First Friends Meeting
Mark 11:7-11
‘The Last Week’
Doug Gwyn

In Life and Worship Team this week, we wondered how often Palm Sunday falls on April Fools Day. None of us could remember it happening before. But it did occur to us that there’s a certain sense to it. Palm Sunday is the time we mark the beginning of Jesus’ last week of life. It begins with the story this triumphal procession Andy has read for us from Mark’s gospel. Jesus arrives in Jerusalem. He’s hailed by a crowd of people as their new king. On the face of it, it sounds glorious, not foolish. But Jesus isn’t riding a war horse, he’s riding a donkey – not even a mature donkey, but a donkey colt. That’s our first clue that something ironic, strange is going on here. We sing ‘All Glory, Laud and Honor’, but the words drip with irony. There’s a dark humor, a divine foolishness afoot. By the time the week is over, Jesus will be mocked and jeered as the biggest fool of them all.

Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan have recently published a book titled The Last Week, looking at those final days of Jesus’ life. They point out that Jesus arrives in Jerusalem just before the Passover feast. It’s the time Jews celebrate their liberation from bondage in Egypt. But even in Jesus’ day, that liberation was more than a thousand years ago. In Jesus’ day, Jerusalem suffered a new bondage of Roman occupation and heavy taxation. So every year, Passover tended to stir up people’s resentments and yearning for a new Moses, a new liberator. In fact, there were major riots in Jerusalem during Passover some of those years. The Romans came down hard on Jerusalem and a lot of people were killed in the streets. So, every year, just as the Passover began, the Governor, Pontius Pilate would ride in from his headquarters in Caesarea with a cohort of imperial cavalry. They arrived with trumpets and fanfare, to let the people know, “Hey, we’re here – don’t do something foolish.” Coming from Caesarea, Pilate and his cavalry entered the city through a west-side gate. And you know Pilate would be riding a war horse, not a donkey. Pilate is about power, about force.

Well, we don’t know if it happened at the same time exactly, but when Jesus comes into town from Bethany, he’s entering an east-side gate. It’s a counter-procession, an alternative parade. Riding a donkey, Jesus is sending a completely different signal. Jesus is about a different kind of power. The power of God in people’s hearts, spreading rapidly from the grassroots, not slamming down on people from above. But no wonder the chief priests and scribes are horrified by the timing and the way Jesus arrives! They’re caught in the middle between their own restless people and the greedy Roman occupation. Watching the Jesus parade enter Jerusalem is like watching a burning fuse wend its way into a powder keg. They can’t just sit there and hope that the west gate doesn’t know what the east gate is doing.

According to Mark, Jesus goes straight to the temple that day. But it’s getting late. He just looks around and then goes back out the east gate to Bethany for the night. It’s the next day, Monday, that he scatters the money changers in the temple. He accuses them of turning the temple into a den of robbers. Now the priests and scribes are determined to arrest Jesus before this goes any further. But as Mark comments, “The were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching (11:18). And each evening that week, Jesus leaves the city and returns to Bethany. This continues Tuesday and Wednesday. Jesus teaches large crowds in the temple. His teaching is very challenging, confrontational. He predicts the destruction of the temple. Even though that event will not happen for another 40 years, Jesus creates an atmosphere where it feels like it’s already happening. The temple, the whole world seems to be coming apart as Jesus preaches to a spellbound crowd, using parables, prophecies, and warnings. In effect, Jesus is yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater. But people aren’t stampeding out – they’re crowding in. The fire of the Holy Spirit is ready to break out in them.

Well, the priests and scribes are beside themselves. This thing could blow any minute. But they know they can’t crash in and arrest Jesus before all these people. It would create the very riot they hope to avoid. Their only chance is to arrest Jesus at night, outside the city. To do that, they need someone from inside Jesus’ circle to betray him. We will never really know what went on in the mind of Judas, that led him to cooperate with the priests. What that kiss of betrayal in the garden that Thursday evening meant to Judas we can only guess. But the motivations of the priests and scribes are easy enough to understand. They felt responsible to protect the temple, to ensure the safety of their people, to keep the peace with the Romans. But they were in the business of maintaining a false peace. They were holding in place a system that was oppressive and wrong. And they benefited from their position between the Romans and their own people. They were invested in staving off the kingdom of God.

For those few days that last week, it all hung in the balance. I think we can find ourselves in that last week, and learn lessons from it for today. That last week teaches us that Jesus is alive and well among his people. Christ still fills our hearts with fire, still gathers us to himself as he did with the crowd there in the temple. First, we have to be quiet to hear Christ teaching, just as the crowd there in the temple was quiet. When we still our hearts to hear Christ’s teaching, it keeps drawing us nearer, nearer to God in our thoughts, in our words, in our daily lives. Last week, Tom Mullen spoke on one of those teachings from that last week of Jesus’ life (Matt 25). Jesus taught that when we visit the sick, feed the hungry, reach out to those in prison, we are doing those things for him. Christ is there among us, particularly as we serve and help one another. Tom rightly pointed out that we are usually unconscious that we are serving Christ. We don’t usually recognize Christ in that other person. But we do it because Christ in us nudges us. We sense somehow that it’s the right thing to do.

Christ is alive and well, moving freely in the world when his people keep widening the circle out to include others. When we reach out and include those who have been excluded, we are following the clear example of Jesus. But we betray Christ when we turn him over to those who are supposed to be ‘in charge’. What do I mean by that?

Well, for example, the Christian clergy can wind up looking like those chief priests and scribes sometimes. Because professional ministers feel institutional responsibility – the building, the budget, the programs, etc. If you turn Christ over to me, I’ll kill him. I won’t mean to. But I may. Now, let me clarify that. I hope Christ is alive and well in my own life. I try to seek and follow his guidance. And I try to serve the Meeting as prayerfully and conscientiously as I can. But don’t make me responsible for our shared spiritual life. Our open worship is a chance for us to all gather under Christ’s teaching. Our Monthly Meetings for business is our attempt to be led by Christ’s Spirit into unity. I get out of the way of that, so that Christ can teach and lead us together in these temples we call our bodies.

We also betray Christ when we turn him over to the state. Again, we may not always recognize when we are doing it. Our nation is founded on the principle of separation of Church and state. And Quakers were key pioneers in establishing that separation. It protects the Church from the state’s manipulation, and it protects the state from the Church’s designs. We must be vigilant in maintaining that constitutional separation. But we can also betray Christ to the state in more subtle ways. If you’re faced with a moral dilemma and find yourself shrugging and saying, “Well, it’s not against the law,” or “It’s a free country,” beware. Or you may feel morally bound to do something, but you’re concerned not to break the law. Don’t assume that you shouldn’t do it. There would be no Quaker faith today, if early Friends had obeyed the English laws that forbade their meetings. We would still be a segregated society if African Americans hadn’t started sitting at lunch counters where they were not allowed. A lot more Central American political refugees would have died in the Arizona desert in the 1980s, if conscientious Americans hadn’t taken them in and given them sanctuary in their homes and churches.

When we come together around human need and around spiritual devotion, then we gather around Christ, like the people in the temple. We protect Christ, we glorify God. We draw closer together and the kingdom of God breaks out among us. This month our Kaleidoscope focus is the Food Pantry. I hope we will do as well for the Pantry as we have done for the Friends School last month. Because there is very real need, very real desperation and hunger in our own community.

So, as we move into Open Worship now, let us gather around Christ, let us hear his teaching in our hearts, let us feel Christ’s presence in the temples of our bodies.