On that first Palm Sunday Jesus rides between the hammer and the anvil.

The hammer is the mighty Roman Empire. Imperial guards stand on the walls of ancient Jerusalem. Roman soldiers control the city gates and check people for weapons. Roman flags fly from the fortress that faces the Jerusalem Temple. The Roman governor in Judea collects the taxes, enforces the peace, and leaves no doubt that Rome is supreme. Under it all, Rome is terrified of revolution.

The anvil is the chosen of people of God called Israel. They have waited for God make things right for God’s people. For almost five hundred years they have waited. They have endured the domination of empires. They have suffered under their own corrupt rulers. They have prayed and obeyed for centuries. Now, it is time for the revolution.

On that first Palm Sunday Jesus rides between the hammer and the anvil.

“Open to me the gates of righteousness,” shouts half of the happy crowd, “that I may enter through them and give thanks to the Lord.”

“This is the gate of the Lord,” shouts the other half of the parade, “the righteous shall enter through it.”

They know what it means. God had been away for a long time. The Jerusalem temple has been an empty shell. Now God’s glory is returning to the Temple. The crowd knows the words of the prophet, Zechariah, by heart.

Lo, your king comes to you;

triumphant and victorious is he,

humble and riding on a donkey…

Do you see Jesus on the back of that donkey? He rides from the Mount of Olives—the place where the Prophet Joel said the Final Judgment begins. The people finish the great Song of Ascent as he passes through the gate. “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord,” they shout. “We bless you from the house of the Lord,” comes the reply.

Jesus rides between the hammer and the anvil. To the Romans he is either dumb or dangerous. To the Judeans he is either a fool or a fraud. He announces that God intends to be King. He declares that God will set right what is wrong, heal what is broken, lift up what is fallen down.

Jesus rides on the back of a donkey down the slope of the Mount of Olives. As the great city comes into view, Jesus cries. “If only you had recognized the import of this day, things could be different.” But that recognition was not forthcoming. As Luke tells the story, there is no welcoming delegation from the city as he approaches. There is only the anxious reproach of some of the Pharisees, urging Jesus to silence his disciples.

Some fear the iron fist of Rome. Others want confrontation. They pout when Jesus speaks words of peace. Still others are glad to make him a scapegoat to support the corrupt status quo.

Jerusalem elites, which example will you follow? The response seems clear to Jesus. They will follow the the path of accommodation to power, as they have for the previous hundred years. As a result, people will suffer and die. Jesus is the first to go, in the Lukan account. But he won’t be the last. From the cross, Jesus declares to the weeping daughters of Jerusalem (!), “For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?” (Luke 23:31, NRSV).

If only we knew the things that make for peace. In these days when graphic and horrifying images of destruction, death, war crimes, and attempted genocide fill our news feeds, I wonder if our Passion Sunday eyes can be turned anywhere else in our text. What are the things that make for peace? If only we knew, we would put those things to work.

Yet, the Lukan account is nothing but a record and report of those things that make for peace. Speckman argues that these things are listed and described in at least three locations in the gospel narrative. We can find summaries of the things that make for peace in the birth narratives, in Jesus’ Nazareth sermon Luke 4:16-18), and in Jesus’ response to John’s disciples (Luke 7:22). These are not descriptions of military strategies, lists of armaments, or the words of great military leaders. These are calls to God’s justice.

“This year, as every year, we begin Holy Week in praise of a king whose power is not that of tanks and fighter planes, drones, and supersonic missiles. This week,” writes Kathryn Schifferdecker, “we see the power of God to do something that no army can do: to give life, not destroy it; to change hearts; and to destroy the power of sin and death once and for all.”

No one wants what Jesus brings. The space between the hammer and the anvil is about to disappear.

Paul describes Jesus’ mission in Philippians two. Jesus

“emptied himself,

taking the form of a slave,

being born in human likeness.

And being found in human form,

he humbled himself

and became obedient to the point of death—

even death on a cross.”

This is his path to the throne. We know that path passes through a cross. We know that path opens into an empty tomb. We know that path travels from death to life. We spend this week re-telling that story.

