Sermons

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Shouting Stones
Palm Sunday, April 8, 2001 
Pastor Dan Baumgartner

Luke 19:28-40

I pulled an article out of a file this week. It was a story from several years ago about Saddam Hussein, the strongman of Iraq. Saddam apparently built a resort city about 85 miles west of Baghdad, as a huge tribute to himself. It is complete with stadiums, hospitals, parks and restaurants. Most of the bricks in the buildings are stamped with Saddam’s initials. Most of the strategic intersections have statues of Saddam. As you drive towards the city, you can see a towering statue of Saddam atop the gateway to the city…from a mile away. Throughout the city, there are posters and banners everywhere…of Saddam. Everywhere you look, there is Saddam…like some modern day Narcissus, the mythological character so enthralled with his own image. Saddam puts out image after image of power, authority and success.

Luke’s picture for us this morning is very different. In the midst of mounting expectations of power and new kingdoms…Jesus approaches Jerusalem. One man, finishing a long, long and dusty trip, slowly coming up the hill towards the city, riding on a donkey. 

What a contrast. Striking, actually. In fact, practically all of this Palm Sunday scripture is a study in contrast. My artistic friends tell me that contrast is an absolute necessity. Contrast…lights and darks…are part of what make these pieces of art so striking. The artist says “There are no light lights without a dark dark nearby.” Contrast provides a point of reference, it is dynamic, it draws the eye. You can see it in the art work here on the walls. The contrasts in this story draw our eyes as well.

Luke’s painting shows Jesus surrounded by disciples…like a bunch of Secret Service guys swarming around the President, the disciples are everywhere. In verse 29, TWO DISCIPLES are sent to a village to procure transportation. The DISCIPLES negotiate for a colt. The DISCIPLES bring it to Jesus. The DISCIPLES throw their cloaks on the colt. THE DISCIPLES sit Jesus upon it. A multitude of DISCIPLES shout, loudly praising God for the miracles they’ve witnessed. Disciples are all over the place. It’s practically a parade…it might even have been kind of cool to be seen with Jesus. 

Yet in just five more days…just three chapters further into Luke…you won’t be able to find a disciple anywhere. One will betray, one will desert, others will sink into the background, and Jesus will be alone. Totally alone. What a contrast.

Near the gates of the city, watching the crowd flock for the celebration of the Passover are some of the religious leaders of the people. Well-dressed and fed, they stand in their long-flowing robes, hiding underneath the layers of cloth, underneath layers of law and tradition, comfortably insulated from the movement of God…and openly scoffing at this uneducated teacher who has popular appeal.

And beyond the gates, the disciples of Jesus and fellow pilgrims begin to strip off their cloaks, throwing them down on the road and hanging out in their T-shirts…providing a welcome traditionally reserved for the welcome home of military heroes from their wars. A ticker-tape parade. What a contrast. 

The air is filled with the shouts of the people: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!” What a contrast. We can’t help but remember that when Jesus arrived on earth, in Luke’s version of the Christmas story, it is angels who proclaim “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace towards men.” The shouting acts as the bookends of Jesus’ life…The angels at his birth proclaiming his arrival as peace for earth. The people just before his departure from earth proclaiming his arrival as peace in heaven. All the shouting and exultation on the one hand…all the muttering and plotting of Jesus’ enemies on the other.

All of these contrasts serve only to highlight this moment of high drama. God is doing something. Oh, he hasn’t been silent up to now. God has spoken, acted and loved in many ways… The book of Hebrews begins by saying “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets.” It was true. God did not start communicating with people in Jesus. The Psalmist a thousand years earlier, wrote:

“This I know…that God is FOR me.” The prophet Isaiah, 700 years earlier, through whom God said: “…you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you.”

Or through the prophet Jeremiah, God says to his people “For surely I know the plans I have for you, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you.”

God spoke in many and various ways…but Hebrews continues, “In these last days he has spoken to us by a Son.” 

And so he speaks in His Son, Jesus the Christ. The one on a donkey, riding resolutely towards Jerusalem. And as he nears the city, the people cheering and shouting, some proclaiming him a king, some sacrificing their garments, all praising God for what He was doing, for what they had seen…Jesus raises the anger of the Pharisees, in their last appearance in Luke’s story: “Order your disciples to stop!” And Jesus replies, “I tell you, if these people were silent, the stones would shout out.” 

