Amazing Grace
Stories
Object:
Contents
"Amazing Grace" by Peter Andrew Smith
"The Unavoidable Cup" by Lamar Massingill
"The Hope of Palm Branches and Personal Garments" by Lamar Massingill
* * * * * * * *
Amazing Grace
by Peter Andrew Smith
Isaiah 50:4-9a
"In conclusion, they can teach this church a great deal about God," Jacobs said.
The board members of St. Bartholomew's who had been thumbing through the long report stopped what they were doing. The few who were not paying attention focussed on the man sitting in front of them. Dressed in khaki's and a golf shirt he looked relaxed and comfortable compared to the tense suits and ties surrounding him.
"With all due respect, Pastor Jacobs, that is not what we wanted." The chairperson shifted in his seat. "We agreed to let the outreach program happen in our church because we knew there were many people who had never heard the word of God and we wanted them to find Jesus."
"That has all happened through the 'Amazing Grace' program. All of that is outlined in the report you have before you."
"But you just said you aren't teaching them about the Lord!" a red-faced board member blurted out.
"Not at all. I ran all of the programs you see listed on page five." Jacobs held up a copy of the report. "We have groups ranging from a basic understanding of the Bible to an open discussion of who Jesus is for us today."
"He is the Lord and Saviour and that is all these people need to know," the red-faced man spurted. "We hired you to teach them, not to gather information you can put in another book you are writing."
"I'm sorry, perhaps I have not been clear," Jacobs said. "I didn't do anything other than what we agreed when you brought me in to administer these outreach efforts at St. Bartholomew's."
"Then what is all this nonsense about you learning something from them? Did you waste this money?"
"I spent the grant money from the foundation exactly where we agreed it would go," Jacobs said. "The auditor's report is on the final page showing where every last penny was spent."
The sound of pages turning filled the room for a few moments.
"Chase and Fairweather is a very respectable accounting firm and if you can satisfy them there is nothing else for us to question." The chairperson glared at the red-faced man.
The red-faced man glared back. "Perhaps there is no question about how the money was spent but I don't see how these godless people can contribute anything to this church. After all we trace the faith of this congregation back to the first settlers."
Jacobs spread his hands. "They can and they do teach very clearly about grace and charity, faith and hope."
"But they do not know Jesus!" the red-faced man thundered.
"They don't know the stories of the Bible or the facts about Jesus' life but they clearly recognize the good news when it is before them," Jacobs said. "There is much they can teach us."
"They are drunks, prostitutes, and crazies. There is nothing we can learn from them except what not to do," the red-faced man proclaimed.
"The drunks know they are helpless in the face of alcohol and look outside of themselves for strength. The prostitutes are abused and shunned by everyone else so they care for each other selflessly. The people who struggle with mental health problems are unwilling to accept things the way they are." Jacobs drew a deep breath. "They respond to God from their weakness and find what we all hunger to know in our lives. After forty years of preaching and teaching the gospel, what I have learned from them about grace humbles me."
"They have nothing to say to us," the red-faced man announced. "After all here at St. Bart's we teach the gospel, we do not learn it."
"Perhaps that is the problem of this old and dying congregation," Jacobs said. "You do not listen to the Holy Spirit speaking through the lives of other people."
"I think with the end of this grant we can finally get things back to normal around here," the red-faced man said, "without those sorts of people disrupting things in this house of God."
Jacobs shrugged. "That is up to the members of this board. As I outline at the end of the report you can continue this program for a fraction of what the grant money provided now that everything is in place and running smoothly. We have volunteers who are more than ready to step in and continue this effort."
"It is too much money," the red-faced man said.
The chairperson cleared his throat. "Would you be willing to continue teaching if we carry on with this program, Pastor Jacobs?"
"I would be honoured," Jacobs said. "I am eager to learn from the Holy Spirit's work here."
"Well, if there are no further questions," the chairperson said, "thank you pastor, for your report. We will let you know what we decide about the future of the 'Amazing Grace' program."
"It finishes tonight," the red-faced man announced.
