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Back to Sermon ArchivesApril 5,
2009
The Rev. John Auer
Scripture: Ezekiel 37:9, 11:17-21, Psalm 118:14-29, Mark
1:1-11
“King for a Day – Fear-Breaker Forever!”
We are getting ready for one more weekend of asking and acting upon the unfinished
business of Dr. King. Yesterday marked 41 years since his death. We
want to do a workshop on “street theater.” We want to create the kind of “public
demonstration” he did so often -- of how certain issues harm our communities – and
what choices we might make to end and repair the harm.
Jesus is doing “street theater” today and this week! We can learn a lot
from him as we try to keep up with him! He prepares every last detail of this
entry into Jerusalem – seat of all earthly powers – as we just re-enacted it.
Where, in how many different ways, do we find ourselves among the gospel characters,
and various roles they play out this day? Followers? Disciples?
Onlookers? Curiosity-seekers? Enemies? Revolutionaries?
Soldiers? Temple guards? Pilgrims? Tourists? Jesus knows every one there –
and every one here.
He knows what friends to stay with on the edge of the city – where he will be
safe from enemies and opponents he knows are more than ready and waiting for him.
He knows when to send the disciples – where they will find the colt, what they will
do and will say about what they are doing. He knows how the crowds will respond
– the “red cloak and carpet” treatment, the hailing of him as Messiah and King.
He knows how the temple is set up for national Festival of Passover. Shusako
Endo says, Jesus knows “the spirit of the feast,” “the whirlpool of popular
misunderstanding” that will accompany all his actions this week.
He knows his plans to return to the temple tomorrow, and as many times as he
can get away with appearing there. It will be so long as the crowds protect
him, so long he can retreat out of town at night to stay among friends. He
knows he has a place for his disciples to share a meal with him Thursday night.
Who knows if he knows it will be the last time? Who knows if he knows he will
be betrayed and arrested that night? That by Friday noon he will be crucified?
Only Mark gives us this “remarkable” moment at the end of our gospel reading.
Jesus, apparently all alone – after all the electric excitement, the urgency and
the energy, the enthrallment and the enthusiasm – Jesus goes into the temple.
It feels like a moment of cosmic hush! He looks around at everything.
Dare we say – he remembers everything – and everyone who brings him to this perilous
point? Let’s imagine: Does he think of this as fruition of his lifetime’s
preparation? Like this powerful bulletin cover of the seed he called himself
last week? Openly bursting essential aloneness into uncountable
parts? Leaving to the One he has trusted thus far just where and how the enduring
movement of his life and work will be carried and scattered – forever? How
does he see this still, still moment?
There is no one to teach or preach to here, no one to argue with or to
debate, no one to feed, no one to heal, no one to touch or to exorcise – not
even any one to look at or listen to. How more alone can anyone be than in
sacramental time and space -- that lie at the heart of the life, the work, the
worship of a whole people?
It is night. How does he look around in the dark? Look around with
him. What can he possibly see? Himself? His memories?
Brought first to the temple as a 40-day-old for dedication? Brought
again every year for the Passover Feast? Especially age 12 – when he wandered
from his parents – losing himself among temple elders? What did he learn from
them? They learn from him? And what’s the effect of those years of watching
blood gush and flow from all the sacrifices?
Remember the temptations in the wilderness right after his baptism? Satan
shows Jesus the top of the temple and bids him leap to see God save him! Is
Jesus wondering who will save him now? Only John’s gospel says Jesus comes
to Jerusalem earlier in his ministry – to empty the temple courtyard of money-changers
and sacrifice-sellers. There’s so much about him we do not know – then or
now. And what has he meant by saying the temple would be destroyed and replaced
by his body? That he knows the temple-deciders of both church and state hold
his fate in their hands? That his life has been destined a sacrifice, a self-offering
– ever since Joseph and Mary first presented him? And old Simeon greeted and
held him and sang of salvation? The prophetess Anna mixed her praise with prophesy
of his mother’s pain? Is he expressing what Ezekiel does? Hearts
of stone turning to flesh – as temple does to body?
Is Jesus remembering those who have gone before him in faithful resistance to
anything less or other than the full promise of God? Promise of life abundantly,
life without end? Life in the Jubilee time of forgiveness of all indebtedness?
Freedom to be restored to family and land, work and hope to start over again?
As Jesus will instruct us to join in the meal of his temple-body remembering him?
