Built to Last Gene McAfee Faith United Church of Christ Richmond Heights, Ohio The Sixth Sunday in Lent Palm Sunday March 25, 2018 “The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This is the Lord's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.” – Psalm 118:22-23 Yesterday morning, seven of us from Faith Church went downtown to March for Our Lives. We joined thousands of other Clevelanders and tens or hundreds of thousands of other Americans to send a message both to our leaders and also to our fellow citizens that we are sick and tired of being victims to our nation's irresponsible relationship with guns. Several of the young people who spoke yesterday, including students at Mayfield High School and Solon High School, made it clear that they expect their political leaders to exercise the kind of political will that keeps firearms out of the hands of people who should not have them. Military-grade weapons, such as have been used in a number of recent shootings, have no business anywhere in our country except in the military. Devices that can modify firearms to perform like military-grade weapons have no business anywhere. And as one student pointed out, her dress code is more heavily regulated than firearms in our country. The rally and march yesterday left me and, I'm sure, many others, with mixed emotions. We were saddened and frustrated, of course, that we have to protest to get our government's attention to keep us safe. Isn't that what a government is supposed to do? We were also hopeful that the voices of the young we heard, and the sentiments they expressed, may signal a turning point in the tide against a distorted use of the Second Amendment to promote a “guns everywhere” mentality. We were also proud to be able to march down East 4th Street, Lakeside Boulevard, East 6th Street, and Superior Avenue not only without fear that our government would direct fire hoses or tanks against us, but also aware that our city spent our tax dollars to hire safety forces on foot, on bicycles, on horseback, on motorcycles, and in automobiles to keep us safe. “Tell me what democracy looks like!” one side of the street chanted, and the other side of the street responded, “This is what democracy looks like!” It was street theater and it was political engagement, and we chanted it because it was true: democracy had taken to the streets, led by young people who do not want to live their lives in fear. And in that desire, they deserve our support. That was yesterday. Today is Palm Sunday, and in churches all around the world there will be reenactments of the street theater and political statement that Jesus made two thousand years ago when he led a march through the streets of Jerusalem protesting a culture of fear and violence. By the time that first Palm Sunday had arrived, Jesus was the leader of a movement that was the antithesis of so much that had come to be regarded as the ordinary, everyday, inevitable suffering of the Jewish people under Roman occupation. The movement that he represented – what he called the kingdom of God – was grounded in the prophetic tradition of the First Testament, and articulated a vision of what a properly ordered society looks like. Jesus said it again and again: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a mustard seed. . . .”

2 “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast. . . .” “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. . . .” The realm of God was the core of Jesus' life and teaching, and people hungry for justice, hungry for peace, and hungry for righteousness responded to it. One of the relatively few undisputed historical facts of the New Testament is that there was a Jesus movement, the core of which was the realm of God. And it was the message of that realm that Jesus took to Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday with street theater and political engagement. Jesus didn't have to organize a march into Jerusalem. He could have walked through the gates of the Holy City like any other person would do and as he himself had done on previous occasions. But the gospels are clear that Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, being hailed as a liberator, to draw the sharp contrast between the realm that he represented and the realm built by the Romans and supported by their Jewish collaborators. And his point was that the realm to which he had given his unconditional allegiance was built to last. Some of you will recall that we used to observe this Sunday here at Faith with two names, Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday, and if you consult the liturgical pages of our denomination's website, that's what you'll find there for today's liturgical date: the Sixth Sunday in Lent (Palm/Passion Sunday). The reason for this liturgical infelicity is very simple. Those of us responsible for leading the worship in churches know perfectly well that there are more of you here this Sunday – and a great deal more of you will be here next Sunday – than will be here on either Maundy Thursday or Good Friday, when the details of Jesus' passion are read out, reflected upon, and imaginatively re-enacted. We know that many of you will hear the account of Jesus' theatrical triumphal entry into Jerusalem this morning, as I read a little while ago from the Gospel of Mark, and then, in seven days, you will hear me read the genuinely triumphal account of God's victory over death itself through the power of Christ's resurrection on Easter morning. And both of those triumphs are worth hearing, of course, and you need to hear them, year after year. But you will badly misunderstand the second if you are not attentive to the parts of the story that fall between Palm Sunday and Easter morning, those parts that we read in the Social Hall on Maundy Thursday and here in the Sanctuary on Good Friday. Those are not the parts about adoring crowds waving palms and spreading cloaks and shouting hosanna. Those are not the parts about disciples ready to lay down their lives to throw off their Roman oppressors. Those are not the parts fit for children, which is one of the reasons, I believe, children have historically been pressed into service on Palm Sunday and not later in the week. No, the parts of Jesus' story that we'll be reading this coming Thursday and Friday do not bear the marks of even mock triumph that today bears. The accounts of desertion, betrayal, abuse, and, eventually, death by crucifixion bear all the marks of failure and defeat. And not Jesus' failure and defeat, but ours, for the desertion, the betrayal, the abuse, and even the crucifixion belong not to Jesus but rather to us; and the passages that tell of them are those places in Jesus' story in which we may – and must – most assuredly take our place. Because we know that we are his followers – who abandon him. We are the crowds who want the deliverance he offers – but on our terms. We are the authorities and rulers and solid citizens who bear responsibility for maintaining the peace – by putting down those who disturb that peace. We know this to be true – true about them back then and equally true about us today. The story of Jesus speaks across the ages because people are very much the same across the ages. We'd like to think that we're different – and that means better – than our Jewish and Roman ancestors, but we're not. We are as entrenched in our own interests as they were. We are as willfully

