Sermon

“Breaking our Silence”

Luke 19:28-40

I Timothy 2:8-15

A sermon preached by the Rev. Douglas M. Donley

Palm Sunday

March 16, 2008

University Baptist Church

Minneapolis, MN

Palm Sunday represents a pivotal time for the Jesus movement. It represents the movement from the rural ministry of Jesus to his short-lived urban ministry. It’s where Jesus brings his famous reputation as a healer and as a rabble rouser and as a critic of establishment of both secular and sacred order and lays it all on the line. He emerges from the margins where it is easy to persuade the masses and he enters the jaded occupied city with all of its divided loyalties and hardened and cynical veterans of hopeful words from an outsider.

It’s the fulcrum of the hopes and desires of the people coming face to face with the harsh realities that happen in capital cities. Compromises must be made to appease the masses. We can’t have it all the way we want it, even if it is God who wants it.

It’s the beginning of the end of the movement of Jesus and the foreshadowing of the beginning of the Jesus movement which eventually became the church.

In a few short days the crowds that hailed him as the blessed one who comes in the name of the great King David, will cry out “crucify him”. It’s as if they are saying, “We want change, but not that much change.”

Palm Sunday is the inevitable day when the people’s hope meets the harsh realities of the way things are. As soon as Jesus turned over the tables of the moneychangers outside the temple mount, folk realized that their self-interest might be at stake. They pursued ways to destroy him. First they denounced him. Then they bribed an insider to turn him on. Then they staged not one but six mock trial with no Geneva Convention rules to protect the innocent. The great Jesus would get killed on Good Friday, the seemingly inevitable result of such audacity. And on Easter he would raise from the dead as much as the people came to believe that the movement need not end with one person’s death. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The church would struggle from then on to decide how to speak and which image of Jesus to invoke. They tried many ways to squelch the influx of the spirit of God, but there was something that would not be squelched.

When Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, the authorities tried to silence the crowds. I guess he was causing too much of a stir for their tastes. But Jesus says, “If these people were silent, the very stones would cry out.” There is something about the Spirit of God which cannot be silenced. It can be squelched for a time, but eventually the stones cry out.

The stones may not cry out right away. It may take years, even generations. But it is inevitable. The Spirit of God cannot be silenced forever. We reach a tipping point and the efforts to keep the movement down will topple and the stones will cry out. While the long arc of history bends toward justice, it comes and goes in wavews, depositing stones on new shorelines. And eventually they (we) cry out.

Think about that for a moment. Think about the people who have been silenced by those in authority. Did not the stones cry out?

The writers of the Bible, or at least their editors, put passages in the scriptures that tried to silence the voices of women. The writer of Timothy was likely referring to a specific issue with specific people, but it got universalized and it kept qualified and God-inspired women out of the pulpits and out of the classroom, much to our detriment.

The leadership tried to silence the women and did so successfully for centuries, but the stones have cried out. And now a woman is a top contender for the White House.

Many of the framers of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence of this great nation were slave owners, so they wrote our nation’s founding documents to exclude certain groups of people. Black men were considered three fifths of a human being and given no rights endowed them by their creator. They tried to silence the people of color in this country. But the stones cried out and another top contender for the White House is a man of African heritage.

Almost forty years ago, the Stonewall riots marked the beginning of the public activism of the LGBT communities. They were silenced by the church, the educational system and even the Psycholoigists. But one by one they all came around to finding that the LGBT people add a depth of creativity and diversity and variety and humor and music to the community that demanded that they be acknowledged. And while there is still prejudice out there, the stones are crying out and the people will no longer be silenced. Even parts of the church are coming around.

For years portions of the Religious Right ignored and even actively worked against the environmental needs of the world. Some of them justified this by saying that the world was doomed and that our most important work was the stewardship of our souls in preparation for the rapture. In the meantime, the doomed earth could be used up to the glory of God. But just this past week, leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention have stated that they were wrong to not focus more upon the needs for environmental stewardship. The Southern Baptists! The stones are crying out.

Five years ago this week, millions of people across the world took to the streets to protest the impending war in Iraq. There were protests in country after country. The press tried to ignore it. The president certainly ignored it. And eventually the war raged on in spite of the people. But the word leaked out that the protests happened. The internet and blogosphere proved to be formidable and now, the sentiment has turned. Five years later the people are in the streets again, as evidenced by yesterday’s rally here in Minneapolis and across the nation. And people are listening. Millions of people were silenced, but the stones are crying out.

When the stones cry out, great and creative and transformative things begin to happen. And God rejoices amidst it all.

What begs to be proclaimed in your life?

What good news do you have to share?

What needs to be proclaimed?

If it’s from God, it cannot remain silenced. You can try, but you will ultimately not succeed in keeping the Spirit of God down.

We are here to break our silence.

We are here to proclaim that although the world seems to be in chaos, God is not done with us.

We are here to proclaim that although the economic times might seem to have a strangle hold on us, that God is not the one holding the noose. God wants to set us free and have us remember ultimately to whom we are beholden.

We are here to proclaim that yes; we do know the story of God and of Jesus and of his fickle disciples. Yes, we often resemble the disciples, denying, betraying and falling asleep when we need to be alert, but those behaviors need not ultimately define us. We know that Jesus and his message of love and inclusion and justice and mercy and compassion are life-giving messages that beg to seep through our greatest resistance.

We know what God requires of us, as the prophet Micah reminds us: We are to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God. (Micah 6:8). But in a world where people seem to practice deceit and call it justice;

In a world where people seem to love vindictiveness toward the outsider, be it the immigrant, the Muslim, the foreclosed upon, the victims of racism, patriarchy and prejudice and seem to be wanting mercy only for themselves and not another;

In a world where people wear God on their sleeves like a badge of honor and privilege instead of a mark of humility;

Into this world, Jesus came on Palm Sunday. Jesus was not met with justice, mercy or a humble walk with God. And the people and the domination system did what they always do—including underestimating the stones.

They underestimated that people would come after as numerous as the stones around us. Stones, sometimes used as weapons are metaphorically transformed into the numerous, plentiful and persistent presence of the Spirit of God.

You and I are the stones. Our task is to break our silence and remember that those captured by the message of Jesus will not and cannot be silenced. We will move foreword doing justice, loving mercy and walking humbly with God.

Maya Angelou endured devastating violence early in her life and for a time she remained silent. But eventually, the Spirit of God, like so many stones, could not hold back and we have received inspiration and power in her poetry. Hear this poem of hers about breaking our silence.

Still I Rise by Maya Angelou

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I'll rise.



Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.



Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,  

Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?



Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don't you take it awful hard

'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines

Diggin' in my own backyard.



You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I'll rise.



Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I've got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?



Out of the huts of history's shame

I rise

Up from a past that's rooted in pain

I rise

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.



Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

As much as we try to resist and silence God’s message, we cannot. For the stoney part of ourselves will sing out. When we hear the stones singing, we need to pay attention, because that’s where God lurks. It’s in the voice of those who have been silenced that brings us a new clarity, new hope, and new vision not just for us, but for our world. Thank God for the rocks and stones who at long last break their silence.