Looking around the room he found few people who would meet his gaze. Most were in deep thought about where their congregation would go. Back to the way things were in St Bartholomew's, a church with its best days behind them, or forward by risking on this effort to bring the gospel to the desperate people who surrounded them in the community.
"I think we need a moment for prayer before we vote," a member who had remained silent until now said. The red-faced man reluctantly bowed his head along with the others.
For the first time in many years the people in the room who had always been certain about what they knew opened their ears and listened.
Peter Andrew Smith is an ordained minister in the United Church of Canada who currently serves at St. James United Church in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. He is the author of All Things Are Ready (CSS), a book of lectionary-based communion prayers, as well as many stories and articles, which can be found listed at www.peterandrewsmith.com.
The Unavoidable Cup
by Lamar Massingill
Mark 14:1-15:47
Carlyle Marney once pointed out that our great symbols are nearly always acted out. Our great ideas, sooner or later get personified.
Abraham Lincoln was offered the way of race extermination for African Americans in 1863 -- the thinking was that this would solve the contraband problem Grant was facing. But Lincoln said "Mercy bears better fruit than strict justice, for a slave has no justice," and with that turned away from the notion of mass extermination in literally, what could only be called a shuddering horror. Unfortunately, that wasn't the end of the idea. Less than eighty years later there came a man mad enough to personify the symbolic idea of race extermination -- that man's name was Adolf Hitler.
The free sex revolution of the sixties was simply a wholesale acting out of symbols of a dark and secret craving for freedom and license with no responsibility. (This, as many baby boomers will remember, was personified in the movie The Graduate [Ku ku Ka Chu Mrs. Robinson] and yet later at Woodstock.) No surprise either that the first credit card available to the general population, BankAmericard, now Visa, at that time had the same sexual overtones: have it now, pay later.
Anglo-Saxon pride, a leftover from Hitler's contagious dis/ease, is nothing more than a tribal provincialism -- but it is now being personified through white supremists committing all manner of hate crimes toward the government; those who are of a different color or political, religious, or sexual orientation; and basically anyone else not like themselves. These great symbols are nearly always acted out on stage somewhere.
Israel, for the longest, had used the symbol of the lamb to take away sins. These were searing, visible images of redemption. The historian Josephus counted over 248,000 lambs slaughtered in the Passover feasts in Jerusalem in the year 70.
But a lamb would not do as a symbol forever. Great symbols sooner or later get person/ified. History being history and symbols being symbols, someone -- somebody -- a body, will unavoidably go to the altars where our symbols are taken seriously. That's why, for Jesus, it was an unavoidable cup to drink.
What terrible power ordains this I do not know, but all of the sudden in dark Gethsemane, a chalice, a dripping chalice shines like a jewel, filled with a dark and bitter brew, and the human lamb shrinks back: "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass."
In Matthew, stone silence. No ministering angel. No disciples hovering over. No voice from the blue to comfort. I think Matthew has it right. When you cry the loudest, the answer is what Ignatius called sige, utter, stark silence.
Have you ever thought what made Jesus think it would pass if he drank it? Judas drank it just hours before and nothing passed. It was a dead end.
What about us? With our unavoidable cups that have loss in them, grief in them, death in them, guilt in them, need in them, despair in them, or whatever else we find in them? What makes us think such cups will pass with the drinking? The answer is found in whether or not we perceive ourselves as victims or journeyers.
We all are victims. But some of us are victims and journeyers at the same time, and only for those folks who are used to perceiving life as journeying through, such cups will pass. These never perceive their victimhood as eternal. However, I don't have any idea when such an attitude about life comes to be. Jesus knew such at 33. The cup passed because, out of a sense that life is a journey and every movement is designed to teach us, he drank it, it passed, and he passed on -- he journeyed to another stage of growth.
The difference is not in the cup that's there, in the drink, in the way you drink it, or whether you inhale it or sip it. Some I have watched drink crises, even the crisis of death itself, as if they were toasting life and some drink it kicking and screaming. So what's the difference? The difference is in the drinker, not the drink.