We spend our life re-living that story. We are the Church, the body of Christ. So we live between the hammer and the anvil.

The hammer is a secular culture of violence, greed and fear. The hammer commands us to keep quiet about this spiritual hobby called Christian discipleship.

The anvil is a religious culture that used to be in charge but is no longer. The anvil seduces us to trade strength, success and security for faithfulness to Jesus.

We need the “mind of Christ” if we are to be faithful. So we, the body of Christ, give life to the people, the neighborhood and the community we serve. They live in the same dangerous space we do. They live their days terrified that life would flatten them to death!

The things that make for peace are things that happen in our daily and ongoing work for justice and compassion in the world. That work happens in our individual and communal lives. That work happens when human governments act with compassion and integrity rather than with cruelty and deceit. Often, we may miss the things that make for peace – but not always. It is slow and often hidden work, but it is not in vain.

And though Jesus grieves over the hardness of human hearts even when given the chance to soften, that is not the end of the story. It is, rather, only the beginning. In Holy Week, once again we tell the story of a God who will not take No for an answer, even when that No comes in the shape of a Roman cross.

During the next week, we tell the only story that matters. Millions of people will hear that story in Christian churches. But tens of millions will not hear a word. They won’t hear it unless they hear it from you and me.

A faithful church is a witnessing church. If we have no story to share at Easter, we have no story share at all.

Millions of people will come to (Western) Christian churches this week. Some will come for the first time since Christmas. Some will come for the first time ever. But millions more will not come at all. They won’t come because no one invites them.

How often do we keep quiet in order to avoid attracting unwanted attention? How often do we do that with the best of intentions, with a panicked desire for safety in a dangerous and unpredictable world? We may not find ourselves in a political parade risking a violent response by the authorities – although some of us might. We may simply find ourselves in a difficult conversation in our church community, where the safest course might be to say nothing and thus keep a conflict from erupting. When church fights get going, who knows where they will end.

A faithful church is an inviting church. If we have no reason to invite at Easter, we have no reason to invite at all.

Millions of people will be part of real Christian community this week. But tens of millions will continue to live in the punishing loneliness of modern existence. They will face suffering and struggle alone and without hope. That will happen unless we embrace them.

Of course, Jesus’ words are the same, then, to us. “If these were silent, the stones would shout out!”

Our expectations are also profoundly shaped by our self-interest. I hear what I want to hear, for the most part. What I hear and see are shaped by what I want and don’t want, by what’s good for me and those I love. If I hear messages that conflict with my self-interested expectations, my first impulse is to reject those messages as wrong. How else can I maintain the status quo that serves me so well?

A faithful church is a serving church. We have the love of Jesus in our hearts and in our church family. Now is the time for you to help that family grow by loving the people Jesus loves.

There will more than a little hammering in the next few days. But soon the power of the hammer and the anvil will be broken at the mouth of an empty tomb. I invite you to be part that journey this week.

Tucker Ferda writes that “the weeping of Christ assumes that Jerusalem should have expected ‘this day’ to come…From where does the expectation for ‘the time of your visitation’ derive?” he continues, “What does the disappointment presuppose?” (page 2). Ferda finds part of the answer to his questions in the intertextual connection he finds between the triumphal entry in the Lukan account and the prophetic oracle in Isaiah 52:6-10.

Ferda follows the work of Richard Hays in examining in the Lukan account what Hays calls “dialectical imitation.” This imitation happens when one writer of scripture takes up and responds to the words and work of another writer. Hays describes dialectical imitation “as a process of juxtaposing two literary worlds so that the tensions between the worlds generate meaning” (page 4). An obvious example, in my experience, is the dialogue between Jonah and Joel regarding God’s mercy. This process of dialectical imitation is one of the Lukan author’s favorite techniques (page 5).

