April 1, 2007 - The Path of Confrontation

William Willimon was the Dean of the Chapel at Duke University for a number of years. He writes about that experience in a recent preaching journal, focusing on an encounter he had one year with a student. He says that he was urging a Duke undergraduate to go on a spring mission trip to Honduras. She has expressed interest in going and her own sister had gone on one a few years back. When Willimon checked back in with her she said that she had decided not to go on the trip. He said to her, "May I ask why?" Her response was this:

"Because (Jane) my sister went with you to Honduras, and it totally destroyed her life. When she came back from working with the poor, she wasn't the same person. She completely changed the course of her life. It disrupted my family, upset my parents, and things have never been the same. I just don't want to bring that much disruption into my family." (Pulpit Resource April-June, 2007, p. 7)

Willimon says that "it was one of the best reasons I have ever heard for not going on a church mission trip."

I think there are a number of Christians who would like to believe that going to church, hearing readings from the Bible, being involved in our faith community will just be a nice enhancement to our lives. Worship will be a peaceful hour in my week, people will be kind to me when I'm going through a time of crisis, and I will contribute my time by bagging a few groceries at the soup kitchen, making a financial commitment or serving on a committee. How many of us really seek church involvement to shake us up? How many of us are here today to encourage ourselves to change and grow on a regular basis? Like the young college student who declined to go on the spring break mission trip, we may not want to disrupt our lives with the power of the Gospel.

And yet, today, Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week in our liturgical calendar, is meant to stir us up. We, as disciples of Jesus, are invited to journey along with him on a radical path of love and commitment. We are invited to read the Passion narrative and to notice what Jesus did and said at every opportunity. For today, with the triumphal entry of Jesus into the ancient city of Jerusalem, is the beginning of the convergence of the private Jesus and the public Jesus.

The private Jesus lived in obscurity during his childhood and adolescence. There are elaborate birth narratives created many years after his life and death, but there are very few experiences of his recorded childhood and early adolescence. We hear of the presentation in the temple after his birth. We hear of him preaching in the temple when he was a young adolescent; we hear of his being left behind when he was 12 during the annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem. But that is all that we know about the young Jesus! The next time we hear of Jesus is when he is a grown man, in his late twenties, when he begins his public ministry. So, the private Jesus grew up in a household as a Jew; he mostly likely studied Jewish scripture and eventually began to preach and teach people as a Rabbi. He called disciples and taught them, he ate with an assortment of people who ranged from upstanding citizens to those on the margins of his society. He withdrew and prayed when he need to, he quietly performed many healings and miracles, and befriended various people such as Mary, Martha and Lazarus. This is the private Jesus whom we follow and adulate.

There is also the public Jesus--the man who plucks corn on the Sabbath day and raises the ire of the local religious Pharisees. There is the public Jesus who keeps men from stoning a woman who is caught in adultery and challenges them to be blameless before they cast blame on others. There is the public Jesus who gets run out of town after preaching provocatively, who steps over the boundaries of decency and disregards purity laws to touch lepers and a bleeding woman; there is the public Jesus who meets alone to have a conversation with a single woman who was desiring abundant life. All of these acts, and many more that are recorded in scripture, show us a man whose private spirituality spilled out into the public arena. You could see why eventually the private, personal Jesus was going to clash with the authorities. Why? Because Jesus was not just interested in a personal spirituality that was not lived out in the real world. Jesus was committed to following God and not the rulers of his world. Instead he was led by a God who advocated compassion and care for all people; and this was considered to be subversive. Jesus was a rule bender and a rule breaker. Jesus stirred people up and made the authorities mad. He rarely got angry but he got famously angry the week he entered Jerusalem--by publicly turning over the tables in the temple and accusing the people of using God's house as a place to transact business that profited some and exploited many others. Jesus was bound to have a confrontation with the authorities, not because he was a James Dean rebel figure; but because he embodied the Spirit of God which is often in direct opposition to the values of the world.

The Christian Church has often modeled itself after a part of Jesus' life and witness. It's a wonderful part of Jesus--the part where we are kind and loving to people, where we offer prayer and compassion to those close to us, who work hard and are grateful for what we have. These are wonderful qualities of the Christian Church. Yet, if we really read the Bible we see that by only modeling ourselves after that side of Jesus, we are cutting off the feisty Jesus who challenged the oppression of his day, who advocated for a change in values, who included those who were excluded by society, and clashed with those in power.

I would suggest that as we walk along the path of Holy Week with Jesus this week, we incorporate all of Jesus into our hearts and lives. Not just the feisty Jesus who challenged the rules; not just the kind and compassion Jesus who went out of his way to heal someone. But the entire picture of a fully drawn person who had both a private faith and a public persona that could not be ignored.

I would maintain that the confrontation that Jesus had with the authorities was inevitable, and the same is true for us. At some point, our religious convictions will clash with the society in which we live. And we will have to make a decision whether to stand up, speak up, or name that which is antithetical to our faith. Most of us will not have to give up our lives in order to do that, but it may make us uncomfortable to follow the way of Jesus at times.

That is the part of being a Christian and going to church which might make us feel a little uneasy. Think of every person who made the decision to speak up about their convictions and who got great resistance or ridicule for doing that.

Think of those who challenged the treatment of gay and lesbian folks and were called horrible names, were attacked, or humiliated.
Remember Tipper Gore years ago when she came out suggesting that records should have a labeling system on them to alert parents about graphic content? She was laughed at and labeled a religious zealot. I for one welcome parental advisory labels today!
I'm sure Cesar Chavez wasn't universally celebrated when he first started to advocate for rights for farm workers.
Imagine Martin Luther King Jr. and others who moved the civil rights movement from the churches to the streets, incurring the wrath of those who didn't want black folks to have the same rights as others.

Every time a person takes that leap from personal conviction to public witness, there is a potential confrontation. Imagine what our world would be like if none of these people had spoken up, or acted upon their convictions?

Jesus models for us the perfectly blended life of inward spirituality and outward action. He rode into Jerusalem on a donkey to be public about his faith. He cleared the temple of the moneychangers to object to their practices. The crowds adored him and were intrigued by him. A small group of people crucified him. Many stood by and watched--frozen, confused, and afraid.

Our parade of palms hits deep because it asks us a fundamental question of each of us who follows Christ--what are you willing to do in the name of God? Are you willing to have an inward faith and an outward faith like Jesus taught us?

Theodore Wardlaw, a preaching professor, writes about a visit to a museum exhibit one time. They were in a group and a man had a peculiar way of looking at each painting. He would stand very close to the surface and make his way across the entire picture, examining each inch of the painting in this way. He also happened to block the view of the others in the group. Finally they complained to him and he scorned their far-away views. He maintained that you had to stand close to understand the painting and their distance was misguided. Wardlaw, who tells the story, says it reminds him of this very insular way of understanding faith, particularly during Holy Week. It may be tempting to to scrutinize the details of the week: the entry with palms, the cleansing of the temple, the last supper, the trial, the execution, and to miss the larger perspective. For ultimately, Holy Week is not about what we do or what Jesus did, or what was done to him. It is about what God is doing in our world and our relationship to that life-changing God. Jesus did not do what he did without that relationship and neither will we. So, as we enter this week in the path of Jesus, we are called to have both and inner and outer faith, and we are called to remember that all of this is about our connection to God, who travels with us in every circumstance. Thanks be to God for this message and this challenge. Amen.