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Palm Sunday: Poetry & Historical Fiction

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Easter is poetry
and Palm Sunday is historical fiction.

Don’t get mad yet, historical fiction
can be and is composed
of actual facts and real people
but told with a narrative
that is more interested
in story
than it is in accurate history.

I feel like I should issue some kind of warning
about this sermon, but not sure what I should say.

On the other hand, you already knew this was Palm Sunday
so it’s not like you walked in here
expecting Easter. Right?

This version of the Passion Story from Luke
makes it sound like a lynch mob took Jesus
from the feeble hands of Pilate and crucified him.
The mob is made up of “rulers,”
the “high priest,” and “others.”

Let’s be clear who Luke is talking about:
corresponding contemporary figures like the Pope,
College of Cardinals,
Archbishop of Canterbury,
Michael Curry, and
some underlings to add bulk.
A mob of men in high positions
turned petty, jealous, angry, and blood-thirsty.
Does that sound right?

Luke’s Pontus Pilate
is a hand-wringing, ambivalent,
worried about his image,
nice-guy-in-a-tough position.
This actual historic character
crucified participants in a messianic rebellion
along a twenty mile stretch of road
from Jerusalem to Jericho.

He was eventually recalled to Rome
because his administration
was even too ruthless for Rome.
Does Luke’s Pilate sound right?

The Passion Narrative taken from Luke’s Gospel
basically reports that impotent clergy
and a violently repressed population
forced a ruthless, cruel tyrant
into executing a poor undeserving Messiah.
Does that sound right?

I know I am a little ruthless, like Pilate,
when it comes to deconstructing this biblical narrative
we call The Passion.
I do it even though
it is such an integral focus of the tapestry
upon which the myth of Jesus is woven —
and by myth I don’t mean untrue
I mean the whole story of Jesus
and all the beliefs and doctrines that surround him.

Someone asked me recently
why I hate Scripture — by which she
meant it seems like I am always deconstructing it.
In fact I am as deeply devoted
and wrapped up in the Bible
as any fundamentalist preacher
who thumps the pulpit with it.
But I insist that Biblical wisdom
has to make sense through eyes
that view the world in 2022.
The reason I do, is that there is a war going on —
besides the one in Ukraine.

The war I am talking about
is a protracted one
waged against Christianity
and all religion —
a death served up by a thousand cuts.

Call it secularism
or scientific atheism
or capitalism
or all of the above and more,
but it is a war Christians have participated in
with amazing self-destructive resistance
to the facts on the ground
in the twenty-first century.

The Gospel narrative contains
many elements that are reasonable to assume
are historical in some way.
But like all of the bible,
it also contains elements that are clearly not factual
as well as meant to be metaphorical
or even strategic and instructive
in the battles of its own day.
Insisting that we swallow it whole
as if it is either all factual or all false
is part of what is killing us.

Let me explain.

I attended “real” church this week.
It had been a long time.
By real church, I mean
not the Trinity Place brand
of highly modified,
inclusive language church.
This liturgy was for an audience of clergy
and it had everything in it
that you might remember from former days.
Things you may even miss
like the Nicene Creed,
four or five readings,
lots of singing
and singing every verse.

In the back row was a young woman,
a layperson who I only know slightly.
She was sitting there
through the whole thing,
not saying the words in unison
as far as I could tell.

Thinking about her
and wondering what she saw and heard,
I all of a sudden had a vision of sorts.
It was AS IF

I was seeing and hearing the liturgy
for the first time ever
without any knowledge of Christianity.
What would an educated,
secular,
science-respecting,
capitalist nurtured consumer
who had never been in church before
think about what she was hearing?
Whoa!

Those of us who have grown up in church
host so many words and ideas and stories
that just wash over us
or pass through us
when we hear or say them.

Think about these words
and what they could mean to people
who do not know anything about church.
”Lord”
”Trinity”
“Cross”
”Hosanna in the highest”
”Sanctify this body and blood, the holy food and drink
of new and unending life…”
“Lamb of God”
”Angels and archangels”
”Blood of the new Covenant”

Those are mostly from our worship
not even the more formal and unadulterated liturgy
most Episcopal churches still use.

So I get a little crazy
about the stories we still tell
and how we tell them.

Because I know that Luke and the others
were telling their Jesus-story
generations later
to an audience made up of mostly Romans,
and I understand that those stories
were told to put the blame for how things turned out
on people other than the Romans.

Think of it this way.
Imagine if the Jesus-story took place
in modern day Afghanistan
and he had been tortured for information
by American CIA agents
and left for dead in a ditch,
only to be killed by a landmine.
Then, fifty or sixty years later,
the agents of a fledgling religion
with that long dead Afghan Jesus as Messiah,
brought their story to the United States.
How might they modify their story
to make it more palatable to us?

Maybe the landmine was an old Soviet one
left over for generations.
Maybe their Jesus had been turned into the CIA
by bad guys who wanted him dead.
Modifications like that,
that don’t really matter
because they aren’t about Jesus.

