404 Error: Not Found

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC March 29, 2015, Palm Sunday.

Text: Mark 11:1-19                                                                

“Do we preach Christ crucified?” (that is) “Do you believe in a Jesus who is dangerous enough to be arrested and killed by the state?”  That question, presented by South African Methodist pastor Alan Storey at an MFSA event here at Foundry last fall, is the question of the day.  In how many places today will people walk into churches and find a Jesus who is presented—probably unintentionally—as the Grand Marshall of the Big Parade, making his “triumphal entry” in line with the marching band and the corporate-sponsored floats and the children on daddy’s shoulders waving those tiny American flags?  In how many places today will people find Jesus doing nothing more than offering an opportunity to have a party and a cute procession with children whacking each other with palms?  In how many places today will people find a celebration of Jesus as the one who is so familiar, so accessible, that he almost blends into the crowd, tacitly blessing the status quo?  Lord knows I have been part of such celebrations in my life.  But Jesus the Grand Marshall, the party guy, the bland, Everyman, is not dangerous enough to be arrested and killed by the state.  And that is the story we begin to tell and to hear today:  “they kept looking for a way to kill him, for they were afraid of him…” (Mk 11:18)

 

The procession into Jerusalem is no accident or whim or flash mob for the sake of fun.  It is a carefully planned demonstration, orchestrated by Jesus for maximum effect (Mk 11:2-3).  By its method, the make-up of participants, and its content, this march puts those in power on notice that business as usual is unacceptable. The procession calls upon symbolism from the prophet Zechariah who speaks of a king who will come into Jerusalem “humble and riding on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”  The prophecy goes on to say that the king “will cut off…the war horse,” “shall command peace to the nations,” and prisoners will be set free. (Zechariah 9:9-11)  Jesus organizes and leads a non-violent freedom march in solidarity with the poor and oppressed… Can you imagine any scenario in which that would lead to conflict, violent retaliation, and death threats? 

 

In our day, a “404 Error” is a familiar computer message—one that appears when something you’re looking for can’t be found.  This error message doesn’t necessarily mean that what you’re looking for doesn’t exist, it’s just that there is a broken link somewhere, or something in the system isn’t configured to find what you’re after.  Jesus knows that the system he encounters in Rome-occupied Jerusalem—the political, socio-economic, and religious system—is not configured such that he will find what he is looking for.  The link between reality and God’s vision is broken.

 

Jerusalem at the time of Jesus had already served as the “center of the sacred geography of the Jewish people for a millennium.”[i] It was a city associated with all their best hopes and aspirations for justice and peace.  But it was also a city that had been captured and ruled by one foreign power after another for centuries. Under Roman rule beginning in 63 BCE, the religious Temple became used as the center of economic and political activity and control by the Roman Empire.  Temple leaders were likely hand-picked by Roman rulers and came from high-ranking priestly families and from wealthy lay families.  The system—what Walter Brueggemann calls the “imperial reality” and Marcus Borg refers to as a “domination system”—was marked by oppressive “rule by a few, economic exploitation, and religious legitimation.”[ii] In other words, there was a small percent of the population whose power was fueled by a large percent of the wealth and the God they worshiped was a God who was interested in maintaining this system and ensuring his own place with the “in” crowd in the palace.  One might think that such a state of affairs would make the masses rise up in protest.  But the reality is that this kind of system—a very common system, by the way—often has just the opposite effect.  In the face of such overwhelming power differentials, a “numbed consciousness of denial”[iii] sets in.  Brueggemann says, “Imperial economics is designed to keep people satiated so that they do not notice.  Its politics is intended to block out the cries of the denied ones.  Its religion is to be an opiate so that no one discerns misery alive in the heart of God.”[iv] 

 

In this “domination system” everyone is caught in the web of injustice.  The poor are caught in dehumanizing systems and become exhausted by the obstacles they face… The oppressed who try to speak up are silenced and treated as selfish or crazy or traitors… Those in “middle management” often live with a complex mixture of guilt and envy… The powerful and rich are bound and blinded by their own privilege… Daily work and entertainments and bones thrown out here and there keep most people distracted… and everyone becomes lulled into believing the fiction that this is simply the way things are, that there are no real alternatives, and therefore life becomes a matter of just getting by.  Do you ever catch yourself feeling like this-is-just-the-way-things-are-and-nothing-will-ever-change-so-why-bother?  Do you ever realize that you have become numb to the reality of suffering all around?  Do you ever find yourself thinking there is no future that will be different than the present?

