“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

What does it mean to be an evangelical Anglican today?

 

Historically…

The evangelical movement in the Anglican Communion traces its roots back more than 250 years, to the era of the famous brothers, John and Charles Wesley in the middle to late 1700s. By that time, for more than a century the church had been falling into increasing corruption, doctrinal error and spiritual torpor. There were bishops and clergy who rarely or never set foot in their dioceses or parishes, choosing to indulge in a life of idle luxury. Socinianism (or what we now call Unitarianism—the denial of Christ’s divinity and the power of the Holy Spirit) was becoming increasingly commonplace in the pulpits. The poor and working classes were at best ignored if not despised. And (little surprise!) church attendance had sunk to abysmal levels.

Into this dark and seemingly hopeless scene stepped men such as the Wesleys, with their fiery preaching of a message of salvation through repentance and personal faith in Christ. But they were not alone. Though not nearly as famous, there were others such as George Whitefield, who is estimated to have brought the message of the Great Awakening to more than ten million hearers in the British Isles and the American colonies. There was John Newton, the former slave ship captain turned hymn writer; Charles Simeon, who influenced hundreds of future church leaders through his fifty-three-year ministry at Holy Trinity Church, Cambridge; the father and son Henry and John Venn, who together with William Wilberforce, Hannah More, Granville Sharp and others worked to abolish the slave trade, reform the penal system and establish child labour legislation, to mention only a few of their endeavours.

In the course of their lifetime they also witnessed the transformation of the Church of England. Through practical biblical preaching, the introduction of lively hymns and consistent pastoral care, the people came back. And Christian faith and values permeated society in a way they had not for generations. From its beginnings the movement was not limited to the British Isles. Through organizations such as the British and Foreign Bible Society and the Church Missionary Society the message was taken abroad—not least to Canada, where many of our western and northern dioceses find their roots in the evangelical movement.

Sadly, within the space of a couple of generations the movement began to harden. In the 1850s a new spirit had begun to arise within the church that came to be known as Anglo-Catholicism. With it came the introduction of customs and practices that had not been seen in the Church of England since the Reformation: candles, coloured stoles and vestments, incense and processionals, to name a few. Evangelicals saw these novelties as a dangerous distraction from the gospel.

Coincidentally another challenge was coming from a different direction. We could summarize it as Darwinism, although it was much broader than that. Suffice it to say that there were those who thought they could use the findings of contemporary scientific research to undermine the credibility of the Bible.

As though that were not enough, there was a third challenge in what came to be known as the “social gospel”, which saw the emphasis move away from personal transformation to concentrate on societal change (both of which had been emphases of the original evangelicals of en earlier generation). The result was that by the beginning of the twentieth century it seemed as though evangelicalism had taken a purely defensive posture. Evangelicals became defined more by what they didn’t do than by the vigorous proclamation of a life-saving, world-changing gospel.

Today the situation has become even worse, where in the United States and increasingly in some other parts of the world, the once honourable name “evangelical” has come to be associated with a particular narrow, mean-spirited and negative political ideology—to the point where some are asking, Have we reached the point where we need to toss it out altogether and find another name for ourselves?

To strike a more positive note, on the other hand, the negativity and insularity of some evangelicals is balanced by a refreshing openness and desire to work together for the gospel on the part of others. Ministries such as Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship and Scripture Union and missions like the Overseas Missionary Fellowship and World Vision have always involved evangelicals from a wide variety of backgrounds, with evangelical Anglicans not least among them. And it is now twenty-five years since a group of leading evangelical and Roman Catholic scholars in the United States came together to produce a document entitled “Evangelicals and Catholics Together”. I see these as hopeful signs.

Theologically…

So what do we mean by “evangelical”? It’s important to realize that the name traces its lineage back to the New Testament, to two Greek words: eu, which brings with it the meaning of “good” or “excellent”, and angelia, which means a message or an announcement. Put them together and you get the word euangelion or evangel, meaning “good news” or “gospel”. So who are evangelicals? At heart we are gospel people, women and men and children with good news to share. We think of the words of the apostle Paul in Romans 1:16, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes.”

Where does this take us in practical terms? Here is where the four hallmarks or pillars of evangelicalism come in, and they are these:

First among them is the need for a personal relationship with Christ through repentance and faith. This relationship can come by many different means and take many different forms, depending on our background, culture, upbringing, education and a host of other factors. Yet at the core there is that personal walk with Jesus. With Paul once again we affirm, “I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him…” (Philippians 3:10). And so evangelicalism is not following a tradition (although traditions are important). It is not being a member of an organization (although participation in the Christian community is vital). More than anything else it is my personal decision to trust in Jesus as my Saviour and to live my life in obedient response to him as my Lord.

