205 When Stones Shout

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “When Stones Shout”, originally shared on April 7, 2022. It was the 205^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   Do rocks have feelings? Do they have needs and aspirations? If they could talk, what would they say? Today, we’re going to find out, on at least one day anyway.

   Jesus entered Jerusalem at the head of a parade on the day that we celebrate as “Palm Sunday”. In a few days, he was dead.

   But, as we described last time, for this brief moment, people were going nuts for him.

   They spread their outer garments on the road before him to show their submission to his authority. They cut down branches of palm, as was done for civil or military parades. The Bible, in Luke 19’s version of events, says that “the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen”. They celebrated, “the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”

   All of this suggested the Messiah, the anointed one, the one who had been longed for and promised by the prophets for 1,000 years, the one who would be their deliverer. Many thought the Messiah would come as a king, like King David, and deliver them from the latest of many occupying empires: the Romans.

   The Pharisees, members of a religious party of highly observant laymen (only men could be Pharisees), were upset.

   Maybe they thought that Jesus being called the Messiah was blasphemy. Or maybe they were worried that the Romans would hear the shouts of “Blessed is the king” as an insurrection and put it down in a crushing and indiscriminate fashion.

   Either way, we see their response, and Jesus’ answer, in Luke 19:39-40,

³⁹ Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” ⁴⁰ He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”

   That’s an indication that something significant and unstoppable is happening!

   You may remember, or have heard about, a mid-1970’s fad where people bought a product called a “Pet Rock”. The joke was that, unlike other pets, the pet rock required no grooming, walking, special food or beverages, no Dr. visits, or housesitting when you are away. In fact, your pet rock didn’t do anything requiring maintenance at all, and it certainly didn’t shout out!

   What would it take for a rock to shout? I’d say that it would take an act of God.

   It would take something so positively life-changing that if people didn’t shout about it, God would arrange things for the rocks to shout out.

   What do you think that a shouting rock would sound like? I’d guess that it would have a gravelly voice. 😊

   You’d want a pet rock then, wouldn’t you? If was a shouting rock.

   And what would it say? “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!”

   And what was happening that called for shouts of praise? Jesus was coming.

   The pivotal event of human history was about to happen. People were created for a living relationship with the one true living God. People rejected that relationship and brought evil into the world. Now God was going to die to restore that relationship as a gift, by grace, through faith. Not by human effort. That’s something to shout about!

   Jesus knows he’s going to die there, but he rides into town like a boss.  

   It seemed like a victory parade, and in a sense it was. But nobody knew it was also a funeral procession but Jesus, or if they had heard it from Jesus, they didn’t want to know. Now, the time was at hand. Jesus had come as the Messiah, the deliverer, to deliver people from sin, death, and the power of the devil and all the forces that defy God. That would be accomplished on the cross.

   Jesus enters Jerusalem at the head of the parade to become the head of the Church.

   He does so through his death, in humble service to humankind.

   That is the message of Palm Sunday. The triumph of obedience. The victory of God in flesh.

   This is Paul’s focus in his letter to the church at Philippi in Philippians 2:5-11,

⁵ Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

⁶ who, though he was in the form of God,
    did not regard equality with God
    as something to be exploited,
⁷ but emptied himself,
    taking the form of a slave,
    being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
⁸     he humbled himself
    and became obedient to the point of death—
    even death on a cross.

⁹ Therefore God also highly exalted him
    and gave him the name
    that is above every name,
¹⁰ so that at the name of Jesus
    every knee should bend,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
¹¹ and every tongue should confess
    that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father.

   I mentioned last time that I had played drums in jazz bands in college and seminary and beyond. I wasn’t a great drummer, I admit. I didn’t want to be. I didn’t like to do solos. I was fine being the back beat, setting the mood, the tempo, the feeling, with everyone else.

   My favorite quote on drumming came from Charlie Watts of “The Rolling Stones”, who died last year, though I can’t find the attribution for the quote. He said, “I don’t want to be the world’s greatest drummer. I want to be the drummer in the world’s greatest band.”

   That’s us. We are not a collection of individuals. We are a community, the Body of Christ, with Jesus as the head and we as members of the body. Among other things, that means that as the head of the Church, Jesus is the face of the Church.

   Is he? Is Jesus what people think of when they think of our churches? Is it what we present to people? Is Jesus central to the message we present to the community?

   Palms were raised on that day of Jesus entry into Jerusalem.

   Some of the palms we raise at our Palm Sunday services will be burned to make the ashes for Ash Wednesday next year. They will be used to make the sign of the cross on our foreheads, and we will hear the words, “Remember that you are dust. And to dust you shall return.”

   Those are some mighty scary words to most people. But to us, they are presented in the shape of the cross, the shape of victory. Jesus’ victory, which the crowds couldn’t see, past their belief in their own needs and desires.

   If the sub-variants don’t get a foothold, we may soon have our masks off, and we’ll be looking at each other’s faces again. Will we be able to read expressions? Will others see the face of Jesus in ours?

   I was standing just south of San Dimas Canyon Road, right next to San Dimas Canyon Park the other day. I was standing next to what I think is a retention basin, where runoff water from the foothills is slowed and held by the rocks and the low areas so that more of it can soak into the underground aquifers and be tapped later. Not that we’ve really needed a water retention basin that much lately. We’ve had several years of drought, so what we have there is a field of rocks.

   I’ve heard that there’s gold in the foothills above it. We took my sister and her family up there to pan for it when they were visiting from Minnesota. Whatever shiny flecks we found wasn’t much, but everyone had fun.

   What message would these rocks bring that is more precious than gold?

   What would they say, if we weren’t being the Body of Christ, embodying the face of Jesus to the world? They would say, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!”