Matthew 26:14-27:66
Preached by Rev. Dr. Jason Haddox
What is happening?
From “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the
Lord!” to “Let him be crucified”…today is a day of almost unbearable extremes,
straining in contrast with one another.
If you’re not feeling a bit of mental whiplash, you’re not paying
attention.
Many things can be true at
once. And especially today…as we begin
the most extraordinary and significant week of the Christian Year, as we
“…enter with joy upon the contemplation of those mighty acts, whereby [God has]
given us life and immortality; through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Many things can be true at
once. And the story we have before us is
so multi-layered, that no sermon can begin to say even a percentage of all that
is before us. So I’m not going to try to
do more than call your attention to two things throughout: The expectations of those who are part of the
story, and Jesus’ constant refusal to be constrained by those expectations.
When we began, with shouts of
Hosanna and waving palms in a parade into the city, we have to remember that
there’s another parade going on across town.
As Jesus is entering Jerusalem on a donkey through the east gate, Pilate
is riding a white horse from the west, backed by the armies of the Roman
Empire. Many of those who follow Jesus
are expecting great things from him. Perhaps
a confrontation with the religious and political power structure of the day,
perhaps a challenge to the empire and its domination over their lives. And the funny thing is, apparently the
religious and political leaders, those invested in the empire and its
domination, seemed to expect some such thing as well. For they too were mindful of this “prophet
Jesus from Galilee in Nazareth.”
But what they expected is not what
they got. Jesus the prophet from Galilee
came not as a politician, not as a military leader, not as one crying for
violence and revenge against those who perpetrated vengeance and violence—none
of those categories would work. And this
frustrated the people no end: both the people who were in favor of Jesus (as
far as they understood him) and the people who were opposed to him, and fearful
of him.
Neither group could quite figure
him out.
When they come to arrest him, with
clubs and swords, he tells those who would die to defend him in the same
manner: Put your swords away.
When he stands before the governor,
on trial for his life, and is asked over and over to explain himself, he does
not answer.
When he is cursed and humiliated,
he will not curse them back.
Over and over in Matthew’s gospel,
we hear echoes of the words of the prophet Hosea: “I desire mercy and steadfast
love, not sacrifice; the knowledge of God above all things, says God.” (Hos
6:6) Jesus has preached it, practiced
it, shared it, and having lived in that way all along, he lives in that way
until the end.
Confronted with violence, Jesus
rejects violence as a tool, even for self-protection.
Confronted with words of fear,
anger, and hatred, Jesus enters into silence—a silence more profound than any
words that could be thrown at him.
And in that silence, even the
stones under his feet cry out.
When you come forward for communion
in a few minutes, I invite you to put your hand in the baptismal font. During our Lenten journey it has been
filled—not with water, but with sand.
Dry, dusty, gritty, the stuff of the desert. Today it is filled with stones. Hard, jagged, rough, the stuff of the road
down to Jerusalem, and the road up to Mount Calvary. The stuff of the tomb, sealed tight, hard and
dead and buried.
I invite you, as you come forward
to receive the bread and the wine, Christ’s body and blood, to take a stone
from the font with you. Keep it in your
pocket this week, as together we walk the road as Jesus’ followers. Let it remind you of the stony and rough places
in your life, the violent and bloody places, the places where the stones have
been piled up and sealed against death itself, from which, even now, God is
bringing forth new life.
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