Let's face it; all our unavoidable cups are fatal brews. These drinkers of unavoidable cups, these who pass the cup... their ability to pass it are in them, not the cup. That's why Jesus is both victim (if it be possible, let this cup pass) and victor (yet not what I want but what you want). He turns dark to light and night to day, but he doesn't pass the cup by avoiding it. He, you, me, victims and journeyers, all of us can pass our catastrophic cups only after drinking them. And you -- which are you? The victim who stops at the cup and avoids the fatal brew, or the journeyer who goes through only by a courageous drinking of it? I hope we would deal with our many brews by drinking them. But we do not yet know, do we? We are all amateurs here.
Once while attending the ordination service of an old friend, Carlyle Marney knelt to receive communion. His friend was dying of Hodgkin's disease and just received his Ph.D. from the Divinity School, University of Chicago. Marney continues the story: "He gave us wine, my friend and newly ordained priest, and when he came to me, the cup was almost empty. Over my shoulder, as we went away from the altar, I saw him, dead now for seven years, I saw him turn the chalice up to get the last ruby drop for himself. But he drank it really long before, as did our Lord, from the bottom of the cup. And so must we."
Do you see that he willed his suffering into life? The difference is in the drinker, and we all have our cups. Suddenly it gleams there in our own Gethsemanes, and we can't take our eyes off it. We shrink back but we take and drink all of it, for the only way to pass it is to drink it. Afterward, the great journey continues to abundance, life beyond, and becomes something in our hands too. The only dignity for one who follows in the way of Christ is to drink what he drank over a lifetime. Then our integrity will be concurrent with what we want and what God wants for us.
After Gethsemane, Jesus never turned back again. He never looked back. Because he drank, there is nothing else from which he shrinks. He is victor. He is headed through this, and this is why the light stays on him.
The Hope of Palm Branches and Personal Garments
by Lamar Massingill
Mark 11:1-11
I'll never forget when former president Jimmy Carter came to Jackson, Mississippi, in 1977. It was pouring down rain, or even better said, raining sideways with the kind of wind that will turn your umbrella inside out. Why I was even there was mystery to me. I suppose even then, I was keeping up with world events. We had just struggled through the Watergate scandal, the tragedy at Kent State University just five years earlier, not to mention Vietnam, and we had hostages taken in Iran. But still, who would leave work early (I was working my way through college then), drive to Jackson airport, and stand in the rain to see a little figure step out of a plane and wave at us? Some would say it would take a fool to do that, but I'm telling you, there were at least 10,000 other fools besides me who made the decision.
Why did I do it? Why would anybody do it? I think, in retrospect, it was the allure of people who have not only national notoriety, but the power to help us to hope. Presidential power certainly. A powerful person who can perhaps provide a little hope for the rest of us. Nobody would have done it for me or you. In fact, I've landed at Jackson several times, and I'm telling you the truth, never, not once, did 10,000 people come out to greet me!
When President Carter came to Jackson, it was a hard time in our nation's history, as it is now, I suppose, except I would change it to our world's history during these days. At any rate, people are drawn mystically to that kind of event, with the possibility of seeing and hearing from those kinds of people.
It was no different as Jesus made his historic entry into Jerusalem. No big jet, of course. No security details to contend with. No fences to stay on the other side of. No republicans or democrats, but certainly Pharisee's and Gentiles, which was the politics of that day. I suppose you could still say that of religion these days as well. It is well on its way to becoming powerful enough to elect presidents. Scary... and then there were probably the people who just happened upon the event, wondering what was going on.
All to say that the technology and historical contexts were different, but not the people, for I think the two groups from the first and twentieth century gathered for the same purpose: to find hope in somebody of notoriety. By this time Jesus had as much of it in his day that a president would have in this day, although Jesus was a simple itinerate rabbi who always hung around sinners and was always bucking the religious system of the day. It was probably the same kind of notoriety that Father Andrew Greeley received when he began writing novels to expose the sins of powerful bishops and cardinals of the Catholic church. The first of these was called The Cardinal Sins, which you may remember or you may have already read.
