The Stones Would Shout

Luke 19:28-40

by the Rev. Dr. E. Scott Jones

First Central Congregational Church

13 April 2024

            Jesus goes up to Jerusalem like a pilgrim, following the traditional pilgrim route, as commentator Brendan Byrne points out.  The route from the Mount of Olives, down and up through the Kidron Valley, and into the Old City, remains the main pilgrimage route all these millennia later.  If you travel to Jerusalem, you too can walk this path and even sit on stone steps that are old enough Jesus might have sat upon them too.

            But on this pilgrimage, Jesus does something wild, he lays claim to the city as its King in an act that many describe as street theater, a form of protest.  Unlike the Roman governor Pilate, entering the city with soldiers and riding a great steed, Jesus comes on a colt of a donkey.  As Brendan Byrne writes, “Those who would rule with force and power do not enter cities on donkeys.”

            All the symbols here point, once again, to the topsy turvy way that God does things, not with the normal trappings of power and authority.  Jesus is modeling a new way of being human, a new way of exerting power.

            One of the details of this story is that when the crowd begins to shout their lauds and honors, those aren’t directed to Jesus.  Luke tells us “the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice.”  The collective praise is aimed at God.  A reminder that God is the true sovereign of this world, not any human power.  Our allegiances are to what God desires of us, not any state or ruler.

            And what does God desire of us?  Here the crowd begins to sing of peace.  Just like the chorus of angels at Jesus’ birth, here is a parallel, near the end of his life, humanity responding with their own song of peace.

            Some of the religious leaders are bothered, of course.  As some always are going to be bothered by such wild and frenzied displays.  They want Jesus to tell the crowd to stop. 

            Of course there’s some prudence in their request.  If the Romans see or hear what’s going on, they are likely to arrest some people.  Maybe even execute some people.  The Romans, Pilate in particular, doesn’t brook challenges to his power and authority, particularly from rabble like this.  Best to settle down and not anger him.

            But Jesus doesn’t take the prudent path.  No, he pushes on ahead with the wild challenge to the status quo.  And that challenge will get him arrested and executed, of course.

            In response to some of the Pharisees he says, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”

            The Baptist pastor Stephen Shoemaker, in his commentary on this story, draws our attention to this amazing and provocative answer that Jesus gives.  Shoemaker writes, “Here is faith in the sure triumph of God.”

            Shoemaker then teases out three layers of this faith—“First, here is a truth too good to have its mouth shut.  It may be temporarily silenced, but not for long.”

            I find that’s a helpfully blessed reassurance to keep in mind any time we feel that there is an assault upon the truth.  The truth will not be forever suppressed.  The truth will come out.

            The second layer he draws our attention to is “if disciples fall away by cowardice or complacence, God will raise up more!”  If for whatever reason the current followers of Jesus can’t or won’t keep up the work, God will find others.  The forces will not quash the will of God.

            And the final layer Shoemaker identifies, “Injustice will not long prevail.”  He notices that this answer of Jesus has a parallel in the writings of the Old Testament prophet Habakuk who declared that if a house is built upon corruption, then the very stones of which the house is built will cry out. 

            This final layer is a prophetic warning to any who would try to suppress God’s people, God’s truth, God’s peace.  The truth will come out, justice will prevail, peace will be achieved.

            So, there’s much that is encouraging to us as followers of Jesus in this wildly wonderful answer that Jesus gives when challenged to stop his trouble-making.

            How do we achieve this peace the disciples sing of?  I believe one way is by pursuing truth.

            Linda Zagzebski, the great Catholic epistemologist, writes “To have a true belief is to have your mind aligned with some bit of reality in the right way.”  And she argues that the best way to achieve true belief is to cultivate good habits, the virtues that most reliably lead to truth, understanding, and wisdom. 

            What bits of reality are revealed in this story of the Triumphal entry?  That God is the true sovereign.  That God’s work and God’s people will not be silenced.  That peace is one of God’s goals.  And that Jesus wants us to do the good and trouble-making work that advances that goal.

