March 24, 2013
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Palm Sunday
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The Rev. Dr. Charles Rassieur
Blessed Disturbance
Luke 19:28-40
As you all certainly remember very clearly, I also preached on Palm Sunday last
year, on April 1, and no one needs to make a comment about that date. And, there’s no
secret that I preach from a written manuscript, which also means that all my sermons are
wonderfully stored in my computer for later reference. And, so, refer to last year’s Palm
Sunday sermon I did. So, here’s the truth: a part of last year’s Palm Sunday sermon is in
this sermon; I couldn’t help it because it‘s a fact that sometimes the way I‘ve said
something the first time simply can‘t be improved on, at least by me. And, that’s our
situation today. So, just listen very carefully, and if three of you can tell me after the
service what part came from last year’s sermon, I’ll return the honorarium. But, if you
are wrong about what you think came from last year’s sermon, your dinner will be $6.00
instead of $3.00. And, if none of this sermon sounds like anything you heard last Palm
Sunday, then we all will have proven again just how easily any sermon can be forgotten.
The streets were all packed with pilgrims from across the country and beyond
who had converged again upon Jerusalem for the annual observance of Passover.
Thousands of voices were bargaining and yelling and shouting as they looked for lodging
and food and always for the animals for temple sacrifice offered by the local trades
people and shop owners. Which is to say, there was a lot of money to be made by the
locals those particular days of festivity and celebration. And, of course, as always
children were underfoot everywhere, screaming and yelling as they chased each other,
wrestled, and paid no attention to what woman or man with arms full they might knock
down. But, as jammed as the streets were, the Roman horses with their armored riders,
led by a soldier in front holding high a pole carrying the emperor's imperial flag, cut
unhesitatingly through the crowds like a giant icebreaker moving relentlessly through
tons of arctic ice. Caesar's soldiers, fully dressed for battle with long swords at their
belts, cared very little who was knocked down or trampled underfoot by their driven,
snorting, sweating horses. There was no mistaking Rome's intention. At the height of
this Passover celebration, the armed power of hundred’s of Rome’s soldiers and horses
were paraded through Jerusalem to make it very clear that no lawlessness would be
tolerated whatsoever. And to emphasize that point, the last two dozen horses each
dragged two heavy timbers behind them, one sixteen feet in length and the other eight
feet long. With the shorter pole fastened at right angles to it, the long timber would go
upright into a six foot deep hole. The message was shockingly and graphically clear that
any foolish challenge this week to local and imperial authority would be dealt with
swiftly and severely. So, this display of Roman power slowly and deliberately with
military precision wound through the main streets until the soldiers, tired from their long
day‘s work, arrived at their Jerusalem barracks. This was carefully and precisely
calculated Roman crowd control at its best.
Who knows how it happened to be at the very same hour that another procession
also was occurring on the opposite side of Jerusalem. A lone and silent figure rode on a
colt, preceded by perhaps a couple dozen friends and supporters excitedly shouting their
acclaim and support for this teacher from Galilee. The pilgrims on each side of the road
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momentarily interrupted their shopping to pause and turn and wonder at what they were
seeing. Not once did it ever occur to any of those puzzled bystanders that they were in
fact and at that moment witnesses to an approaching epic confrontation that would
change forever the course of history and the lives of millions upon millions of people.
No, that day, as the quietly self-confident figure rode by on a colt, those unknowing and
unsuspecting pilgrims could not possibly have realized the sheer magnitude of what they
were watching. While Rome was demonstrating the most carefully organized crowd
control just a mile or two away, the young man on the colt was carrying out a quite
intentional and equally calculated "in your face" confrontation of cosmic dimensions!
And, all the while those unsuspecting soldiers across town had no hint at all that
the realm of justice and love and mercy in the name of that lone figure on a colt would
one day not only sweep over and across them, but over and across their empire and
empires to come for countless centuries. No, they never dreamed, as they pushed
arrogantly and mercilessly through the crowds, that history was on the side of that
resolute, unwavering Galilean and not at all on their side. No, they never dreamed it!
Probably we all can look back and name teachers and professors who were, for
whatever reason, were our unforgettable favorites. And, Paul Scherer at Princeton
Seminary was one of those professors for me. He was a retired Lutheran pastor who had
preached for many years in New York City before, in the later years of his retirement,
coming to Princeton Seminary to undertake the daunting and formidable task of trying to
teach young Presbyterians how to craft and deliver a sermon. Paul Scherer, by the way,
cannot be blamed and has no responsibility for what I regularly try to pass off as a
sermon. But, I’ve never forgotten Scherer’s comment one day about one of our favorite
hymns, number 341 in our big, blue hymnal. The title is, “Blessed Assurance, Jesus Is
Mine!” Now, listen carefully so you hear the apostrophe. Scherer rightly and correctly
observed that the profoundly real truth about our Christian faith is, “Blessed disturbance,
I am Jesus’.” Did you hear the apostrophe at the end of Jesus? Because it really sets the
record straight about who really belongs to whom! And that’s enough to change, well, if
you and I are willing to be honest about it, to even disturbingly change everything!
The message today is that Jesus came to town that first Palm Sunday and created
a disturbance. And one heck of a disturbance he sure created, because in the name of
God’s realm of love and justice he challenged the domination systems of both a
thousand-year-old religious institution and an imperial Roman government institution!
That’s whom we belong to: the One from whom nothing is safe from being disturbed,
which means then, to say the obvious, even you and I aren’t safe from that holy and
loving disturbance!
Three and a half weeks ago President Obama helped to dedicate at the Capitol a
new statue in the Statuary Hall. It is the only statue of an African-American woman in
the midst of so many others memorialized by their statues in that hall of national honor.
It is the statue of a woman who, in 1955, boarded a bus, as she often did, in Montgomery,
Alabama. This time, she was seated just behind the so-called white section. The bus
made a couple stops, and when the bus driver asked her to move so more whites could sit
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down, she refused to get up and move to the back of the bus with the rest of the colored
(as they were called then) the rest of the colored riders. I heard that someone said a
couple weeks ago that if it hadn’t been for Rosa Parks’ courageous and disturbing
confrontation that day of an unjust institution of domination, there likely would not have
been a Martin Luther King, Jr. And, if there had not been a Martin Luther King, Jr., there
might not have been a Barack Obama. You can be the judge of that for yourself.
My friends, as we wave our palm branches and shout our hallelujahs this day, just
do not be fooled for one minute about whom we belong to. Because, the disturbing and
sometimes very inconvenient truth is that he will very likely ask you and me, in the name
of God’s eternal realm of love and justice and mercy, to do something--in your
neighborhood, in your church, in your family, where you live--but to do something that
someone or even a lot of people may find quite if not very disturbing! In fact, in the
name of and for the sake of God’s commanding love, you may even be considering now
what you have to do that you had hoped you would never have to do. I know I am.
Last year a young woman in high school spent over 6 hours writing 1,986 sticky
notes that said, “You’re beautiful.” Then she went to school early one day and put one
on each student’s locker. She was called to the dean’s office and threatened with a threeday suspension from school. And, speaking, as I was about Martin Luther King, Jr., he
once said that “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
May you and I always be so disturbed by the One we belong to, you know--the One
riding today into Jerusalem on a colt--so disturbed that for the sake of God’s love and
justice and peace we can never remain silent about so many things that really matter!
Amen.