If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace…. (Luke 19:42)
Jesus utters these words while looking at the holy city – at the buildings and institutions, memorialized in the worship of a people, idealized for the memory and meaning it gave to them. Jesus looks at Jerusalem – where his people think their power comes from. Jesus is looking at place where the survival of the city means the fulfillment of their hope, the survival of their kind and the destruction of their enemies. And Jesus weeps.
Is it that Jesus knows something about what we build with our hands? (Gen. 11)
Is he is looking at the people and all they’ve built up to stave off insecurity, uncertainty? All the things they’ve put their trust in rather than the sheer trust of provision in the wilderness? (Ex. 16) He knows what that feels like, how strong the need is to grasp for something solid when you are afraid and hungry. (Matt 4) Is Jesus looking at the rule-makers who are telling people it’s for their own good but are only erecting whitewashed tombs? (Matt. 23) Or the community leaders and their insistence that maintaining their own power and influence is what will bring them peace? (Mark 10) Is he seeing how doomed that path is? How it never satisfies the deep hunger and need of humans?
The hearts of the religious, the fear of the people with even the smallest bit of something to defend, the indifference of the empire and its gods, and the deep need and deep hope of women and men and children who are looking for peace - all of it is laid out before him. And he is heartbroken.
As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it. Luke 19:41
This weekend is Palm Sunday. We give the kids palm branches – we sing about Jesus coming as a king – maybe they run around the sanctuaries swishing their leaves? But maybe we forget to tell them the full story? It’s harder to do admittedly, harder to think of a craft for the kids or alliterated list of key words for the adults that begins to tell the truth of the deep subversion at the core of our faith. The upsidedown-ness demonstrated when Jesus comes on a donkey and not a chariot. The unsettling truth when the Divine loves to be welcomed by the ordinary people with their ordinary belongings – the clothes from their backs and the plants from the side of the road. We forget to tell them that this is enough for the God of grace. He doesn’t need the trappings of wealth or power to do the work he is here to do. We often forget, and we almost never tell our children or maybe even ourselves, that Jesus then weeps over the city and then directly moves to clean house at the temple – flipping the tables of a corrupt religious institution that is getting in the way of people meeting God.
I am increasingly challenged to remember that this, and only this, is the proper context to even begin to understand the events of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday. The power of these days is true and is rooted here in the disconsolate weeping of the Son of God over the kind of power the people think they need.
Jesus comes, not as a powerful king. He chooses the opposite. He chooses to look weak. He chooses to be weak. He chooses to disavow the power that comes from naming who is in and who is out, who is worthy and who is not. And believe me, that naming of who is in and who is out is a powerful tool. It will get you very far in this world. But Jesus refuses it. And then he subverts it. He even goes so far as to say – well yeah, if there is an “in and out” it’s not based on how righteous you are but on how you meet your neighbor who has nothing to offer you. Whether you do it with openness and generosity or with indifference and disdain, it shows how you would meet Christ. (Mt 25)
Jesus sees through the talk of theological rightness and purity and sees that it, in the end, is just the talk of control and certainty and Jesus chooses to meet the people in the place where peace actually happens. He knows that peace does not happen by enforcing idealogy, nor controlling people’s thoughts – on either side of the political spectrum. He knows that peace does not come from controlling the information the people get, or telling them what they are allowed to feel. Jesus knows that peace does not come, has never come, from a hatred of ourselves or the shaming of others. Why does it feel so often that we Christians have not begun to grasp this?
Peace comes from being met. By unafraid love. (Luke 8)
Transformation comes through grief and through love – and never by enforcement. (John 20)
I have witnessed so many times, up close, the tragedy of Christians trying the path of enforcement, boundary drawing, enemy-identifying, cancelling the voices of those who do not fit the mold or point out embarrassing truths. I’ve seen what happens when leaders’ egos let them diminish the voices of women telling of abuse as if their project is more important than one person’s life. I’ve seen what happens when those who are afraid of the future tell others to close ranks and vilify a “weak” target. I’ve seen what happens when defamation and anonymous trolling takes the place of restorative, good faith conversation. And it has never once made the world more beautiful, more kind, more true, more able to let go and trust. It has never once inspired the fruit of turning from the ways of scared world and turning to the ways of love. It has never inspired our children to seek out those among themselves who might need love, like their good father would. In fact, it does the opposite - it poisons the water of life.
The need to lament this is vital. It might be the only way through the grief to the truth.
