In the name of Jesus

In the name of Jesus

Thomas Kleinert

Palm Sunday is a curious day. We spread palm branches up and down the center aisle, turning the long stretch of carpet into a royal highway, and we sing with joyful exuberance, welcoming the Lord Jesus into the city. Today, the tall double doors of the front entrance are the city gates of Jerusalem, and the table in the great hall awaits the gathering of the guests who are coming from all the ends of the earth for the royal banquet. We sing, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord,” because we do want him here, we do want him to rule and make all things right – but we also remember why we have come to call this particular week, Holy Week; because it’s not all royal welcome and hosanna. Our hopes and the promises of God are being fulfilled in ways no one could have imagined.

We do want Jesus to rule and to make all things right, but we are also beginning to understand that it is not just them who get in the way of Christ’s reign – them being the Jews, or the Romans, or the fickle crowds or whoever else we think we can blame – it is we ourselves who cannot let God’s love rule our lives. Our own visions of a world made right often have more in common with imperial dreams of world domination than with the peculiar way of Christ. We get power wrong, and we half know it, and so we feel a little awkward standing in the gate of the city and watching Jesus riding down Broadway on a donkey. He’s turning our world upside down, and we half know that that is what it takes to make things right, but we only half know it and the other half resists the pull of God’s love. We get power wrong. We see the donkey, but in our imagination it’s still the strong man in shining armor, riding high on a white stallion, who comes to save us. We see Jesus, but we still dream of Superman and Wonder Woman.

There is a city, not far from here, and it could be any city, in any state.[1] In that city, there’s a hospital for men and women who are emotionally wounded and mentally ill. A few years ago, the medical staff and the board of that psychiatric hospital wanted to open halfway houses in the community, so that people who were on their way to full recovery could be supported while making the transition back into life outside. Rather than taking one giant step from the small world of the hospital to the big world of the city, they would be encouraged to take a number of small steps toward greater independence. Well, not everybody in the city was thrilled about the idea, and so there was a contentious city council meeting.

The place was packed. Hundreds of people squeezed into the meeting room, shouting their opposition to the halfway houses, “We don’t want these people in our neighborhood.” After a couple of brief presentations and a lot of yelling the city council said no to the proposal. Just then, the back doors of the auditorium opened, and in came this little woman with a white scarf over her head. Suddenly it was so quiet, even people up in the balcony could hear the hushed voices from below, “Is that Mother Teresa?” Indeed, it was her. She happened to be in town to dedicate a new Sisters of Charity program and she had heard about this meeting. She came down the center aisle and everybody gasped as she came to the front, turned around, got down on her knees in front of the city council, raised her arms and said, “In the name of Jesus, make room for these children of God! When you reject them, you reject Jesus. When you affirm them, you embrace Jesus.” With her arms up in the air, she pleaded, “Please, please, please, please, please, in the name of Jesus, make room for these children of God! Make room for them in your neighborhoods.”

Now imagine for a moment you’re on the city council. There is Mother Teresa on her knees in front of you. Crews from several television stations have followed her into the auditorium, with cameras rolling. What are you going to do? Somebody say something; somebody do something.

One of the councilmen moved that the previous motion be reconsidered, there was a second, and then the city council did a complete 180 and voted unanimously in favor of opening those neighborhood halfway houses. There were hundreds of people packed into that auditorium, and not one of them uttered a word of opposition to the motion. Nobody shouted when it passed. Why? Because of the pleas of a little old woman who spoke with such authority? Everybody knew how Mother Teresa served God by serving the poor. Everybody knew that she wanted nothing but to live in the love and mercy of God. And seeing her there on her knees between the elected officials and the hushed crowd, everybody in that room wanted that life, the life her pleas represented, a life of love and mercy; and they wanted it more than any other life, for themselves and for everybody else, and together they moved one step closer to the kingdom where mercy reigns. They couldn’t say what made them change their minds, it was a strange power, it was a love stronger than all their fears.

Jesus doesn’t ride into town in front of an army. He doesn’t change the world by imposing his will on us. He turns the world upside down by refusing the path of coercion. He transforms the world by embracing the way of obedience, by doing what love of God and neighbor demand. That is the passion of his life to this final breath. We call this week holy because in the events we recall in prayer and ritual we enter the mystery of God’s power revealed in the life and death of Jesus.