Rather, they are about other people in the story.
But those things have a way of mattering
in unpredictable ways —
like a millennium of antisemitism
that culminates with a Holocaust.

So why do we keep telling the story
of Jews killing Jesus
when we know
it could not have happened that way?

Why don’t we unwrap the story
and talk about what it is really about,
and talk about it in terms
that make sense in 2022?

So I am a ruthless de-mythologizer
because I think we are losing the war.
I think we are losing the war
because we cling to the wrong things,
and because some of the things we cling to
have caused horrendous violence and hatred
throughout history.

An unreconstructed Passion Narrative
is one of the worst things
we cling to
and yet it is smack dab
in the middle of the tapestry
we have woven.

So this is a great opportunity we have in 2022.
We do not know what happened
between the moment
Jesus gathered his friends for a last meal together,
and him hanging nailed on a cross.

We DO know
the Romans arrested him
because that is who had the power and authority
to police the locals.

We DO know
Jesus was charged with insurrection
because crucifixion is the punishment
that fits the crime —

besides, that is also what
Pilate supposedly posted on the cross,
that he claimed to be King.

We DO know
that Jesus was crucified
because it is corroborated by other,
even non-Christian sources
that mention it in passing
decades later.

So we do NOT know
how and why
he got from the Last Supper with friends
to the cross by enemies.
It is a blank.
We know what the gospel-editors
filled in, and that it was from their own perspective
and editorial bias.
Remember, none of the four gospel authors
knew Jesus or were there in Jerusalem.

When you and I stand at a grave
and cannot understand
why someone so young, so vital,
so beloved
has died,
the grief makes us even crazier.
We have no answers for death
any time,
but when death comes
and rips our heart out
we reach for explanations.
We reach for anything
that will staunch the bleeding
of our hearts.

2022 gives us an opportunity
to back up a few paces
and wonder again
or for the first time,
what this story is really about.
Without filling in the gaps
of what we do not know,
what is this story really about?

IF we do not fill the gap
with things we do not know
what does the story tell us?

Jesus was executed by the state
for insurrection.
We have no idea if he was guilty or not
but whatever he did
he got on the wrong side of Roman authority.
The only evidence we have
is what he taught,
and what it said he did.
Let’s look at it.

He didn’t teach people
not to pay taxes…not exactly.
He offered an ambiguous proverb:
Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s
and to God what is God’s.

If you’re a Roman hearing that,
you know that the taxes belong to Caesar. No issue.
But if your a zealous Jew hearing it,
you know that everything belongs to God. Big issue.

Jesus taught his followers
to turn the other cheek when a soldier strikes you,
and to carry the soldiers stuff an extra mile
when impressed into duty.

There was subtlety here too, that I won’t go into
but suffice it to say,
he was being subversive
right under Roman noses.

When we get to Jesus causing a riot in the temple
is when we see actions that might have
immediate and violent consequences for Jesus.

Something Jesus could not have controlled
is what his followers claimed.
If they went around chanting that Jesus was Messiah
then Pilate would not have liked that too much.
It wasn’t against Jewish law
to claim messianic authority, in fact
there were quite a few who did.
But that claim would have included being King
who would return Israel to the Promise Land
of national independence, so well Pilate
would have been more than uncomfortable there…

We know that Jesus lived in a time of heightened
expectations for a messiah to appear
and kick the Roman legions
back across the Mediterranean.
We know there had been a long series of rebellions
in Judah and Galilee and
it was a bitter, hostile, angry, and violent
atmosphere the Romans were trying to control.
If Jesus was seen
as another one of those crazy messiahs
then it would not have gone well.

So I do not think we need to fill the gap
between the Last Supper
and Jesus hanging on a cross
with all the stuff that
Luke,
John,
Matthew, and
Mark
filled it in with.

I think we know why Jesus was arrested,
tortured, and executed.
It is the same reason
it would happen today.

What is not clear
is where you and I would stand.

Palm Sunday 2021: This is not about once upon a time…

by

A video format follows the written text of this sermon…

There is an argument that bubbles
just under the surface of Palm Sunday
and Holy Week – at least among some clergy
and planners of liturgy
who think about things
rather than just doing them.

It is not a very important argument
considering our current moment
snarling with anger
and anguished with grief
over mass shootings,
COVID deaths and job losses,
and the choking, shivering, and sweating
of the planet.

It is a little thing really
but I get agitated about it every year.
I want to observe “Palm” Sunday
on this day each year
instead of “Passion” Sunday.
I want to reserve Good Friday
for the reading of the Passion –
and broken up into bites during Holy Week.
But that is not the way we do it anymore
and believe it or not,
there are some aspects of tradition
and ecclesiastical protocol
I avoid betraying.

The reason we don’t do “Palm” Sunday
instead of “Passion” Sunday
is you guys.
Fretful Church fathers and mothers
bewail the fact
that few people attend Holy Week services
these days – and for a long time now.
Not even Good Friday,
though there are some interesting folks
who wouldn’t miss
Ash Wednesday or Good Friday
even though they don’t attend the rest of the year.
But anyway, the anxiety
among those with strange collars
and who dress in drag each Sunday
is that you will hear the triumphalism
of Jesus’ Palm Sunday entrance into Jerusalem
but by-pass the torture and execution
on your way to Easter.
If that happened it would, they say,
be cheap grace.