 

Today, Jesus rides into that thinking and challenges it.  Jesus rides in to town as an embodiment of a true alternative and as the One who can restore the link between the broken present and God’s future wholeness.  He comes with humility to stand up to power players and the Roman military industrial complex, to stand in solidarity with the poor, to speak out for the marginalized and oppressed, to call people back to the connection between prayer and justice.  Jesus rides in to Jerusalem embodying God’s freedom in the face of those who thought God could be tamed, co-opted, and manipulated to serve the war machine, Wall Street, and the status quo. 

 

And when Jesus entered the Temple and “looked around.”  404 Error: Not Found.  Justice was not found. Care for the alien, orphan and widow were not found.  What Jesus found was reason to quote the prophet Jeremiah who said, “Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal…and then come and stand before me…Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight?” (Jer 7:9-11)  Jesus entered his nation’s capitol and through public, peaceful protests and teaching named the hypocrisy and injustice of a system that had lost a life-giving connection to its God, a God of justice, mercy, and self-giving love.  He rides in and proclaims God’s hope-filled future if only people will repent and turn back to God’s Way.  And then people decided they should kill him.

 

If Jesus marched into our nation’s capitol today and looked around, what would he find?  What would he overturn, who would he drive out, what would he not allow to be carried through the sanctuary?  Be careful as you consider your answer.  If Jesus doesn’t make you yourself uncomfortable, then something is likely missing.  Our tendency is to try to make God in our image instead of the other way around.  And my guess is that if we met Jesus today he would be more conservative than some of us would like, and more liberal than others would prefer.  But the thing that is simply too clear and consistent in the scriptures to ignore is that Jesus—like all of God’s prophets—takes the side of the poor, the vulnerable, the powerless, the losers, the oppressed.  This is not because God doesn’t love everyone, but because God DOES.  God won’t rest until all God’s children are safe and cherished and cared for.  We may disagree on how to accomplish the goal, but the goal itself is clear.

 

So if Jesus came into Washington, DC today, this nation of such high hopes and aspirations, this nation that claims “liberty and justice for all,” would he find immigration policies that treat persons with dignity, would he find care for the most vulnerable in our society including the thousands of mentally ill and addicted folks who live on our streets, would he find protection for transgender, gay and lesbian persons?  Would Jesus find economic justice for the poor, environmental justice for the animals and ecosystems, racial justice for sisters and brothers of color?  Would Jesus find a commitment to feed and educate every child and to assure that people who work will have enough to live and that an affordable home will be available?  Would Jesus find a commitment to peace and non-violence, healthy work policies that support healthy family systems?  Would Jesus find people who understand that they cannot save themselves and that God is more than a benign idea or a list of “thou shalt nots?”  Error 404: Not Found.  What Jesus would find is a growing number of so-called “Religious Freedom Restoration Acts” finding support among our states that make it legal to discriminate against LGBTQ folks and to use Jesus’ own name as the justification.  Jesus would find a nation whose economy is dependent upon our military industrial complex, whose value system places money and power at the very top and has made violence a cash crop, whose commitment is to the bottom line at the cost of the planet, healthy relationships, and long-established communities.  Jesus would find entrenched systems of racially motivated violence and injustice and a society in which “The poorer you are, the more things cost. More in money, time, hassle, exhaustion, menace.”[v]  I could add to this list and, Lord knows, so could you.  Just think of what Jesus would add that you and I don’t have the eyes to see…  And I don’t claim to have answers for how to address the deep and wide disconnect in our society between the vision of God’s Kin-dom and our current reality. 

