The Prophethood of All Believers
a sermon given by the Rev. Claire Feingold Thoryn
on Palm Sunday, March 16, 2008
at The First Parish in Lincoln
To listen to this sermon click here.
First Reading: Matthew 21:1-11
When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, just say this, ‘The Lord needs them.’ And he will send them immediately.” This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying, “Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!” When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?” The crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”
Second Reading: “Before the Beginning” by John O’Donohue
Unknown to us, there are moments
When crevices we can't see/ open
For time to come alive with beginning.
As in autumn a field of corn knows
When enough green has been inhaled
From the clay/ and under the skill
Of an artist breeze becomes gold in a day,
When the ocean still as a mirror
Of a sudden takes a sinister curve
To rise in a mountain of wave
That would swallow a village.
How to a flock of starlings
Scattered, at work on the grass,
From somewhere, a signal comes
And suddenly, as one, they describe
A geometric shape in the air.
When the audience becomes still
And the soprano lets the silence deepen,
In that slow holding, the whole aria
Hovers nearer, then alights
On the wings of breath
Poised to soar into song.
These inklings were first prescribed
The morning we met in Westport
And I was left with such sweet time
Wondering if between us something
Was deciding to begin or not.
Hosanna, the prophet has come to town.
Unknown to us, there are moments
When crevices we can't see/ open
For time to come alive with beginning.
The story of Holy Week begins today. Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey—or two if we use this version of the story that Matthew tells. Matthew’s version, unlike the versions from the books of Mark or Luke, relates the entrance of Jesus explicitly to the words of the prophet Zechariah found in the Hebrew Bible. Matthew describes the disturbance Jesus is creating with his processional into Jerusalem.
When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?” The crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”
One prophet foretelling another. The prophet Zechariah and the prophet Jesus.
I have this image of Jesus with his hair up in a rhinestone turban passing his hand over a crystal ball. Or perhaps reading a palm. It is Palm Sunday after all. Is this what prophecy is?
One of my favorite books is the People’s Alamanac published in 1975. The book is about 2,000 pages long and filled with all kinds of fascinating minutae. The first chapter is dedicated to psychics, their predictions, what they got right and wrong, and their predictions for the future. The best part about this is that since the book was published in 1975, you can see if what they predicted came true or not. Here are some of my favorite prophecies that as far I as know did NOT come true:
* Sometime between 1981 and 1990, “Love, as we know it, will cease to exist.” The 80s weren’t that bad.
* An invisibility device will be created, it will look like a flashlight or an aerosol can.
* From 1975 until 1978, the devil will rule the earth. If we consider the US a world superpower that in many ways rules the earth, and our president as the head ruler, I’m still not sure that Gerald Ford or Jimmy Carter were the devil. Maybe his timing was off and he meant Nixon.
* In 1980, there will be a breaking up of icebergs around the North Pole. Scientists will explore the newly revealed depths of ocean and find alien machines, including “a huge ball, part of it protruding, from which radiates tremendous energy.” I think they predicted the plot of the Michael Crighton movie Sphere! Did you see that movie? It was a little predictable.
* In 1983, all of the women in St. Louis, MO will lose their hair.
* Several psychics predicted New York City would be annihilated by rising waters by the year 1990. That hasn’t happened but if we look at the global warming warnings about melting ice caps and rising sea levels this one might not be so far-fetched.
So these prophecies, these predictions are duds. Not one of them has happened when or how the psychics said they would. They make the work of prophetic speech seem a little silly. These psychics predicted inventions, elections, war and disaster, but none of them ever predicted we’d be here today, on the cusp of our five year anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq.
Jesus was not riding into town to foretell hairloss or the invention of an invisibility machine. Jesus had bigger prophecies to tell, much more challenging truths to speak.
The prophet Jesus was not the only person riding into town in a big celebratory procession. That same day, Pontius Pilate was arriving from the west, with his long line of stately horses, Roman soldiers in leather armor, banners, golden eagles mounted on poles, the glint of metal and gold, the beating of drums. Imagine the beautiful and quiet violence that procession held, the long line of soldiers and horses, the marching footsteps, the silent onlookers. A river of soldiers that of a sudden could take a sinister curve
To rise in a mountain of wave
That would swallow a village.
How different it was from the procession coming from the east, one man on a funny little donkey—or was it two donkeys?—riding along to the cries of Hosanna, steps softened by palm leaves, the crowd shouting and talking and wondering who the heck this guy is. And so they march into town, and as it happens, they have almost the same destination. Because Pontius Pilate is coming into town to make sure that the Jewish people of Jerusalem stay peaceful during the holiday celebration of Passover. He’s going to the military headquarters. When an oppressed people are celebrating a holiday about God killing their former oppressors and giving the people freedom—well—I’m sure Pilate thought the watchful eye of the law was called for. And Jesus was heading to the temple. The military headquarters and the temple, faced each other across the plaza.1
So the procession and the counter-procession march into town. In one marches the ruler, the dominant force, the maker of reality. In the other rides a renegade, the subverting force, the imaginer of a new reality.