You, and I mean you who are not ordained,
have to experience Jesus suffering on the cross
in order to be able to celebrate the resurrection.
It is an absolute necessity they say.

Never mind that it is a story we tell
and not an event we relive on cue.
It is the church continuing to act as if
it sets the cultural table
and as if it sets the stage for what the rest of us
can see and understand about life as we live it.

That is what bugs me most, I guess.
The church, still acting as if this is Christendom.

All of which you probably could care less about
and wonder why I am yammering
about something of so little consequence
when this is Palm Sunday
and we are still separated by a virus
and the world all around is flopping like a fish
desperate to return to the water.

Okay, I am going to tell you
but don’t blame me if you get upset.
This story,
this so-called “Passion” story
falls on dead ears.

Our place in this story
is not in the crowd laying down palms.
We are not in the crowd jeering him
and asking for Barabbas to be freed.
We are not members of the Sanhedrin
or scuttling clergy
plotting against him.
We are not among the disciples
scared and brave and angry and scared again.
We are not among the brave women
who hang tough with him.
We are not the soldiers who abuse him.

We are not the haughty Herod
or malevolent Pilate who execute him.
Clearly we are not him either.

So who are we in this story?
We are a long, long way away.

We only appear between the lines.
We are the Romans back in Rome or
somewhere in Italy
who employ people like Pontus Pilate
and who deploy the legions.
They didn’t have drones back then,
but if they did,
Jesus and the disciples may have all been wiped out
because drones are much cheaper
and often more effective
against revolutionary riff-raff.
And that is what really matters to empire.

It is almost impossible for us
to hear this story
and feel its true resonance
because we do not listen to it
from our perspective.
We try to shoehorn ourselves into it
through somebody else’s part.

We don’t get the fact
that it was and is our agents –
people who work for us
to keep us safe and sound and secure
within our borders –
who kill people like Jesus.

Instead, we make our liturgical dramas
and our Passion Plays and movies
and feel just awful
when we see the reruns each year.
But we feel awful in the wrong place.

We feel awful for Jesus
as if he is still suffering.
Instead we should feel awful for ourselves
because we are still doing it.
And by “we”
I mean those of us in the controlling classes
all around the world –
in the U.S.
and across Europe
and in China and Myanmar and Thailand.
Everywhere.

You see, this story
is about what happens
when the agents of God meet us.

They die.
When they get too close
or get heard too widely
or start to resonate beneath the surface
they die.

As long as we keep the focus on Jesus
instead of us,
or on what happened back then
instead of what we are doing today,
then the story remains just a fascinating story.

I get why the church does it this way.
It is no fun to do what I am doing right now –
de-mythologizing
so that it shatters our resistance.
But honestly, I can’t be part of the pretend any more.
I was never very good at it anyway.

The Passion is not about Jesus it is about us.

Palm Sunday 2020

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This sermon appears in video format on the trinitygeneva FaceBook page.

All I have to say,
is this is a really inconvenient time
for Palm Sunday and Holy Week.
I mean, who wants to hear about
betrayal,
torture,
and a gruesome execution
while isolated
and huddled at home
in a pandemic?

Honestly, I do not know how to preach
Palm Sunday in the midst of pandemic.
I have preached it in the context of war –
there is a natural affinity
between this story
and our wars of colonialism
and economic imperialism.
And I have preached it in the midst of economic crisis
in which the story reminds us
of more essential truths,
with all those niggling issues
of justice and class
so deeply embedded in it.

But pandemic, a virus without allegiance
to any nation, class, race, or ethnicity?
A world class virus that is invisible, odorless,
and apparently asymptomatic in 25% of us –
so that some of us are carriers of death
and never even know it?
How does Palm Sunday preach
in that kind of a story?

Somebody asked me the other day
if I thought the pandemic is punishment –
as in a Sodom and Gomora kind of thing.
I was so surprised by my internal reaction.

I wanted to slap the person.
I was incredulous
at the obscenity of the suggestion
that God is the master of punishment and death –
that God is the distributor
of indiscriminate capital punishment
like Nazis machine-gunning
the sick and lame into open graves.
In normal times
I would have fielded the question
without any emotional response
other than perhaps, impatience.
And hopefully, the person on this occasion
did not notice the outrage I felt on the inside.
But the cruelty of the pandemic
in all of its awful dimensions,
made that question more than intellectual.

The Palm Sunday story agitates and chaffs on its own,
because of how Jesus’ death was interpreted
and how the story was used
as a weapon of anti-Semitism.
Frankly, that awful, obscene question I was asked
pokes at the heart
of how Palm Sunday has been interpreted –
not the story itself
but how we have corrupted it
so obscenely.
I am talking about the idea of Atonement –
that God had Jesus tortured and sacrificed
as an offering for our sins.
That is exactly the same kind of thinking
behind a question like,
“Is the pandemic punishment?”