No doubt this is why the Pharisee's were there; full of anxiety that Jesus was getting all this attention. What would happen to the synagogue, they must have thought or for that matter, the entirety of Judaism? I'm sure they were keeping a close eye on the crowd, like Jimmy Carter's secret service agents that day. Therefore many people were afraid to shout praises out loud, for fear of the Pharisee's with their religious and political power in Jerusalem. It was probably the Gentiles who were the loudest with their praises, because the Pharisee's had already deemed them sinners. But the Jews had to be careful that day. So how could they express their hope?
Suddenly, some heard it. Limbs of leafy trees began cracking and those cutting them spreading them in the front of Jesus riding upon a donkey. Others were spreading their very garments on the dusty road before Jesus. Why leafy branches of trees? Why personal garments?
In spite of the apparent absurdity of it, maybe there was hope deep in the recesses of their spiritual places that cried out to Jesus to have mercy, but never would the Jews make such a cry publicly, because no doubt their religious leaders were there to see the whole thing go down.
But the tree branches, whatever they were for, said something to Jesus that they could not bring themselves to say with a voice. A cry for mercy and forgiveness does not always need a voice to make it heard. The eyes, a hand, or even in this case, a tree branch would do, and somehow they hoped that Jesus would hear the kind of hope that does not need a voice, for the action itself speaks louder than any voice could. It is the hope that eyes can speak or even silence can speak. It is the hope that will never drop silent on the ears of the one called the Christ. It is the hope of palm branches and personal garments.
The Rev. Lamar Massingill, a former Southern Baptist pastor, and also long time minister at the historic United Methodist Church in Port Gibson, Mississippi (1988-1999), is now Religion Editor for the Magnolia Gazette (magnoliagazette.com), for which he writes a weekly column. Massingill has traveled nationally and internationally and has lectured widely on the interaction between religion and psychology. He recently retired from the parish church after thirty years of pastoral ministry.
*****************************************
StoryShare, April 1, 2012, issue.
Copyright 2012 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
"Amazing Grace" by Peter Andrew Smith
"The Unavoidable Cup" by Lamar Massingill
"The Hope of Palm Branches and Personal Garments" by Lamar Massingill
* * * * * * * *
Amazing Grace
by Peter Andrew Smith
Isaiah 50:4-9a
"In conclusion, they can teach this church a great deal about God," Jacobs said.
The board members of St. Bartholomew's who had been thumbing through the long report stopped what they were doing. The few who were not paying attention focussed on the man sitting in front of them. Dressed in khaki's and a golf shirt he looked relaxed and comfortable compared to the tense suits and ties surrounding him.
"With all due respect, Pastor Jacobs, that is not what we wanted." The chairperson shifted in his seat. "We agreed to let the outreach program happen in our church because we knew there were many people who had never heard the word of God and we wanted them to find Jesus."
"That has all happened through the 'Amazing Grace' program. All of that is outlined in the report you have before you."
"But you just said you aren't teaching them about the Lord!" a red-faced board member blurted out.
"Not at all. I ran all of the programs you see listed on page five." Jacobs held up a copy of the report. "We have groups ranging from a basic understanding of the Bible to an open discussion of who Jesus is for us today."
"He is the Lord and Saviour and that is all these people need to know," the red-faced man spurted. "We hired you to teach them, not to gather information you can put in another book you are writing."
"I'm sorry, perhaps I have not been clear," Jacobs said. "I didn't do anything other than what we agreed when you brought me in to administer these outreach efforts at St. Bartholomew's."
"Then what is all this nonsense about you learning something from them? Did you waste this money?"
"I spent the grant money from the foundation exactly where we agreed it would go," Jacobs said. "The auditor's report is on the final page showing where every last penny was spent."
The sound of pages turning filled the room for a few moments.
"Chase and Fairweather is a very respectable accounting firm and if you can satisfy them there is nothing else for us to question." The chairperson glared at the red-faced man.