“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,” the Apostle Paul urges us. “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit … Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others” (Phil 2:3-4). Such words were rare and foreign in a city like Philippi, which isn’t to say they aren’t rare and foreign in a city like Nashville. The citizens of Philippi valued their connections to the imperial household, their privileges, and their advantages as subjects of Caesar. Roman culture valued force, competition, and honor-seeking, and humility was not considered a virtue. The perfect career of a young Roman aristocrat followed the cursus honorum, or “course of honor.” It was a ladder that comprised a mixture of military and political administration posts. Each office had a minimum age for election, and at each stage the upwardly mobile young man gained new responsibilities and new privileges. Lower classes of people developed their own sequence of offices that mimicked the upper classes. Roman society, much like ours, was built on the pursuit of status. You move up, and you socialize with the people who can help you move up even higher. But when everybody is only concerned about moving up the ladder, the only reason to look around is to check out the competition with a quick glance over the shoulder; others aren’t even seen.

We call this week holy because the final days of Jesus’ life on earth reveal to us the heart of reality, and it’s not relentless competition and survival, but rather relentless love and communion.

“You want to talk about status?” Paul seems to suggest. “OK, let’s talk about status.” Jesus had the highest status imaginable: equality with God. Only he did not regard that equality as something to be used for his own advantage. On the contrary. He emptied himself. He humbled himself. He “made himself of no reputation,” as the King James translation says it so beautifully. He climbed down the ladder, his mind on nothing but the will of God, loving us sinners with a passion and a vulnerability for which we have no words. On the cross, his career in reverse reached its end and he died the most cruel and degrading death, reserved for slaves and rebels against Rome’s rule.

And isn’t that just the way the world works? Isn’t that the way it has been since the dawn of humankind and will always be? Yes, that is part of the truth we must face when we look to the cross. This is what we are capable of doing to each other in the name of religion, in the name of justice, in the name of political convenience. But this dark Friday truth has a glorious, hopeful side: God vindicated the way of Jesus. God raised Jesus from the dead and gave him, the crucified servant, the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. We call this week holy, because the story of Jesus reveals who God is, and not despite the cross, but because of it. We look to the cross and we see love that goes all the way for the life of the world, for the sake of communion with us, for the sake of righteousness.

Today we sing, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord,” because we do want him here, we do want him to rule and make all things right for all the children of God, especially the ones for whom no one wants to make room in their neighborhood. We sing, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord,” because this humble one, riding on a donkey, comes with forgiveness, never tiring of showing us a world where all are neighbors and all are at home, never tiring of inviting us to live there.

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[1] Based on a story told by Tony Campolo http://www.csec.org/csec/sermon/campolo_5218.htm

Can You See Me Now

Can You See Me Now

Thomas Kleinert

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My friend John is a photographer, but he also loves to tell stories about his travels in the U. S. and around the world. A few days ago, John talked about a trip to India and the large groups of children that often surrounded him there, laughing, shouting, pulling his sleeves and begging for change, and how one day he decided that he was done handing out small coins to them. He got into the back of one of those three-wheel taxis and took off, feeling terrible about his lack of generosity and compassion. He turned around and looked back through the small window cut into the canvas of the cab; he saw the children he had just so cold-heartedly abandoned: they were playing soccer on the street, laughing and shouting and having a great time. He was relieved to see them run around and play, and to note that, contrary to the dark thoughts of his guilt-ridden heart, their world did not revolve around him.

Another story he told that night was from a trip to China. He visited a town where begging had apparently been elevated to a performance art. John saw a man at a street corner, and he was fascinated by him while at the same time trying to ignore him. The man had no legs and he was sitting in a small wooden cart; one of his arms looked twisted and paralyzed, and he used his other arm to push himself forward. John tried to look past him, but the man wouldn’t let him. He addressed John as he walked past, but John kept walking, pretending he couldn’t hear him. He thought he had escaped, but the man in the cart followed him, pushing himself forward on the road with astounding proficiency. John walked a little faster, his eyes firmly locked on the end of the street, but the man didn’t stop his pursuit. John picked up the pace some more, but the man in the cart was determined and astonishingly quick on his wheels. They came to the end of the block and John crossed the street, certain that the man would give up the chase now, but no, he was relentless. Halfway down the second block, John stopped and turned around. They looked at each other, neither said a word, and then they just burst out laughing, deep, full-throated belly laughs that shook their bodies so hard that fear, guilt, awkwardness, shame and anger vanished until nothing but joy remained. Then they went to get a cup of tea.

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Mark Horvath also works with a camera, but his preferred format are video and film. He once heard a story about a homeless man on Hollywood Blvd who thought he was invisible. One day a kid handed the man a pamphlet, and he was shocked and amazed: “What!? You can see me? How can you see me? I’m invisible!”

Horvath writes about that moment, “It isn’t hard to comprehend this man’s slow spiral into invisibility. Once on the street, people started to walk past him, ignoring him as if he didn’t exist … much like they do a piece of trash on the sidewalk. It’s not that people are bad, but if we make eye contact, or engage in conversation, then we have to admit they exist and that we might have a basic human need to care. But it’s so much easier to simply close our eyes and shield our hearts to their existence.” Horvath knows we’re not literally closing our eyes; we just keep them focussed on the end of the street and hope that invisibility works both ways. The homeless man blends into the background, and we who are passing by blend into the steady stream of faceless pedestrians; it’s a kind of blindness.

