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Approaching Jerusalem

3/31/2021

Mark 11:1-11   “
Today we enter the holiest and most significant time of our liturgical year – Holy Week.   Over the next week we remember once more Jesus’ final journey to Jerusalem, where he was initially received with great fanfare and adulation, with waving palm branches, cloaks laid before him on the road like a red carpet, welcomed with cries of Hosanna! Throughout the week the tensions between Jesus and the religious leadership will reach a boiling point and Jesus’ fate will be sealed as his disciple Judas is bribed to betray him.   This Thursday we observe Jesus final Passover meal with his disciples followed by his arrest at the Mount of Olives. Friday, our most somber holy day, recalls Jesus’ sentence to death, his torture, crucifixion and death as he takes on the sin of the world, our sin.

Then exactly a week from today we will stand with the disciples, stunned, fearful, amazed, rejoicing at the empty tomb and Christ’s victory over the grave. It’s a long emotional roller coaster of a journey, this next week. It’s a journey of deep valleys and high peaks. It is a procession that, if we allow it, will take us into every nook and cranny of our soul. It will force out every feeling. It will push us so we can identify with every act of faith, every cowardly act of fear, every act of meanness, every act of devotion, every tear, every shout of hosanna will be ours.

But let us not get ahead of ourselves. Let us pause and look at the context of Jesus’ grand entrance into Jerusalem. The crowd has been gathering. Jesus had just been teaching his disciples about what it went to be great in the kingdom of heaven – if we want to be great we need to be the slave of all. How not to hold back the little children from Jesus. How nothing is impossible with God. Jesus shares a third prediction of   his death and resurrection. The scriptures tell us that Jesus had just left Jericho with this large crowd when Bartimaeus, a blind man keeps crying out, “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!” The crowd tries to silence him, but Bartimaeus persists. Jesus stops and calls him forward. Bartimaeus is so eager he throws his cloak down on the ground – he gives up everything to get to Jesus – and this blind man finds Jesus, and Jesus said, “what do you want me to do for you?” and Bartimaeus said “my teacher let me see again.” And Bartimaeus recovered his sight – immediately, it says, and he followed Jesus on the way.
You see, the triumphal entry into Jerusalem really began in Jericho, when blind Bartimaeus call out Jesus, Son of David! Bartimaeus, a poor blind man, pushed aside, told to be quiet, calls Jesus “Son of David,” son of the greatest king, the return of the mighty king so longed for by the people of Israel. This is the first time Jesus is called “Son of David” in Mark’s Gospel.

So Bartimaeus becomes the parade master of ceremonies. He was a blind man whose sight was restored - the last person healed before Jesus’ arrest according to Mark. Bartimaeus becomes the symbol of the faithful person, the symbol of the faithful person who will not be silenced by mob rule

Jesus, approaching Jerusalem, stops at Bethpage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives. He is 1.5 miles away from the Holy City. We know the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus, prayed to be spared, where he was betrayed, arrested and abandoned, happen at the Mount of Olives. We know Bethany was the home of his dearest friends, Mary, Martha and Lazarus, whom he had recently raised from the dead.

        Bethpage held great significance as well. Here is where the Sanhedrin, the leadership body of the Jewish people, sat as "elders sitting in the gate of the city." The main seat of the Sanhedrin was in the Temple but certain things could only be determined when they were at Bethpage, outside the walls of Jerusalem (Pesachim 63b). This was a very important place in the days of Jesus. Entering this way, he would be riding in through the Eastern Gate of Jerusalem proper. This is also the direction that the Jew's believe their Messiah will travel when he comes.

        So, Jesus stops the procession and according in a very detailed manner, sends two disciples – to get a donkey. Other gospel writers place Bethpage as the village where the donkey was obtained. Isn’t it striking that Mark takes 7 out of 11 verses to describe this process? This must have been a very important point for Jesus. Jesus wanted to continue the final lap of the procession on a donkey. Not just any kind of donkey, but a colt, upon whom no one had ridden.

According to Old Testament guidelines, for an animal to be used for a sacred purpose, it must never have been used for any other purpose (Num. 19:2; Deut. 21:3.   Jesus chose to fulfill a scripture that described a king as righteous, bringing salvation, and gentle – Jesus was careful not to convey an image of a messiah-king carrying a sword, riding a war horse, signaling destruction.