The red-faced man glared back. "Perhaps there is no question about how the money was spent but I don't see how these godless people can contribute anything to this church. After all we trace the faith of this congregation back to the first settlers."
Jacobs spread his hands. "They can and they do teach very clearly about grace and charity, faith and hope."
"But they do not know Jesus!" the red-faced man thundered.
"They don't know the stories of the Bible or the facts about Jesus' life but they clearly recognize the good news when it is before them," Jacobs said. "There is much they can teach us."
"They are drunks, prostitutes, and crazies. There is nothing we can learn from them except what not to do," the red-faced man proclaimed.
"The drunks know they are helpless in the face of alcohol and look outside of themselves for strength. The prostitutes are abused and shunned by everyone else so they care for each other selflessly. The people who struggle with mental health problems are unwilling to accept things the way they are." Jacobs drew a deep breath. "They respond to God from their weakness and find what we all hunger to know in our lives. After forty years of preaching and teaching the gospel, what I have learned from them about grace humbles me."
"They have nothing to say to us," the red-faced man announced. "After all here at St. Bart's we teach the gospel, we do not learn it."
"Perhaps that is the problem of this old and dying congregation," Jacobs said. "You do not listen to the Holy Spirit speaking through the lives of other people."
"I think with the end of this grant we can finally get things back to normal around here," the red-faced man said, "without those sorts of people disrupting things in this house of God."
Jacobs shrugged. "That is up to the members of this board. As I outline at the end of the report you can continue this program for a fraction of what the grant money provided now that everything is in place and running smoothly. We have volunteers who are more than ready to step in and continue this effort."
"It is too much money," the red-faced man said.
The chairperson cleared his throat. "Would you be willing to continue teaching if we carry on with this program, Pastor Jacobs?"
"I would be honoured," Jacobs said. "I am eager to learn from the Holy Spirit's work here."
"Well, if there are no further questions," the chairperson said, "thank you pastor, for your report. We will let you know what we decide about the future of the 'Amazing Grace' program."
"It finishes tonight," the red-faced man announced.
Looking around the room he found few people who would meet his gaze. Most were in deep thought about where their congregation would go. Back to the way things were in St Bartholomew's, a church with its best days behind them, or forward by risking on this effort to bring the gospel to the desperate people who surrounded them in the community.
"I think we need a moment for prayer before we vote," a member who had remained silent until now said. The red-faced man reluctantly bowed his head along with the others.
For the first time in many years the people in the room who had always been certain about what they knew opened their ears and listened.
Peter Andrew Smith is an ordained minister in the United Church of Canada who currently serves at St. James United Church in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. He is the author of All Things Are Ready (CSS), a book of lectionary-based communion prayers, as well as many stories and articles, which can be found listed at www.peterandrewsmith.com.
The Unavoidable Cup
by Lamar Massingill
Mark 14:1-15:47
Carlyle Marney once pointed out that our great symbols are nearly always acted out. Our great ideas, sooner or later get personified.
Abraham Lincoln was offered the way of race extermination for African Americans in 1863 -- the thinking was that this would solve the contraband problem Grant was facing. But Lincoln said "Mercy bears better fruit than strict justice, for a slave has no justice," and with that turned away from the notion of mass extermination in literally, what could only be called a shuddering horror. Unfortunately, that wasn't the end of the idea. Less than eighty years later there came a man mad enough to personify the symbolic idea of race extermination -- that man's name was Adolf Hitler.
The free sex revolution of the sixties was simply a wholesale acting out of symbols of a dark and secret craving for freedom and license with no responsibility. (This, as many baby boomers will remember, was personified in the movie The Graduate [Ku ku Ka Chu Mrs. Robinson] and yet later at Woodstock.) No surprise either that the first credit card available to the general population, BankAmericard, now Visa, at that time had the same sexual overtones: have it now, pay later.
Anglo-Saxon pride, a leftover from Hitler's contagious dis/ease, is nothing more than a tribal provincialism -- but it is now being personified through white supremists committing all manner of hate crimes toward the government; those who are of a different color or political, religious, or sexual orientation; and basically anyone else not like themselves. These great symbols are nearly always acted out on stage somewhere.