The path of the Christian never looks like consolidating power. If you see a bunch of Christians trying to use back room machinations, political engineering to get on boards, who employ the naked abuse of power and process to silence those with different points of view – you can be assured that you are not witnessing a move of Christ. There is not a single thing in these acts that builds grace into the system. There is nothing, not a single, counter-cultural thing about these acts. Every culture on the face of the earth has its ways of power and control. To see Christians try to use these sorts of tools to their benefit, to silence and force out others, as if they alone knew the full truth and they alone needed to defend this truth for God - the God who cultivates 1000 year forests and ordains the waves from the depths, who knows the hairs on their heads and also knows they are like grass in a field - well it is almost pitiful. To think any one of us can control the power of Christ, burgeoning with life and love from the compost heaps of the world, to think any one of us can determine who is in and who is out when Christ consistently, always turned those expectations over… it is tragic. Because it doesn’t work - it will not lead to peace.
The promise of Palm Sunday is that the branches we wave one year become the ashes we use the next, reminding us that even our deepest hopes do not always turn out the way we had thought they would. That even our best ideas and expectations are temporary and not even close to imaging God’s. The promise of Palm Sunday is the promise of radical subversion. Our faith is not in our ‘side’, nor in our gatekeeping. It is not in the purity of our theology, the heights of our emotions or the power of our convictions. Our faith is not in our ability to defame those who challenge us, or maintain the theological purity of the people inside our walls. Our faith is not in our ability to condemn or bully ourselves and others but our faith is in a God who with no hesitation crosses every line – even enemy ones – to love and to heal and to restore.
Is this is the call of Palm Sunday? To let our hearts get broken, flip the tables of a religion that is missing the mark? To flip the tables on ourselves? To love to the point of weeping the built-up monuments that were supposed to point to God but became gods of control and certainty? Is this the call? To go to, and lead from, the place of peace – that place we have gotten to only by that moment of vulnerable honesty about our deep deep need?
There is a change that only grace does. Something meets us when we can do no more, when striving ceases, when we open the gates to our own deepest fears. And it helps us to finally see this, not control, as God’s precious path.
On this Palm Sunday, I am aware that I have spent these past 8 months in a kind of silence, letting the events of the last 7 years of pastoring and parenting settle. I’ve been letting the deep joy and the deep heartache decompose in this compost pile and I’ve been turning it over, wondering what will come up from the dirt. Whatever it is, it won’t be of my own making – but it will be green and able to bear fruit – because this is the Creator’s good world not mine.
I have been spending these 8 months in the hospital learning to walk with people’s real souls in their crisis times. I’ve been sitting with people who are dying. With people who have become paralyzed. With people who received a diagnosis that absolutely rocked the foundations of who they are, what they can do, what their future will hold. I have been with people who know the depths of despair addiction can bring and who know their hatred of themselves has brought no relief. I have sat with people who are so afraid and so sad. And I have spent time in the presence of the dignifying truth that each of these ones is beloved. Seen. Known.
It is hard to see through tears, but sometimes its the only way to see - Malcolm Guite
And more, I have been met there. By the grace that pulls up the weeds choking the life from my soul. By the grace that does not leave me in my own anger and does not let my own broken heart consume me. I have wept over my own habits and fears that keep me from loving well. I have been met by grace and challenge – to stay with my heart, stay curious and open and the result is a softness that doesn’t need to be tamed and cannot be destroyed. Just cultivated by more grace.
I’ve been reminded in this time that while I have seen the damage and wept brokenheartedly over the actions of Christians who control, and even my own actions, I also have seen women claim their stories, loose their tongues and speak truth. I have also seen those accused and defamed ask their friends to pray that they stay soft, kind and not return evil for evil. I have seen people be healed in body, mind and heart simply by taking the place at the table opened up for them. I have seen grace in families and forgiveness. I have seen the power of healthy community and I have seen what happens when trust and kindness take over at the world’s end of each human. And it keeps changing me, over and over.
If the ways of Christ are only for those who can control the wildness of the world with their ability to control others – then it is not a good religion. It is not a way that leads to an experience of belovedness, that changes how we are in this world. I weep – looking at the churches that choose a crusade over a conversation. At the people blinded by ideology (on every end of the spectrum) so they cannot see Christ in their neighbor. It is right and good that this makes us weep. And maybe it is right and good we go to the temple and flip some tables. And yes, maybe this means that we will be maligned and silenced - for Good Friday comes next. It is the way.
And yet.
It is not the end. If Christ is the image of the invisible God – the truth that turns the universe – then that truth knows that this kingdom is not about something as small as control or something as basic as gatekeeping. But about something as momentous and powerful, as earth shattering, as passing the bread and pouring the wine and calling people’s names, pointing to the coming of the light…..and…forgiving.
A prayer:
If you are there, we need you. When you are here, come close. Tell us the stories of when you chose the donkey and when you cried and when you told the truth even when it made you enemies. Tell us of what kind of love it takes to redeem a world from its terrified self. I don’t think we could get to this love on our own – it’s too scary. But meet us in the mercy the world turns upon.
To listen:
The Table is Yours, by The Good Shepherd Collective
Jacqui thank you for using your amazing gift! ❤️ I needed to read this today.