Easter Sunday:

The Last Week of Jesus

A Sermon Offered at the Unitarian Universalist Church, Lafayette, Indiana

By Rev. Hilary Landau Krivchenia

Reading

In the Gospel of Mark Jesus stood in the Temple and told this story to the crowd and to those priests who were collaborating with the Romans:

–"A man planted a vineyard, and set a hedge around it, and dug a pit for the wine press, and built a tower, and let it out to tenants, and went into another country. When the time came, he sent a servant to the tenants, to get from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. And they beat him, and sent him away empty-handed. Again he sent to them another servant, and they wounded him in the head, and treated him shamefully. And he sent another, and him they killed; and so with many others, some they beat and some they killed. He had still one other, a beloved son; finally he sent him to them, saying, `They will respect my son.' But those tenants said to one another, `This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.' And they took him and killed him, and cast him out of the vineyard. What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants, and give the vineyard to others. And he challenged them saying: Have you not read this scripture: `The very stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner;

Sermon

It’s Easter Sunday.  For some of you this is a day of memory – of little starched shirts and lovely, scratchy dresses, of being wrapped in the warmth or trapped in the chill of family, the memory of Easter Egg hunts, baskets of treats, eggs you dyed along with your fingers, and sitting in church doing hard time until the fun would begin.  Churches everywhere this morning are celebrating Easter – each according to their own slant.  But in hundreds of thousands of them Easter – more than the teachings of Jesus – more than his life – even more than his death which takes on meaning because of the Easter event – Easter is the defining event that was later shaped into the religion that came to be called Christianity – which means the religion of the Christ – the risen one.  The Resurrection is a defining event for most Christians and the empty tomb the sign of that miracle.

Literal Resurrection is not an option on my palette of belief.  On the other hand, I am able to see the possibility that his disciples – confronted by devastating loss and the reality of ongoing suffering in a Roman dominated world – had a miraculous awakening.

If I look at the context in which this event occurred I am, at first, even more skeptical – there were bunches of men walking around claiming to be the Messiah – who heralded the end of time and suffering.  Other Jewish teachers were bringing messages of love and justice to a people suffering under imperialism.  And people were regularly executed by the Roman authorities for all sorts of crimes that the oppressed commit – both as a means to survival and resistance.

 Jesus wasn’t exactly claiming to be the Messiah – he was claiming something far more dangerous – he was claiming to be the Son of God – a title reserved only for the Roman Emperor.  Caesar – son of God – that was the authority by which he ruled an empire and the religious tolerance of Rome only went as far as the supremacy of Caesar was recognized.  Jesus wasn’t claiming to be a new Emperor – but he was directly challenging the Empire of Caesar with the Kingdom of God.  And this meant more than this one man making this claim.  Remember the Jewish people are – above all – a people in covenant – not to worship any ruler, money, power, anything above God.  And there they were – not only oppressed but paying taxes to Caesar and the center of religious life – the Temple – the place where the indwelling spirit of God resided -- also served Caesar.  There were rebellions and resistance movements – mostly small – but in the center of power – in Jerusalem – it was business as usual – Temple life going on as though the priests weren’t purchasing this business as usual by cooperating with false gods established by Rome.  They were worshipping security and the status quo. 

            It is into that setting that Jesus came riding on a colt for his last week.  The scene was painted vividly by two of my favorite Christian Scripture scholars – Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan. It’s clear in the gospel of Mark that Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem was planned in advance – the animal was waiting for him and his supporters didn’t simply run out of their houses to see him – they were ready for his arrival with palm fronds filling the streets – a statement – as though they were greeting a king.  The real twist in this scene was that as Jesus entered the city on his modest animal, on the opposite end of the city, the Roman governor of Idumea, Judea, and Samaria, Pontius Pilate was also entering – clad in the robes and armor of state and escorted by imperial troops.  The procession of Jesus was guerilla theater – to challenge the power of Rome with the power of Yahweh.  It reminds me of the historic march to the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965 that led to the march from Selma to Montgomery.  If you’ve seen pictures of those events: on one side are the marchers – unarmed and singing and on the other are armor clad state and local police wielding billy clubs and tear gas.  I think that the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. studied the lessons of Jesus and knew that truth can speak to power and should bear no other armor. 

            With actions like that the ordinary Jew in the street might be inspired to resist –to wield the power of the powerless and refuse to pay tribute.  Last week I talked about how Jesus was a teacher of parable -- who told the truth in a new way.  To enter Jerusalem on a colt just as Pilate entered on a war horse was in deed to do more than to tell a parable – it was to BE a parable.  In addition – he used the week before Passover to dramatize the significance of these events.  While the formal Seder the way that we celebrate it today is relatively recent – 9^th century of the common era – the Passover meal was kept in honor of the liberation of the Israelites from Egypt.  Each year it is said – I redeemed you with outstretched arm – in honor of our covenant.  And there they were again enslaved.  Jesus was fomenting rebellion.  Being a parable to make people think – both his own and the Roman authorities.