            We should develop the spiritual practices that help to align our minds to these realities.  Through prayer, worship, Bible study, paying attention, and more, we align ourselves with the reality that is God.  And this takes some effort in a culture and a politics that is designed to constantly distract us with trendy consumer products or the latest outrage.

            We Christians must cultivate the skills to live well in our times.  That takes discipline and focus.  It also takes winsome delight and joy.

            The theologian Elizabeth Gandolfo, in her wonderful book The Power and Vulnerability of Love, poses the question, “How can we get closer to the truth?”

            She writes that it is not by appeals to scripture or tradition to be our authorities.  Nor is there some one objective standpoint from which we can answer that question for all time.  No, “All human apprehension of truth is situated and perspectival, including our interpretation of what we consider to be authoritative sources of divine revelation.”

            Which is why it is so important for us to engage with others and listen to a diversity of voices and perspectives, a point I’ve made over the last few weeks of our Lenten worship. 

But Gandolfo adds a further important point—“we need to deliberately seek out perspectives . . . that can bring us closer to the truth about reality and the will of God for reality.”  There are simply some perspectives that get us reliably closer to God’s truth.

And much Christian theology over the last century has taught us that “God and God’s will for humanity is best discerned from the authoritative standpoint of suffering, especially the suffering of those on the underside of history.”  It isn’t usually the rich, powerful, and in control who get us closer to the truth.  It is those on the underside, the outside, the oppressed, the victims of violence and injustice.  Their perspectives reveal the lessons we need to hear, learn, and understand.

She quotes the Spanish Jesuit Jon Sobrino, “The sign is always the historically crucified people.” 

Look to where crucifixions are happening, and there you will find Christ.

Another Jesuit, the American Kevin Burke, influenced by the El Salvadoran Ignacio Ellacuria, put it this way, “the truth of reality becomes most manifest where reality has been crucified.”

In this Holy Week, when we walk with Jesus through his arrest, torture, and execution, we are invited to tune ourselves to these deep theological truth.  This week, in particular, we can align ourselves with these facets of reality.

Gandolfo is deeply influenced by these liberationist ideas, but she pushes back against the idea that poor and marginalized people must always be victims, lacking agency.  And so she broadens our notion of what perspectives help us find the truth.  She says the experience occurs not only when we are the victims of suffering brought on by others, but in our natural forms of human vulnerability.  In natality and maternity and just the ordinary ways we humans are vulnerable.

Ever since I first read her book, I’ve returned to it again and again in my preaching, and her basic point that our health, well-being, wholeness, and spiritual growth are to be discovered in the awareness and embrace of our own vulnerability.

We humans generally don’t like being vulnerable.  We normally have two responses to our vulnerability.  One response is to ignore it.  To deny it.  To act like it isn’t true.  To distract ourselves, which can be the source of addiction.  Denying our truth is a very, very unhealthy response that usually catches up with us sooner or later.

The other common response is to try to control our world to protect ourselves from our vulnerability.  This is the source of harmful privilege, where we try to live within enclosed communities of people just like us in order to avoid seeing poverty, pain, or even racial difference. 

And we try to control our vulnerability through all sorts of products and self-help approaches.  Or through the politics of resentment.  Blaming other people for all our troubles and trying to make sure they get what we think is coming to them.

Gandolfo, drawing on the ideas of the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, writes, “But refusing to be vulnerable to pain carries with it the price of closing oneself off to Beauty.”

Instead, she encourages us to become peaceful souls.  How do we do that?  By accepting and embracing our vulnerability, to embody it, which is honestly just to follow Jesus in the way of the incarnation and along the path of Holy Week. 

She writes, “Peace entails an understanding and an acceptance of the tragic structure of existence, and thus frees us to appreciate the Beauty that continually and infinitely emerges. . . . Peace manifests itself in human life and civilization as a power to survive and even thrive in the midst of tragic existence.”

We align ourselves with reality and will more reliably discover truth, when we follow Jesus in embracing our vulnerability.

This is the path to peace.

This is the good news that cannot be suppressed by those who attempt to control us.

This is what the very rocks would shout.