Sermon – “If Stones Could Shout” (Luke 19:28-40)

For the next few moments I want you to try to imagine what it must have been like to be among those who stood on the streets of Jerusalem on the first Palm Sunday. (I’ll even let you close your eyes if you like, as long as you promise not to go to sleep!)

The city would have been bustling with people, as worshippers from all over Palestine and many from considerably farther afield—from as far away as the distant corners of the vast Roman Empire—had begun to gather in preparation for the annual Passover celebration.

For centuries there had been a tradition that, as they made their way towards the holy city, travellers would recite what are known as the Psalms of Ascents, the fifteen psalms beginning with Psalm 120. Many of those psalms remain familiar to us today, as they have become entrenched in our Christian worship: “I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come?” “I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go the house of the Lord.’” “Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved…” “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream…” “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labour in vain…”

So it was that there was literally music in the air as Jesus and his followers made their way towards Jerusalem. Our Bible reading this morning opens with them looking across at the city from the top of the slope that separates it from the Mount of Olives—and I find myself hearing the distant echoes of those psalms being sung in the background.

As they made their way along the twisting road that led down into the valley and then up towards the city, Jesus knew what awaited him there. Indeed, he had been warning his followers about it for some months: “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. For he will be delivered over to the Gentiles and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon. And after flogging him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise.” (Luke 19:31-33)

The Disciples

In fact, Jesus had warned them on at least three separate occasions what was going to happen to him. However, the disciples, really hadn’t paid very much attention at the time. Plus, I suspect that by this time they were so caught up in the excitement of the coming Passover celebration that those words of foreboding had faded almost entirely from their minds. They would have had no idea of the darkness that was to engulf them over the coming days.

It was in that context that Jesus came to them with a request: “Go into the village ahead of you. There on entering you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever yet sat. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ say this: ‘The Lord has need of it.’”

The instructions seem strange to me—almost like something out of a James Bond movie. However, the disciples seemed to think nothing of it and went on their way unquestioningly, following Jesus’ directions to the letter. And as it turned out, everything was exactly as he had told them. Little did they know that they were embarking on a trajectory that would lead to treachery, betrayal, torture and execution.

Now they were happy to obey Jesus and to carry out his instructions. But in a few days’ time they would see this same Jesus, whom they had come to love and adore, roughly arrested, unjustly tried, brutally tortured, and nailed to a cross to die a slow, agonizing death. And they would find themselves cowering behind locked doors in fear for their lives. Piece by piece, everything that they had come to believe in and to hold dear over the previous three years would be turned on its head.

The Multitude

The next scene takes us to the gates of Jerusalem. Located atop Mount Zion and surrounded by thick stone walls, the city would have made an impressive site, especially for those who came from the towns and villages of the countryside.

I am reminded of one of my visits to New York City. I was with a friend and we were walking through the streets of Manhattan, when a stranger came up to us and said, “You’re visitors here, aren’t you?” When we asked him what gave us away, he replied, “It’s because you’re looking up, not ahead.” All our attention had been riveted on the enormous skyscrapers that towered above us, to the point where we weren’t paying any attention to where we were going!

I can imagine a similar dynamic taking place with many of the pilgrims from the tiny hamlets of Palestine—among them Jesus’ disciples. There were the more than a quarter of a million of them jostling along through its narrow streets. And everything about the city would have prompted oohs and ahs.

At the centre of it all was the magnificent Temple occupying thirty-six acres of land. Its fifty-foot-high gates flanked by enormous columns, its gold glistening in the hot Near Eastern sun, it would have been an impressive sight even to modern eyes. Already more than forty-six years in the making, it would not be fully completed for another four decades.