That brings us to the second hallmark, which is the centrality of the cross. We believe that by his death and resurrection Jesus has once and for all, unequivocally and irrevocably defeated the powers of evil and death. Nothing that you or I can do can add to that or take the place of it. Jesus has done it all. The old Prayer Book put it well when it referred to Jesus’ “full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world”. It is because of Jesus’ sacrifice and Jesus’ sacrifice alone that we can come to the Father and receive the life that he has to offer.

Thirdly, there is the unique, divine authority of Scripture. That is, that through the prophets and apostles of the Old and New Testaments God has uniquely spoken—and continues to address us today. Some people like to refer to the three-legged stool of Scripture, reason and tradition as the basis for our authority. For evangelicals it is more like a tricycle, with Scripture as the front wheel with the pedals. It is Scripture that is always the final arbiter and that provides both the power and the direction to the other two. But there is more to it than that. Evangelicalism involves not just an acknowledgement of the authority of Scripture. It also involves a love of Scripture. Evangelicals aren’t people who merely own Bibles. They are people who, in the words of the Prayer Book, “hear, read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them”. They study them, ponder and discuss them because there they find the words of life.

Finally, but far from least, there is engagement in mission. This is an act of obedience to Jesus’ great commission to be his witnesses and to make disciples (Acts 1:8; Matthew 28:20). Just as much, however, it arises from an unquenchable desire to share the good news of what God has done for us in Christ and is doing in our lives. In the words of the great Sri Lankan preacher, D.T. Niles, it is “one beggar telling another where to find bread”. Of course mission is far more than words. It is seeking to be as Jesus in the world, in whatever context to live out his command, “As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you” (John 20:21).

Currently…

This brings us to evangelicalism in the world today—and I’d like to give specific attention to our Anglican setting. First of all, although we may not see much evidence of it in our little corner of the world, we need to recognize that we are the exception. The Anglican Church of Canada, along with most other Anglican bodies in the western world, is declining at an alarming rate. A recent report commissioned by our House of Bishops suggests that if the current trajectory continues, there will be no Anglicans left in Canada by the year 2040.

Meanwhile, in other parts of the world, where Anglicanism is fired by an evangelical spirit, there is exponential growth. Where is the largest Anglican population by attendance in the world? Nigeria, with more than twenty million members. Nigeria is followed by Uganda, with eight million, and then Kenya, Sudan and India, each numbering five million. More than half the world’s Anglicans live in Africa—and with few exceptions they are evangelical. In many cases, particularly where they border with Islam and in countries where corruption and violence are endemic, theirs can be a costly faith. Yet the church grows—and they look with sadness and horror at what they see as the spiritual deadness of the church in the west.

However, there are signs of hope, even here. Allow me to name a couple. One of them is the Alpha Course. That ten-week programme, which continues to bring faith and renewal to a widespread constituency, began in an Anglican congregation, Holy Trinity Brompton, just over forty years ago. By the latest count it has engaged more than twenty-four million people around the world. Curiously, it has been taken up with enthusiasm by the Roman Catholic Church in Nova Scotia, where it has been the source of powerful renewal. Yet it is largely unknown or ignored by Anglicans.

Secondly we need to recognize evangelical Anglican scholars and writers. A generation ago men like John Stott, J.I. Packer and Michael Green were among the best-selling Christian authors in the world. Through their books and their teaching they called their readers to a serious engagement with an intellectually honest, spiritually challenging evangelical faith. Today their place has been taken by people such as N.T. Wright, Alister McGrath and Fleming Rutledge. We should be grateful for Wycliffe College in Toronto, too. It has an international reputation for academic excellence and is the largest Anglican seminary in North America.

Thirdly, while there are numerous thriving evangelical Anglican congregations across the country, you need to look to the north if you want to see a whole evangelical culture—to dioceses like Saskatchewan, the Yukon, Caledonia and the Arctic. I have been privileged to visit a couple of them and I have been humbled by the depth and sincerity of evangelical faith that I have found there.

Yet let me say that I think that the battles that once raged over stoles and candles have only served to divert us from what it means at heart to be evangelical—and I am grateful that by and large those issues are in the past. If we are to be true to our evangelical heritage (and far more importantly, true to Jesus and his mission) then we need to go back to those four pillars: to engage in a daily walk with Jesus, to recognize that our only hope is through what he has accomplished for us through his cross, to absorb his word into our practical everyday lives, and to engage in his mission, seeking to live as Jesus in the world.