Making Stones Shout

Unknown, Getty Museum
Ottonian, Regensburg, about 1030 - 1040
Tempera colors and gold leaf on parchment

The Sixth Sunday of Lent

Palm Sunday, 2009

Making Stones Shout

Everyone loves a parade. Especially a parade featuring a celebrity. Last year we saw many such spectacles in an election campaign, although the "parades" had a lot more security that this one. Everyone can get into the mood, the swing of it. Everyone gets excited and starts cheering, even when they may have no idea what's going on.

It can be called an example of "mob psychology." It can go either direction. Reading recently of the riots around the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968 showed that unfortunate truth on both sides of the aisle.

Today it is going in Jesus' way. The wave of joy and expectations is real and overwhelming. But there lurks the other side. It is always there. It is what Jesus is parading against though few if any on the road to Jerusalem knew it that day.

The other side, the dark side, the evil side, whatever we wish to use to describe was there. It could be seen in the spies and religious officials in the crowd taking notes. It could be seen in the need for beggars on the edge of the crowd to be there looking for alms and food. It could be seen in the Court of the Gentiles where all nations were allowed to come and pray- and be required to buy their way in God's presence.

It could also be seen not far from the crowd. Pilate and Herod and the forces of occupation; military hardware and armaments there for "peacekeeping;" the wealthy and the aristocrats doing what they could do to keep others from getting even a piece of what they had; Satan or Evil seeking souls to use to bring this parade to an end.

Today we fall into line.Yet after all these years of thousands of Palm Sundays, Passion Weeks, and Easters we know that the line gets tougher to follow in the next five days. We know, if we are honest, that the Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn was right- the line dividing good and evil runs through the center of the human heart.

My friend and colleague Christine on her liturgy blog, Freshly Squeezed Liturgy, started a litany for today with this call and response:

Today we have cheered you on as our champion and hailed you as our hero.

Forgive us tomorrow when our enthusiasm wanes.

Today we believe stones will shout against the fear and injustice and oppression of our world. Today we may even have trudged through winter storms and flooded towns to attend church. Tomorrow we will crawl away in embarrassment for what we dared think possible today.

It is a long week ahead if we take the time- and risk- of walking with Jesus. It is a long week ahead if we expect Easter to come out of nowhere when no one dies. Only in death, the death of our human expectations and controls and fears, can there be a resurrection.