The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for April 1, 2007 (Palm/Passion Sunday)

Texts: Isaiah 50:4-9a/Luke 19:28-44

Title: “The Reckoning”

              To insure that we all begin at the same start point, I will introduce and define a word with which some of you may be unfamiliar.  The word is “triptych.”  Some of you know that word.  Yes? 

              My friend Webster defines triptych as a “set of three panels with pictures, designs, or carvings often hinged so that two sides may be folded over the central one. Triptychs have been around a good long while.  I remember visiting a museum and seeing a triptych painted in the Middle Ages whose subject was King David, one panel depicting David the shepherd, one David the warrior, and one David the king. Triptychs can be found in virtually any museum.

              Triptychs provide an economical means to tell a story or relate an incident that occurred over a period of time. I introduce the triptych this morning to make a point related to the life and work of Jesus. 

              I have in mind a triptych with these three panels, Galilee, Triumphal Entry, and Jerusalem.  Each of those panels I imagine delineates one of three important episodes in our Lord’s life and ministry. The panels basically define Jesus’ life in three segments, “past,” “present,” and future.”

              The Galilee panel represents Jesus being Jesus, preaching, teaching and healing in his boyhood surroundings of Galilee. Rural, away from the “big city” hustle and bustle of Jerusalem, it was in the region of Galilee that Jesus made his mark and established his reputation. It was from the sons of Galilee that Jesus chose the twelve who would accompany him on his ministry.

              The Triumphal Entry panel, depicts the grand entrance where Jesus’ disciples, and the people who lined the route into Jerusalem, turn out to herald the arrival of Jesus who is stepping on to a bigger stage. “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” they cried. This panel in the triptych celebrates a public ministry concluded, a reputation established, but it also features the imposing voice of his detractors who, witnessing the spectacle surrounding Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem, call out to Jesus, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.”

              The third panel in the triptych, the Jerusalem panel, marks endings, but most importantly new beginnings. This week we will concentrate on the endings represented in the panel, next week the new beginnings. Jesus arrives in Jerusalem, not to leave the way he arrived, celebrated as king triumphantly when he entered the city, he was arrested, tried, and executed. 

              The end, but it wasn’t was it? In three days time, new beginnings. He rises from the tomb, ascends to his throne on high, establishing his reign, not merely over Galilee or Jerusalem, but over the entire universe. Come next week and hear more.

              Each of the gospels, follow the same general outline of Jesus’ earthly ministry, a ministry undertaken among the humble people inhabiting the northern part of Israel, on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, his Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem, his last supper with his disciples, his arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, his trial, and execution. 

             Though chronologies differ, and though each gospel reports occurrences unreported by the other three, the portrayal of Jesus is consistent, Jesus is Lord, Jesus is Savior, period. What is striking, however, is that the grand reception Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem earns in each of the gospels as king of Israel is a departure from how Jesus is perceived before entering that city.  Teacher, yes, rabbi, yes, healer, yes, but the public acknowledgment that Jesus is a man of exalted standing, a king in the lineage of David, only comes as Jesus descends the Mount of Olives on the back of a donkey.

                They say “the past is prologue,” but the reception Jesus receives on entering Jerusalem for the final time is inconsistent with what precedes it.  Again, Jesus’ celebrity as a man possessing uncommon authority, as a man who performed great fetes, and as one who consistently outmaneuver his opponents, was well established in Galilee, but, frankly, it was not a reputation rising to the level where people were moved to spread their garments on the path his donkey traveled.  Yet Luke and the other three gospels report, with some variation in detail in each case, that the event actually occurred.                       

              A Triumphal Entry, but not into some Galilean village.  Jesus made his entry onto one of the grandest stages in the ancient world, Jerusalem. The Gospel of Luke makes a great deal out of Jerusalem, for as scholars who study the gospel tell us, Jerusalem and the temple in Jerusalem signal for Luke the “fulfillment of prophesy, the completion of Jesus’ ministry.” “In Luke, Jerusalem is [Jesus’] destination and the disciples are to remain there until they receive the Holy Spirit.” Contrast that with the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, each of which leaves the impression that Jesus would have returned to Galilee had he not been killed in Jerusalem.

