It is easy to get seduced into the party, parade atmosphere of the Palm Sunday procession. The church has often treated it like that; much more like the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade downtown yesterday, than the antiwar protest downtown yesterday.

I think that, especially in Mark’s Gospel, the Palm Sunday event is a very intentional and well- orchestrated bit of “street theater,” as Jesus enters his final and consummate confrontation with “the powers.”

Who are “the powers?” They are the whole Jewish Temple/economic system on the one hand and Rome on the other. Both systems were exploitative, especially of the poor. Both were oppressive in the extreme.

So, Jesus rides toward Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives, the place from which all the Jews knew the conquering hero would launch his campaign. He comes as a king— the king of peace. But the people would still have seen him as a conquering hero, like the Davidic Messiah, a military figure who would remove the occupier, Rome, and restore the Temple. Jesus, however, seeks to confront both Rome and the Temple. He seeks to tear them both down, not as the militaristic Davidic Messiah, but in the roll of the Suffering Servant Messianic figure. He will not supplant one militaristic, oppressive system with another.

Remember, this scene begins Holy Week. The texts for this Sunday, however, are the entire Passion story. Holy Week is all about confronting “the powers.” Those “powers” are not just the “spiritualized” powers of sin, but the earthly powers of sin: injustice, warring, exploitation…They include abusive state power and abusive religious authority.

Later this week, we will see Jesus confronting the symbol of religious power, the High Priest and the ruling elders. He will also confront Rome through Pontius Pilate. The Ruling Elders are no match for him and they show who they really are in violating their own laws and professed beliefs. Pilate, even with all the power of Rome, trembles in Jesus’ presence.

We know all that. There is, however, a mini-drama going on here that I want to look at. (This approach and some of the stories in this sermon were suggested reflections by William Willimon). This scene has my name written all over it: It is so human, so poignant, so heartbreaking, so much like us. That is Peter in the court of the High Priest.

You see, while Jesus is on trial in the palace of the High Priest and, later Pilate, Peter is on trial in the courtyard. What a contrast!

Peter’s questioner doesn’t even have a name! She is here only for a few verses, hardly paid any attention. All we know is that she was a servant girl. Remember, this scene takes place near the end of Holy Week. The soldiers have seized Jesus and led him off to the palace of the High Priest. Out in the darkness in the courtyard below, this trial takes place. The examiner is this servant girl, a small, insignificant, powerless person.

Earlier that evening, when Jesus said that the disciples would all fall away, Peter, with characteristic bravado said, “Even if all the others fall away, I am behind you all the way.” Well, he was behind him  ... way behind him! Maybe he tried. At least when the soldiers came, he followed, albeit at a safe distance. He couldn’t follow Jesus, but he couldn’t leave him either. So, he ends up in the middle of the night in the courtyard.

“You also were with the Galilean,” she says. “Woman, I don’t know who you are talking about.” Peter clearly is on the defensive. He denies it altogether then, and two more times!

Sometime before, in the light of day, Jesus asks, “Who do you say that I am.” Peter’s is the first hand to go up, “You are the Christ, the son of the Living God.” Jesus says, “On this rock I will build my church.” But in the darkness of this dangerous week, this powerless servant girl has completely crushed “the rock.” Peter stumbles into the utter darkness and weeps like a lost child.

This powerless servant girl stands before the best of the disciples, and gives him the opportunity to testify, to show what he is made of. It is his most important exam, and he flunks!

I used to hate those public spelling bees in grade school. You may remember; the ones when you’d have to stand at your desk, with the whole class watching, while the teacher gave you a word to spell (or in my case, probably misspell). It was similar with Algebra in high school where the teacher would write an equation on the board and then call on a student to go forward and solve the problem with the eyes of the whole class drilling into her.

A few Sundays ago, we received members. A couple weeks before that, we baptized babies. In the course of both of those services, we were asked to stand and affirm our faith. It is a celebrative moment. It is easy to confess our faith in the confines of this building with many like-minded and like-believing people around us. We sing our hymns, we affirm our faith, but then we go out of here.

Out there is where the exam takes place. Do we keep our faith private? Oh, I know. With all the stuff that is said and done in the name of Christianity, I too am often tempted not to claim the label. But, if I don’t then they get to define it. The truth is, no matter what, when we leave these doors, our private faith is forced to go public, or to go nowhere!

A student at a private college went to see the chaplain because he and his roommate were not getting along. The chaplain asked him why and he said it is because, “He is a Muslim and I am not.”

“Well, how does that make a difference,” the chaplain asked. “Well, when we moved in together, he asked me what my religion was. I told him I was a Christian, a Lutheran. I told him that my family members weren’t the very best Christians; that we all went to church, but not all the time, and it really wasn’t a big deal to me. But, he has this nasty habit of asking embarrassing questions. Like, after we had lived together for a few weeks, he asked me why Christians never pray.

I told him, ‘we pray a lot, just sort of to ourselves.’ He said, ‘I’ll say you do, I have never seen you pray.’ He prays half a dozen times a day on his prayer mat, facing east. Then, when I came in last Saturday morning, he asked, ‘Doesn’t St. Paul say something about joining your body to that of a prostitute?’ I told him, ‘Look, she is not a prostitute, she a Sigma Delta.’ I told you, I am not the best Christian in the world. You shouldn’t judge the Christian faith by me!”

The chaplain, hearing the kid’s torment said, “Well, how should he judge the Christian faith? I think I need to write your Muslim roommate a thank you note. If he keeps working on you with these questions, he may make you into a real Christian!”