In this manner Jesus rides into the capital city as a King and is hailed by the people as such, in the manner of the day. The streets of Jerusalem, the royal city, are open to Him, and like a king, He ascends to His palace, not a temporal palace, but the spiritual palace, which is the temple, because His is a spiritual kingdom. He receives the worship and praise of the people -- Hosanna – Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Jesus, knowing his hour had come, allows all this to unfold. The crowd takes over. We witness their acts of adulation. The waving of palms and laying down of coats by the people was no accident or coincidence. The Romans gave palms to the victors in the Roman games and emperors gave them to their subjects following their military conquests.

Then as meticulous as the procession began it quickly ends. Jesus enters Jerusalem: he goes to the Temple: he looks around at everything, and as it was late, he returns to Bethany with the twelve disciples. After all that trouble to get the donkey, we don’t know what Jesus did with it. But we do know that the donkey was a key player in the parade. It signals a messiah whose triumphal entry announces that kingship is service. In the kingdom of God the blind can see, the young and pure of heart are embraced, and no one is silenced.

Today we are almost invited to think back on that journey began from Nazareth to Bethlehem, as legend tells us, a donkey carrying Mary pregnant with Jesus. Even the lowly donkey played his part – so lowly it seems silly to mention.   Today, Jesus sits upon another donkey that carries him to his rightful spiritual home in Jerusalem where a new birth is in order; where once more-- like his parents were turned away--- Jesus will be too.

        Today Palm Sunday, we are invited to join the sacred procession of Holy Week: to be inspired by a faith of a blind man. To cast down whatever cloaks us. To find what we need that can carry us through this week. May our hearts be filled with the cries of Hosanna! Save us Lord! Have Mercy on us, Son of David!
Have a blessed and transformative holy week. Amen.

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Dying to Live

3/31/2021

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John 12:20-36

        Who here remembers the two inevitable things in life? For those who are still wondering, they are death and taxes! It is worth the reminder that out of the two, taxes is the only one where we can get an automatic extension! Many of us have taxes on our mind with the traditional filing date for the income tax less than a month away. However, our passage today from John focuses our attention on the topic of death – Jesus; death. Jesus it seems has his upcoming death weighing heavy on his heart.

        Jesus has taken the news of the Greeks wanting to see him as a sign that his hour had come. Jesus knew that he had come to bring the gospel not just to the Jewish people but indeed to the entire world. The message has to spread and grow. And Jesus knew how this would happen. He was to become that grain of wheat – sacrificing his life on the cross – and through that sacrifice life would spread to all people in his name. So, Jesus is preparing his disciples for the inevitable shock of his death. Jesus is also expressing his own anxiety about his impending death, but knows in the end, it is for this purpose that he came into the world.

The topic of death, even for people like us who come to church, who believe in God and strive to follow Jesus, is not an easy one to raise. Especially now all around us, we see the stirring of spring in nature around us, people are looking though seed catalogues, we are counting down the days to planting. The beginnings of life, not the approach of death, is on our minds.

Living in a pre-scientific, agricultural world, Jesus’ disciples would appreciate the metaphor of planting a seed, see it apparently die, in order to become a plant that bears much fruit. Jesus latches on to this image in order to explain to his disciples the purpose of his impending death.

For Jesus, death was just days away and his soul is troubled. As he will later pray in the garden of Gethsemane, “Father save me from this hour”, Jesus struggles, because he knew he came into the world to die for our sins. Jesus is bracing himself, speaking for himself as much as teaching his disciples, that life can get lost if we treasure and make the things of the world a priority.   We need to die to selfishness. Eternal life should be our priority over the things of the world. Death is the great reminder of the passing nature of life, and how we should keep our affairs in order- especially our spiritual priorities.

Why is it so hard to talk about death, to confront death, openly like Jesus did?   Our faith teaches us that death, redeemed by Christ, leads us not to annihilation or non-existence as we fear, but to the fullness of eternal life with God. Facing death while we are alive can awaken in us the desire to live our lives with clarity, energy and purpose.
Facing death can be hard and painful. We rarely treat adequately the wounds that death deals to us. Most of us bury our mourning and fear half-alive in our hearts. And the reality is people do die ugly, unjust, premature deaths. People die alone and unloved. People die with bitterness, anger, resentments and fear. Death wounds in ways that seems humanly impossible to recover -- especially if death comes to a child or in an otherwise premature manner; or if it comes suddenly, hits too often, or arrives in a vicious manner -- as in murder, the kind of death Jesus endured.

