Oh, the disciples had seen miracles.  The anticipation and excitement reach that point when, at the crest of the Mount of Olives, with Jerusalem and the Temple in full view—so close, almost there!—they all begin singing, chanting.  Have you ever started humming, or even singing, just because, and didn’t mind?  We might chant from excitement—the future is ours!  We might chant from agitation and fear—danger is near, but we’re united!  It’s like being at a concert or the big game: you can feel the energy of the crowd.  There’s that in you that feels the draw—float along on it.  There’s that in you that resists.

But after all that the followers of Jesus had seen, they felt confident of the result: more miracles were on the way!  Everything was about to change!  You ain’t seen nothing yet!  Now, note this: Luke does not say it was the teaching of Jesus energizing the crowd.  It was the miracles, the works of power.  John tells us how, early in the ministry of Jesus, he calls the crowds to account because they were more eager for the miracles than for the teaching, the shows of power than for the words of life (Jn 6:26 ff).  Now, they’re shouting, chanting, singing, crying out, for any and all to hear: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” (19:38).  Jesus, they knew, was the Messiah, the heir to David’s throne, the one sent by God Himself to restore Israel’s glory and make all things right.  Victory now.  Power now.  Glory now.  It’s exciting stuff!  I hope you can feel it, too.  Those of you who voted for Donald Trump, especially this time around, may have a sense of the atmosphere Luke is describing, so too those of you who voted for Obama in 2008.  Victory now.  Power now.  Glory now.  Everything is about to change.

But the people are also singing, “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” (19:38).  That sounds sort of familiar.  “Peace in heaven”: was there conflict in heaven?  Was heaven not at peace?  Not when God is on bad terms with mankind.  Not when people seek their peace in what they find and fashion here: peace in family, peace in friends, peace in their work, peace in their pleasures, peace in their getaways, peace in their portfolios or their property.  Peace in all the little addictions, harmless, of course.  We do not have peace in heaven, so long as God is maybe a nice add-on to the satisfying lives people have made for themselves.  But now, in this one coming humble on a donkey—no warhorse, no armor, no fearsome sword unsheathed for slaughter—in this one who comes in the name of the Lord: reconciliation, peace, blessing.  Glory in the highest.  Amen.  All glory, laud and honor.  The Messiah was the sign, the one who meant assurance that God’s displeasure was at an end, that God’s favor was upon His people: all would be well; God was going to make all things right.  Oh, how we want to experience God making all things right!

It seems just a little curious to me (though the energy and excitement probably explain it)—it seems curious to me that none in that loud procession, so far as we’re told, paused long enough to remember that, since the fall there in the garden, since the utter alienation and ruin that came with that willful disobedience—a willful disobedience Israel’s subsequent history did nothing to remove, reverse, or erase—the only way to have reconciliation with God was through sacrifice, through blood.  No one seems to be thinking about blood, in all that parade, except, maybe the blood of their enemy, soon to be flowing in the streets.  But all the blood there would be on the streets of Jerusalem, as we know, was the blood of Jesus on his way to the cross, blood dripping onto this rock or that stone, the way of dust and blood.  “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”  Yes, peace does come with a cost.  Freedom, as we like to say, isn’t free.

“Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, rebuke your disciples!’” (19:39).  We keep thinking of the Pharisees as implacable enemies of Jesus, yet they’re constantly in the crowds with Jesus, as if there is some draw, some sense they cannot shake, that Jesus is genuine, and in a position to teach the Pharisees something they had missed, that Jesus was in a position to provide something the Pharisees were lacking despite all their zeal for the Lord and His Law.  We’re told there never were many Pharisees, maybe six thousand, tops.  That may sound like a lot, but the number of people in Jerusalem for the Passover was in the hundreds of thousands.  The Pharisees had influence, definitely, but they were a small group.

And no wonder!  We know too well how hard it can be to live for Jesus day by day, keeping him first, asking ourselves what Jesus would do, what Jesus would say, how Jesus would regard this or that.  The Pharisees had devoted themselves to the most rigorous observance of the Law.  For some, the motivation may have been the idea that their impeccable performance would win them merit: God would have to love them, and reward them, then!  I think, though, that for others—I’ll grant you it was likely a small minority—but for others among the Pharisees, that desire to perform flawlessly was born from love for God, wanting to glorify God by their conscientious, faithful, daily walk.  We want to live up to the love we are given.  We know we owe it to the one who loves us.  We hate to disappoint or hurt the one we love.  So, it matters whom we love, just as it matters who loves us.  It can take a long time to figure out that attraction and love are not the same thing.