3 negligent about the suffering of the world as they were. We are as quick to resort to violence and the threat of violence toward anything that threatens us as they were. Technology has certainly improved some lives, no doubt. Some of us are living longer and staying healthier while we live. Some diseases that were historic scourges are now, happily, on the ashheap of history. Some prejudices have been overcome, some barriers have been broken through, some suffering has been alleviated. All of this is true, all of it is progress, and all of it is just cause for celebration. But human nature is what it is, just broken enough that we are a little lower than angels, as Psalm 8 puts it. And while that distance may not sound great, it is very significant. We have used the gift of our minds not simply to make tools to increase the yield of earth's bounty and to cure and heal, but also to devise new and more effective ways of destroying ourselves. We write constitutions and laws, and render judgments based on those laws to protect the interests of the few at the expense of the many. We sacrifice the resources of the less powerful for the convenience of the more powerful. We do this again and again and again. We did it then, we do it now. To paraphrase the old CBS docudrama, we were there and we are there. And few of us wish to be reminded of that fact, which is why so many of us opt out of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. We Americans are known around the world as a can-do culture, focused on the opportunities that lie ahead rather than the mistakes we've made in the past. We tend to follow the advice of the popular song from the 1940s to accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch on to the affirmative, and don't mess with Mr. In-between. And there certainly is a place for the positive in the Christian faith. A group of about sixteen of us just finished a midweek study on joy, and how it is possible – perhaps even necessary – to live a joyful life as Christians if we're to live fully into our calling as followers of Jesus the Christ. Christianity is all about living a life made abundant by allowing the love of God to flow through us as gracefully and reflexively as it flowed through Jesus. Before it was known as Christianity our faith was known as the Way and before it was known as the Way it was announced simply as good news. God's love for the world, in which we believe, is good news, and that love cannot, finally, be extinguished by even the worst that we humans can do. That's the ultimate message of Easter, and it was that positive message that gave birth to Christianity. And that message was announced, again and again, by the divinely inspired messengers of the First Testament of the Christian Bible, including the author of Psalm 118, from which I have taken the text for this sermon: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This is the Lord's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.” We're soon to hear again the story of Jesus' rejection by the builders of his world. Neither the Jewish authorities nor the Roman occupiers of Judea had any use for a teacher and healer who preached and lived a message of radical peace, radical compassion, radical justice, and radical obedience to God. People in power and people in the know have no use for radicals. People who don't cooperate are difficult at best and threatening at worst. We build our systems to last, and we don't take kindly to those whose lifestyles have the power to undermine those systems. And Jesus knew that and he knew how destructive and self-destructive those widely-accepted systems are, and the core of his life and message was that there is another system that works better than all our little systems. He called it the realm of heaven or the realm of God, and he preached it and he lived it. And he brought it to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, and through his little low-budget drama of street theater with a donkey and palm branches and cloaks on the road and a simple script, he put his

4 message of God's realm right in the face of Caesar's realm. He was saying in effect, You want to see a realm that lasts? I'll show you a realm that will put yours to shame. And we know the outcome. The outcome was that Caesar lost. Jesus was crucified, but Caesar lost. How? Because Caesar's realm has disappeared, but the realm of the Christ, two thousand and more years on, is alive and well. Where is Caesar today? Where is Caesar's empire? Where are Caesar's legions? Where are Caesar's monuments? Where are Caesar's temples? In museums and in ruins, that's where Caesar is today. Oh, yes, of course, there are today's Caesar's, who huff and puff and rattle their nuclear sabers, and the fate awaiting them is the same fate that came to Caesar and comes to all Caesars. Some of them will wind up in museums; all of them will wind up in ruins. All of them, without exception. If history teaches anything, it teaches that. And then, ask yourself, where is the Christ? Where is the one without the blaring trumpets, without the flashing steel, without the banners snapping in the breeze? Where is the one who was railroaded through a mockery of a trial, publicly humiliated and abused, and finally nailed to a cross? Where is that Christ, that ruler, that prince of peace? Very much alive and very well, thank you very much. That Christ lives, and the realm of justice and peace he announced in his words and deeds is very much alive with him. It lives in the hearts and minds and deeds of billions of ordinary women and men who have looked at history, who have looked at the world around them, and who have looked into their own souls and have, as the missionary hymn puts it, “decided to follow Jesus.” We may not see much evidence of that determined conviction here in the affluent and powerful northern hemisphere, where we have our reward, but elsewhere in the world, the good news of the gospel is being received eagerly, joyfully, and gratefully. Perhaps, someday, it will be received that way here, too, and maybe some of us will be alive to see that day. But whether we are or not, the realm that the gospel announced in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ was built to last, and it will. It was here before any of us got here, it's been here while we've been advancing it – or not – and it will be here long after we're gone. The realm of God is built on a foundation that the world constantly rejects, but which, finally, the world can never destroy, because it was that realm, and the love on which it is built, that brought all the realms of this world into being. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” We are soon to hear again our attempt to silence the Word of God made flesh. We will hear again the story of our failures of love and courage in the struggle between the moral light and the moral darkness. We will hear again of the death of love incarnate. We'll hear it all again, and we'll know how it ends. Caesar will lose and the spirit of the crucified and risen Jesus Christ will bring us and billions like us to hear and celebrate and share his story and his life again. It was a life built by and built on God, and it was built to last.