Raising Our Voices
Based on Luke 19:30-40, Philippians 2:5-11, Luke 22:19-27
I grew up in a very quiet Minnesota home. My parents were readers and were fairly calm individuals – they would get exasperated with us at times and discipline us when necessary, but they rarely raised their voices. I honestly don’t recall many times that I was shouted at throughout my childhood. My friends’ homes were the same way growing up, they were all populated by Minnesotans and so they reflected the social norms of that place and time. Raising our voices and attracting attention to ourselves was just not a socially acceptable thing to do. We were expected to just take care of our business and not disturb the people around us.
Given all of that you might imagine that it was a tremendous shock to my system to go off to college at the University of Minnesota! I was thrown in with folks from all over the United States – people whose home life was a lot louder and more passionate. It put me off for a while – that amount of noise was overwhelming, and I found myself retreating to my room to find some peace and quiet. It wasn’t long, however, until I found my voice and entered into the fun, the frenetic activity and the noise of living in a dorm. I became accustomed to that level of noise and activity – but I still needed my quiet time to recalibrate and to relax – for I am a strong Myers-Briggs introvert.
To this day it’s quite unusual for me to raise my voice. I’ve got to get really wound up by something and usually be part of a raucous crowd before I’ll really let loose. I seem to be in the minority nowadays, surrounded by folks who are constantly hollering at me from my television and social media feeds. There are even people who yell at me when they type a message using all capital letters. Folks are constantly raising their voices trying to be heard above all the other folks who are shouting and trying to attract our attention. This wasn’t always the case, however, as we read in our scriptures for this morning.
The reading from Paul’s letter to the believers in Philippi tells them that they are to imitate the humility of Jesus. The same Jesus who though he was divine, humbled himself and did not often raise his voice, even when he was falsely accused by the Temple leaders, examined by Pontius Pilate and nailed to a cross where he died. He remained obedient to God and submitted himself to humiliation so that he could fulfill God’s greater plan for all of us. Truth-be-told, Jesus did not need to raise his voice in order to be heard around the world and across the ages.
Our readings from the Gospel according to Luke has Jesus at his Last Supper with the disciples as-well-as riding into Jerusalem on a donkey on the first Palm Sunday. In the Last Supper reading, Jesus quietly teaches the disciples the liturgy that we know as Holy Communion. A meal that we will celebrate together on Thursday evening. Even when he tells the disciples that one of them will betray him, he does not raise his voice, nor does he name the disciple. When the disciples began to argue about who was going to take over when Jesus leaves – he calms them down and focuses them on the task at hand – being servants to each other and to all people.
The first reading from Luke is the classic reading for Palm Sunday. Jesus asks two of the disciples to fetch him a donkey from a nearby village. In response to anyone raising their voice to enquire why they are taking the colt, Jesus tells them to say simply, “The Lord needs it”. No voice is raised in protest when the disciples take the animal away. No, the voices are raised when Jesus began his descent from Mount Olivet into Jerusalem. A large crowd gathered and “began to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen”. They raised their voices to such an extent that the Pharisees in the crowd asked Jesus to quiet them down. Jesus told the Temple leaders that there was no stopping this celebration, that if he were to quiet the crowd that the stones would shout out the arrival into Jerusalem of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords!
This is probably the most challenging Sunday of the liturgical year for most people. Putting Palm Sunday hosannas up next to the Passion themes of betrayal and crucifixion creates a tension that makes us uncomfortable – the tension of one day raising our voices praising the King of Kings, followed by the shouts a few days later to end that king’s life through horrific torture. The writer and social critic, Fleming Rutledge, noted that, “the liturgy of Palm Sunday is set up to show you how you can say one thing one minute and its opposite the next. This is the nature of the sinful human being.”
It is in our human nature to be sinful, fickle, contradictory, hardheaded and hearted, swayed by popular opinion and the crowd mentality, to not understand what is right in front of us. That last bit is the essence of how I think the crowd goes from shouting “Hosanna”, which in Hebrew literally means “save us please”, to “Crucify!” all in the span of a few days. They really did not understand Jesus. They had in their heads the teachings of the scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees who indicated that the Messiah would be a warrior king like David who would violently overthrow the Romans and return Israel to her glory days. They raised their voices and cried out, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” They raised their voices and praised God for all the miracles they had seen performed by Jesus over the previous three years. Yet, they didn’t understand the embodiment of the Messiah in Jesus.
In our day, do we really understand Jesus the Messiah and how he came to save us? Each time we enter Holy Week with Palm Sunday praises we tend to fall into the temptation to identify the first crowd as “us” and the second crowd as “them.” However, the people in both crowds are the same – there weren’t two separate populations. The crowd on Sunday is beseeching God to please save them – thinking that the warrior king Jesus is going to accomplish that task. However, Jesus had preached and taught throughout his public ministry that the way to salvation was through servanthood, through unconditional love, mercy and forgiveness, through peace and understanding. This is important to note because it is likely that when it became clear that Jesus was not the “second coming” of the warrior king David, then the crowd lost hope that God would save them. They saw Jesus as another imposter selling false hopes and dreams and thus, he “deserved” to die for misleading them.
Rev. Stephanie Jaeger unpacks the tension of this day writing, “…When the people welcome Jesus through the city gates, they are looking for a winner. Palm branches were used to welcome victors in war, military heroes who had saved the Jewish people from their enemies. The people wave palm branches and call out ‘Hosanna’ because they anticipate that Jesus will save them from Roman occupation. But the would-be ‘king of the Jews’ doesn’t act very kingly. He allows himself to be arrested, to be hung up on wood like a common criminal. When the crowds realize that Jesus isn’t the kind of hero they expected, they turn on him. Disappointment turns to rage.
What are our expectations about how God saves? Do we set ourselves up for disappointment because we confuse modes of human victory with God’s saving grace? The core revelation of Palm/Passion Sunday is this: God doesn’t save in the ways we might expect. God doesn’t rule the way humans do. God dominates with love, not violence. God overpowers through sacrifice, not by taking away. God wins by suffering, not humiliating - suffering and aligning God’s self with those who suffer….”
The passion narrative becomes personal when the sins that send our Lord to his death are the sins that he redeems – when we realize that they are my sins and your sins that have been redeemed! Redeemed in the only way they could be by a Savior “…who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death – even death on a cross!...” (Philippians 2:6-8) Therefore, let us all get wound up and continue raising our voices in praise and thanksgiving that God unconditional love does save us through the sacrifice of Jesus the Christ, our humble King of Kings! Amen!