I don’t know which it was among the Pharisees who tells Jesus “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!”  They don’t call him king.  Teacher, yes, but not king.  They certainly do not call him Messiah.  He may well have been sent by God, like a prophet, but the Pharisees would not agree that Jesus was the one who came in the name of the Lord.  To come in the name of the Lord didn’t mean just as God’s representative or ambassador, ready to negotiate, ready to come to terms, ready to cut a deal.  The one who came in the name of the Lord came in God’s character, making God visible, making God known.  Only God can make God known—that’s revelation.  There were those Pharisees who lived to glorify God.  Jesus, if he were the one who came in the name of the Lord, lived to make God visible, came as God among us, with us.  To come in the name of the Lord was to be among people as the glory of God.  Earlier this year, I was trying to help us to see that glory, at heart, means presence and, even more, character.  To speak of the presence of God’s character is to speak of the presence of God.  Jesus, the glory of God with us: that would be a bit much for almost any Pharisee, and for many others.

This man, with the dust of the road on his clothes, in his hair, on his feet, dirt under his fingernails—this man was to be taken as King?  As Savior?  The presence and glory of God?  Well, was he?  We can say the disciples were convinced, many of them anyway, or at least twelve (or eleven), but in a matter of days, all will have abandoned him.  When the going gets tough—disciples split.  But we know there’s a way back, a way always open, even for cowards like . . . them.

“I tell you,” [Jesus] replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out” (19:40).  All creation, singing?  It’s Paul who tells us all creation groans as it awaits redemption.  Partly, this is a poetic way of helping us to understand why this world is such a mess, why terrible things happen: storms, earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, droughts, fires, epidemics, famines.  People get hurt; people get killed.  Even the rocks and stones and trees cry for something better: freedom from thwarted purpose, restoration to perfect purpose, balance, harmony, peace.  I can’t imagine rocks crying out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy!”—it’s not crying out in pain Jesus means but joy, the recognition of salvation: cry out for it now, before it passes you by!  Jesus, Savior, have mercy.  Kyrie eleison.  Christe eleison.  That is Greek, the language of the early church: Lord, have mercy.  Christ, have mercy.  This prayer has come down to us intact from those earliest centuries because the Church has always cried out for mercy, and does so even in heaven, from under the altar.

The stones will cry out.  It’s Ezekiel, priest and prophet with the exiles in Babylon, who gives us the clue: through Ezekiel, God sings to His people, “I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh” (Ezek 11:19), and again, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezek 36:26).  A new heart, a circumcised heart, which may sound very strange to us, but circumcision was a sign of dedication to God, having your place in God’s covenant.  Living dedication to God meant cutting out, cutting away, whatever was contrary to life God’s way, whatever remained that yet wished and willed to go its own way, the way of flesh, the way of all flesh.  Oh, those hearts of stone!  If Jesus can’t make them cry out, who can?

It’s a little late in the year but also maybe just the right time to remember a poem by a former Poet Laureate of the United States, Richard Wilbur, who died in 2017.  “A Stable Lamp Is Lighted,” published in 1959, was later set to music and is now in our hymnal.  It’s lovely, though probably better suited for choir than congregational singing.  Listen.  Think of Bethlehem.  Think of Palm Sunday:

A stable lamp is lighted whose glow shall wake the sky;

The stars shall bend their voices, and every stone shall cry.

And every stone shall cry, and straw like gold shall shine;

A barn shall harbor heaven, a stall become a shrine.

This child through David’s city shall ride in triumph by;

The palm shall strew its branches, and every stone shall cry.

And every stone shall cry, though heavy, dull, and dumb,

And lie within the roadway to pave his kingdom come.

Yet he shall be forsaken, and yielded up to die;

The sky shall groan and darken, and every stone shall cry.

And every stone shall cry, for hearts made hard by sin:

God’s blood upon the spearhead, God’s love refused again.

But now, as at the ending, the low is lifted high;

The stars shall bend their voices, and every stone shall cry.

And every stone shall cry, in praises of the child

by whose descent among us the worlds are reconciled.