Looking Up

​Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
Palm Sunday, Year C
April 10, 2022
 
When you go to a big city, it is easy to spot the tourists.  They are the ones looking up.  They are the ones who are amazed at the size, the grandeur, and the energy that is so unlike things back home.  Jesus gathered all kinds of people and met them where they were, which was, mostly, a long way from the big city.
 
The excitement is palpable.  Even from a distance, they see the walls, the guarded gates, and inside, the majestic temple, built on the highest point.  The largest stones at the base weigh in at more than 500 tons.  The smallest stones, near the top, weigh 2 tons.  In their time, Jerusalem is a remarkable human achievement of engineering, constructed over centuries at incalculable expense.  
 
How could they not be excited as their man, Jesus, enters this citadel: the intersection of religion and empire.  This is the big time.  This is where big things happen.  If you make it here, you have made it.  And now, Jesus arrives.
 
It is hard to tell what Jesus and Jesus’ people expect.  They have seen him work miracles and gather all kinds of people to join the procession.  Jesus tells them he is there to set things right and show the power of God.  God can make the stone shout.  Whatever is going to happen, it will be big.
 
Between the triumphal procession and the eventual retreat back to Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives, Luke tells story after story of Jesus leaving no stone unturned.  He wrecks the temple market as an offense and a farce before God.  He denounces religious leaders as greedy and self-serving profiteers, he denounces the Romans as just the latest of a long string of strongmen there to extract wealth, and demand worship and honor for their leader.  He tells a biting parable about wicked tenants, implying that the powers that have taken hold are not rightful heirs of God.
 
We are about to tell the story of what happens when human power is threatened and challenged.  We are about to hear how God’s power does not come through might and wealth making right, through some twist of redemptive violence wherein regimes are toppled and their adherents get what is coming to them.
 
What we will see is the fully human God stand up and take the absolute worst that humanity can dish out.  God does not pull back, regroup, and attack.  God stays there, as tragedy unfolds, and power does what threatened powers do.
 
But God is not finished.  God is about the long game.  Immense stones are impressive, but they area not eternal.  With water and pressure and time, stones become sand, and wash into the sea.  Nothing we build will outlast, overpower, or divert the oceanic love of God.
 
On the walk of Holy Week, we will look up to see the massive monoliths of human power appear fixed and immovable.  We will look up, see love on the cross, and see what is big beyond time.  We will see what is all powerful.  We will see the Way of Eternity.  Love is God.  Everything else is just so much sand.  Amen.