The problem of course,
is that we all know how the story ends
and that distorts how we hear and interpret it.

Our foot-of-the-cross perspective
from which we watch Jesus’ death
is like reading the last chapter
of The DiVinci Code
before reading the whole novel,
or the last chapter of the last Harry Potter story
before reading the first book.
In cheating ourselves
into the climax of a story,
without paying attention to how we got there,
we inevitably miss the larger story
and whatever goodness or truth
may be embedded in it.

An additional problem for us,
after all these years of preaching and teaching,
is that we read the betrayal,
arrest,
imprisonment,
torture,
mistrial,
and execution
through the filter of Christian doctrine
instead of just reading the story.

In other words, we have been given
all the official answers
before we have been allowed to actually
ask questions.
“Why did Jesus have to die?
“To save us from our sins?”
“How did Jesus save us from our sins?”
“By serving as a once and for all sacrifice.”

But let us take advantage
of our historical distance from the story
and ask about that traditional interpretation:
Why in the world
would anyone ever imagine
that one person’s life could be exchanged,
like foreign currency at the bank,
for all of humankind’s wrong-doing –
past, present and future?

That is a good question, doesn’t it?
It seems like something we should want to know
if we are going to take this story seriously.

Well, here is why early story-tellers
might have understood the death of Jesus
as an horric act of God.

In the world of that day,
in both Jewish religion and Roman culture,
sacrifice to the gods was an essential part of life.

They believed
the very balance of the universe,
the very future of every individual and family,
the very fate of cities and nations,
depended upon the right sacrifice to the right god.

But we have to go back to the very beginning
of our story – in the Book of Genesis
with the story of Abraham and Isaac.
God orders Abraham to take his only son,
the very son that it took an epic story
to give birth to,
and cut him open on an altar
as a blood sacrifice
to a blood-thirsty god.

Standing over his son
who was bound and gagged
upon the altar of sacrifice,
Abraham raises the knife over his head.
Just as he was about to thrust the knife
into the heart of his only son,
God yells, “STOP!”
“Just testing.”
God looks around the area
as Abraham is breathing hard,
heart pounding, and sweat
dripping down his face.
God says: “Hey, there is a ram over there in the bushes,
substitute the ram for Isaac
and we’ll call it even.”

That story of Abraham and Isaac
is the background behind God and Jesus.
Abraham demonstrated his total faith in God
by being willing to sacrifice his only son,
while God demonstrated
God’s total devotion to humankind
by going through with the sacrifice of Jesus.

We can see the symmetry and logic
between these two stories
told almost half a millennium apart.
It was a theological message to Jews
that what had taken place with Jesus
was even greater than the story of Abraham and Isaac.

To the Romans is was a political message
that God’s sacrifice of Jesus
was more powerful than any sacrifice
that could be offered to any of their gods.
I mean really, how could you top
God killing his only son
as a gift for you?

But you and I should have a problem with that interpretation of Jesus’ execution
because we do not perceive the universe
as balancing upon the magic of ritual sacrifices.

The idea of Atonement –
the belief that God substituted Jesus
as a sacrifice for our sins
in the same way that the ram
was substituted for Isaac –
makes perfect sense
in a cosmos orbiting around the logic of sacrifice.
But the meaning of Atonement is problematic
in a world of indiscriminate pandemic
and Christian participation in the holocaust,
and any number of genocides and crimes
wreaked upon the powerless
by those with more power.
Has all the unspeakable savagery
been wiped clean
because Jesus was executed –
but only for Christians?

And if so, why haven’t our many other sacrifices
protected us from pandemics,
mass shootings,
wars and terrorism,
and just plain human ugliness?

The problem of course,
is the Atonement has been our only lens
through which to read this story
for many centuries.
But it is NOT the required Christians lens.
We are allowed to take off those glasses –
we can always put them back on later if we want.
But right now, it is time
to read the Palm Sunday story
as if from the beginning
without knowing how it ends.

I think that is how it relates to our social exile
in this time of pandemic:
we have the time, if we have the will,
to stop and read the story
as if we did not know the ending,
and to ask it questions
that we may not have asked before.
We also have the time to work on different answers
unrelated to Atonement and sacrifice.

If we come to this story
at the beginning
instead of from the end,

I can almost guarantee
we will walk away astounded
with new insights
and with flashes of the holy
we have never seen before.

First of all, the story of the last week in the life of Jesus
is an epic poem rather than history.

There are historic references in it
and historic details
that reflect actual events,
but it is not a factual or verbatim account
of what took place.

Even if it were,
there is a whole lot missing
from a week of 24 hour days,
and what is missing
would utterly change the way
we interpret what is told.

No, this is a poem.
It is every bit as much a poem
as the Suffering Servant poems
from the prophet Isaiah.
(Isaiah 42:1-4; 49:1-6; 50:4-7; 52:13-53:12).
And poems,
like paintings or sculptures,
must be construed
and interpreted
and imagined
rather than dissected and squeezed
for exact, literal,
and once-and-for-all meanings.