In the Lukan account, this “dialectical hermeneutic” accomplishes two things at once, according to Ferda. The technique is used “to demonstrate that the preparation and ministry of the Messiah fulfil Scripture, and to show that Jesus reversed many expectations” (page 6). The Lukan account is the Gospel of the Great Reversal not only in content but in method as well. “The hermeneutic often shows that it is Jesus’ contemporaries, not Jesus himself,” Ferda argues, “who fail to uphold scriptural precedent by misunderstanding or rejecting what God is doing in Jesus” (page 6).

The ways in which the Lukan author adapts an Old Testament text can emphasize the blindness or stubbornness of Jesus’ opponents. At the same time, the way that the author portrays Jesus’ own use of the text can then upend expectations which the audience may bring to the text (including our contemporary expectations). This is the case, Ferda argues, in the Lukan report of Jesus’ triumphal entry in Luke 19:1-4.

Ferda describes how the Lukan narrative both signals the fulfillment of the Messianic expectations of Isaiah 40-52 and subverts those expectations at the same time. This use of the (sub)text accounts for some of the resistance and rejection Jesus experiences. The Lukan author relies directly on texts from Isaiah several times in the body of Luke-Acts. In addition, the Lukan author identifies Jesus most clearly as the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53.

For understanding the Triumphal Entry and the rejection, Ferda argues, it is especially important to notice that the Lukan author portrays Jesus as the one who proclaims peace – a significant feature of Isaiah 52. This is amplified in Peter’s sermon in Acts 10:36, where Peter affirms that God is proclaiming the good news of peace through Jesus Christ. The concentrated use of the Second Isaiah passages and trajectories would lead readers who know their Bibles to expect the Triumphal Entry to be consistent with the witness of the prophet.

“But it is clear that Jesus’ entry to the city is a double-edged fulfillment and disappointment of prior hopes,” Ferda writes, “and readers recall that Simeon had said that Jesus would cause ‘the rising and falling of many in Israel” (page 11). The disciples accompany Jesus with joyous songs as he enters Jerusalem. But the entry is met equally with resistance and rejection. “The point is not that God’s plan was thwarted,” Ferda argues, “but that the opponents to the Jesus mission are like those Pharisees and Scribes who, by refusing to be baptized by John, ‘rejected God’s purpose…for themselves (Luke 7:30)’” (pages 11-12).

Ferda suggests that the narrative arc in the Lukan account from chapter three through nineteen “is a microcosm of the trajectory from Isaiah 40 to 52” (page 15). Jesus takes us from the announcement of coming comfort for God’s people to the return of God’s presence to Jerusalem. Ferda details the linguistic and rhetorical connections between Luke 19 and Isaiah 52 to further make his case.

What do we find as the connections and disconnections between Luke 19 and Isaiah 52? The Isaiah text expects that God’s people will recognize God’s arrival on the day. Jesus laments that they neither recognize the coming nor know the day. In Isaiah 52:7, God’s messenger proclaims the good news of peace. But Jesus’ audience doesn’t what produces peace (Luke 19:41). In Isaiah, the expectation is that eyes shall see, but Jesus declares that the truth is hidden from Jerusalem’s eyes.

“Should this thesis prove convincing,” Ferda concludes, “it would mean that the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem is another case in Luke where the fulfilment of Scripture is manifest, yet not grasped as such or just plain rejected” (page 32). This is the same pattern as we saw at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. He quotes Isaiah 61 to launch his mission. But the message was misunderstood and rejected. And the hearers wanted to pitch him off the nearest cliff.

“During this Passover season, what kind of Jesus will appear in Jerusalem?” Emerson Powery asks in his workingpreacher.org commentary. “What kind of Jesus will the American Church proclaim in this bitter and bifurcated period in which we live? Which Jesus,” Powery persists, “will we preach and live out during this Passion season?” That’s the question, isn’t it? Are we able to receive the ways in which the Lukan author both inspires and subverts our expectations? Or do we want to take a conscientious preacher and throw them off a cliff?

If Jesus isn’t the king we want, then the king we want isn’t Jesus. Well, thank you for that, Captain Obvious! I know that sounds like a trivial tautology, but I don’t think it is. We, too, have been formed to expect certain kinds of leaders and certain kinds of leadership – in personal, political, and institutional arenas. The Lukan strategy of “dialectical imitation” is going to be hard slog for us as well.

