Jesus vs the Chamber of Commerce (Matthew 21:1-13; Palm Sunday; March 29, 2015)

Jesus vs the Chamber of Commerce

Matthew 21:1-13
Palm Sunday
March 29, 2015

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, IA

Everyone loves a parade. People gather with their lawn chairs along the parade route. Some people stake out space long before the parade begins. In Decorah we don’t even have to stay with our chairs; we know they’ll still be there when we get back from wandering around and saying hi to our friends. I don’t know whether the kids or the grownups enjoy a parade more. Kids chase after candy that is thrown to them from passing trucks, floats and tractors.

No one throws candy to grownups, but we get to watch the kids. We all get to wave to our friends who are actually in the parade. Our friends in the parade try to pretend that they don’t really want to be center of attention, but we don’t believe them.

In Decorah we don’t need much of a reason to have a parade. I remember in our first six months in Decorah there were four parades: Fourth of July, Nordic Fest, Homecoming, and Christmas. The day of the Christmas parade was so cold I was afraid that there would be parades right through January and February, but good sense prevails in Decorah. Maybe at the last minute, but it prevails.

Everyone loves a parade, but this parade, this entrance into Jerusalem with a donkey, coats on the road, waving palm branches and shouts of Hosanna! is something different.

Some folks loved this parade. The crowd loved it. The blind and the lame loved it. They followed Jesus right into the Temple and Jesus cured them. The children loved this parade. No one threw any candy but they loved it anyway. They really got into shouting Hosanna! and they also followed Jesus into the Temple. They kept shouting Hosanna!–an Aramaic word that means “Save!” or “Help!” They shouted “Hosanna to the Son of David!” They kept it up long after the parade was over. They were having a good time.

But not everyone loved this parade. Jesus had no permit for the parade. He hadn’t talked to law enforcement or City Hall or anyone else to ask permission to have a parade. The whole city was in turmoil. Then as now there were folks who didn’t like turmoil, especially turmoil of the unauthorized kind. They asked, “Who is this?” (Well, at least that’s the gist of what they asked. There might have been some editing.) “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee,” was their answer.

Uh oh. “The prophet Jesus,” is it? That could mean trouble. Prophets are unpredictable. No, that’s not exactly true. No, prophets predictably speak in ways that make people uncomfortable. They have little sense of propriety. They crash parties. They make scenes. They stir up crowds. They annoy the people who like things the way they are.

Prophets act like Jesus acted. This is why I never took seriously the fad of a few years ago of wearing bracelets and necklaces with the letters “WWJD,” (What would Jesus do?). That’s because the people who most wanted people to wear these bracelets seemed to me to be the people least likely to have approved of what Jesus actually did, and still less likely to approve of other people doing what he did.

Here’s what he did: He led the crowd into the outer court of the Temple and he disrupted the smooth flow of the business of religion. You probably know the drill. The Torah required sacrificial animals that were perfect specimens, animals with no deformities, scars or sores. It wasn’t right to fulfill your obligations to God with animals that you didn’t want and couldn’t sell anyway; no a sacrifice, if it’s really a sacrifice, needs to be of your best. And it was hard to travel from, say, Nazareth in Galilee with an animal, a yearling lamb, say and arrive in Jerusalem with the lamb still unblemished.

So, in the court of the Temple you could buy unblemished animals right on the spot. It was a service to pilgrims and a source of revenue to the Temple, especially during the major festivals, like Passover.

Now, to buy these animals you couldn’t use ordinary currency. The ordinary currency was Roman and Roman currency had images of the emperor stamped into them; Roman money was widely believed to be idolatrous in and of itself, no matter the intention of the one who used it. It might be okay for daily buying and selling, but it simply wouldn’t do for use even in the outer court of the Temple. So, in the court of the Temple you could exchange ordinary money for the shekels that you needed to buy the animals you needed for your sacrifice. It was another service that the Temple provided for pilgrims and tourists and, again, a source of revenue.

These businessmen were doing a brisk business. After all, it was just days before Passover. The city was packed with pilgrims, each one of whom would want to make offer a sacrifice for the things that everyone, of whatever religion, prays for: good crops, fertile marriages, healthy children, and freedom from disease.

So Jesus, “the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee,” came into the Temple with the parts of the crowd that wanted to see what would happen next. He marched up to the tables of the money changers and overturned them, scattering coins of all sorts on the ground. He knocked over the chairs that the sellers of animals were sitting on. (I don’t even know whether he did this while the sellers were still sitting on them.) He let the pigeons loose; he drove out the lambs and goats. You can imagine the scene: tables overturned, merchants shouting and shaking their fists, pigeons flying around trying avoid recapture, lambs and goats bleating and looking for a way through the crowd, and children shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David!”

If the turmoil in the city outside the outer court of the Temple was bad, this was far worse. This was turmoil at the very center of the ideological world of Roman Judea. If God was in his heaven and all was right with the world, as the one percent always seems to believe, it was because God lived in the Temple and the Temple functioned smoothly. It functioned smoothly, that is, until Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee showed up.

This parade, Jesus’s actions in the Temple court, indeed, everything that Jesus did during this time in Jerusalem had two effects. It caused sparks of hope to burst into flame in the hearts of some so that they shouted Hosanna. Among these were the blind, the lame and the children.

It caused the ones who liked things just fine they way they were to become angry so that they wanted Jesus dead. Among these were the Romans, their collaborators among the Jewish people, and, of course, the Chamber of Commerce.

None of this was a surprise to Jesus, not because his divinity gave him perfect knowledge of the future, but because this is what he had come to Jerusalem to do. He came to pick a fight, to draw a line between cynicism and hope, between poverty and privilege, between oppression and justice. He knew that people would make choices. Some would welcome a new hope for justice; others would cynically cling to their privilege. This is the work of a prophet. And that’s what he was.

Jesus has found the sweet spot and preachers, when we step into the pulpit and we ask “What would Jesus do?” look for that sweet spot, too. We hope when they hear what we say, that outsiders, the oppressed, the blind, the lame and children will rediscover hope and be moved to shout Hosanna! We also expect that some will get angry and want to string us up. When both of those things happen, we know we have found the sweet spot.

It’s true for the whole church. If our good news doesn’t cause some–the ones you’d least expect–to shout Hosanna and wave palm branches, our good news isn’t good enough. If our good news doesn’t cause others to wish for our destruction, our good news isn’t good enough. When there are some folks shouting Hosanna and others muttering under their breath, then we know we’re on to something that Jesus would have recognized, something that Jesus would have done, something that might be a place where new life might be found. It could happen today, perhaps, next week or sometime next year; but, whenever and wherever it happens, it will be Easter.

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