But we must remember that life is this way too.   People live in ugly, unjust ways. People live alone and unloved. People live with bitterness, anger and resentments, consumed with fear.   Life brings us wounds and obstacles that seem impossible to recover from. We bury life and joy in the ground of our hearts and don’t let them bloom. Neither life nor death is for the weak of heart.

If we allow ourselves to sit along side death, like the gospel asks us this week, it will lead us where our soul is troubled, like Jesus’s was. Death would talk to us about the loss. The memories. The good times and the bad. The sorrow. The unfinished business.   The broken dreams. Sitting with death just a little while we come to experience the source of real disease.   We come to see how we love or do not love in the course of our lives. Jesus would remind his disciples of the priority of love in the great discourse he gave right before he died, when he declares: “Let me give you a new command: Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another. This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples—when they see the love you have for each other.” John 13: 34-35.

Through the lens of love, Jesus prepares to face the betrayal of Judas, the denial of Peter, the desertion of his disciples, becoming a pawn between religious and political leaders who would torture, mock and kill Jesus because they saw him as a threat to their power and status. As Jesus struggles with death, struggles with the hour that is coming, he models trust in God. He knows that he would be that seed, come to die, so all may live.

We may not be imminently facing the physical death of our body, but every day we have the opportunity to put to death parts of ourselves that keep us from loving. The fear. The selfishness. The petty jealousies. Jesus is not telling us to hate life per se, but to not make a priority those worldly things and forces that would detract us from loving and relating well. Put God first, Jesus, says, our neighbors second, ourselves last, and then we will have our priorities straight. Every day we reach out in love to someone else or act sacrificially our ego dies, dies to produce life, life that in Christ’s name brings us to life eternal.

It is said that at the same time the Passover Lamb was killed in the Temple Jesus died on the cross. The Passover Lamb was a cover while Jesus’ death took sin away. Timing was everything. Not only did Jesus die at the right time, but He rose from the grave at the right time as well. On the Sunday after Jesus’ death, the Sunday of the resurrection, The Jews celebrated the Feast of First fruits, which was the beginning of the barley harvest. The Israelites practiced giving God the first portion of their harvest by faith trusting that God would be faithful and bring about a full harvest for them. Jesus rose on that very day. God showing that He is giving us His best and that there will, indeed be a full harvest coming in the future. Jesus’ resurrection is the first fruit of the resurrections to come. Jesus the holy seed that has born fruit of abundant life for all.

As we approach the end of Lent, let us begin to contemplate dying to live, like Jesus did. Not in a morbid, depressing way. But as a way to understand how precious the gift of life, especially eternal life. Because through Jesus we too die to live, burying the seed of our life in the world with God’s grace, bear the fruit of the gospel into the world.   Amen.
https://gccwaverly.net/2017/03/12/sermon-dying-and-bearing-fruit-john-1219-26/

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Be Lifted Up

3/31/2021

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Numbers 21:4-9; John 3:14-21

It’s been a just a year since COVID19 lockdowns began. In person worship cancelled. People suddenly found themselves working remotely, sharing their table with their children who were taking virtual classes. People moved out of city to the suburbs. Remember the shortages of antibacterial wipes, Lysol, even toilet paper? Debates have raged about wearing masks, social distancing. The efficacy of vaccines. We witnessed an extremely combative and hostile political climate which added to the deep divisions in an already fragile nation. We endured profound social divisions, such as hate crimes against Asian Americans because China was blamed as the source of the outbreak. Racial tensions grew exponentially, arguments about sexual identity and gender exploded, and we are experiencing all sorts of reactions – schools in Manhattan are discouraging the use of “mom” “dad” for grownups, folks or family, and the teaching of the proper use of pronouns in an era of the awareness of gender fluidity. Who has heard of the recent fury over the six Dr. Seuss books (removed by the author’s estate) because of stereotyped images within the books? We are living in cancel culture where ghosting has become common – dropping people from your lives with whom you disagree – with no explanation, no warning, no recourse.

We are, clearly, in pivotal times. Times that call for courageous, faithful stance. Times that call for discernment and self-examination.    Times that call for prayer, repentance and healing. Times that call for us to know what we stand for and why. Times that demand of us to reflect on our discontent, to ask ourselves what is more important – to feel right or be kind? If we care about matters of faith, if we care about the future of our church, indeed of our nation of our earth, then we will indeed get involved.
Our texts today remind us of a time where people were struggling with ongoing unrelenting tensions.   The people of Israel have been traveling, led on detours for months on end, and they are fed up. Just like us, they had gotten to a point of being sick and tired of being sick and tired. They are hungry. They are thirsty. They have become impatient with God. They say there is no food or water, but in the next breath with disgust they say, “we detest this miserable food!” – referring to the manna and quail God has been faithfully providing for them for years. Thus was cancel culture displayed in the wilderness.