Is this a last moment of “breathing room” for Jesus? How far he has come --
yet how much farther to go just this week? Ultimately on his own? And
what about us? Are we with him in this moment? This week? Taking
that measure of ourselves? Going that deep? Facing that fear? Asking
that strength? As it was late, Mark concludes, Jesus retired to Bethany.
This week is all about living with fears – really living with them – creatively,
courageously, freely, fully living with them. You name it, we can be afraid
of it! How many “phobias” are represented among us this morning? Spiders?
Snakes? Dogs? Germs? Elevators? Waves? Pain? Height? Agoraphobia? Autophobia?
Claustrophobia? Decidophobia? Erotophobia? Gynophobia? Hemophobia? Homophobia?
We could go on and on. We could make up our own. Nothing to be ashamed
or embarrassed about. I’m facing “retirophobia,” “inactivphobia.”
Let us give our fears to this Jesus! The one who breaks the powers of fears
over us. The one who puts even our deaths, our dyings behind us. God
knows – from news to news, issue to issue – there’s plenty to fear. This is
not about denying, repressing, avoiding, escaping our fears. It is about making
them liveable – so that they do not keep us from living! – not only surviving but
thriving! The persons and peoples God makes and Jesus calls us to be – the very
body of Christ, the temple, filled with his Spirit –that we may follow him even
this week. Either we give our fears to Jesus -- or we give them power over
us – especially to keep us from seeing and saying and doing what we know is
right and just – from speaking out, acting out, risking out, living out our commitment
to be like he is.
Even Jesus faces his Garden of Gethsemane this week – time of prayer that the
cup of suffering might pass him by. Jesus cries out to the One he calls “Daddy”
– to find some other means by which and by whom to break all the fears that leave
us with constant cycles of conflict and conquest, division and despair, greed and
guilt, isolation and ignorance, vengeance and violence, weapons and wars.
Yet the One who once seemed to sanction the eye for the eye, the tooth for the tooth,
the might for the right – this One now sees fit to suffer the death of an Only Child.
A fragment of early-church communion prayer reads like this –
In order that he might fulfill your
will and make for you a people, he extended his hands when he suffered, so that
he might liberate the suffering ones who hoped in him who was handed over by his
own will to suffering, that he might destroy death, and break the chains of the
devil, and trample hell, and direct the saints, and fix the boundaries, and manifest
resurrection.
Clearly this is a different king, an unheard of messiah who enters the city of
all earthly powers riding a colt, bearing no arms, and followed by – us! Can
you imagine any less reassuring a royal setting? And yet . . .
I had a privileged encounter this week with one who spent his life in U.S. Special
Forces – doing whatever he was asked, imposing his orders, often to kill, however
he had to. Now he finds himself alive with a new kind of power – to feel,
to wonder, to care for, to love. He is not quite sure what to make of it all.
It is as if the word that breaks through to Ezekiel, and to Jesus, is alive and
well and coming after us!
This week is about each one of us – from whatever our starting point – finding
that new kind of power in us – the power to live with our fears in new and non-destroying
ways. It is a power found deep within our own person. It is a power
found in our relationships. It is a power found in congregational mission
and community organization. It is, at last, a power found in confrontation
and transformation of all earthly powers of both church and state. It is the
power found in Holy Week – a power in crucifixion and resurrection serving the poor.
This week our State Legislature took the first step toward proclaiming an annual
Cesar Chavez Day in Nevada. I can think of no more gentle and generous, humble
and human servant of the immigrant and working poor. Think ever of those Squaw
Valley resort workers killed and injured in last night’s bus crash. Preparing
the Invocation for his annual dinner here, I found two quotations about the life
of suffering service Jesus offers this week.
n
Power is very elusive. It is here today and gone tomorrow.
But it’s being able to gather people around, very specifically on the issues – people
who are directly affected by the problem. And we have been able to solve a
few things so that we have been able to give the workers some kind of hope.
Then bringing them all together naturally creates power; that’s the basis
for it. But because the world doesn’t stand still, what’s power today isn’t
power tomorrow unless you keep up with the world.
n
A very personal kind of response is needed. I think it is
my responsibility to do whatever I can. I say that because I don’t know how
to really express the real reason. . . . It’s like a fire, a consuming, nagging,
every day and every moment demand on my soul just to do it. I am not confused
about what I want to do, but about what is to be done – and I am thinking of how
to do it. Who, who gets me to do it, I don’t know; it’s a very personal kind
of thing. It’s difficult to explain. I like to think it’s the good spirit
asking me to do it. I hope so.
As it was late, Jesus retired to Bethany.
Amen.
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