Sunday’s Thoughts

An article in the 2024 edition of Living Well Through Lentpiqued my interest. It is about the bystanders on Palm Sunday and written by Victoria Garvey.

Many of the characters in the Palm Sunday Liturgy we know well- Pilate, Jesus, Peter, Judas, Barabbas, Mary Magdalene. We don’t see any such leaders in the “crowd.” Garvey writes “Only after Jesus’ arrest does the tide turn, and the “crowd” moves from support to condemnation because they listened to loud voices muttering fake news, because they were afraid to be counted among the risk-takers, because they feared losing hold of their own tenuous grasp of what was deemed acceptable behavior by their contemporaries. Over and over, we are reminded that even those closest to Jesus during his ministry are capable of turning way, of betrayal and cowardice.”

This sounds like today. We listen to the loudest voices, not necessarily those who makes the most sense. We tend to be timid over confrontation. And then there is the issue of fake news. We don’t analyze what we hear and assume those who speak or write have facts and/or reality on their side.

Bishop Robert Wright of the Diocese of Atlanta in his message prior to Palm Sunday considers that we prefer a Jesus who looks at issues in particular ways, particularly those we on which we agree. Facts and logic may not have been applied.

“The rise of Christian nationalism in our nation is us crying out “crucify him” because Jesus chooses to be Messiah in a particular way: unbought by any political party and unbiased toward race, gender or country of origin. Biased only towards sharing and healing those in pain. It seems we prefer a Jesus who votes as we vote, lives where we live and who hates who we hate.

We are heading down the last lap. John is here to wrap it up with his mystical interpretation of events with a chronology that is all his own.

The word “glorify” or derivation of that appears four times in one Gospel reading. Looking it up it means to “honor” but it must mean more. John talks about glorifying his name – “Father, glorify your name.” John Piper writes about this -“When God glorifies a human being, he grants to that person the privilege of beholding his infinite beauty and becoming like him as much as a creature can”. His references are Romans and not John

“Father, glorify your name.” The idea is to approach the truth of God in direct connection to God.

For us it is dying to the things of the earth, the greed,the sin, and approach God on his own terms. We have to have a new heart and substitute God’s desires for us for the desires of this world, to focus on serving others.

John illustrates by using an object, a seed, that all know well especially in that agriculturesl society.

This meaning is enhanced by the second saying John sets in parallel: “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Plants go through their own death and resurrection from starting as a seed to becoming a plant and providing benefits to others in the form of nourishment. Likewise, we move from a focus on the needs of ourselves to the needs of other and this world.

The next to last sentence states, “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.”

Debie Thomas writes of the Greeks who wanted to see Jesus at the beginning of the passage and then this one. “In the end, what this week’s Gospel reading teaches me is that I don’t have to strive and strain to see Jesus. ”

She is comforted by the conclusion to which she arrives – ” He loves whether I love or not. It has taken me a long time to believe this and to trust it, but now I do: Jesus’s longing for me is the ground upon which all of my desire — however abundant or stingy — rests. He wishes to see me — to see all of us — far more urgently than we’ll ever wish to see him.”

This comforting message can help us walk the way of Holy Week with less than a heavy heart. We will be lifted up.

The scriptures this week especially from Numbers and John concentrate on what God is doing. It is definitely the God show. As Lawrence writes, “God is turning the world around, redeeming even the worst of the worst, swords into ploughshares, serpents into salves, crosses into trees of life — making all things new.” We have no way to affect it, change it o alter it.

There is much summary. Luther called John 3:16 “the Gospel in a nutshell. ” Tom’s sermon this week said as much. It covers “the fullness of the word of God to us because it lays out for us God’s purposes of God’s love and God’s plan for eternity.”

Sometimes I wonder why the certain weeks of the lectionary are placed where they are. This one takes the story of Jesus past the naming him as God’s son, the various healings that he did like Peter’s mother-in-law to consider his overall role and purpose. Last week it was transforming the temple into more than a building. This week it is about mission involving God, his son and man which involves life beyond Easter. As Lawrence wrote “to correct what can be corrected and makes all things new.”

It was all about the larger issues of life. One of the last segments of God’s Garden took up the “golden rule”. The children reflected the difficulty of applying this to their own family members but much easier to their outside friends.

This Sunday’s Gospel has an usual order of the overthrowing of the Temple’s table . In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus flips tables in the Temple courtyard just after the triumphal entry into Jerusalem. But in John, we get this narrative much earlier, following directly on the heels of Jesus performing his first miracle at the wedding at Cana. So, for John, Jesus flipping tables at the Temple is more an inauguration of Jesus’ earthly ministry rather than a culmination of Jesus’ earthly ministry. One thing we can’t do is flip the pews – they are bolted to the floor

Is Jesus against commerce? The SALT blog was quick to point ou this week. No. “…Jesus’ anger seems to be focused not on marketplaces, or on corruption in general, but rather on the sacrificial system itself. His actions seem to say: It’s high time for that system to end, and for a new era to begin.”

The second part of the scripture moves the temple from a physical location to the temple in his body. ” The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking of the temple of his body. ”

Thus Jesus does at least three things at once: (1) he counters the religious authorities; (2) he cryptically predicts his death and resurrection, something his disciples realize only later, “after he was raised from the dead”; and (3) he casts a revolutionary vision for worship in the new era. His body is the temple.

He re-interprets both the temple and worship. We can follow Jesus and his ministries outside the church and find new avenues for extending the kingdom. And they may be in the institutions in Port Royal and elsewhere.

Back in Matthew 5:!7-19 Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount that “his purpose is not to abolish the law or to criticize what the prophets proclaimed and taught. Rather, he has come to fulfill or complete them. Jesus also emphasizes that keeping the commandments is essential for faithful living.” So it may not be where the temple is, the institution but how we can approach what it teaches.

“The core message of Jesus was to proclaim what all the law and prophets demand of us; to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind and to love our neighbors as ourselves. For Jesus, the law of love was primary, and he responded to people and situations with love and compassion. Love is the law and the gift that we are called to live and to share.”

Jesus teaching was radical since the original temple, the Temple of Solomon, was built in Jerusalem around 990–931 BCE and had 1,000 years of use. This was the means of public religion. Now there was a different vision of how it should be done that wrangled many of the Jewis leaders.

In our time there are similar controversies involving institutions and the way they have been doing things which have contributed to the polarization in our society. We should look at process to try to bridge the gap. Look at vision first. Are we are aligned with a similar vision or not ? If we are, can we work together on means and come up with a way forward where both groups can find a role and a place?