A Sermon for Luke 19:28-40 for April 10 2022, Palm Sunday

It is the Sunday before Passover and throngs of people line the streets. The famous rabbi is coming to Jerusalem! The famous rabbi who has healed people, the one who raised Lazarus! (do you think Lazarus was there that day?) The rabbi who has worked wonders throughout the land is coming to town.

It is Palm Sunday for us. A day of celebration and the start of Holy Week. The Palm Sunday story comes to life in the Bible in each of the four Gospels. Jesus rides on a donkey toward the city. Throughout the years our imaginations have been fed with the visions of hordes of people massing along his path waving branches and shouting, Hosanna!  This has been celebrated in art. It has been celebrated in music. I’m old enough to have spent my babysitting money for original Jesus Christ Superstar album, AND to have seen the touring company in the old Auditorium Arena. Thus, this time of year I live with one earworm or another. For me, the season of Lent, Holy Week and Easter isn’t complete if I haven’t listened to Hosanna, hey sanna, sanna sanna ho Sanna hey, sanna ho Superstar.

If I haven’t imagined the Pharisee’s anticipating a riot and instructing Jesus to rebuke his disciples, the common crowd, for being much too loud. And Jesus’s reply… Why waste your breath moaning at the crowd? Nothing can be done to stop the shouting. And besides, even If every tongue was still, the noise would still continue. The rocks and stones themselves would start to sing.

The rocks and stones themselves would start to sing. <pause>

Even the stones will cry out.

Years ago I joined a group of clergy and others on a trip to the Holy Land.  It was billed as “Walking In the Footsteps of Jesus.” We visited Nazareth, Bethlehem, the Sea of Galilee, Jericho and the River Jordan. We spent a full day at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, and journeyed along that path that Jesus took into the city. Along the ancient retaining wall that surrounds the old city. We made our way to an area called the Western Wall. Once called the Wailing Wall. Since we had arrived at a time for men only to visit the wall, I stood with others and watched while we waited our turn. As I observed those many slips of paper being pressed into the fissures and folds of the ancient wall, I softly spoke these words, “Even the stones will cry out.”

Before visiting Jerusalem, I held the vision of Palm Sunday that I had been taught in Sunday School. The picture in my mind was the one of Jesus on a donkey, making his along the road and down a hill into town. Hearing this scripture, I assumed the stones crying out were those on or along the pathway Jesus was following, along the roadway into the city.  I wonder now, though, if, from his seat on the donkey, Jesus was gazing at the city walls of Jerusalem. If he was looking up at those countless stone blocks making up the walls and buildings … the temple. I wonder if Jesus was seeing the stones, knowing they represented the people, the living souls and those gone, the thousands of workers who had quarried the stones, carved the blocks, carried them on their backs. Carried them to build the city time and again throughout centuries of war and occupation and destruction. Was it these people, the poor of the world, the workers, who, with raucous praises gladly welcomed this Rabbi, that Jesus was speaking of. Those who welcomed him as the king, as the savior they hoped for.

Even the stones will cry out.

Many of the words that have been attributed to Jesus in our sacred texts echo words found in the Hebrew Bible; in the Old Testament scriptures. With these words about stones, Jesus reflects that prophet Habakkuk. Jesus echoes the condemnation of those in power. Condemns those who built cities by bloodshed and injustice. Jesus reflects the words of one we now consider a minor prophet, Habakkuk, “The stones of the wall will cry out, and the beams of the woodwork will echo it.”

The very stones will cry out, Jesus says. 

Jesus entered into Jerusalem to the cries of the people, to shouts of hosanna.

“Hosanna” was the shout of praise or adoration. Hosanna, recognizing the messiahship of Jesus for his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Sitting on that humble donkey, Jesus knew that his very presence in Jerusalem challenged those in power. Did he know precisely what would happen in the days following? Maybe. He had to have known that pissing off people in power would not be a good thing. But even the stones cried out to him. The stones along the path, the stones of the city walls, the stones of the walls of the temple. Cried out for change, for freedom, for justice. Cried out for a new way of living and being. Cried out for a kingdom not built on the backs of the enslaved. Cried out for a kingdom of quiet wonder and the peace of the divine order.

The Chinese philosopher, poet and politician, Confucius, once said that the one who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.

What are the stones saying today? What are the stones of our time? The stones of the great pyramids of Egypt, of Stonehenge, the Parthenon, Mount Rushmore. The stones that make up the beautiful symbols of the Taj Mahal, the cathedral of Notre Dame, the Tower of Pisa. The great wall of China that can be seen from outer space, the monument to Crazy Horse in South Dakota, the dry, stone walls and huge blocks of the Incan citadel of Machu Picchu. 

Even the stones will cry out.

What is being said by the too numerous stones on the graves of warriors, poets, philosophers, scientists, teachers, what are those saying to us, today? The headstones of soldiers and students, activists and protestors. The stones marking the graves of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Philando Castile, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Ahmaud Arbery.

Even the stones will cry out.

The sandstone walls of Lake Powell being exposed by drought due to climate change. The stones of the foundations thousands of homes burned in wildfires, or made shambles by the bombs of war.

Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, maybe knowing that he was in his last week in human form. Certainly, knowing the opposition that lay before him. Yet Jesus heard the stones as they cried out, and he remained undeterred in his mission. He would teach at the temple each day and spend his nights on the Mount of Olives. He would boldly clear out the vendors from the temple portico. Jesus would gather disciples and friends into the upper room for a meal, breaking bread and asking to be ever remembered.  He would be denied, betrayed, arrested, subjected to a trial and multiple punishments and degradations. He, himself, would cry out to God for the cup of suffering to be taken from him. Many in those in the crowds that first day in Jerusalem, many who had hailed Jesus as king on that day we call Palm Sunday, many would be crying out for his crucifixion by Friday.

We are the stones, my friends. We are the ones who must continue to cry out about injustice. We are the disciples who must work — carrying the stones and crying out for those whose voices can no longer be heard or who have limited voices in the world. We are the stones. We are the disciples cheering Jesus today and we must be the stone who rolls away from the opening of the tomb on Easter morning.

Even the stones will cry out.  Amen.