Now add to that the excitement and anticipation over the coming celebration of Passover. Then into this scene there enters a strange sight—a man riding on a donkey, with other men going before him and spreading their cloaks along his path as though he were a king or some kind of royalty. This leads to what seems to have been a spontaneous outburst of excitement, as some join in and spread their garments on the road, while still others cut down palm branches and lay them along the cobblestones. Meanwhile, all of this is accompanied by joyful shouts of “Hosanna!” and “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”

Of course, we all know that within the space of a few short days the jubilant cheers of the multitude would turn to shouts of “Crucify!” Among them there might even have been some of those who passed by him as he hung naked on the cross, who jeered at him and mocked him with the words, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself…”

The Stones

Then there were the religious authorities, who would have none of this spontaneous celebration. “Teacher,” they snapped, “rebuke your disciples.” To which Jesus replied, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”

My suspicion is that the stones that Jesus was referring to may have been the enormous megaliths that formed the base of the Temple. Some of them weighed as much as five hundred tonnes. You may recall that on a previous visit to Jerusalem one of Jesus’ disciples had drawn attention to them. “Look,” he said (and I can imagine the wonderment in his voice). “What massive stones! And what enormous buildings!” (Mark 13:1)

Now let me ask: Can you think of anything more inanimate than a stone—particularly a stone of that magnitude? Yet Jesus says, “If [the human voices] were silent, the very stones would cry out.” What did he mean? Was he just being poetic? Was he using exaggeration to get his point across?

Maybe. But I think there was more. And my reason is this: It is because at the cross everything would change—and I mean everything. It was not just a matter of closing the gap that separates you and me from God on account of our sin. What was happening on the cross would radically affect the whole created order in its entirety—even the rocks! For it was on the cross that Jesus would defeat once and for ever the cosmic powers of sin and evil and death—all that is wrong and sinful and out of step with God’s will in the universe.

We get a glimpse of what was happening in Matthew’s remarkable account of what took place in Jerusalem at the moment when Jesus gave up his spirit:

And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many. (Matthew 27:51-53)

So it is that when we get to the Book of Revelation, we find the aged John peering through his astonished eyes not just to catch a dream of things made better, but to be captured by a vision of the whole of creation transformed. What he gazed upon was a new heaven and a new earth. “For,” he says, “the first heaven and the first earth had passed away.” (Revelation 21:1)

The apostle Paul expressed the same kind of understanding in his letter to the Romans, when he wrote:

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. The creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. (Romans 8:18-23)

So as we move through this Holy Week towards the observance of Good Friday and Easter, if I leave you with anything, I want to leave you with a cosmic vision of what was taking place as our Lord and his disciples made their way into the holy city.

When Jesus was to utter those words from the cross, “It is finished,” he was not just saying that his life was coming to an end. He was doing away once and for all with sin and evil and death. He was ushering in a whole new creation, made perfect in accordance with the will and pleasure of his Father.

In the words of the apostle Paul, “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.” (Colossians 1:19-20)

When New Testament scholar N.T. Wright wrote his book about the meaning of Jesus’ crucifixion six years ago, he chose the dramatic title The Day the Revolution Began. In his conclusion to this massive 400-page-plus study, he wrote this (and please forgive me for quoting it at length!):

With all this we lift up our eyes and realize that [we] have been so concerned with getting to heaven, with sin as the problem blocking the way, … that [we have] forgotten that the gospels give us [the atonement] not as a neat little system, but as a powerful, many-sided, richly revelatory narrative in which we are invited to find ourselves, or rather to lose ourselves and to be found again on the other side. We have gone wading in the shallow and stagnant waters of medieval questions and answers … when only a few yards away is the vast and dangerous ocean of the gospel story, inviting us to plunge in and let the waves of dark glory wash over us, wash us through and through, and land us on the shores of God’s new creation.[1]

The obedience of the disciples would quickly turn to fear. The shouts of “Hosanna!” that rang through the streets of Jerusalem would soon be no more than an echo. But the day is coming when even the stones will not be silent, but will resound with the joyful chorus of all the redeemed:

Worthy is the Lamb who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might
and honour and glory and blessing!
(Revelation 5:12)

Let’s be sure that you and I are part of the crowd!

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[1]       The Day the Revolution Began, 415-416

Sermon – “The Assurance of Better Things” (Hebrews 6:9-12)

 

Last Sunday those of you who were here or were watching on YouTube will recall that Pastor Doug Mott led us through the first eight verses of Hebrews 6. Early on in his sermon he quoted one biblical scholar who described those verses as “perhaps the most severe warning that occurs anywhere in the pages of the New Testament”.