It may be that Jesus’ “opponents” weren’t so much resistant as they were terrified. What if Jesus doesn’t so much produce resistance and rejection as that he just scares people silly? It’s worth thinking about how you might “play” the line from some of the Pharisees: “Teacher, command your disciples to keep quiet!” We could play that as haughty and demanding. But I think it should be played another way.

I think that perhaps that line ought to be read as a whisper. Put a finger to your lips and have some terror in your eyes. “Not so loud, Teacher! Don’t your disciples know the Romans are watching and listening at every moment? Keep it down, before somebody gets hurt! A lot of innocent Jews could suffer if this thing gets out of hand! For the love of God, will you please get them to hush up?”

How often do we keep quiet in order to avoid attracting unwanted attention? How often do we do that with the best of intentions, with a panicked desire for safety in a dangerous and unpredictable world? We may not find ourselves in a political parade risking a violent response by the authorities – although some of us might (or should). We may simply find ourselves in a difficult conversation in our church community, where the safest course might be to say nothing and thus keep a conflict from erupting. When church fights get going, who knows where they will end?

Of course, Jesus’ words are the same, then, to us. “If these were silent, the very stones themselves would shout out!”

Our expectations are also profoundly shaped by our self-interest. I hear what I want to hear, for the most part. What I hear and see are shaped by what I want and don’t want, by what’s good for me and those I love. If I hear messages that conflict with my self-interested expectations, my first impulse is to reject those messages as wrong. How else can I maintain the status quo that serves me so well?

One of the hardest things to do when confronted with a claim that challenges my settled understanding is to stop and listen. I may not agree with that claim in the end, but the first task is to understand. Agreement or disagreement should only come later. But these days we typically leap right over understanding and get in the express lane for resistance and rejection. Perhaps this text is an invitation to stop for a moment and wonder with Emerson Powery just what sort of Jesus we are actually meeting on Sunday.

If Jesus isn’t the king I want, then the king I want isn’t Jesus. The one who comes proclaiming the gospel of peace will not comport well, for example, with the “Jesus” of White Christian Nationalism. The Jesus in Luke 19 is not a Jesus who shoots first and asks questions later. This is not a Jesus who loves America more than God. This is not a Jesus who underwrites and oversees the historic White Christian hegemony that has structured our national life for nearly three centuries.

If that’s the king I want, then the king I want isn’t Jesus – at least, not the Jesus we find when we actually read the canonical gospel accounts.

Perhaps the question isn’t only Powery’s question. We can interrogate what sort of Jesus we meet in the Triumphal Entry. More to the point, however, we can wonder with some honesty about the kind of Jesus we really want today. When I wonder that way, I find that the Lukan author both informs and challenges me.

Come, Holy Spirit. Form me to want the real Jesus, and not some cheap imitation from my self-interested imagination.

Resources and References

Capon, Robert Farrar. Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus. Kindle Edition.

Ferda, T. S. “Reason to Weep: Isaiah 52 and the Subtext of Luke’s Triumphal Entry.” The Journal of Theological Studies 66, no. 1 (2015): 28–60. doi:10.1093/JTS/FLV006.

Gonzalez, Justo L. Luke: Belief, A Theological Commentary on the Bible. Westminster John Knox Press. Kindle Edition.

Kinman, Brent. “Parousia, Jesus’ ‘A-Triumphal’ Entry, and the Fate of Jerusalem (Luke 19:28-44).” Journal of Biblical Literature 118, no. 2 (1999): 279–94. https://doi.org/10.2307/3268007.

Levine, Amy-Jill, and Witherington III, Ben. The Gospel of Luke (New Cambridge Bible Commentary). Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Malina, Bruce, and Rohrbaugh, Richard L. Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels. Kindle Edition.

