"The Last Week"

Luke 19-22(excerpts)

Palm Sunday

A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Douglas M. Donley

April 4, 2004

University Baptist Church

Minneapolis, MN

 

We are at the last week of Jesus’ life on earth.  We rehearse this story every year.  It behooves us to look at the last week more than just the last 12 hours.  The week started with great excitement.  Jesus came to town with people shouting “Hosanna to the Son of David.  Blessed is he who comes in the name of God.”  Children got into it all.  They laid down branches and flowers as a kind of green carpet for Jesus.  The imagery of Palm Sunday is of a warrior who is to take back Jerusalem from Roman rule.  This was the messiah, the anointed one.  People were ready to follow him into battle and what does he do?  After turning over some tables he goes off to pray.  He didn’t come wielding a sword.  He had a different kind of power, a greater power. 

The people in control did what they always do.  They tried to silence him.  And they did as we will hear later in the story this morning.

Walter Wink puts it this way:  "When the Domination System catches the merest whiff of God's new order, by an automatic reflex it mobilizes all its might to suppress that order...The Powers are so immense, the opposition so weak, that every attempt at fundamental change seems doomed to failure.  The Powers are seldom content merely to win; they must win big, in order to demoralize opposition before it can gain momentum.  The tactics always include gratuitous violence, mocking derision, the intimidating brutality of the means of execution.  All of this is standard, unexceptional.  Jesus died just like all the others who challenged the powers that dominate the world."(Interpreting the Lessons of the Church Year,pp.10-11)

Jesus could have simply died and went away, been forgotten.  But something happened that week.  The last week was the week of transformation for Jesus’ inner circle. Throughout the previous three years, the disciples and the other followers saw how Jesus healed people, how he put people in their place by a craftily worded parable.  They saw how he befriended the friendless and welcomed and affirmed the poor and the outcast.  What happened during the last week was certainly more intense because it was now in Jerusalem, that place where religion and government made strange bedfellows.

But what happened in the last week was that the disciples were changed.  It took some of them longer than others.  Mary Magdalene probably got it more than the others.  But what happened during the last week was a series of very serious challenges.  Jesus said, you will be tempted to deny the work of God (as Peter did).  You will be tempted to fall asleep on the post (which all of the disciples did).  You will be tempted to betray your own commitment to God’s way (as Judas did).  You will be tempted to doubt (as Thomas did).  But through it all, we are to remember.  Remember the story.  Sure, tell it like they always told the story of the Exodus at the Passover meal.  But this time really remember not only the work of Jesus, but our own work.  When we remember our own work, then the death of Jesus really starts to mean something.              Think of these words we share at communion each month.  “This is my body which is broken for you.”  Certainly, Jesus’ body is broken.  But could not the body also represent the church, the whole world.  The aching creation that is broken? 

If this is broken, then might not the eating of this bread, making it part of what nourishes us, be the commitment we all make to making the world a better place. 

Could it not be the commitment we make to change our little corner of the world? 

Could it not be our commitment to remember? 

To resist the temptation to forget, the temptation to exclude, the temptation to limit our understanding of God? 

As we eat this bread, we do this in memory of Jesus. 

So when we eat this bread, we remember the brokenness of the world and we remember Jesus.

And then there is the cup.  “This is the cup of the new covenant poured out for you and for many.”  This is the cup of the new covenant.  The new covenant is a covenant made between us and God to continue the work Jesus began.  That’s the only way the covenant can continue, if we are here doing the work Jesus gave us.

When we do this, when we drink, we remember the ministry we share.  We remember the work of proclaiming the reign of God which is often over and above and even in opposition to the reign of governments, military might, conspicuous consumerism and selfish me-firstisms.  The new covenant is the commitment we make to be changed people.

So we remember that on the last week, even though the denials and the betrayals and the falling asleep happened after the first last supper, we know that eventually the disciples and the early church got it.  They eventually were changed.  And as they ate and drank, they received the sustenance to be changed people, too. 

So as we rehearse the stories again today, we remember our own propensity to forget, to fall asleep, to betray and to deny.  And yet we eat this meal to commit to a new way of being.  It may not be here yet, or it really might be.  It’s all up to us.  It depends upon what happens in us, between us, even in spite of us when we eat this bread and drink this cup.  You see, we’re not simply remembering something about Jesus, we’re proclaiming something about ourselves.

What do you proclaim when you eat and drink this morning?