Here is the sermon that he delivered on Palm Sunday this year for his home Cooperstown congregation:
They Called Him ‘King’
Delivered by Peter Craig, LLP
It was a buoyant crowd, a “multitude
of disciples.” They cheered as Jesus
descended the Mount of Olives toward the Temple. Their cry echoed the Psalms and
prophets. You heard it in this morning’s
readings from Psalms and Zechariah.
“Blessed is the king who comes in the
name of the Lord!
Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest
heaven!”
This morning I’d like to
think about is what it meant when Jesus was acclaimed as king. You see, the Jews had a bit of a checkered
history with kings, right back to their experience with the pharaohs. Under the pharaohs, they found favor and
prospered for a time. But things
deteriorated. The Hebrew people fell out
of favor and were persecuted. They fled
Egypt and occupied the Promised Land.
Then for a time they were governed by charismatic tribal leaders, and
JHWH was seen as the true ruler. This
was the period of the judges. It didn’t
last. Neighboring peoples were ruled by
kings, and the Israelites wanted a king of their own. Almost reluctantly, God allowed the
Israelites to have a king, and Saul was anointed. Things did not go well. Saul died in battle, a broken man, alienated
from God and from David, his onetime ally.
Saul was succeeded by David.
Under David’s rule Israel’s tribes were united, and its borders were
extended. It came to be viewed as a
golden age in Israel’s history. But it
was golden with an asterisk. It was hard
to ignore that episode with Bathsheba and Uriah. David was succeeded by Solomon, who built the
First Temple and under whom Israel attained its greatest national glory. But, once again, it was glory with an
asterisk. International standing had been achieved through marriage alliances,
and the wives brought along their native gods, which were tolerated by
Solomon. Following Solomon things went
downhill. There was a battle for succession;
the kingdom divided; then the northern region of Israel was overrun by the
Assyrians; finally, the southern kingdom of Judah fell to the Babylonians.
If that seems like a lot
of history, it is. Chronologically we’re
talking about over four centuries. Was
the monarchy a success? For biblical
writers, especially the prophets, I think not.
The chief problem was Israel was the people of God. A king was permitted as long as the king was
the agent of God’s rule. But Israel’s
loyalty to God was inconsistent as kings dallied with foreign gods. Equally important, Israel’s kingdom did not
look much like the society laid out in the books of the law. In practice wealth and power were
concentrated in the hands of the king and his retainers. As worship became centered on the Temple, its
priests and councils joined the ruling powers.
Ordinary folks suffered. They
were conscripted for the army, and they were heavily taxed for royal and
priestly building projects and to support the high lifestyles of the elite.
You’ve got to wonder why
later Jews looked back on the monarchy as a golden age. I’m thinking of the Jews of Jesus’ day, but
I’m pretty sure this outlook is still very real today among some Zionists and
their sympathizers. My guess is that it was
and is a matter of nostalgia. When
things are bad, selective memory of the past, the good old days, can be a
consolation, a source of hope. I’m
guilty of this myself. I had a fortunate
childhood, and it’s easy to idealize that time, especially since my parents
kept their struggles to themselves.
Looking back through the eyes of an adult, I’ve got to believe that they
struggled economically at times, and there had to be interpersonal struggles
(There are always struggles like that, aren’t there?) —and not just the period of my own
adolescence. There were wars, the
Depression, not to mention the quickening pace of change, the erosion of the
values they grew up with. So I look back
on those times fondly, but when I’m honest, I have to acknowledge that I’m
looking through rose colored glasses.
Not all nostalgia is so
personal. Our politicians have a way of
referring back to the days when America was great. They invoke a sort of collective nostalgia of
a time of innocence and prosperity and unity and unparalleled power,
and..and..and.. You fill it in. The city on the hill… If we are honest about our past, we must
admit that the time in the vision never was.
The dangerous thing about a myth like this is that it can be
captivating, it holds our hearts so strongly that our vision is clouded. We get stuck in trying recreate a time that
never was and fail to understand the difficulties and challenges that were
present. We come to think that the way
forward is to go back. Nostalgia for a
time that never was…
Fast forward six centuries
to the time of Jesus. Some things had
changed; some had not. The Jews were
still ruled by a monarch, only now the monarch was far off in Rome, and he was
titled “emperor” instead of “king.” He
ruled through his appointees and client kings.
What hadn’t changed was that the state and its allies in the temple
oppressed the people and ruled with an iron hand. The nation’s loyalty to JHWH was compromised,
and this was reflected in the poor fortune of the vast majority of Gods’ people. The main difference, as I see it, was that
their new ruler was not one of their own.