So here are a few things we might want to know
that have the potential to free us
from the answers we have been given
before we were allowed to ask the questions.
Holy week is a great time
to open ourselves to see and hear
the Palm Sunday story all over again.

So first of all, it was not blasphemy
to be proclaimed or to proclaim oneself
as “Messiah” or “Christ”.
Lots of people did it.

In the gospel story as told
fifty years after Jesus’ death,
Jesus’ claiming to be the Messiah
is supposedly the big offense
that gets him killed.
But that doesn’t hold up.

Secondly, “the Jews” didn’t kill Jesus.
The gospels often blame the Jewish authorities
in particular, and the Jewish crowds in general,
for the execution of Jesus.

But ordinary Jews and Jewish authorities
had no power.
Pontus Pilate,
who the Gospels paint as a decent guy
put in a tough position,
was actually a cruel, viscous tyrant.

We know this because historical records
show he was later demoted
and sent into administrative oblivion
for being such a repressive governor.
Pontus Pilate and the colonial Roman Military system
ground Jesus into jackal meat,
not ordinary Jews and ruling clergy.

Jesus was executed by the Romans
as punishment for a crime.
The crime that fits that punishment is insurrection.

So if historical conjecture is our lens
instead of Atonement,
Jesus was found guilty of insurrection
against the authority of the Roman Empire.

He was executed as any political prisoner
proven to be guilty would be executed:
publicly and with maximum humiliation.

Now if that is true,
one of the questions we might ask the story
is why, as clever and wise as Jesus was,
did he find it necessary to risk such an outcome
by leaving Galilee and going to Jerusalem?
What opportunity did he imagine
was available in the city of Jerusalem
when he was most popular and safest in Galilee?

Knowing the dangers –
as clearly as he would have seen the dangers
since others had suffered his fate before him –
what opportunity made the risk worth it?
What dangerous opportunity did Jesus reach for
against such a risk?

I invite us to take this story home
and to come to it
from the beginning
not the end,
and read it anew.

If you have someone to read it with,
take turns reading it to each other out loud,
the way most people back then would have
encountered it – orally.

If you don’t have someone in the house,
make a phone or video conference date
with a friend or family member
to read the story.
Heck, convene a book club online
or via zoom or google
and read it again
and ask it questions
you have never asked it before.

Allow all the pre-conceived Christian notions surrounding the story to fall away.
Allow your questions to lead you
deeper and deeper into the story,
evoking and provoking
more questions and wonder.

None of that, I am sorry to say,
really helps us with the pandemic.
But here are a couple of great metaphors
connecting Palm Sunday and pandemic
that I received in an email this week
(Thank you, Shelley).
They are great puzzles to work with:

  • Rolling out the palm leaves and coats as Confusion rides into town.
  • Welcoming something we don’t understand and might even fear,
    because Hope rides into town in the middle of our needing a Savior.

So I invite you to read this story again:
work it
argue with it
move it around and wrestle it
ask it questions that have always bothered you about it
forget the answers you were given and challenge it
be open to it and allow it to speak to you
re-write it in a way that makes more sense to you

Treat it like a story that truly matters, because it does.

Palm Sunday C, 2019: Palliative – to relieve without curing

by

I’m just saying, Palm Sunday
is the hardest sermon to preach all year long.
Just remember that when you’re tempted
to throw your prayer stone.

When Easter arrives, we can dream again.
But for now, standing below the cross
on Palm Sunday,
we cannot dream.
Standing at anyone’s grave
we cannot dream.

In the shadow of death
the only dreaming is denial.
Instead of dreams, it is our memories
that areactivated in the aftermath of death.

Death pulls us into our memory.
By remembering
we stay close to the one who has died.

We stand around
and we remember the one who has died
and we laugh
and cry
and grow thoughtful
and reflective,
and we want to stay in that remembering zone
because it feels almost like a drug.
When the only other thing we feel
is the exhaustion of grief,
the “memory zone” is palliative.

If death has ever been a visitor in your life
then you know that channel of remembering
that feels so good
because it keeps us hanging
in the nether world
of the person who has died.
It is the remembering
that keeps the loved one from slipping away.
Remembering is not quite a palliative
but close enough
when we are standing in the shadow
of a loved one’s death.

Pal-li-a-tive.
“…to relieve without curing; to mitigate;
to alleviate.”

“Palliative care,” is medical care not intended to cure
but rather, to address the emotional, social, spiritual, and pain management needs of the terminal.

I am going to ask us to do a hard thing.
I am going to ask us to slip into the memory
of this Palm Sunday story
without the palliative
that was placed in it.

First, I will draw out the palliative
and then leave us at the heart of this story
so we can use it for contemplation during Holy Week.
Then, on to Easter, we can dream again.