              Jerusalem, which David, Israel’s most esteemed king, chose to make his capital, a regal city, home to the temple, the repository of the Torah, the  books of the law, and the holy relics of the Jews, was a place Jesus had visited on many occasions. The seat of religious and civil authority, it was in Jerusalem that Jesus’ message and methods received their most unfavorable critique. 

The ways of Jerusalem, under her high priests, and others who presided as officers and functionaries in the temple, did not square with the message Jesus brought, and Jesus was not shy in stating it.  No, not a smart thing to do if one wished to stay out of trouble, but the Lord went ahead anyway.

              Jesus, you see, knew that if his mission here on earth was to be deemed complete he could not ignore Jerusalem, even it meant placing himself in danger. There is a passage found in the thirteenth chapter of Luke, a passage we treated a few weeks ago, where Jesus’ investment in Jerusalem is unequivocally stated: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!  How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!  Exclamation mark. 

             “You were not willing!” The echo of Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem is heard in our morning’s lesson where Jesus, having just made his triumphal entry into the city, is depicted as weeping over the city.  Jesus announces that Jerusalem faces a divine reckoning “when [her] enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.”  Care to guess what Jesus meant by “visitation from God”?  Jerusalem failed to recognize that Jesus was God in their midst.

               Jerusalem faced a reckoning, and the arrival of Jesus riding into the city heralded with shouts, “blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” was the one to arrange it. Luke reports that Jesus punctuated his point by going to the temple and assaulting those who were conducting business there, the moneychangers and that crowd. 

               The Jerusalem panel in the triptych features not just Jerusalem’s reckoning, but also the reckoning of Jesus himself. I am using the term reckoning in the sense of “a settling of accounts,” a “final disposition of matters yet to be resolved.”

             “Wait until your dad gets home.” I heard those words quite a few times when I was growing up. Six chilling words to ruin an otherwise perfect day.  “Wait until your dad gets home.”  The reckoning, the settling of accounts for my act of disobedience, always came when my dad got home from work. On those occasions I alternately dreaded him coming home, and wished he would come home as soon as possible so that I might put the punishment behind me.                          

             Jesus faced a reckoning in Jerusalem and he knew it. Galilee, and the Triumphal Entry, were behind him. Though he knew that the reckoning would cost him his life, he went forward with it, alone as it turns out, for his disciples had an amazing capacity to ignore the Lord’s repeated declarations that his days on earth were numbered. Luke tells us that, Jesus, on no less than three prior occasions, declared that he would he would be killed.

             The disciples were dead set against a reckoning, their joyful shouts, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” bearing testimony to where their hopes were lodged. 

              The Jerusalem panel in the triptych is a panel of reckoning.  Jerusalem would have its reckoning, the city and temple where destroyed by the Romans about forty years after Jesus’ death and resurrection.  The disciples would have their reckoning, though it would not come in being led off in chains to be tried along with Jesus.  Instead their reckoning came after the crucifixion when they were forced to accept the fact that they had abandoned Jesus when he most needed them. 

              Jesus faced a reckoning, though he may well have avoided it, thereby buying himself a long life.  There was, after all, work to do in Galilee and elsewhere. He was respected, building up an ever increasing group of followers. Why go to Jerusalem when his dealings with the Jerusalem authorities to date had almost always ended badly?

              Jesus faced a reckoning, a prophet’s reckoning.  People often respect the prophet, they just don’t want to listen to him very long. Jesus, the prophet, or, the authorities wanted to know, did he fashion himself “king of the Jews,” as some were saying?  Prophet? King?  How people referred to him really didn’t matter much to the Jewish authorities. All they knew was that he was a threat, a threat to be gotten rid of.

                The reckoning.  Jesus, human like us, struggled with the reckoning.  “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done.” Jesus may have opted out of the reckoning, but no.  Your will, not my will be done. Jerusalem would murder another one of her prophets.