To be sure, the Romans and
their allies had their challenges. There
was deep distrust and resentment among the vast majority who were not in the
power structure. Rebellion was in the
air and in the people’s hearts. When
Jesus was a youth, there had been an armed rebellion in Galilee. It was led by
a man named Judas of Gamala, and it was brutally repressed. The Romans destroyed the city of Sepphoris,
just a short distance from Nazareth. They sold its inhabitants into slavery and
crucified as many as 2000 rebels. In
fact there was a whole line of rebels claiming to be the messiah, a king who
would arise from the people, overthrow the Romans and usher in a period of
independence and justice. So the Romans
were nervous. Of course they were
nervous. Enter Jesus and his exuberant
followers on Palm Sunday Passover Week.
His followers hailed him as “king”.
Given that the only kings acknowledged by the Romans were the emperor
and his local client rulers, given the heightened sensitivity of Passover week
commemorating the liberation of the Hebrew people, it’s easy to see how
provocative those shouts were.
But where did Jesus stand
in all this? Was the crowd really
representing Jesus as he sought to be known?
I think not. Jesus does not
represent himself as a king, at not least in the everyday sense of the word ”king.” The sign--“King of the Jews”--, which was
nailed to the cross, was a mockery based on what others were saying about
Jesus. There are places in the New
Testament where Jesus is referred to as King, places like the book of
Revelation, but this was not a title which Jesus embraced for himself. In fact
Jesus was not buying into the myth of the savior king. He was trying to change the terms of the
discussion, to break the hold of Davidic nostalgia. So I
think it was a dangerous mistake for his followers to hail Jesus as
“king”.
It was a mistake, but it
was a natural mistake having to do with the related idea that Jesus was the
messiah. For most of the Jews of Jesus’
time the ideas of king and messiah were closely linked. The Jews saw the messiah as a person,
possibly descended from the great king David, sent by God to lead the people in
overthrowing the rule of their Roman oppressors and ushering in an age of
independence and justice. The messiah
would be a worker of miracles or signs and a person of power and glory. Others believed that the messiah was a
heavenly figure of power and glory who would lead his heavenly army in a battle
with the forces of evil. Today we call
that type of thinking apocalyptic.
Whichever way they saw the messiah—as an earthly warrior king or as the
leader of an army of warrior angels--the messiah, to first century Jews, was a
figure of power and glory who would overthrow their oppressors and usher in a
new age of God’s kingdom.
Today we accept Jesus as
messiah or Christ. It is central to what
we believe. What did Jesus himself
say? The record in the Gospels might
surprise you. If we were able to put the
question to Jesus, “Are you the messiah?”, I think he would answer, “Yes, but
we need to clear about what I mean by ‘messiah’.” This kind of reply is deeply unsatisfying to
some people. They want to respond, “Stop
beating about the bush, are you or aren’t you the messiah?” Fact is, most people in Jesus’ day had a
picture of what the messiah would look like, and Jesus didn’t fit that
picture. Even the Hebrew scriptures gave
a lot of support to the common understanding of the messiah. So Jesus was attempting to shift the messiah
paradigm of his culture. It’s easy for
us, twenty centuries on with the testimony of Jesus’ resurrection and with all
those centuries of church teaching, to say “Of course, Jesus was the
messiah.” But if you’d polled the Jews
during holy week on whether Jesus was the Messiah, I don’t think there would
have been much support.
What about the people in
the crowd? Luke describes them as the
“multitude of disciples”. Other Gospels
refer to them simply as the “crowd”. I’m
sure Jesus was preceded by his reputation, his reputation as a wonder worker
and healer, as someone who associated with those on the margins of society, the
poor, foreigners, those deemed unclean, as someone with words of hope for the
hopeless. In a few days the “multitude of disciples” was reduced to a handful
of disillusioned followers. Perhaps many
in the Palm Sunday crowd were merely curious, drawn to see who was the cause of
all the excitement. What did they
believe about Jesus? Did they see him as
a messiah/king? Perhaps only a few saw
him as messiah and others got swept up in the shouts of the crowd and joined
the cheer. I can only speculate. If they had seen him as their messiah, Jesus
was not the messiah they had expected.
If people had been paying
attention to Jesus’ teaching, they should have understood that Jesus was not
holding himself out as that type of
messiah. His message was one of
reconciliation and peaceful resistance, not of violent revolution. Jesus’ power
did not rest on threats of violence backed by armies of enforcers; it rested on
his compelling vision of God’s kingdom, a vision which undercut the ideology of
the authorities of empire and their collaborators in the council of the Temple,
a vision which punctured the nostalgic myth of a powerful and glorious king.
Was Jesus even dangerous to the authorities?