The words that he was referring to were in verses 4 through 6 and they were these:

It is impossible, in the case of those who have been once enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God…

“It is impossible to restore them.” “They are crucifying once again the Son of God.” Can you imagine a more telling condemnation? Imagine if you were among those hearing those words for the first time. I can almost hear the stunned silence and see the faces of the congregation turn grey as the dreadful meaning of what they were hearing began to sink in. Could it really be true? Might it be possible for someone who is a believer to put themselves in a place where they are outside the reach of God’s grace?

A few weeks ago I told you that my introduction to Hebrews came when I was part of a group Bible study as a student at university. To this day I clearly remember both the puzzlement, the fear and the fierce debate that erupted when we came to these verses. “You mean it’s possible to lose your salvation?” Very quickly the discussion spilled out of our little group and into the wider campus fellowship. Some members began to worry that they might one day find themselves that God had rejected them. Fortunately our very wise and patient staff member got wind of what had now become a full-fledged debate. “Yes,” he said, “those are stern words. But take a moment to look at what the author says just two verses later…” So we opened our Bibles, and what did we find but these words:

Though we speak in this way, yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things…

“We feel sure of better things…” You may not have noticed it, because the Greek term is translated in several different ways into English, but this is the second time the author uses that word “better”. I draw your attention to it because he will use it again on another nine occasions before we come to the end of the letter, for a total of eleven times. In fact, it is one of his favourite words. Outside of Hebrews it’s found only four times in the rest of the New Testament.

The first time we find it in Hebrews is in chapter 1, verse 4, where we see that Jesus is infinitely superior to the angels. The final time will be in chapter 12, verse 24, where the author tells us that Jesus’ blood speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. If you’re familiar with the Old Testament, you’ll know that Abel’s blood cried out for the guilt and condemnation of his murderous brother Cain. Jesus’ blood cries out for the forgiveness and restoration of sinners like you and me.

Thus, when our author writes, “In your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things,” he means stronger, higher, superior… And so the letter moves swiftly from warning to encouragement, from condemnation to hope. So let’s take the next few moments to see for ourselves what reasons the first readers of this letter had, even in the midst of their weariness and despondency, to take courage and to regain their hope.

Work and love

Those reasons come in three pairs: work and love (in verse 10), earnestness and hope (in verse 11), and faith and patience (in verse 12). Let’s look at each of them in order—so first: work and love. Turning to verse 10: “For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints.”

In our day and age, we think of love as an emotion, a feeling. It’s when you’re attracted towards another person. It could be romantically. It could be because you have shared a common experience or have a common interest, or any other of a whole host of reasons.

Our English language is poor in that we have only one word for love. In the Greek of the New Testament there were three. There was one that described the bond that unites friends to each other. There are people who have been my friends for decades. In some cases, we may not have seen one another for years. But when we get together that bond of friendship still remains and it is as though the passage of time means nothing. I suspect that most of you have had that experience as well.

The second kind of love in the Greek-speaking world of the New Testament was the one that gets all the attention. It is romantic love—the kind of love that makes our hearts go pitter-patter, the love that so many of our hit songs are about and so many of our movies focus on—the love between a man and a woman, a husband and a wife.

But it is neither of these loves that is the focus of our passage this morning. It is the love that that apostle Paul wrote about in his famous passage in 1 Corinthians 13: the love that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, the love that never ends.

It is the love that Ruth expressed when she refused to abandon her mother-in-law, Naomi. It is the love that the good Samaritan showed to that hapless traveller who lay naked and beaten by the side of the road. It is the love that Jesus showed for you and for me when he hung dying on the cross. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…” “Jesus…, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” (John 3:16; 13:1)

That kind of love is more than a feeling. It calls for practical engagement. So it is that work and love go together in our passage this morning, because genuine love invariably shows itself in hands-on, concrete action and self-giving service. And this was the kind of love that was being demonstrated daily in the everyday lives of the congregation of the Hebrews in Rome.