               You and I face reckonings, though they may not come in the form of “in your face,” life and death challenges. Our reckonings may not appear to us to be a reckonings at all. Our reckonings are often of the insidious variety, a temptation to lie, cheat, or hold a grudge. We face reckonings all the time, and may not, unfortunately, even know it. 

                  The religious communities, and Christianity is not alone in this, but that happens to be our belief system, the religious communities are in the business of spotting troubles and alerting us when the times of reckoning come.  No, it is not an easy chore, for the values we learn in churches like this were taught by a man the world despised. And why did it despise him? It despised him because it didn’t want to be criticized.

                  The values and beliefs Jesus taught got him killed.  It would ultimately get some of his faithful followers killed, it is even getting people killed today.

                  Jerusalem presented Jesus with his reckoning.  He faced it, not without agony, but he faced it.  We face reckonings all the time, the bidding of the world to live by the values and norms it creates.  The world, however, didn’t die for us.  Jesus died for us, and because he died for us we have courage to face anything the world presents to seduce and enlist us. Have courage and be of faith, God will stand with you in the face of all reckonings.  You and I are never alone. Trust in the Lord and at the final reckoning you will hear these words, “well done, good and faithful servant.”

PRAYER

              O Christ, our brother, a productive career in Galilee behind you, you set your face toward Jerusalem.  Welcomed into the city as a king, the cries of approval that issued from the people lining the roadside stopped all too soon, replaced by cries to have you crucified.

              “O Jerusalem, I would gather you as a mother hen gathers her chicks,” but it was not to be.  You were murdered, O Lord, just like the prophets who preceded you.  O Christ, our own wayward hearts have turned from you many more times than we wish to remember. Our lives are blighted by jealousy. We want what we can’t have, and denounce those who enjoy advantages we covet for ourselves. We criticize the faults of others, while excusing our own. 

              “O Jerusalem, I would gather you…”  It is not just Jerusalem you would “gather,” O Christ, it is us you would gather as well.  Mercifully forgive our stubborn willfulness in turning our backs on you. Rehabilitate us that the lives we live may bring you glory, and having rehabilitated us, give us courage to go forth as your ambassadors to help rehabilitate this world over which you reign.

               O God, even as we face our daily reckonings, so the world itself faces reckonings for the bad decisions being made by nations or sects within nations. Heedless of the costs in lives or property, their policies exact, heads of state and other despots and terrorists, pursue their vile aims. The peacemaker perishes as the scoundrel lives to plot yet another outrage. We pray for justice, O God, a justice that will end the tyranny of those who cowardly take sanctuary under rocks, in caves, behind machinegun toting goons.

                 O God, The future of our troops in Iraq continues to fuel debate, but debate fails to stanch the flow of blood of our troops, or the innocent Iraqi casualties of the war. Grant wisdom to those who will decide the outcome of our sojourn in Iraq, wisdom consistent, O God, with your holy purposes. We pray for a peaceful outcome of the controversy surrounding the British sailors and marines detained in Iran, praying that the world community will denounce Iran’s action, and take steps to restore peace.

                 We continue to pray for the afflicted, O Lord, those suffering life threatening diseases. Abide with Pam, Ken, Shane, Betty, Mrs. Pilet, and Mrs. Porter.  Strengthen Audrey who is rehabilitating after surgery.  Be with Bobby who continues to wage his battles.  Be with those who in the aftermath of Katrina have yet to find stability in their lives. Be with those busily at work rebuilding their Lakeview homes. Be with TJ Pierce in his confinement.

                  Abide, O God, with victims of crime in our city, even as we pray that the battle being waged again violent crime may be victorious.

                  O God, open our hearts more fully to your gospel that we may be bearers of its fruit into the community and world.  Prosper the efforts we make in outreach, and bless those who are committed to the work of discipleship that the joy of witnessing may be experienced as efforts to reach out are made.

For this church, the freedom to worship here, and the faith that unites us in common purpose we give you thanks, O Lord.