Holy Ridicule (Palm Sunday; Luke 19:29-44; April 9, 2017)

Holy Ridicule

Palm Sunday
Luke 19:29-44
April 9, 2017

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

A friend of mine who teaches an Introduction to the New Testament course asks his students, "Why was Jesus killed?" Most of the answers are some variation on "He died to save us from our sins." That's a perfectly acceptable and orthodox answer, but to a different question: "Why did Jesus die?"

No, the question is, "Why was Jesus killed?" and the answer can hardly be "to save us from our sins" unless we imagine those who brought him to trial, condemned him, and executed him believed in a theory about Jesus' death that wasn't invented until some twelve centuries later.

Douglas Adams in his four-volume trilogy The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy takes a stab at answering my friend's question. The story begins "one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change..."¹ But this, as a motive for killing Jesus, makes no sense at all. People with power may find nice people annoying and uncool. They do not find them threatening, even if they preach being nice.

Without a threat to their authority, why would the Jewish leaders care if someone were telling everyone to be nice to each other? Why would the Roman governor bother to bring the power of the Roman regime to bear? Nice people are not hard to govern; quite the contrary. Douglas Adams, like the New Atheists fails to take Jesus seriously.

So why was Jesus killed? It's a good day to ask that question and, unless I am very much mistaken, an answer can be found in and around today's reading.

We got a start at an answer last week when we heard the stories of Jesus restoring sight to a blind beggar and announcing the salvation (and retirement) of Zacchaeus the tax farmer.
In both cases, the result was not only an individual changed life; it was a disruption to the economy. In the first case it was the economy of alms-giving that involved the circulation of money and prestige. In the second case, the financial foundation of Roman Palestine
was laid bare as opposed to the Torah, to the Way of God given to the Jews. Will people kill for money?

After these stories, Jesus tells a parable we know as the Parable of the Talents. It is usually read as a story about people's gifts or talents and making proper use of them, but first it is clearly a story about something else. A member of royalty placed three small fortunes in the hands of his servants. When he returned he demanded a report on what profit had been turned. Sounds to me like a story about money. One servant refused to make more money for a boss whose wealth was tainted. "You withdraw what you haven't deposited and you harvest what you have not planted." I can hardly imagine a more direct attack on the legitimacy of an economic system. Would that rich man kill, not simply to hang on to his wealth, but also to be seen as deserving it?

Just after our reading comes the story of the "Cleansing of the Temple." Jesus threw the merchants and bankers out of the Temple. In the other gospel versions of the story, Jesus drives them out with a whip, overturns their tables, and scatters their coins. Jesus justifies this "direct action" by citing Scripture: "My house will be a house of prayer, but you have made it a hideout for crooks." Traditionally this is taken to mean that business and religion don't mix. Businesses shouldn't operate in church. The church shouldn't tell businesses how to do their business.

But notice that this isn't what Jesus says. Jesus' complaint is not that the Temple has been turned into a supermarket, but that the Temple is being run as a criminal enterprise. The priests and those to whom they've given licenses for trade in the Temple court are crooked and corrupt. Jesus will have none of it. Do you think that an organized crime boss will kill if his smooth operations are disrupted?

By themselves these might not have added up to a reason to kill Jesus. These actions by themselves might have been tolerated. But the action that we celebrate today on Palm Sunday made these other things intolerable to the rich and powerful.

I've shared before that I believe that the +"triumphal" entry into Jerusalem was carefully staged by Jesus to undermine the pageantry and symbolism that the Romans used to prop up their regime. The crowd certain "got it" as they chanted "Blessings on the king who comes in the name of the Lord [not in the name of Jupiter]. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest heaven [not the peace that Caesar claims to give, a peace based on violent oppression]." Jesus comes, not to claim a throne, but to ridicule and satirize one.

If it's one thing besides shutting down their revenue streams that powerful people cannot stand, it's being made fun of. We know this. Jesus knew it, too. He knew that if he poked at the Roman eagle, he would face its deadly beak and talons. He did it anyway, knowing that it would provoke the authorities to react on his terms.

Why was Jesus killed? He was killed because he attacked the political and economic regime in Roman Palestine and held it up for ridicule. The riches of the rich and the power of the powerful were under a credible threat. The rich and powerful killed Jesus because they wanted to stay rich and powerful. This is the way the rich and powerful have always been. This is the way they are now. Jesus stood in their way then. Jesus stands in their way even now.

The rich and powerful imagined then as they imagine now that they could end the threat to their status by killing Jesus. They were wrong then. They are still wrong.

Jesus will stand before them later in the week and say, in the words of Obi-wan Kenobi, "If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine." Just wait until next week!

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1 Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide (New York: Wings Books, 1996), 6.