Israel, for the longest, had used the symbol of the lamb to take away sins. These were searing, visible images of redemption. The historian Josephus counted over 248,000 lambs slaughtered in the Passover feasts in Jerusalem in the year 70.
But a lamb would not do as a symbol forever. Great symbols sooner or later get person/ified. History being history and symbols being symbols, someone -- somebody -- a body, will unavoidably go to the altars where our symbols are taken seriously. That's why, for Jesus, it was an unavoidable cup to drink.
What terrible power ordains this I do not know, but all of the sudden in dark Gethsemane, a chalice, a dripping chalice shines like a jewel, filled with a dark and bitter brew, and the human lamb shrinks back: "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass."
In Matthew, stone silence. No ministering angel. No disciples hovering over. No voice from the blue to comfort. I think Matthew has it right. When you cry the loudest, the answer is what Ignatius called sige, utter, stark silence.
Have you ever thought what made Jesus think it would pass if he drank it? Judas drank it just hours before and nothing passed. It was a dead end.
What about us? With our unavoidable cups that have loss in them, grief in them, death in them, guilt in them, need in them, despair in them, or whatever else we find in them? What makes us think such cups will pass with the drinking? The answer is found in whether or not we perceive ourselves as victims or journeyers.
We all are victims. But some of us are victims and journeyers at the same time, and only for those folks who are used to perceiving life as journeying through, such cups will pass. These never perceive their victimhood as eternal. However, I don't have any idea when such an attitude about life comes to be. Jesus knew such at 33. The cup passed because, out of a sense that life is a journey and every movement is designed to teach us, he drank it, it passed, and he passed on -- he journeyed to another stage of growth.
The difference is not in the cup that's there, in the drink, in the way you drink it, or whether you inhale it or sip it. Some I have watched drink crises, even the crisis of death itself, as if they were toasting life and some drink it kicking and screaming. So what's the difference? The difference is in the drinker, not the drink.
Let's face it; all our unavoidable cups are fatal brews. These drinkers of unavoidable cups, these who pass the cup... their ability to pass it are in them, not the cup. That's why Jesus is both victim (if it be possible, let this cup pass) and victor (yet not what I want but what you want). He turns dark to light and night to day, but he doesn't pass the cup by avoiding it. He, you, me, victims and journeyers, all of us can pass our catastrophic cups only after drinking them. And you -- which are you? The victim who stops at the cup and avoids the fatal brew, or the journeyer who goes through only by a courageous drinking of it? I hope we would deal with our many brews by drinking them. But we do not yet know, do we? We are all amateurs here.
Once while attending the ordination service of an old friend, Carlyle Marney knelt to receive communion. His friend was dying of Hodgkin's disease and just received his Ph.D. from the Divinity School, University of Chicago. Marney continues the story: "He gave us wine, my friend and newly ordained priest, and when he came to me, the cup was almost empty. Over my shoulder, as we went away from the altar, I saw him, dead now for seven years, I saw him turn the chalice up to get the last ruby drop for himself. But he drank it really long before, as did our Lord, from the bottom of the cup. And so must we."
Do you see that he willed his suffering into life? The difference is in the drinker, and we all have our cups. Suddenly it gleams there in our own Gethsemanes, and we can't take our eyes off it. We shrink back but we take and drink all of it, for the only way to pass it is to drink it. Afterward, the great journey continues to abundance, life beyond, and becomes something in our hands too. The only dignity for one who follows in the way of Christ is to drink what he drank over a lifetime. Then our integrity will be concurrent with what we want and what God wants for us.
After Gethsemane, Jesus never turned back again. He never looked back. Because he drank, there is nothing else from which he shrinks. He is victor. He is headed through this, and this is why the light stays on him.