Earnestness and hope

So there we have it: work and love. The second pairing that the author puts together (in verse 11) is earnestness and hope. And once again, hope, like love, needs some defining.

Tell me if I’m wrong, but I think for most people today hope is little more than some nebulous kind of wish. “I hope that the weather will improve soon.” “I’m hoping for a bigger bonus next Christmas.” “Let’s hope that covid will soon be in the past.”

For the early Christians, however, hope was not just that vague “pie in the sky when I die” but a driving force that motivated and transformed them in the present.

Jeremiah in the Old Testament has sometimes been called the weeping prophet or the prophet of doom. Over a span of forty years he tirelessly warned the people of Judah that their disregard for God and his laws would bring destruction upon them. Yet some of the most stirring pictures of hope can also be found in Jeremiah’s writings. One of them came to him one day when he was visiting a potter’s workshop. It happened that one of the vessels the potter was forming on his wheel began to be misshapen. Did the potter give up and toss it away? No, he simply continued at his wheel and skilfully reworked it.

That was an “Aha!” moment for Jeremiah. “Then,” he wrote, “the word of the Lord came to me: O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done? declares the Lord. Behold, like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.” The point is that, amid all the mess and injustice of this world, God is still at work. Even when things seem to be going terribly wrong, we are still in the Potter’s hands. They may even seem to have gone beyond the point of no return. Yet God is sovereign and he will surely work his good purposes out.[1]

We may think today of the grim situation facing the people of Ukraine, as the seemingly unstoppable Russian army, more than 150,000 of them, mercilessly pound their cities with bombs and missiles. Yet they refuse to surrender. They will not give up hope, as the rest of the world watches and waits and prays. And we have to believe that somehow, in the midst of this evil and injustice, God is still at work.

It was the same kind of hope that sustained the believers in the struggling Hebrew church in Rome. Christians were held in contempt. And all the signs were that their circumstances were only going to become worse. Yet they continued to cling to their hope, to sing their joyful hymns, to pray with conviction, to show acts of mercy—and all with what the author commends as earnestness.

The word in Greek means eagerness, effort, never letting things get in the way. And they could do it because deep in their hearts they had the conviction that, in the end and spite of all outward appearances, “all things [do indeed] work together for good for those who love God, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).

Patience and faith

The hearers of these words were to be commended, then, for their work and love, for their earnestness and hope. And now in verse 12 the writer prays that they would not be sluggish—that is, that they might never grow weary or lose energy in running this race—but that through faith and patience they might push through to the finish line.

The author will have more to say about that in due course. But for the moment his concern is that they continue in faith and patience. When you think of it, those two qualities are really the two sides of the same coin.

Faith in God and in his good purposes for us enables us to be patient in the face of setbacks, disappointments and pain. If God is really to be trusted, then we can be sure, even in spite of the direst of circumstances, that in the end he will not let us down—even if that end is death. For we know that then we shall see him face to face. And as we gather and with the faithful from down through the ages, including those Hebrew believers of the first century we will be greeted with those welcoming words, “Well done, good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:23).

Centuries before the Letter to the Hebrews, the people of Israel faced even more discouraging circumstances. Their city of Jerusalem had been crushed, its glorious Temple reduced to rubble, and they themselves had been held in captivity for a generation. It was no wonder that many of them were beginning to question God’s purposes. Yet in the midst of their despondency God inspired the prophet Isaiah to write these words:

Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
     the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
          his understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the faint,
         and to him who has no might he increases strength.
Even youths shall faint and be weary,
         and young men shall fall exhausted;
but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;
         they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
         they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:28-31)

“So we do not lose heart” wrote the apostle Paul. “Though our outer self  is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison…” (2 Corinthians 4:16-18a)

If you’re like those Hebrew believers who were the first to hear these words, if you find yourself at times struggling just to keep your head above water, I hope that you will take heart from these verses this morning—and that by God’s grace and in his power, you may show forth in your life God’s priceless gifts of love and hope and faith.

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[1]     I owe this insight to Bill Hockin, The Habit of Hope, pp 13, ff