metaphor for building the
kin-dom if anything is: it takes a lot of people doing what they are
best at, some of which may not seem that important, much of which is
mucking out, but all of which together can transform it all!

Another
practical example seems to be in order. Many in this congregation
have been doing the long term work for full inclusion of LGBTQIA+
people in the church and in the world. That requires a lot of
different effort: from strategy work to protests, from legal work to
acts of defiance, from the the “work” of celebration to the
simple acts of inclusion, and beyond. A few years ago a friend
mentioned the deeply necessary work of having initial conversations
with people who are closed minded, or who are having their very first
thoughts that perhaps God loves LBGTQIA+ people too – and that she
no longer feels called to do it. She is an incredible organizer, we
really need her organizing rather than in those conversations, and
she was wise enough to know continuing to be in those talks decade
after decade was too much for her. Her stance felt like freedom. We
don’t all have to do the same work, there is too much to do to be
stuck on only one thing!

So, to give to God’s what
is God’s, what does it mean? It means our whole lives being directed
towards co-creating the fullness of God’s vision into the world. The
really good news is that when we are working along with God, the
burden is lightened and the possibilities are expanded. Thanks be to
God! Amen

1Richard
E. Spalding, Pastoral Perspective on Matthew 22:15-22,
Feasting on the Word Year
A, Volume 4,
edited by David L. Barlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville, KY:
Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 189.

2Robert
W. Funk, Roy W Hoover, and The Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels: The
Search for the Autthentic Words of Jesus (HarperOneUSA, 1993), 236.