Here is the palliative of the Passion story,
it is nothing new if you have heard me preach
that last three years:
Pontius Pilate,
the Roman military governor of Judea,
stands before the blood-thirsty crowd
and complains about the innocence of Jesus.
“Please don’t make me do this,” he pleads.

We used an abbreviated and modified version
this morning,
but here is a verbatim of Luke’s version
of the Pilate Palliative:

“Then they all shouted out together, “Away with this fellow! Release Barabbas for us!”

Pilate, wanting to release Jesus, addressed them again; but they kept shouting, “Crucify, crucify him!” A third time he said to them, “Why, what evil has he done? I have found in him no ground for the sentence of death; I will therefore have him flogged and then release him.” But they kept urgently demanding with loud shouts that he should be crucified; and their voices prevailed.

So, Pilate gave his verdict that their demand should be granted. He released the man they asked for, the one who had been put in prison for insurrection and murder, and he handed Jesus over as they wished.”

Luke has made it so clear and blatant
who is at fault, that unlike John’s version,
Pilate doesn’t even have to wash his hands.

In Luke’s version the crowd purifies Pilate of blame.

We can guess why it was palliative
for Luke to tell the story this way,
but since Pilate is whitewashed in all four gospels
with varying shades of emphasis,
why suspect the historicity of it?
Here is why:
We know that Pontius Pilate was ruthless.
He was a blood-thirsty, cruel,
and tyrannical manager.
He was so repressive and violent,
crucifying so many local peasants,
that the not-so-squeamish Caesar
yanked him from duty
just a couple of years after he crucified Jesus.
Pilate’s violent, repressive administration
fueled riots and rebellion by the locals.

That is not the picture the gospels painted of Pilate
when they were telling the tale
forty to eighty years after the crucifixion,
but Pilate’s recall, based upon his ruthlessness,
is in Rome’s historical record.
Pontus Pilate did not need a palliative,
no excuses were necessary for him.
He apparently just loved to kill peasants.
We also know that the ranking priests and elders
who formed the small establishment
around the Temple,
governed their little fiefdom
with a rigid, stingy hierarchy.

We know too, that they were greatly disliked
and disrespected by ordinary people
who were marginalized by these Temple clergy
and their privileged status.

At the same time, we also know this temple clergy,
beyond the temple courtyards and inner sanctuaries,
were impotent.

They were a powerless paper aristocracy
with no influence over Pilate.
In the scheme of things
they had even less power over the direction
of Roman governing authority
than immigrant laborers in Finger Lakes dairies
have over what the New York State legislator does.

That Temple hierarchy was hated to be sure,
bloated with self-importance
and perhaps even acting with malevolence
toward the peasants of their own religion,
but beyond the walls of the temple
they were also impotent –
and as history would show,
even in the Temple
they were powerless without Roman backing.
To tell the story with a nice-guy Pilate
put into a bad situation
by the bad-guy Jews,
was a palliative
for that second generation of Christians
who wrote down and disseminated the story.

So, who were Matthew, Mark, Luke and John comforting with this palliative story that blamed
‘the Jews’ for the arrest, trial, and death of Jesus?
And why should WE care?

They were protecting Rome.
It was Roman rule being whitewashed.
Pontius Pilate represents Rome
and the effort to conceal its guilt
by casting blame on the Jews
was done for a very good first century reason.
After that first generation of Jesus-followers,
Christians were no longer Judeans or Galileans,
they were mostly Roman –
in other words,
they were no longer Jews but Gentiles.

So, our passion story as it has come down to us,
like all remembering at the graveside,
was told partly as a palliative –
to relieve and alleviate the pain of loss.
That second generation of Evangelists
who we have to thank even for Trinity Place,
were telling the story in a way
that was more palatable to Romans and Gentiles,
and with little or no concern
about the Jews of Judea and Galilee.

The palliative in Luke’s Gospel
is that impotent clergy
and a violently repressed population
forced a ruthless, cruel tyrant
into executing a poor, undeserving Messiah.

There are two problems with this palliative for us.

The first and most awful one
is that it has been the source of Christian
anti-Semitism for more than a millennium.
With this palliative
Christians and the Church itself
have participated in inquisitions, pogroms,
and genocide against Jews and Judaism
for centuries and centuries.

That alone
means we cannot allow this ancient palliative
in our most sacred story,
to go unnoticed or unmentioned.
That is why I bother to address it each year.

But here is the other reason
this palliative may have shaped our story:
We do not know what really happened
between the Last Supper
when Jesus gathered his friends for Passover,
and his crucifixion on the cross.

We doknow
the Romans arrested him,
because that is who had the power and authority
to police locals.
We do know
Jesus was charged with insurrection
because crucifixion is the punishment
that fits that crime.

We do know
that Pontius Pilate was the one who condemned him
to be executed because he was the only one
with the authority to do so.

We do know
that Jesus was crucified
because it is corroborated by other,
even non-Christian
sources of the period.

But we do NOT know
how and why
he got from Passover with his friends,
to the cross with his enemies.
We do not know,
it is a blank, except for
what is written in the gospels.