The Hope of Palm Branches and Personal Garments
by Lamar Massingill
Mark 11:1-11
I'll never forget when former president Jimmy Carter came to Jackson, Mississippi, in 1977. It was pouring down rain, or even better said, raining sideways with the kind of wind that will turn your umbrella inside out. Why I was even there was mystery to me. I suppose even then, I was keeping up with world events. We had just struggled through the Watergate scandal, the tragedy at Kent State University just five years earlier, not to mention Vietnam, and we had hostages taken in Iran. But still, who would leave work early (I was working my way through college then), drive to Jackson airport, and stand in the rain to see a little figure step out of a plane and wave at us? Some would say it would take a fool to do that, but I'm telling you, there were at least 10,000 other fools besides me who made the decision.
Why did I do it? Why would anybody do it? I think, in retrospect, it was the allure of people who have not only national notoriety, but the power to help us to hope. Presidential power certainly. A powerful person who can perhaps provide a little hope for the rest of us. Nobody would have done it for me or you. In fact, I've landed at Jackson several times, and I'm telling you the truth, never, not once, did 10,000 people come out to greet me!
When President Carter came to Jackson, it was a hard time in our nation's history, as it is now, I suppose, except I would change it to our world's history during these days. At any rate, people are drawn mystically to that kind of event, with the possibility of seeing and hearing from those kinds of people.
It was no different as Jesus made his historic entry into Jerusalem. No big jet, of course. No security details to contend with. No fences to stay on the other side of. No republicans or democrats, but certainly Pharisee's and Gentiles, which was the politics of that day. I suppose you could still say that of religion these days as well. It is well on its way to becoming powerful enough to elect presidents. Scary... and then there were probably the people who just happened upon the event, wondering what was going on.
All to say that the technology and historical contexts were different, but not the people, for I think the two groups from the first and twentieth century gathered for the same purpose: to find hope in somebody of notoriety. By this time Jesus had as much of it in his day that a president would have in this day, although Jesus was a simple itinerate rabbi who always hung around sinners and was always bucking the religious system of the day. It was probably the same kind of notoriety that Father Andrew Greeley received when he began writing novels to expose the sins of powerful bishops and cardinals of the Catholic church. The first of these was called The Cardinal Sins, which you may remember or you may have already read.
No doubt this is why the Pharisee's were there; full of anxiety that Jesus was getting all this attention. What would happen to the synagogue, they must have thought or for that matter, the entirety of Judaism? I'm sure they were keeping a close eye on the crowd, like Jimmy Carter's secret service agents that day. Therefore many people were afraid to shout praises out loud, for fear of the Pharisee's with their religious and political power in Jerusalem. It was probably the Gentiles who were the loudest with their praises, because the Pharisee's had already deemed them sinners. But the Jews had to be careful that day. So how could they express their hope?
Suddenly, some heard it. Limbs of leafy trees began cracking and those cutting them spreading them in the front of Jesus riding upon a donkey. Others were spreading their very garments on the dusty road before Jesus. Why leafy branches of trees? Why personal garments?
In spite of the apparent absurdity of it, maybe there was hope deep in the recesses of their spiritual places that cried out to Jesus to have mercy, but never would the Jews make such a cry publicly, because no doubt their religious leaders were there to see the whole thing go down.
But the tree branches, whatever they were for, said something to Jesus that they could not bring themselves to say with a voice. A cry for mercy and forgiveness does not always need a voice to make it heard. The eyes, a hand, or even in this case, a tree branch would do, and somehow they hoped that Jesus would hear the kind of hope that does not need a voice, for the action itself speaks louder than any voice could. It is the hope that eyes can speak or even silence can speak. It is the hope that will never drop silent on the ears of the one called the Christ. It is the hope of palm branches and personal garments.
The Rev. Lamar Massingill, a former Southern Baptist pastor, and also long time minister at the historic United Methodist Church in Port Gibson, Mississippi (1988-1999), is now Religion Editor for the Magnolia Gazette (magnoliagazette.com), for which he writes a weekly column. Massingill has traveled nationally and internationally and has lectured widely on the interaction between religion and psychology. He recently retired from the parish church after thirty years of pastoral ministry.
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StoryShare, April 1, 2012, issue.
Copyright 2012 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
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