Sermons from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
Palm Sunday, 2007
April 1, 2007
The Rev. Melissa Skelton
Sometime around 1920, the young boy William Stafford came home from school and told his mother that two new students had been surrounded on the playground and taunted by their classmates because they were black.
“And what did you do, Billy?” said his mother. “I went and stood by them,” Billy said.
Years later during WW II, Stafford became a Conscientious Objector. With other CO’s, he would be sent to public service camps in California and Arkansas while other men and women served in the military in Europe or in the Pacific. Once when a group of CO’s was visiting in a local town on a Sunday, they came very close to being mobbed and lynched. Stafford describes this experience in his book entitled Down in My Heart.
“It takes such an intricate succession of misfortunes and blunders to get mobbed by your own countrymen—and such a close balancing of good fortune to survive—that I consider myself a rarity, in this respect, in being able to tell the story, from the subject’s point of view; but just how we began to be mobbed and just where the blunders and the misfortunes began, it is hard to say.”
Today we hear in excruciating detail the intricate succession of events, misfortunes and blunders that led to Jesus going from his exciting entry into Jerusalem to being mobbed by his own people and by their rulers, the Romans. But unlike Stafford and his companions, Jesus does not have what Stafford called the “good fortune” to get away. Jesus does not live to tell the tale from the “subject’s point of view” as Stafford did.
And so we have Luke’s account of what happened to Jesus.
But in many ways the tales—Stafford’s tale and Luke’s tale of Jesus—have much in common, for in both, those who stand for peace, those who are about non-violence—elicit violence from others. Or as a Quaker once said in describing his denomination: “(Quakers) work for peace -- and if you really want to cause conflict, work for peace.”
If you were listening carefully in the parish hall to Luke’s account of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, you heard that after Jesus mounted his colt, his disciples cried out “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!”
“Peace in heaven and glory in the highest heaven!” But the mention of peace does not stop here. We are told that Jesus stops, looks down at the city and, weeping, says to Jerusalem “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.”
This emphasis on peace occurs throughout Luke, with the word for peace occurring fourteen times in Luke, more than all the other gospels combined. It’s a theme that begins with John the Baptist’s father, Zechariah's song celebrating the prophet who comes: “to guide our feet into the way of peace. (1:79).It continues with the angels’ song at the birth of Jesus: “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!” (2:14). And it shows up in Simeon's song as he holds the Messiah in his arms: “Lord, you now have set your servant free to go in peace as you have promised” (2:29) “For Luke (then) salvation consists partly in living at peace with God and with each other -- Jews with Gentiles, males with females, rich with poor, slaves with free.”
But as we know, living in peace, refusing to resort to aggression of any kind—is a difficult stance to take when so much within us as individuals, as groups, as nations, wants to fight. Our bodies are, of course, part of this. Our bodies kick into what’s called the “fight or flight” response when we are in conflict or when we experience too much stress. This hard-wired reaction, a kind of genetic wisdom designed to protect us from bodily harm, involves a chemical release that prepares our body for running or fighting. And so in conflict our bodies tell us is to run or to fight, to become invisible or to get aggressive.
But our bodies are not the only things telling us to fight or to flee. Our minds—our upbringings, our beliefs, the options we see for behavior—have tremendous power over us. Our view of our own and others’ power, beliefs about what we and others are entitled to, our perceptions about what is a legitimate response in a situation of conflict—all these deeply influence the actions of aggression we are willing to take with one another or the rationale we use for disappearing when conflict arises.
Jesus’ way is another way. It’s the way of Gandhi, Martin Luther King and William Stafford. It’s a way that resists acting on the impulse to fight or to flee.
And so Jesus does not flee but goes to Jerusalem knowing it will be a place of conflict that will lead to his death; Jesus does not tolerate violence toward others, interceding when one of the disciples cuts off the ear of the slave of a high priest, saying “No more of this” and healing the wound; and Jesus, even when violence is directed at him, is all about reconciliation, saying “ Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing” as he is crucified.
And streaming from these actions are the actions of others: the boy who will become a poet standing with the two black children who were being taunted on the playground; the man in traditional Indian dress made of homespun cloth declaring: “There are many causes I am prepared to die for but no causes I am willing to kill for;” the African American Baptist minister writing his first book describing six principles of non-violence: “Nonviolence is not passive,” he writes, “but requires courage.” “Nonviolence seeks reconciliation,” he writes, “not defeat of an adversary.”
And perhaps we even see ourselves: in those moments when all the chemical responses in us tell us to fight or to run, or when our beliefs tell us it’s legitimate to get aggressive or to disappear from the conversation. We see ourselves: not fighting or fleeing but taking one deep breath and choosing to lower our voice but not to avert our eyes, choosing to stand our ground without running over someone else.
Stafford put it this way: when describing how his family formed him into the conscientious objector he would be all his life: “….our family ... (reinforced) an attitude (of redemption when it came to) danger or…aggression or even…evil…You don’t overwhelm the opposition, you don’t wipe them out; you redeem them, you save them. They can count on you. You don’t always count on them, but you always try to get into the attitude that you’re ready to count on them, but you’re always ready, if necessary, to oppose them, but to oppose them in the way Martin Luther King did, the way that Gandhi did….this is a religious position. It’s a Quaker, Mennonite, Brethren, Buddha position. And (he said) in a way…..a kind of feminine position.”
Today, Palm Sunday, the Sunday of the Passion, is all about this position and what it can cost those who take it. But Palm Sunday is just the beginning of Holy Week. We will yet traverse paths that can lead to the temptation to fight or to flee in the week to come, and we will see the cost of refusing to go down either of these paths.
But at the beginning of the new week, as we light the new fire in the dark of our Easter Vigil, we will see something else. Though the cost is high—the cost of restraining ourselves, the cost of not running away from conflict, the cost of the loss of life, itself, light and life will come to us; light and life will be given to the world.
Works Cited or Consulted
Kim Stafford’s book Every War Has Two Losers in which he collects his father, William Stafford’s, writings about pacifism. One of Stafford’s “aphorisms”: “To hold the voice down and the eyes up when facing someone who antagonizes you is a slight weight—once. But in a lifetime it adds up to tons.”
Bryan Stoffregen’ s exegetical comments on the Lukan Triumphal Entry story and on Luke’s Passion account can be found at his website Crossmarks. He references Tom Mullen’s comments about Quakers in Laughing Out Loud and Other Religious Experiences.
Information about fight of flight response is at http://www.thebodysoulconnection.com/EducationCenter/fight.htm
Information about Martin Luther King’s six principles of non-violence found in his first book Stride Toward Freedom can be found at http://www.thekingcenter.org/prog/non/glossary.html . These are:(1.) Nonviolence is not passive, but requires courage; (2.) Nonviolence seeks reconciliation, not defeat of an adversary y; (3.) Nonviolent action is directed at eliminating evil, not destroying an evil-doer; (4.) A willingness to accept suffering for the cause, if necessary, but never to inflict it; (5.) A rejection of hatred, animosity or violence of the spirit, as well as refusal to commit physical violence; and (6.) Faith that justice will prevail.