            Once in the city Jesus continued his acts of confrontation and resistance. 

            That week he entered the outer area of the Temple and overturned the tables.  Too often the story is cast as a condemnation of Temple sacrifice or even of the Temple itself – but that makes no sense – given that Jesus had come not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it.  He was a rabbi in his own right who honored the Temple – thought not those in power who were collaborating with the Romans in the persecution of their own people.  He turned the tables to challenge hypocrisy.  Crossan and Borg suggest that the use of the word thieves was intended to point to what was being stolen from Judaism.  When Jesus said you have turned this Temple into a den of thieves he meant that while once the offerings were made with the smoke rising to please God the Temple had become a place where the smoke represented sacrifice made to Caesar instead.

            The next day when Jesus returned to the Temple the priests and scribes – who were by then seeing that he was challenging their collaboration with the Rome confronted him – they wanted to see his credentials – on whose orders was he disrupting their work? Mark set it out clearly: “they said to him, "who gave you this authority?" Jesus said to them, "I will ask you a question; answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. Was the baptism of John from heaven or from men? Answer me." And they argued with one another, "If we say, `From heaven,' he will say, `Why then did you not believe him?' But shall we say, `From men'?" for they were afraid of the people there, for all held that John was a real prophet. So they answered, "We do not know." And Jesus said to them, "Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things."

            He played stump the priests and won.  But it was their job to control the people for the Empire so they kept confronting him and he told a story to spook them – just as earlier prophets had done – only he did it Jesus style – as the story of the man who planted a vineyard, built a tower and who would come and forcibly evict the tenants.

After that the danger he posed was clear -- but the crowd was with him so the collaborators went slinking off and sent other folks to try to trap him: the Pharisees and some of the Herodians flatter him and say - "Teacher, we know that you are true, and care for no man; for you do not regard the position of men, but truly teach the way of God. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?” Knowing their hypocrisy, he said, "Bring me a coin, and let me look at it." And they brought one. And he said to them, "Whose likeness and inscription is this?" They said to him, "Caesar's." Jesus said, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." But of course they were in the Temple the place which reminded them that all was God’s.  He came into the very center and, cryptically, told the people that they should not give toward the wealth of Caesar but should observe the law instead. 

A scribe approached Jesus while he was in the Temple to test him and as he heard Jesus’ answers – he agreed that Jesus was a true teacher – not in flattery but in humility.  At that moment there was truth in the Temple and the power of Rome was being compared to a bunch of lawless tenants to be driven out.  Dangerous ideas. 

            He was headed for a show-down.  All he had were the 12 who again and again disappointed.  Even when he’d take them aside and teach them directly they fell short of understanding. Jesus challenged them to follow him.  Yet they could not.  Only the women – again and again – came through – anointing him, hearing him, being present, generous with him and with others.  Perhaps out of deeper oppression they had clearer insight into his spirited politics of resistance. 

            On the last night Jesus asked his disciples to stay awake with him – not to be faithful, not to follow him into more confrontation with Rome – only to stay awake.  To a man they were unable to keep their eyes open.  Did they really sleep or is this the gospel teller’s parable-like way of saying: even then they couldn’t follow him. They were as sleepers. And when the soldiers came they ran afraid.  And the day of suffering dawned.

This week, I sat with women colleagues from local churches and listened to their preparations for Love Feasts, Good Friday services, and sunrise worship.  I was, I admit, in part, relieved that we wouldn’t have such a full calendar as all that – but I think that Easter mustn’t come too cheap – with too much froth and chocolate. I’d found myself thinking about this already in November as I walked the Via Dolorosa – the Stations of Cross – in Jerusalem.

The day I followed the Stations of the Cross was just another crowded, noisy day in the Old City.  I wanted to meditate at each one but we were driven forward, in part to let new people come and stand in a place holy to them, in part by boys trying to sell us post cards, in part by our guide.  Even though I hadn’t grown up hearing the Lent, Good Friday, and Easter stories I still had a rich store of images that evoked the painful passage of Jesus through the city.  Here he stumbled, here a nameless woman we have called Veronica wiped his brow.  With 2000 years of history layered over them the stations are approximations – not exact locations. 