Speckman, McGlory. (2014). Jesus and the tyche of Jerusalem: A reflection on the mission of Jesus in Luke 19:41- 44 with special reference to the mission of Kairos in Greek mythology. Missionalia, 42(3), 168-191. https://dx.doi.org/10.7832/42-3-63

For those of us in the liturgical and Revised Common Lectionary tribe, the Sunday of the Passion is a preaching problem. Of course, if your worship tradition doesn’t include a sermon on this Sunday, then you likely have a different problem – how to read the Lukan passion account in full without creating a comatose congregation. But for most of us, the problem is too many texts and way too much text. So, we make choices about where to fix our focus.

Let’s begin with the Palm Sunday text in Luke 19:28-44. Jesus has come through Jericho and detours in order to dine at the home of Zacchaeus, the tax collector. “Today,” Jesus proclaims, “salvation has come to this household, because this one too is a son of Abraham” (Luke 19:9b, my translation). Perhaps we can hear the foreshadowing of Jesus’ promise to one of the thieves crucified next to him – “I solemnly promise you, today you shall be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43, my translation). Or, perhaps, when we hear those words on Passion Sunday or Good Friday (or both), we will think back to Zacchaeus.

This one who brings salvation to tax collectors and sinners, this one who promises paradise to captured terrorists – before he leaves Jericho and finishes the journey to Jerusalem, he tells a parable, often knows as the Parable of the Pounds. We might think this is just the Lukan edition of the Parable of the Talents that we find in the Matthean account. That seems likely in historical terms. The two parables may have a common source in church tradition. But the two versions have quite different uses and meanings in the Matthean and Lukan accounts.

“But while they were listening to this thing,” the Lukan author writes in 19:11 (my translation), “he proceeded to tell a parable because he was nearing Jerusalem, and they supposed that the kingdom of God was about to appear immediately.” Here we have one of those narrative insertions by which the Lukan author makes sure we know what’s what in the text that follows. This isn’t about “stewardship,” as some commentators might suggest. This is about Jesus as the coming King. And it is told to upend expectations — notice the narrative “but” at the beginning of the text.

Gonzalez notes that the parable is not a fairy tale or a just-so story. Rather, it rehearses in oblique form the attempts by the successors to Herod the Great to have their kingships ratified by the Romans. “Given that background,” Gonzalez writes, “the parable is alluding to the political realities of the time, and the cruel and vindictive king of the parable is not an outlandish figure of fiction” (Kindle Location 4191).

We read in Luke 19:14 that the citizens of the country hated the king-to-be and sent a competing delegation to the ruling powers. That delegation protested the rule of their potential monarch and said, “We don’t want this man ruling over us.” In spite of that protest, the nobleman was affirmed as king and returned to the country in his newly-minted role. This part of the parable “would immediately remind the early hearers of this parable of the Jewish delegation that had been sent to Rome, to oppose Archelaus’s bid for kingship” (Kindle Location 4201).

Levine and Witherington concur with this assessment. “Since the only mechanism in Jesus’ or Luke’s context for gaining such a kingdom was the Roman system, the parable invokes images of Roman colonialism. Jesus’ listeners,” they continue, “or Luke’s readers, might have thought immediately of Herod the Great’s trip to Rome to gain his rule in Judea, Samaria and Galilee” (page 513). Other connections might have occurred to listeners as well, but such journeys in Luke often don’t turn out well.

Gonzalez argues that the location of the parable in the Lukan account makes it “primarily a parable about the need to decide in favor of or against a king whose authority has not been confirmed. It is a parable about the ultimate risk of discipleship,” Gonzalez continues, “which is based on the conviction that this one whom the disciples serve is indeed king—a point that will become very much an issue in the rest of the Gospel. It is a parable about being faithful to an absent king whose power is opposed by many in his own land,” he concludes, “and who can give his servants no more than a paltry pound or mina” (Kindle Location 4203).

Levine and Witherington argue that the verse describing the hatred of the citizens toward the would-be king open up multiple possibilities for interpretation. “On the one hand,” they write, “we can see the nobleman as representing foreign leaders who colonize, exploit, and demean their subjects.” This puts us as readers, according to the authors, in the position of resisting that hated king. The outcome of the parable, in this interpretation, gives us a nobleman who triumphs by slaughtering his enemies.