Some of you are old enough to remember the rock opera "Jesus Christ Superstar," so popular back in the '70s…and the depiction of Jesus’ answer (I’m not going to sing it!): 

“Why waste your breath moaning at the crowd?
Nothing can be done to stop the shouting!
If every tongue were still the noise would still continue,
the rocks and stones themselves…would start to sing!”

All of the variables, all of the contrasts in this story now point us towards the one constant…God is doing something and will not be stopped. Palm Sunday is the beginning of the end…or perhaps just the beginning. In Jesus Christ, God lays bare his love for his people…and nothing on earth will stop it. It is the truth. And nothing will keep it from being true. Not people who won’t speak it. Not doubt. Not people who work against it. Not people who think they don’t deserve it. God did not send his son into the world for those who were ready. He sent his Son into the world as an invitation to all people to relationship. 

Marjorie Thompson in her book, "Soul Feast," tells of a friend, a woman of deep prayer, who asked God each morning, “What do you want me to tell the people?” Each morning for many years, the response she heard was “Tell the people that I love them.” Then one day a different reply came: “Tell the people that I miss them.” God longs for us to know him. That is the truth, it’s what the stones really cry out: God loves you. Hard to understand? Yes. Difficult to figure out? Yes. And the truth. 

A Brooklyn man named Paddy Chayefsky wrote a play called "Gideon":

“Gideon is out in the desert in his tent a thousand miles from nowhere, feeling deserted and rejected by God. One night, God breaks into the tent and Gideon is seduced, over-come, burnt by the wild fire of God’s love. He is up all night, pacing back and forth in his tent. Finally dawn comes, and Gideon in his Brooklyn Jewish accent cries out “God, Oh God, all night long I’ve thought of nuttin’ but You, nuttin’ but You. I’m caught up in the raptures of love. God, I want to take you into my tent, wrap You up, and keep you all to myself. God, hey, God tell me that You love me.” God answers “I love you, Gideon.” “Yeh, tell me again, God.” “I love you, Gideon.” Gideon scratches his head. “I don’t understand. Why? Why do you love?” And God scratches His head and answers “I really don’t know. Sometimes My Gideon, passion is unreasonable.”

God wooes His people. In love, he rode that donkey right to his own arrest and execution. And the self-sacrificing love of God, the depth of love that might give up an only son, the kind of love that moves our hearts to think about the Son of God enduring the pain of a cross…shows us his love. For some, it turns our hearts towards God, it elicits a response of love. 

But what God is doing in Christ extends deeper still. In Jesus, God not only calls to us…but makes it possible for us to find Him. In Jesus God not only gives admirable sacrificial love in death…but also takes upon himself our sin and rejection of Him. In Jesus God extends forgiveness to unforgivable people, and makes good on his promise of grace that we need never be separated from Him…not in life…not in death…not beyond death. God not only makes us feel his love…but does something for us as well. 

Jesus said, “If the people are silent, the stones will shout.” Perhaps Jesus was looking at the stones of the rocky terrain around Jerusalem. Or perhaps he meant the next stone mentioned in Luke’s story…the stone that one early morning was rolled away from an empty tomb. That was, indeed a stone that shouted…and that continues to shout to this very day. Yet we have a long way to Easter…and difficult ground to cover…the contrast between a short-lived celebration on Palm Sunday, and the darkness of Good Friday…is striking.

And so we will gather this week here in the sanctuary at noontime each day to pray, to confess, to reflect, to hear the story of the last week of Christ’s life. We will come on Thursday night to dark and candlelight, reenacting the moment it seemed that the light of the world was not enough to pull us back from the brink. But mostly we will gather to draw close to God, to remember again where our stories intersect with His story. 

Throughout history, the church of Christ has found ways of hearing the story, of coming back to the foundation of faith, to what is true, to the story of God’s reaching out to His people. One of these ways appeared as early as the 2nd century in the form of a creed, a telling of God’s story and our connection to it. Eventually it came to be called the Apostle’s Creed, and it is printed in your bulletin. I’d like to invite you to stand now, and for us to join with the church down through the centuries in telling the story:

I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ,
God's only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Potius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended into hell.
On the third day he rose again;
he ascended into heaven,
he is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and he will come again
to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. AMEN.