I didn’t know before I went there that there are two Golgothas – one where the Roman Catholic Church decreed it – held in the strong walls of a church filled with incense and candles.  And another – where the Protestants think it was – just outside the city walls – near a grim cliff that looks something like the face of a skull.  Luke wrote: “23:33 When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there...” There’s an observation deck where you can look onto the hill side. Gulgata is Aramaic for skull.  There’s a tomb they say is very much like the one in which he would have been laid – which is a matter of debate – since those crucified were seldom buried.  People were crucified as an example – to punish something truly threatening to the Roman authorities and left out for carrion birds.  But the story tells us that he was taken down off the cross and laid in a cave – from which he mysteriously vanished. 

In spite of my skeptic nature it was moving to be in the places where the story of the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is remembered and relived, day after day – century after century. He, too, would have moved amid crowd and noise.  There were thousands of pilgrims feeling their way through the story – feeling their way through the interpretations of their churches with some yearning for the truth hidden inside.  And I can feel in the story a message that is more than half hidden but that – like the resurrection of springtime – keeps pressing through the hard ground in hope.

I can imagine the day, after the Sabbath, as the women showed up at the tomb, and found it empty.   Emptiness: the beloved leader they hoped was impervious to death had been crucified, they remained in a condition of subjugation, and the kingdom of God was nowhere to be seen.  The women had over and again been the ones to tend to Jesus as both teacher and human – and they’d never been as simple and literal as the 12.  They saw him first – though at first they didn’t know him.  In Mark’s version they told no one – but we know that they did – because we know about it and because the 12 went to meet Jesus where he said that he’d be.  So I wonder – here was a man smart enough to arrange a counter demonstration to Pilate entering Jerusalem, canny enough to stump the Priests, evade the questions of the Romans, perform acts of resistance at the right time to catch the eye of the public, a man unafraid to touch the sick or the lowly – a man this smart, farseeing, and fearless -- must have known that he would be killed.  Must have known that his death would call into question the power of the Kingdom he was claiming.  Who picked Passover to remind people that Moses did not enter the Promised Land, and told the story of the farmer whose son was killed; must have known that his disciples would forsake him and that he would be made a public spectacle.  In literalism, I wonder did he prearrange with Joseph of Arimethea to sneak his body past the guards -- were the women told to go there, be surprised, and take the message to the 12 that they were to meet Jesus again.  In literalism, the better I get to know him, the more I wonder – how hard were these things for a man clever as Jesus of Nazareth: could he not have arranged for the 12 – who also didn’t recognize him at first – to expect him in some form and to arrange for someone to give them the words they needed to go forth and teach his message.  That’s what I wonder literally.  But my literal wondering pales in comparison with what I really think happened and what I think the resurrection is – and believe me – this is as surprising for me to preach as it may be for you to hear.  But I think that there is power and mystery in the resurrection and it’s not about if it literally occurred – but this:

Faced with the death of their teacher and beloved friend – the man they followed the 12 and the women were shocked.  Shocked into hearing, into seeing – into awareness – shocked awake.  You may know that the Buddha once said – if you meet the Buddha on the Road – kill him.  Meaning – that if you get caught up in the teacher and the leader you’ll never become wise yourself – never move forward in courage to face life and suffering – never take the risk to speak the truth to power. So, I think it was that once Jesus was gone and they could no longer see him in the flesh they could see him in spirit -- grasp his lessons and take on the preaching he had begun.  For he had challenged them:  For to him who has, will more be given; and from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.  The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed upon the ground, and should sleep and rise night and day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he knows not how. If any man has ears to hear, let him hear.”  For so it is with humanity – that we may despair – but those stories do not endure as this one has endured.  Or we may rise over our despair and fear and move forward and live out our calling.  So, finally, I believe, each in their own particular way – imperfectly and humanly – they did finally – after his death – hear him and see him and know that the kingdom of God was at hand –resistance to false authority and in faithfulness to the only real truth they knew.        Empires have always clothed themselves in the garments of divine power – spoken as if they have divine right on their side – use both the might of the sword and of Divine authority to control the people.  And in all times prophets rise – some inspired by the teaching of this Jesus and armed with no more than the truth lift up human lives and bring down empires.

Oh -- I do take exception to the history of Christianity, the empire it created and the horrific suffering it has caused over the centuries, and its literal interpretation of the life of Jesus.  Yet I’m certain – that lying in the hard ground is the living teaching – that Empires must fall, that justice and peace must prevail – that all must be awake to know and to do work – from the lowly to the highest. 

All around us today there are churches where Easter is a test of who believes that the tomb was empty and that there was a literal resurrection.  But to fall for that is to fail to see and to hear – and to completely miss Jesus as he appears again – each year – in the real dimension—the real world – of meaning.  The real message of Jesus and Easter is a challenge – to religious authority -- to our contemporary empires – the challenge to every person.  To rise into courage and a full and just life.

So – Happy Easter my brothers and sisters – for as we leave behind the dimensions of literality and which is as it should be -- we are born into --  given into meaning to feast in love and in life.