He answered, I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out. Luke 19.40

Transcription

1 Page 1 of 6 The Stones Are Talking! Reading: Luke March 28 th, 2010 Palm Sunday Rev. J. Manny Santiago He answered, I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out. Luke Introduction Paying attention to the gospel according to Luke, you will note that Jesus has been heading to Jerusalem for the past 10 or so chapters. We first find Jesus in the Galilean region, up north from Jerusalem. The journey south was surely hard and dangerous when you don t have a subway, cars or any of the modern ways of traveling, but it takes Jesus a few years in the gospel to reach this point. Of course, we must put this in its literary context, in which the evangelist tells a story of a man who had been walking with God s people for some time; revealing the face of God through his actions of love. A few verses before, on Luke we find Jesus asking a man, Zacchaeus, to open the doors of his house for he Jesus is to stay with him and his family. The story reads as follows: So he hurried down [the tree] and was happy to welcome [Jesus]. All who saw it began to grumble and said, He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner. Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much. This is a story of transformation that took many by surprise: a so-called sinner welcomes Jesus into his home and his hearts is so transformed that he decides to share his possessions with those who did not have.

2 Page 2 of 6 This was in Jericho, a few miles east of Jerusalem. I can imagine Jesus thinking that once in the big city people will react no more differently. After all, he has been trying to reach the city of Jerusalem for a few chapters! Finally, Jesus reaches a couple of towns close by Jerusalem, and asked some of his followers to prepare to enter the city. He asked them to look for the donkey, or the colt, or the pony, or whichever animal he thought would be good to use to enter the city, and get ready to enter a city which embodied the established religious institution and the oppressive political empire, both signals of a society suffering the pain of slavery. I can imagine that Jesus, after having witnessed Zacchaeus s transformation, was ready to witness the same from the people of Jerusalem. Alas! That was not how the story developed Our Jerusalem Methodist theologian and New York native, Dr. Harold Recinos who teaches at Perkins School of Theology wrote a poem called The Witness, and I want to share it with you today: I ve come back to the / city weeping old tears / provided by the shattered // lives miracles ignore. / I see churches that / did not flee the horror // of this ghetto still / conjuring hope for all / the people who yearn for // a God who does not shorten / days nor answers prayers / with a colossal silence. // I walked past the finest / business on the block / where Abuelita was laid / in a coffin made of / the lightest wood / our money could buy // aware of her last words / warning against every life / in the neighborhood becoming // a grave. Then I pause before the mural painted on the wall / of a building at the end of / the street to read the / names of friends now dead / to this glass world in the // South Bronx. 1

3 Page 3 of 6 Recinos was raised in the South Bronx as the son of Puerto Rican immigrants looking for a better life. His life was not easy. He got into trouble while a young person in the city, and saw firsthand how the church kept silent in the midst of injustices committed against the ones the church called God s people. So, he thought that there were two options: stay away from the church that has kept silent or join in on its ranks and be an agent of transformation. As I mentioned, he chose the latter, becoming a minister first in the South Bronx and later a theologian of the Church. New York is to us what Jerusalem was to Jesus; is the city where oppression lives and where the lives of millions are either transformed for the better of for the worst. We find injustice, pain, hunger, desolation, desperation, need in every corner. Our friends names are written on the wall as well. Even those friends whose names we do not yet know. And, what are we to do? When Jesus came to Jerusalem he came empowered by the Spirit of God to transform the city and its people. A few hundred joined him in the struggle. A few brave women and men, and children, and lepers, and blind people, and people in pain, and people with a vision of physical and political liberation decided that it was worth working with him in the transformation of the world that would start that day and that time. They welcomed him with branches, as defying the powers that be that Jerusalem represented. Just as the Emperors were welcomed by the people as heroes every time they entered a city, Jesus too was received by the crowds as a hero. He came proclaiming the transformation that was possible by an encounter with the God-madehuman which others had experienced.

4 Page 4 of 6 The Call to be Silent Nevertheless, some among the crowd complained. There are always a few of those. The Pharisees asked Jesus to order his followers to stop doing that. They urged Jesus to ask his followers to stop this because the Pharisees knew that what the disciples were doing was a sign of recognizing Jesus power over the oppressive powers of the Roman Empire and its allies in the Judean government. There are always a few who try to shut down the voices and actions of those who justly, humbly, and determinedly defy the systems that oppress others and themselves. There are always a few who try to put down the one who comes in the name of God to proclaim victory over slavery and the sins of society. Their voices are strong and loud. You hear them on the streets and on TV and on the radio, and now the internet. You hear their voices in political rallies asking for the repeal of women s rights over their own bodies; and asking to close shut the doors to gay and lesbian couples to get married; and risking to put the health of children and the elderly in jeopardy so insurance companies can make money; and asking for families to be divided because one of their parents is not worth to be a citizen and the list goes on and on. To these voices who ask for Jesus followers to stop proclaiming social justice, social transformation, and social liberation, Jesus says: I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out. The Stones are Talking When Jesus entered Jerusalem, he expected to bring transformation to a society that needed of God s presence in their midst. At the end of the week, his body was

5 Page 5 of 6 hanging from a tree. His dreams, his passion for bringing God s love to the people, his eagerness to work with others to transform society came to an abrupt end. The people who came with him were silent. The voiceless was, once again, without voice. I would argue that, in spite of the message of resurrection that will come as the next week comes to be, the voices of those who were willing to go along for the ride with Jesus, are still silent. Their place has been taken by the stones which Jesus mentioned. The stones are indeed talking, shouting, screaming for transformation and liberation. As the Apostle Paul reminds us in Romans 8.22: We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now. The whole creation is still in labor pains waiting for the manifestation of God s transformation, while the church keeps its silence. We have let the voices of the Pharisees overshadow our own voices as the people of God. We have given up and stayed by the cross, awaiting resurrection but reluctant to believe that it is in our own actions that we proclaim this miracle. Freedom is Coming! Perhaps is because we are not ready to live those things we cannot imagine. Another Latina theologian, this time an American Baptist, Dr. Elizabeth Conde-Frazier, wrote this: How to live out something we cannot imagine, things we have never experienced before? The Spirit of resurrection grants us these dreams for free and invites us and prepares us to live them out. It is not a matter of subverting but rather of witnessing to the resurrection by faithfully answering the invitation of the Spirit. [ ] We are not living according to the events of the fall but rather according to the events of the resurrection. We will live the unimaginable if and only if we answer the

6 Page 6 of 6 invitation that comes from God s Spirit of: don t be afraid, rejoice, and go fast to tell the others about these good news 2 People of God, the invitation is now extended to you. Go forth and proclaim with your actions what the stones cannot do. Go forth and proclaim that the king is coming, the one who share in his reign for he too was one of us. Go forth and proclaim that God is in our midst, riding a donkey, ready to transform the systems that need to be transformed, and that you are ready to join in the crowd. Go forth and proclaim, as the black South Africans did a few years ago O freedom is coming! Freedom is coming, yes I know! Freedom is coming! Amen. 1 Recinos, Harold J. Who Comes in the Name of the Lord? Jesus at the Margins. (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press) 1997, pp Conde-Frazier, Elizabeth. Amor. muerte y esperanza: una meditación in Camino a Emaús: Compartiendo el Ministerio de Jesús. (Isasi-Díaz, A.M., Matovina, T., and Torres-Vidal, N.M., editors) (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press) 2002, pp. 105.