As a punishment for their endless complaining, God sends poisonous snakes to bite them, and many die. The people beg Moses to intercede, and he prays for them. God orders an interesting thing: He tells Moses to make a poisonous serpent, put it on a pole and anyone who looks up at this bronze serpent shall live. Why a serpent? Why not a lamb? Why not a lion? The image of the serpent is multi-layered: the serpent was feared and revered in the ancient world as they are today. Snakes were often a metaphor for sin, temptation and evil in the Bible: think no further than the form of the tempter in paradise. Yet snakes in popular culture were also symbols of fertility, snakes shed their skin thus they were symbols of new life and healing. Snake venom was believed to have curative powers. The icon of a serpent entwined around a staff is still familiar to us. The staff of Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine, is the symbol of the American Medical Association.

Yet God uses this challenging symbol. A snake. God declares that by looking up at this bronze image – an image people would clearly relate to as an idol of local cultures --the people would be healed. This image of the snake on the pole became so popular among the people of Israel that the Kings of Israel would ultimately mash this image to fight against idolatry.

God had a reason to use a snake – both to inflict punishment and to bring healing. To put the snake on a pole like this was a act of full exposure. Looking up to the bronze serpent exposed the sin of the people – looking up at this symbol was an admission of sin, and its defeat at the hand of God. The symbol is a reminder of where the true power lies. God was sending a message: look up and understand – God uses this image of death and use it to bring life, wholeness and healing to us. All they had to do was look beyond themselves, look beyond their sin, and turn to God. God teaches that the ongoing murmuring, resentments and complaints of the journey results in a poisoning of the spirit. The only cure is lifting up our eyes to the source of our pain, confess our sin and allow God to heal.

No wonder Jesus would relate to this story. The story of the bronze serpent is the story of Jesus himself. Jesus would identify with this serpent. Jesus took on the sin of humanity, Jesus became sin, as the serpent represents, and he endured the bite of death. Jesus on the cross exposes the sin of the world, and those that turn to him are healed.

Our scriptural texts warn us that constant complaining and bickering is poisonous and leads to spiritual death. Who hasn’t felt this poison in our veins, in one shape or another, given what we have lives through in recent history, even this past year? So, in this era of complaints, disagreements, struggles and fighting, we are asked to look away from this pit of serpents we have found ourself in. We are asked to look up, look beyond ourselves, our role in the murmuring and complaining. We are asked to look up to Jesus and know the love and forgiveness of God.

        As we process the changes of this last years, these past twelve months, we are asked, where has the serpent struck? Where do you feel the bite? If we don’t find healing and renewal for ourselves, how can we hope to tell anyone who is hurting out in the world that Jesus matters? This is what we have to figure out. It isn’t an easy journey. We are not promised a comfortable journey. We are not even promised a journey full of success. What we are promised is we will be healed if we lift our eyes to Jesus.

        . Gaze upon the one on the cross – the one who freely associated with all sinners the one who gazes at us with love. Let that love be our source of healing of all the pain, disappointment and grief and rage of this past year. Let us look up so we can engage our upside-down world – with this very love and promise of a better future for all.

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Cleaning House

3/31/2021

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“
Exodus 20: 1-17: John 2: 13-22

