|
|
|
|
|
Sermon preached by Evensong, 5.15pm Zechariah 9: 9-10 - Mark 11: 1-10 Before I begin my sermon may I thank Philip Prior and
the choir for singing ‘Like as the hart’ by Herbert Howells tonight.
This anthem has a very special place in both John’s
heart and mine— as it was the anthem sung for us by the choir at St.
Mary’s church St. Neot's on our wedding day.
And in 36 years we have never heard it sung again ’in
the flesh’ - so to speak, So a big thank you again from us both. Our Second Lesson this evening tells us about Jesus’
final journey into The last stage of Jesus’ journey to along the track which runs along the eastern slope of the reaching the summit.
Just before the crest of the road was a village called ‘Bethphage’ - the House of Green
Figs whose few cottages straggled along the sides of the
road.
Here Jesus
halted; he had a deliberate plan, carefully laid, for the way in which
his entry into He had made arrangements for a young, unbroken ass to
be tethered ready for him. Sending two of his disciples to bring the animal to
him, and giving them the arranged password, “The Lord needs it”, to show
the owner that all was in order, he waited.
Soon the messengers returned, leading with them a
young colt, on which they had spread their garments. Jesus mounted the animal, and the little procession
moved on. Why did Jesus choose to ride for the last mile of his
journey? Was it merely that he was tired?
And why choose an ass?
Why not have chosen a horse, a far more fitting
animal for a leader to ride? To find the answer to these questions, we have to look back into the Old Testament, to the writings of an old prophet, long-since dead,
called Zechariah, who had written over five hundred years before, and whose words were read as our First Lesson
tonight. “Rejoice greatly, O daughter Shout aloud, O daughter Lo your king comes to you! Triumphant and victorious is he, Humble and riding on a donkey, On a colt, the foal of a donkey.” Jesus had remembered these words of long ago, and had
decided to enter the capital in the manner in which the prophet had
foretold. The choice of an ass was deliberate.
The ass was an animal of peace, just as the horse was a symbol of war.
The enthusiastic crowd formed up in a procession, cheering and cutting down branches from the palm
trees to make a triumphant carpet for our Lord to ride
along. That is why the Sunday before Easter is called ‘Palm
Sunday’. Some even took off their cloaks, and laid them on the
rocky path, in front of their leader.
The sound of their singing grew louder. “Hosanna! - Save now!” they shouted, as the final
hill summit came into sight. “Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord!” Amongst the crowds were Pharisees, who, angry and alarmed, told Jesus to silence his
followers, and to keep them in check.
Sternly, our Lord turned to them.
“I tell you”, he said, “that if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out!” Then looking on the city lying at his feet with its roofs and towers gleaming, and the white marble of the His eyes filled with tears.
Here was the dearly as he loved it, it was soon to reject him. Pulling himself together, he rode on at the head of
his cheering followers to the fate which he knew lay in store for
him. The message of Christ has never had an easy ride or a comfortable reception.
Go back to the first disciples and that first Palm
Sunday. According to the first three gospels Jesus made three attempts to tell the disciples what
it meant to follow him—what the cross meant, but each time they thought he was being silly; and
today— even on Palm Sunday the message seems to pass them
by. When Jesus rode into high tension: the Passover was near—a time when riots were common the garrison would have been on high alert; Jesus had a reputation as a speaker, healer and a
charismatic figure; the shouts of Hosanna—do it now they shouted... they knew what the prophet Zechariah had said as we
heard in the First Lesson this evening. Jesus came as a king, but the events of the coming few days were to show
that Jesus hadn’t come as a king in quite the way that
some had thought— not someone who was going to kick out the Romans but someone who was going to show an utterly radical way
of living and dying, a way that was far from being lily-livered and
feeble— but one which was challenging and provocative and not
entirely peaceful. If you read the next part of the Synoptic Gospels you will find Jesus, having come into going into the overturning the tables of the money changers and then having a long discourse about the collapse of the These actions speak of someone deeply concerned with a peace that isn’t simply about quietude, but about justice and the proper ordering of human
society of someone from within the prophetic tradition where conflict was likely to be inevitable. Jesus had spent so much of his time trying to
overturn people’s preconceptions— trying to get them to view things differently.
St. Mark constantly tells us how thick the disciples
were they didn’t get the message— they didn’t understand— it was only after he’d been killed and they were
brought face to face with the resurrection that the disciples
finally ‘got it’. Then they stopped chasing after the things that
everyone else chases after— power, money, status and prestige.
The penny dropped, they were transformed— they went out and preached and lived the gospel— and for the most part that was a very, very costly
thing to do— most of them died as martyrs— Jesus came to bring peace, but his words were not
always recognised as such. There is, however, one man who truly followed the man
on the donkey someone who was a committed pacifist, but himself overturned a few tables, someone who was rejected and despised like Christ and was to be a martyr as well, and I’m going to quote his words to you now— they are words spoken to the American National Guard
by Martin Luther King in 1963 and they are very challenging: My brothers and sisters, listen to the voice of Jesus
in your heart. You may burn with anger But you may not hate, and you may not retaliate We will match your capacity to inflict suffering With our capacity to endure suffering We will meet your physical force With soul force Though we cannot in good conscience obey your evil
laws We will not hate you, do to us what you will. Threaten our children And we will still love you Say we are too low, we are too degraded Yet we will still love you. Bomb our homes, burn down our churches And we will still love you We will wear you down with our capacity to suffer and
still to love And in so doing we will not only win our freedom, we will so appeal to your hearts and minds, that in the end we shall win you in the process. If only forgiveness and love like that could happen
throughout the world today — As Christians we have a long and arduous journey
ahead of us and we can only make that journey with Jesus by our side. I’d like to finish with a very poignant reading from a poem by R. S. Thomas entitled … The Coming
And God held in his hand
A small globe. Look,
he said.
The son looked.
Far off,
As through water, he saw
A scorched land of fierce
Colour. The light
burned
There; crusted buildings
Cast their shadows; a bright
Serpent, a river
Uncoiled itself, radiant
With slime.
On a bare
Hill a bare tree saddened
The sky. Many people
Held out their thin arms
To it, as though waiting
For a vanished April
To return to its crossed
Boughs. The son
watched
Them. Let me go
there, he said. Amen © Penny Bonham 2010 ____________________________________________ |
||
|
|
||||