When we stand at the grave
and cannot understand
why someone so young,
so vital, so close,
so beloved has died,
it makes us even crazier with grief
because we do not understand “WHY!”
We have no answers to death, and so
we reach for palliatives.
We reach for answers
whether we know they are true or not,
because they make us feel better in the moment.

But making the death of Jesus
seem more palatable
may relieve our anxiety and fear
but it will not cure them.

Making this sacred story go down easier
does not lead to dreaming again.
Only Easter leads to dreaming again. Only Easter.
At the heart of this sacred story
there are questions and mysteries we cannot answer,
and pretending that we can
is to engage in hospice spirituality
that presumes we will never get well
so let’s just make one another comfortable.

The story of Jesus,
the sacred story of the Passion,
is not supposed to make us comfortable.
It holds a truth not a palliative.

The sacred story of the Passion
is about the power of God’s love
coming face-to-face
with OUR use of coercive power,
and how we always try to kill the love of God.
Human coercion
always tries to kill the love of God.

That is what this story is about
if we take away the palliative myth about Pilate
being forced into killing Jesus
by the marginalize citizens of Judea.
Jesus was not the first
and he sure wasn’t the last,
but he shows us in excruciating detail
that our response to God’s love
is the use of coercive power
that seeks to kill.

Power in our hands can kill,
not only Jesus, but the love of God
as it makes itself known among us.
Or so it would seem until we can dream again.

On Palm Sunday 2019,
in the coming days of Holy Week,
we are challenged to confront
our participation in coercive power
and how we contribute to the death
of God’s ever-present love.

Not the Jews.
Not the Temple clergy.
Not even Pontius Pilate – because really,
he is only an agent of OUR bidding.

This story,
this sacred story told without a palliative,
asks how you and I
try to kill the love of God in our midst
with the misuse and neglect
of our power.

For some of us – like me, a large, straight male –
that will mean reflecting
on what our power actually is,
because we live in denial of it.

For others, whose power is more immediate
and obvious,
it will mean reflecting on
how we might use our power differently.

But either way,
this sacred story of ours,
without the palliative,
challenges us to consider our participation
in the attempted murder of God’s love
by the misuse and neglect of our power –
not just then…but now.

How do we participate
in trying to kill the love of God
with the misuse or neglect
of our power?

Next week we try to dream again.

 

Palm Sunday 2017: God’s Dream

by

I have two sermons to offer this morning
but together they may be shorter than one.
The problem is an irreconcilable difference
between head and heart.

First comes the head sermon,
no less and no more important than the heart sermon.

The head sermon
has to do with how Matthew depicts
Pontus Pilate and “the crowd.”

First of all, “the crowd”
in the popular narrative of Christianity,
really becomes “the Jews” –
largely because the Church
has historically loved the Gospel of John,
which is a polemic against “the Jews” – as if Jesus and everyone who loved him were not also Jews.

So my head warns me as a preacher,
not to tell this story without challenging
its historic and erroneous religious narrative
that led to a millennium of anti-Semitism
and the Nazi Holocaust.

There are so many missing details of this story,
and so many details that are simply historically unlikely,
that we do not actually know who or what killed Jesus
other than Roman military authority –
which sentenced him to death for insurrection.
Was he an insurrectionist against Rome?
We do not know that for certain either,
we only know that was the charge
that qualified him for capital punishment.
Jesus got the equivalent of the electric chair,
hangman’s noose, or firing squad,
because he was convicted of insurrection.

We also know, that Matthew was a Jew
and that he was writing to convince
other Jewish Christians,
and those who were not Christian yet,
that Jesus and the emerging Christian Gospel
should be the future understanding of Judaism,
instead of the dawning movement
of what would become rabbinical Judaism.

Remember, Matthew is writing his gospel
fifty or more years after Jesus is dead.
But to make that distance even greater
than the number of years that it is,
he is writing his gospel a decade
after a horrendously violent Jewish-Roman war.
It was a three year war, from 66-70,
that not only destroyed the temple in Jerusalem,
but with murderous meticulousness
also killed anyone associated with the religion.
The remnant of Israel fled
and what we think of today as Israel and Palestine
was wiped clean of (Second) Temple-centered Judaism.

In fact, the Judaism almost went the way
of other historic religions that have not carried forward.
It hung by a thread,
kept alive by those huddled in the Diaspora
of the Roman Empire.
What we know as Judaism today
was reborn in that period
from what our Gospels call the Pharisees.
The Pharisees were not,
as our Gospels depict,
a bunch of legalistic scholars.

The Pharisaic movement was in fact,
a grassroots reform that had as much conflict with the Temple,
and the religious aristocracy that controlled the Temple,
as Jesus and John the Baptist did.
The Pharisees in Matthew’s day
represented his competition for the heart of Judaism
and what it would become.
So he depicts them in a negative light
because he wants Judaism to become a religion
centered on the teachings of rabbi Jesus.