Horvath writes about homeless men and women, “I not only feel their pain, I truly know their pain. I lived their pain. You’d never know it now but I was a homeless person. Seventeen years ago, I lived on Hollywood Blvd. But today, I find myself looking away, ignoring the faces, avoiding their eyes — and I’m ashamed when I realize I’m doing it. But I really can feel their pain, and it is almost unbearable, but it’s just under the surface of my professional exterior.” After years of using a television camera to tell the stories of homelessness and the organizations trying to help, Horvath began shooting short, unedited clips of homeless men and women telling their stories, and he posted them on his website, Invisible People. The purpose of the project, he writes, “is to make the invisible visible. I hope these people and their stories connect with you and don’t let go. I hope their conversations with me will start a conversation in your circle of friends.”[1] Stories and conversations against the pervasive blindness.

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Jesus and his band of disciples were in Galilee, where Jesus was proclaiming the good news of God: “the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”[2] He healed the sick, freed the oppressed, he taught and fed the people with parables and bread, and the disciples watched and learned. They watched a lot, but they were slow to learn. “Do you still not perceive or understand?” Jesus said to them at one point, frustration in his voice. “Do you have eyes, but fail to see?”[3]

They came to Bethsaida, on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee, and people brought a blind man to him and begged him to touch him. Jesus laid his hands on his eyes and looked at him intently and the man’s sight was restored and he saw everything clearly.[4] The disciples watched, but they were slow to understand who Jesus was, and what it meant to follow him. They were far from seeing everything clearly.

They followed him as best they could as he turned to Jerusalem. On the way, Jesus told them repeatedly what would happen in the city and he taught them about the demands of discipleship, about serving one another and being attentive to little ones and about the meaning of greatness in the kingdom of God. “What is it you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked the sons of Zebedee, who had been with him almost as long as Peter, and they responded, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.”[5] Jesus modeled being a servant, but his disciples, to this day, dream of power and privilege.

Then they came to Jericho, the last stop for travelers and pilgrims on the way to Jerusalem, and there, just outside the city, sitting by the roadside, was Bartimaeus, a blind beggar. When he heard that it was Jesus who was walking by, he began to shout out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Many in the crowd told him to hold his tongue and be quiet. Easy for them to say, they weren’t beggars. For them it was just fine for Bartimaeus to blend into the background and remain invisible, but he cried out even more loudly, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” He knew it was Messiah time; he knew this was the time when the eyes of the blind are opened and the poor have their debts canceled and the oppressed go free. He may have been blind, but his vision was better than theirs; his insight more profound than the disciples’. He named and entreated Jesus, and when the people rebuked him, he asked again, louder this time. He refused to be silenced. He refused to blend into the background and remain part of the everyday road side backdrop everybody had gotten used to. He cried out, relentlessly, and Jesus stood still. “Call him here,” he said, and they did. “Courage,” they said, “get up, he’s calling you.” They didn’t have to tell him twice. He sprang up and came to Jesus.

“What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked him, the same question he had asked James and John who had been stumbling along behind him since the earliest days of his mission in Galilee. They dreamed of power and privilege; they didn’t see who he was; they didn’t perceive what his mission was, despite their having been with him so long. The blind beggar answered Jesus, “Let me see again.” And Jesus said, “Go, your faith has made you well.” He didn’t send him away; he told him that the days of his marginalization and invisibility were over. Bartimaeus regained his sight and followed Jesus on the way to the cross.

After a long series of episodes in Mark’s gospel in which the disciples just don’t get it, it is a blind man who finally sees clearly who Jesus is and follows him up to Jerusalem. There’s hope for us blind beggars who can’t quite see who Jesus is and what it means to follow him. It’s Messiah time; he’s calling us. The rich man went away grieving when Jesus called him, for he had many possessions. Bartimaeus, throwing off his cloak, jumped up and came to Jesus and followed him on the way. His cloak was everything for him, mattress, blanket, umbrella, coat and coin catcher – it was everything he owned and it represented the life he left behind for the sake of the kingdom, like a fisherman who walks away from his nets and a tax collector who abandons his desk to follow Jesus. Bartimaeus walked away from invisibility and blindness and followed Jesus on the kingdom way. With his eyes opened by Jesus, he began to see everything in his light. He began to notice what others routinely missed or ignored. He began to see everything in the context of Jesus and found a whole new life.

Jesus asks a simple question, “What do you want me to do for you?”

How do you answer?