“On the other,” they continue, “we can see the nobleman as representing Jesus, who entrusts his good(s) to his followers and expects those followers to multiply his household by both people and the material goods they bring with them.” This is, of course, the most traditional interpretation in the broader Christian tradition. But it’s not very palatable. “If we take the second option,” Levine and Witherington suggest, “then Jesus is cast in the role of a ruler who damns his opponents to torture and death” (page 514).

This is the option which Robert Farrar Capon explores at length in his parable books. Capon argues that the nobleman is Jesus. The pounds represent unmerited and indiscriminate grace. The responses of the slaves are either trust or distrust. The result of the response is either inclusion or exclusion – determined by the response, not by the gift. “The parable, therefore, declares that the only thing that is to be examined at the judgment is faith, not good deeds,” Capon concludes, “and it declares that the only thing that can deprive us of the favorable judgment already passed upon us by Jesus is our unfaith in his gracious passing of it” (Kindle Location 5502-5503).

Neither option seems consistent with either the Lukan narrative or the broader New Testament picture of Jesus as king. And this, I would suggest, is the real question on Palm/Passion Sunday (and throughout Holy Week, especially in Luke). What sort of king is Jesus? This parable ends up no more resolved than any of the other Lukan parables – unless we impose some sort of resolution on them.

The Lukan account is motivated, in part, by expectations that Jesus would be back soon to set all things right. We have tremors of expectation in the Parable of the Pounds. Jesus has bested his debating opponents on many occasions. Now, he has brought an important collaborator, a chief tax collector, in from the cold. He leaves Jericho and heads up to Jerusalem for Passover – a liberation festival and a prime time for rebellion and revolt. Based on the evidence, those who accompanied him “supposed that the kingdom of God was about to appear at once.”

We get similar tremors later in the Lukan account. The two disciples on the road to Emmaus are depressed because they “had hoped [Jesus] was the one to redeem Israel” (Luke 24:21). In the first chapter of Acts, the Lukan author reports that those around Jesus still didn’t get it at the Ascension. “Lord,” they ask plaintively, “is this the time [finally!] when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6, NRSV, my emphasis). The Palm Sunday parade participants shout about the blessed king who comes in the name of the Lord (Luke 19:38). The Lukan audience has people who desperately want things to get better and to get better ASAP.

In response to that desperate desire, the Lukan author reports the Parable of the Pounds. I lean toward the first interpretation – the ruler in the parable as emblematic of the kinds of rulers that Jesus’ listeners (and the Lukan audience) knew all too well. These are rulers who seek and maintain power through violence. They may reward good behavior when it serves their purposes. And they are ruthless is rooting out those who either oppose or fail them. Their very unpredictability is another sign and source of their power.

This is the sort of king produced by Herod’s dynasty. This is the sort of king Pilate expects. This is the sort of king that Caesar claims to be – a powerful benefactor to those who play the game and a bloody executioner to those who resist, fail, or happen to get caught up in the workings of the imperial machinery. This is the only sort of king most people know.

As in the case with most of the Lukan parables, we don’t hear the response of the listeners. We are invited to fill in the blanks — for them and for us. I can imagine that they were distressed and disgusted by the behavior of the new king. “What a terrible ruler!” perhaps they said. “We’ve had plenty like that one,” they continued. “Who in the world would want a king like that?”

“Now,” perhaps Jesus smiled. “Now you’re getting it.” Levine and Witherington make the connection to the “triumphal entry.” They write, “A parable containing a ruler whose people do not want him, greater responsibilities for those who serve, and a mass slaughter sets the context for Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem” (page 518).

Thus, the Lukan question for the week is, “If not a normal king, then what?”

Resources and References

Capon, Robert Farrar. Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus. Kindle Edition.

Gonzalez, Justo L. Luke: Belief, A Theological Commentary on the Bible. Westminster John Knox Press. Kindle Edition.

Levine, Amy-Jill, and Witherington III, Ben. The Gospel of Luke (New Cambridge Bible Commentary). Cambridge University Press, 2018.