A prophet is an imaginer and describer of a new reality. Walter Brueggemann, a Biblical scholar, defines prophets as “utterers.” They utter, they say the things that no one else will. They speak, as he puts it, “with all of the elusiveness and imaginative power of poetry. Their utterances are not self-evident in their relevance, but they speak images and metaphors aimed to disrupt, destabilize, and invite to alternative perceptions of reality. …The prophets speak in outrageous and extreme figures because they intend to disrupt the ‘safe’ construals of reality, which are sponsored and advocated by dominant opinion makers.” Jesus tells confusing and disturbing parables. His stories are all about the last being first and the first being last, about God loving compassion more than holiness, about forgiveness and peace. In a land ruled by violence, by power, these stories imagine a very different type of world.
We all know how his prophecies and parables were received by the dominant opinion makers. As Jesus himself said earlier in Matthew: “Prophets are not without honour except in their own country and in their own house.”2 His words were too close to home, too disruptive to allow. Palm Sunday is always marked by that blue edge of sorrow and shame that we know is on the horizon, looming on Good Friday. As this poem by X.J. Kennedy suggests, the response to Jesus’s prophetic voice would probably be the same today. Kennedy wrote:
A Scandal in the Suburbs
We had to have him put away,
For what if he'd grown vicious?
To play faith healer, give away
Stale bread and stinking fishes!
His soapbox preaching set the tongues
Of all the neighbors going.
Odd stuff: how lilies never spin
And birds don't bother sowing.
Why, bums were coming to the door—
His pockets had no bottom—
And then—the foot-wash from that whore!
We signed. They came and got him.
Jesus said the things that no one wanted to hear. Lose your riches. Love your enemy. Jesus things that were silly and strange and rude and even offensive to the people he spoke to. He said, Be kind to prostitutes, tax collectors, the unclean. Worry about the spirit of the law more than the letter of the law. Value compassion over self-righteousness. He spoke his truth. Some people listened, some people laughed, some people decided to kill him. But his truths and his words and his message live on today. This is the power of the prophetic imagination. Our imagination can always envision a better world. Our imagination keeps hope alive.
One unlikely prophet saved hundreds of people from death when the tsunami struck Thailand in 2004. A little girl named Tilly Smith, sitting on the beach with her parents on vacation, saw the ocean pull out into low tide, saw the bubbles on the surface of the water. She had learned in school these were signs that foretell a tsunami. She told her parents, and they listened to her. They warned everyone on the beach and the nearby hotel, everyone evacuated, and within literally minutes the tsunami struck.3 That was one of the only beaches where no casualties were reported. She saw the signs “before the beginning,” before:
the ocean still as a mirror
Of a sudden [took] a sinister curve
To rise in a mountain of wave
That would swallow a village.
She wasn’t a psychic. She was reading the signs that were there for anyone to interpret. She could imagine the disaster that the signs foretold, and she could imagine what needed to be done. And people listened to this little girl. And people listened to this young guy on a donkey.
Being a prophet doesn’t mean being a psychic. It means learning from the past, reading the signs, and imagining what the future could hold. Most importantly, a prophet speaks those imaginings. The prophets speak in outrageous and extreme figures because they want to disrupt, even destroy our ‘safe’ image of reality, a ‘reality’ created and sustained by dominant opinion makers. A prophet imagines. And a prophet utters.
Who are your prophets? What worlds do they imagine?
What signs have you read in the past and the present? What image of the future do you hold?
Have you spoken or stayed silent?
What is the cost of speaking?
What is the cost of staying silent?
The prophetic voice is within all of us. We all have the power of imagination. We all have the ability to look at the world around us, to read the signs, to envision the future.
Your voice is there. Speak up, take a chance, change your mind, imagine a new world, leap into the unknown. A prophet utters.
… there are moments
When crevices we can't see/ open
For time to come alive with beginning.
Hosanna, the prophet has come to town. He is you, you are she, we are here—the prophethood of all believers. May we find our voices rising with the words of justice. May we hold on to courage even as fear threatens to consume us. May we speak our truth and speak it well and speak it loud.
Amen.
_____________________________
- My description comes from the work of Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan in The Last Week, The Day-by-Day Account of Jesus’ Final Week in Jerusalem, and from The Bible Workbench for 3/16/08 pg 100.
- Matthew 13:57
- http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/01/
0118_050118_tsunami_geography_lesson.html
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