 

But what I will claim today is that if we allow Jesus the freedom to be dangerous—dangerous enough that our own small perceptions and projections get stretched and shifted, dangerous enough that our own government officials and religious leaders might be so threatened that they would conspire to kill him—and US for standing with him—then there is hope for us yet.  The danger Jesus brings comes in an unlikely form—a laughable form for those committed to the dominant culture.  Jesus is dangerous precisely through his love and compassion.  Brueggemann writes, “Quite clearly, the one thing the dominant culture cannot tolerate or co-opt is compassion, the ability to stand in solidarity with the victims of the present order.  It can manage charity and good intentions, but it has no way to resist solidarity with pain or grief…The imperial consciousness lives by its capacity to still the groans and to go on with business as usual as though none were hurting and there were no groans. If the groans become audible, if they can be heard in the streets and markets and courts, then the consciousness of domination is already jeopardized… Newness comes precisely from expressed pain.  Suffering made audible and visible produces hope, articulated grief is the gate of newness, and the history of Jesus is the history of entering into the pain and giving it voice.”[vi] 

 

Today, Jesus enters the gates of Jerusalem, enters the gates of Washington, enters the pain of those who suffer and gives that pain a voice.  Since Christ has no body now on earth but ours, it is our bodies that must march, our hands that must be extended in care, our voices that must rise, our lives that must be lived in solidarity and in peace.  Compassion is dangerous and even deadly.  But Jesus shows us through the events of this Holy Week how to proceed—with courage, with trust in God, with self-giving love, and with abiding hope in the new life that surely awaits.

 

 

 

 

 

God and neighbor. In fact, the Lenten season beckons followers to a new and resurrected life made possible by a victory of love and justice. It is an invitation to let go of fear, to all that separates us from God and from each other that we might truly be free--free to be, free to love, and free to work for the well-being of the whole human family. Anything less is captivity, not freedom. God and neighbor. In fact, the Lenten season beckons followers to a new and resurrected life made possible by a victory of love and justice. It is an invitation to let go of fear, to all that separates us from God and from each other that we might truly be free--free to be, free to love, and free to work for the well-being of the whole human family. Anything less is captivity, not freedom.Moreover, Christian freedom has always been defined by an enlargement of the heart, an increase of compassion, and a commitment to loving God and neighbor. In fact, the Lenten season beckons followers to a new and resurrected life made possible by a victory of love and justice. It is an invitation to let go of fear, to all that separates us from God and from each other that we might truly be free--free to be, free to love, and free to work for the well-being of the whole human family. Anything less is captivity, not freedom.Moreover, Christian freedom has always been defined by an enlargement of the heart, an increase of compassion, and a commitment to loving God and neighbor. In fact, the Lenten season beckons followers to a new and resurrected life made possible by a victory of love and justice. It is an invitation to let go of fear, to all that separates us from God and from each other that we might truly be free--free to be, free to love, and free to work for the well-being of the whole human family. Anything less is captivity, not freedom.Moreover, Christian freedom has always been defined by an enlargement of the heart, an increase of compassion, and a commitment to loving God and neighbor. In fact, the Lenten season beckons followers to a new and resurrected life made possible by a victory of love and justice. It is an invitation to let go of fear, to all that separates us from God and from each other that we might truly be free--free to be, free to love, and free to work for the well-being of the whole human family. Anything less is captivity, not freedom.

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[i] Marcus J. Borg & John Dominic Crossan, The Last Week: A Day-by-Day Account of Jesus’s Final Week in Jerusalem, HarperSanFrancisco, 2006, p. 5.

[ii] Ibid., pp. 13-15.

[iii] Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, Second Edition, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001, p. 81.

[iv] Ibid., p. 35.

[v] DeNeen L. Brown, “The High Cost of Poverty: Why the Poor Pay More,” accessed on 3/28/15 at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/17/AR2009051702053.html/

[vi] Brueggemann, p. 91.