In this early Christian telling of history by Matthew,
the Roman military governor, Pontus Pilate,
is let off the hook
and the Temple leadership
and anyone associated with them,
is put on the hook.
So much so,
that Matthew actually has Pontus Pilate
wash his hands of any blood,
AND incredulously,
has the locals – meaning ordinary Jewish citizens –
ask for the blood to be on them “and on their children.”
So Christian theology gladly obliged,
and for centuries persecuted European Jews
as “Christ Killers”
even though Jesus was executed
by State Power
as an enemy of the State.

That is the head sermon –
it is a challenge to bad theology
and bad history.
We should not take this story to be historical
but rather, a theological rendering of events.
A half a century after Jesus’ execution,
Matthew wrote the story from a particular perspective
of a generation and public far removed
from Jesus’ actual death on the cross.
He told us this story in the way he did,
so we would understand what he thought
was the meaning of Jesus on the cross.
What my head tells me
is that we need to grow up about this story,
so that the parts that infected our religion
are neutralized,
and we can then get on
with appropriating the wisdom embedded in it
for the twenty-first century.

Okay, now the heart sermon.

We think about the death of Jesus on Palm Sunday,
but what about the dream of God?
And what about God’s best dream for us?
Did those dreams get
arrested,
tortured,
crucified,
and die
two thousand years ago?
Did you ever you think about what happens
when we try to kill a dream?

It comes back.

Like a bubble under pressure
it is irrepressible.

No one can kill a dream;
it is impossible to kill a dream
and that is exactly why the dream of God,
and God’s best dreams for us,
terrifies people –
especially people who wield coercive power.

Palm Sunday is a story about coercive power
trying to kill a dream;
but it is also, indirectly,
about you and I
when we try to kill God’s best dream for us.

I am not talking about fantasies
that are the work of a wounded ego
reaching for something that feels good
or dulls the ache
or otherwise wraps us in self-indulgence.

Nor do I mean magical thinking,
when our fears and anxieties
lead us to pretend that the safety and security
we want is also easily available
if only we will do the right thing
or say the right thing
or pray the right thing.

And I don’t mean wishful thinking either,
when we imagine that what we want
should be what we get,
and therefore if we wish hard enough
it will happen for us.

None of that is what I mean
by the dream of God
and God’s best dream for us.
Such things are often mistaken for authentic dreams,
but they are categorically different.

First of all,
the dream of God
is for all of us –
all people,
all species,
all Creation.
It is a dream imagined in the Book of Genesis
and again and again throughout the Bible,
especially through the voices of the prophets.

It is the dream of Earth and human society
as an exquisite ecosystem in balance,
so that life flourishes
and the abundance woven throughout the Creation
is shared by all life within it.

It is the dream that those with leadership
of corporate, governmental, industrial, military,
and other institutional responsibilities,
will practice stewardship,
so that resources are more equitably shared
rather than concentrated and hoarded by a few.

That is the dream of God for the Creation.

Jesus articulated that dream
and he practiced that dream on a personal level
so that it was reflected in his life.
It is a dream that terrifies coercive authority
and so they try to kill it.

But it is a dream that keeps coming back.
Relentlessly
the dream of God for the Creation
keeps coming back
in voices throughout history,
and with struggles that strive for peace,
and movements that reach for greater justice,
and leaders who emerge to take us a step closer.
We keep trying to kill it
and bury it forever,
but the dream of God for Creation
keeps coming back.

And then, in addition to that dream,
the one God has for all Creation,
there is God’s best dream for us –
for you and me as individual persons,
and as individual candles of light
in an often darkened world.

God does in fact
have a best dream for you, and for me,
and it never dies either.
It may change as we change,
from 16 to 35 to 90,
but it keeps ripening.
Our task, whatever age we are
and whatever our current capacities,
is to bring that dream out
from the fog of subconscious
into the light of wakefulness.
God’s best dream for us
wants to burst into the open air.
God’s best dream for us
wants to breath in the light of day
and you are the only one
in all of Creation –

in all the cosmos of a billion gazillion stars –
who can make that one dream come true.
It is God’s best dream for your life.

This story is about that dream
and about how it didn’t die
when you and I left it behind somewhere,
or tried to bury it,
or crucify it.
That dream,
God’s best dream for your life,
is alive today
just like God’s dream for the Creation
is relentlessly coming back at us.

This story is about the relentless dreams of God
and how they never die
no matter how hard we try.
So take that into your heart and go with it. Amen.

Trinity Place

 Trinity Place, An Open Space for Growth, Wellness, Healing, & the Arts

“Open Space” means open and inclusive, welcoming the Geneva and FLX community to use our space, and to partner with us in building an inclusive community for spiritual inquiry and wellness. 

“Growth, Wellness, Healing, & the Arts” means we are pointed toward a particular dimension of life, specifically that which strengthens the relationship of body, mind, and spirit. 

Trinity is a Christian community of worship and spiritual practice welcoming all, and an Episcopal Church in particular. However, we welcome all spiritual traditions and those who have no particular spiritual background but are engaged in a mission consistent with ours. We are looking for partners in mission not members (although we love to welcome new members too).

 

 

 

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