No Holding Back
Palm Sunday – Narrative Lectionary 3
April 9, 2017
Grace, Mankato, MN
Luke 19.29-44
I’ve mentioned before my exploration of mindfulness during my sabbatical last year. It was something that I had encountered during a continuing education event and wanted to explore further. What is mindfulness? I like Jon Kabat-Zinn’s definition: “Mindfulness is awareness, cultivated by paying attention in a specific and particular way, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally.” When you unpack that, you see that mindfulness is about being in the present moment in a whole different way. That’s been a challenge for me because one of my strengths is looking ahead, thinking strategically. I’m good at planning and seeing where we need to be and how to get there. Unfortunately, because I’m thinking ahead, I often miss what’s going on around me or fail to savor the present moment.
I think that most of us feel tension between being fully invested in the moment and moving into the future in one way or another. I’m fairly certain I’m not the only one who is thinking about Easter while it’s only Palm Sunday. For me, it’s an occupational hazard because there is s a lot of planning that goes into Holy Week and Easter. For you it may be a social and economic necessity because you need to figure out who is coming to dinner and what will be on the menu. You might even buy a new outfit. The same kind of tension is present in our text today. With the story of Jesus’ triumphal approach to Jerusalem, there is a tension between holding back or not. So, in good Lutheran fashion, I want to explore this creative tension between being fully present in the moment and not holding back.
To do so, I want to explore two distinct but related features of Luke’s version. One, the crowd is described as “the whole multitude of disciples” and two, Jesus’ response to the Pharisees about the “shouting stones.” First, the disciples. Who were these people, for surely they must have been more than the 12? Theologian Barbara Lundblad asserts that they must be those whom Jesus has encountered on this long journey to Jerusalem. Certainly, Zacchaeus must have been there because Jesus has just come from Jericho where he stayed at Zacchaeus’ house. And Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James must have been there because they will be at Jesus’ cross and empty tomb.
It’s not a stretch to imagine that anyone who had seen Jesus’ deeds of power and even transformed by them would be in the crowd, for John the Baptist predicted such at Jesus’ baptism in chapter 3. Here’s where the stones come in: when the religious leaders back then claimed their special religious status as children of Abraham, John told them that God could raise up children to Abraham from “these very stones.” Indeed, these in the multitude of disciples, whom Jesus touched, are stones that have come to life.
This is what it looks like for people who have been touched by Jesus: they can’t be stopped. Even before Easter, Jesus has changed people so much that the religious leaders are concerned about what is going to happen. We’ve heard one such transformation story from Dick Osborne today on our need to give. These stories show that once we have encountered the Living, Giving God there is no holding back in our response.
There are as many stories as there are people here today, all of us who have been touched by Jesus, living stones. My sisters and brothers, as you walk the road with Jesus this week, be mindful of every step because it is in this journey that we encounter Christ, are transformed by him and invited to live in radical new ways. There’s no holding back. Amen.
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