Actually, I think he was, but probably not in the way they feared. I see absolutely no indication that Jesus sought
to lead a movement to violently overthrow of the ruling establishment. Jesus
was dangerous indeed, but not like the usual “messiahs” of his day. He was not a military threat or even a direct
threat to law and order. But his
teachings and his life example were deeply subversive to the values of the
establishment as well as the nostalgic myths of their would-be violent
opponents. He gave hope to the
downtrodden. In that way Jesus was “dangerous” and so should we
be.
Starting with the events
of Palm Sunday, the events of Holy Week provide a whole series of opportunities
for Jesus to show just what kind of messiah he was. The procession begins with Jesus riding on
the colt of a donkey. The colt of a
donkey. This image comes from the
prophet Zechariah. Think of the usual
image of the conquering hero astride his powerful war steed. There’s a whole genre of equestrian
statuary. They dot the public squares of
the Roman world and its successor states.
Renaissance sculptors were obsessed with the task. Kim Il Jung of North Korea has one which is
particularly grandiose. Just for fun I
googled asinine statues. Zero hits. Of course there’s a reason for this: What culture would portray its conquering
hero, its glorious king or leader, astride a donkey? It is a jarring but profound image which
turns conventional values upside down, an image not of pomp and power, but of
humility.
The story of Palm Sunday
is followed in Luke by Jesus’ overturning the tables of the vendors and money
changers in the Temple. This was not
just a matter of Jesus taking on a few dishonest small fry vendors. Jesus was challenging the whole institution
of the Temple and its religion of sacrifices and also the Jewish elite who
lived off the taxes levied on behalf of the Temple, who prospered in their cozy
relations with the Roman occupiers. The
fact was that the Temple elite attempted to mediate between the restive Jews
and their Roman rulers. They were a key
element in the mechanism of repression.
There was more at stake here than getting the riffraff off the streets
and out of the Temple. Those in power
understood very well.
Think next of John’s story
of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet at the Last Supper. Jesus adopts the role normally filled by a
slave, and the disciples are confused.
Everyone understood: there were servants and there were masters. It was the role of the servants to serve the
masters. Now, Jesus was teaching that
humble service was the highest role.
Imagine the lords and ladies of Downton Abbey washing the feet of their
servant staff! Very confusing. Uncomfortable all around. There is comfort in knowing ones place. But here was Jesus, once again, turning
conventional values upside down.
Think of Jesus’
trials. It seemed that everyone wanted a
piece of him: the Sanhedrin, Pilate, Herod Antipas in Galilee. It’s impossible to see any of these
proceedings as a quest for justice. It
was a kangaroo court; the outcome a foregone conclusion. The charges were trumped up, and Jesus’
enemies were in control. There was no chance of his acquittal. “Are you the Messiah?” “If I tell you, you will not believe…” “Are you, then, the Son of God?” “You say that I am.” “Are you the king of the Jews?” “You say so.”
It appears that Jesus neither embraces nor denies the titles others
would foist on him. If he did not accept
these titles, why did he not reject them and protest his innocence? Even if he did accept the titles, why did he
not use the stage to state his case, to clearly proclaim his identity? Is it possible that because he understood that
the proceedings were a sham, his failure to engage his opponents was his way of
dismissing the whole charade of Sanhedrin and Roman justice? Think about it. I certainly wouldn’t want to have to rely on
that system to find justice.
Think of Jesus’
crucifixion. I’ve seen Renaissance
paintings which portray Jesus as serene and radiant, his gaze uplifted,
triumphant over suffering. In my mind,
that is all wrong. The sign “King of the Jews” is strictly ironic. The
crucifixion is a scene of lonely suffering. There is nothing of power or glory
in it. In fact he had renounced all
that. The week which began in joy and
hope appeared to come to a tragic end.
So as I proceed through Holy
Week I am presented with a series of pictures, images that stay with me,
pictures that tell me who Jesus was: Jesus the king who rode into Jerusalem on
a donkey, who overturned the tables of the vendors and money changers in the
Temple, who washed his disciples’ feet, who kept his dignity through a sham
trial, who died an inglorious, powerless death on the cross. For me Holy Week is not primarily about
theology, not even about the words which Jesus spoke. It is about the Word made flesh, God’s
revelation of a different sort of king, a different sort of kingdom, a
revelation just as pertinent to today’s world as it was to the Jews of Jesus’
day. String all the images together, and
you have a sort of sermon in pictures.
And, of course, there is
another picture: the empty tomb. “He is not here, but has risen.” A picture which affirms Jesus as true Messiah
and Lord of our lives in God’s kingdom, Jesus, through God’s love, the
conqueror of death and its forces. For
the picture sermon, that would be God’s “Amen!”
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