How else is the world going to judge Jesus? The world is not being cruel or accusatory when it asks us, “Weren’t you with Jesus?”

A pastor told of a friend of his who grew up in the church but then went away from it for quite some time. Now he had returned and became very active and dedicated. The pastor asked him what happened. The man was an international economist. He told of being in the former Soviet Union when, in a conversation with a colleague, she asked him if he believed in God. He said that he did. Then she asked him, “What difference does it make in your life that you believe in God? I don’t believe, but if I did, it would probably complicate my life.” At that point, he could not come up with a single thing that was different in his life because he believed in God. He was embarrassed that he had no ready answer, and realized that a vague belief in God is not enough. He needed to put his belief into practice.

Isn’t it interesting that sometimes, these people who don’t profess belief, know more about Jesus than we who do? They expose the limits of our fidelity, and we are forced to say what we believe or realize that we are embarrassingly out of step with our professions.

I know that several people here, who are involved with inter-faith dialogue, have found that they learn much more about their own faith and what they believe, when learning about and dialoging with people of other faiths.

In a class at a private college the professor asked the students to write a short essay on the subject, “What I Believe and Why.” By far the most eloquent was by a young Hindu man from Little Rock, Arkansas. It was a beautifully articulate defense of his faith. The professor, a Christian, was embarrassed by the several papers by Christian students that didn’t even come close. The professor told him how much he admired his paper and how embarrassed he was by the papers of the Christians in comparison. The student said, “Remember, I am from Little Rock. I’ve had to explain my Hinduism my whole life. In Little Rock, no one would say, ‘Gee, you’re a Southern Baptist, tell me what you believe.’ I’ve got a lot of experience explaining myself back in Little Rock.”

Our faith is strengthened when we have to explain ourselves. A few decades ago, when we mainstream Protestants were the dominant religious group, we didn’t have to explain ourselves. We didn’t even have to think much about it. Maybe we got out of practice. Now we may not be in the majority, and with the loud, active, and very conservative churches that are very involved in politics, and have the ear of so many in Washington, we need to say what we believe when asked, “Are you with Jesus?”

That is especially true of us in the UCC. In most regions of the country, our denomination is not too well known. We are, however, getting some not so welcomed attention, with accusations against Barack Obama’s church, Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. Trinity’s pastor is the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright and Trinity clearly displays on its façade that they are, “Unapologetically Christian and Unashamedly Black.”

Will we, like Peter, shrink further into the shadow? Will we deny or downplay our faith, and our denominational affiliation, or will we testify? I know Jeremiah Wright, and I know that church. Jeremiah is one of the best pastors in the UCC. If more churches were like Trinity, the denomination and the nation would be better off.

Will we testify? Can we say, as did Dr. Wright after 9/11, in essence, that we are first Christian citizens, and that maybe even nations, even our nation, reaps what it sows, as the Bible says. Can we be as bold as he in speaking the truth about how racism has affected and is affecting this nation? Can we own up to the great divide in how white, middle and upper-class citizens have been treated by this nation and how people of color and the poor have been treated?

Will we testify? When we are told that we are not patriotic because we are critical of this war and so many policies out of Washington, can we say that we take the confession of faith seriously, that “there shall be no other gods before the One True God?” Our first allegiance is to God. Can we say that we don’t believe “might makes right” because we are followers of a servant Savior?

Can we testify that we follow a Savior who is the Prince of Peace, who said, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” that we follow a Savior who said, “Blessed are the poor,” that we follow a God who protected the widow, the foreigner, and the orphan?

Can we testify to the fundamentalists that we don’t believe one has to park one’s brain at the door of the church and believe all kinds of unscientific baloney, that we worship the God of the Bible, not a pre-modern world view? Can we remind them that even though Jesus was called the Good Shepherd, he didn’t treat people like sheep, but like whole human beings?

Can we testify to those on the other end of the spectrum who think there is nothing greater than we humans, nothing beyond the reach of our minds, that maybe life is truer when we plumb both mind and spirit?

Can we say to those church folks and others who don’t care about global warming or environmental concerns, that we see the degradation of the environment as a central religious concern, because we really believe, “That the earth is the Lord’s, and all that is in it?”

When we are asked why we give to the church, why we give to special offerings, or to people on the other side of the world, can we testify to what Jesus said, “Whatever you do unto the least of these, you do unto me?” Can we say that ours is a God of abundance and we believe that this God calls us in fact, not just in theory, to be stewards of God’s realm and Christ’s mission?

When people from other denominations, or even our parents or our children, say to us that we must not read the Bible, given that we are open to and affirming of gay, lesbian and transgender people, can we tell them, “No, it is precisely because we do read the Bible, the whole Bible, that we are Open and Affirming. Therefore, we know that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ is a God of Love, a God who created us as we are, in the image of God and precious, whatever our orientation. We believe that in Jesus, there is ‘neither Jew nor gentile, slave or free, male or female,’ straight or gay, but all are one in Christ Jesus?”

My friends, Peter, faced his trial in front of this little servant girl before Jesus’ resurrection. What is our excuse? We’ve had the benefit of 2000 years post resurrection Christian faith. Yes, we worship the God of a Risen Savior, but that doesn’t mean we can skip over Holy Week, any more than Peter could.

But maybe it does means that we will have the courage to profess what we believe, in word and in deed, before anyone, or no one at all.

May it be so.

 

DVD 3/16/08