   Some time ago, before the COVID19 lockdown, a clergy colleague who wrote about a time in his life when he was robbed. He and his wife had been on vacation. While they were away, his children went to check on the house. When his daughter arrived at the front door something just felt amiss. They open the door to discover that the living room was totally ransacked and vandalized. The furniture was turned over. Shaving cream and paint had been sprayed over the living room and dining room walls. Lipstick was also scrawled all over the walls. The cupboard drawers in the kitchen were emptied and dishes were smashed on the floor. Drawers throughout the house were dumped and their contents carelessly thrown about. And of course, the house was robbed. The TV was gone, the silver was gone, the computer was gone, the jewelry box, gone – everything of value -- gone.
        There is something that hits us deeply in our hearts when our homes are violated. Our homes are our primary place of rest and sense of groundedness. To have our homes despoiled in any way would naturally cause us to feel hurt, fear and especially anger.
        As we can see from our Gospel lesson from John today, even Jesus experienced anger at finding his Father’s house despoiled. All the gospel writers tell us this story about Jesus chasing the money changers out of the Temple, only John places this event at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. It was a critical moment in Jesus’ ministry and drove him to take drastic action.
        As every able-bodied adult Jew would do, Jesus traveled the 75 miles from Capernaum to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover, pay his annual Temple Tax, and make his sacrifices as outlined in the Law given by Moses, of which the Ten Commandments were a part. By doing so Jesus fulfilled his religious duties as outlined by the religious law. But what did Jesus see that turned his mood of celebration into one of anger?
        Jesus no doubt saw tens of thousands of pilgrims, perhaps up to 150,000, like himself, seeking to observe the Passover in Jerusalem. They sought like Jesus, to fulfill their obligation to pay the annual temple tax, which was the equivalent to almost two day’s wages. But the rub was that this tax had to be paid in temple currency, because the Roman coins that people commonly used had images of Caesar on them, and no graven images were allowed instead the Temple. The temple currency had to be made of coins of purest sliver. So, the pilgrim had to pay to exchange their ordinary coins for temple currency – for a steep fee of course. It was all a scam – between King Herod, the religious leadership and the money changers -- everyone got a piece of the action – paid for by the ordinary pilgrim.
        Jesus also saw another injustice as he and his fellow travelers sought to make their annual sacrifices. Because of the rigors of travel, most pilgrims did not bring animals with them. So, they had to buy their sacrificial animals on site. The pilgrims were often charged ten times the amount for an animal on Temple property. Of course, they could not pay for these animals in any other currency but the temple currency. This of course exacted another transaction fee.
        Jesus saw how these pilgrims who brought their own animals, or who bought animals from outside the confines of the Temple, had to have them inspected for blemishes, because only unblemished animals were acceptable for sacrifice. The inspector, of course charged a fee, only payable in the temple currency. Almost always, off-site animals were found with some insignificant blemish. Jesus would have observed then the harried pilgrim forced to sell his animal at a fraction of the cost and buy then at an inflated price an animal that did past inspection. It would not get past Jesus that many of these rejected animals were later resold to other unsuspecting pilgrims.
        It grieved and angered Jesus, on this solemn feast of the Passover, the feast of liberation from slavery, to see religious practice and the worship of God turned into another form of enslavement. It angered Jesus that the vision of right relationships at the heart of the Ten Commandments and the practice of the Law should be reduced to business transactions. And it angered Jesus that his Father’s house, which should be a house of prayer for all people, a home for the weary pilgrim, would be turned into a marketplace that exploited God’s people. God’s home was violated and desecrated.
        So, Jesus commemorated the feast of Passover with his own act of liberation – he took a whip and forcefully expelled the moneychangers, overturned their tables, poured their coins on the ground, and drove out the animals from the courtyard of the Temple. “Take these things out of here!” Jesus upbraided the merchants and moneychangers.   Stop making God’s house a marketplace.”
        Jesus’ act to cleanse the temple during the Passover reminds us that we are created for freedom, for freedom for right relationship, with God and others. That right relationship begins with ourselves, in our very hearts. This time of Lent gives us the gift to look at ourselves more closely, and to ask ourselves, how’s my inner house doing?
Is our inner house in order? Or is it, like most of us, I’d imagine, in some semblance of disarray? What messes do we have to straighten up? Some of us have some impatience stomping around. Others of us have discovered that worry has robbed us of peace of mind. And who hasn’t encountered some excessive anger or judgment lurking about, ready to upturn a chair or two? Few of us are as greedy as those money lenders, but I would guess that at some time or another we’ve all taken advantage of someone else. Lent is our time to help each other get a clearer picture of the mess, like Jesus saw that day he entered the temple grounds.   It’s our time with God’s help, to clean house.
        Even if we have done little for the past few weeks of Lent, there is still time. More than half of Lent remains. Paul reminds us that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit. We are God’s house. In God’s sight you are more precious than Herod’s temple, or any grant edifice built before or since. Let us seek the freedom for right relationship. Let the same zeal that motivated Jesus for change also inspire us and motivate us to make the house of our hearts a worthy home, holy and acceptable to God. Amen.

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Approaching Jerusalem

Dying to Live

Be Lifted Up

Cleaning House

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