"Clearing Out the Attic"
Jesus overturns our expectations
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Text: Luke 19:28-48
Many years ago, when my father was a minister of a Congregational Church in Darlington, County Durham, in England, he received an emergency phone call from the fire marshal, who said: “Reverend Stirling, you had better get down to the church as soon as possible. We have a problem and it needs to be solved right away.”
So my father phoned some of the deacons, got my mother and me into the car and we all went down to the church. It was a large church - not as large as this one, but big - an old 19th-century, classic Congregational Church. At the very back, above the chancel area was a huge attic that no one had been in for decades. The fire marshal had concluded that this attic was a massive fire hazard, so he took us up to see it.
I have never seen anything like it in my life! There were bare electrical wires running along wooden beams, documents soaking in water, dead animals hanging on light switches and records of baptisms and marriages dating back to the 1820s and 30s. There were horrible, horrible things, and in the corner there was a massive trunk. It had rusty locks and hinges, and the rumour had it that a former minister was buried in it! All the children were spooked about going into that attic! Needless to say, I waited to find out who would be the first to open it - it was a real moment of worry. Good news! There were no bodies in the trunk. The fire marshal said,
“Do you realize that all this clutter in the attic could bring this magnificent church down in a matter of minutes?”
People spent the next two weeks clearing it out, making sure everything was safe and that we got a passing report so we could continue with the ministry.
I have thought about that many times over the years, because it is a wonderful metaphor for how our lives are spiritually. There is often a lot of clutter in our attic. There are often a lot of dangerous things: Ideas, beliefs and traditions that become more important than the truth, things we hold on to that are dear and important, but in many ways can be deadly. We often don't even know they are there.
Ever since the very beginning of God's call to the people of Israel, there have been those who were called to warn people that there is stuff in the attic that needs to be cleared out. The people who did this most of all were the prophets. The prophets were called to make sure the Israelites knew what was cluttering their attic, what was dangerous to them. The prophets' task was to diagnose the problem and bring about a cleansing. It was their role to call for reform of what was wrong among the people of Israel. All the prophets, at various times and in various places, were called to proclaim the Word of God for Israel to clean out its attic, and to make sure that it no longer had dangers that could bring down the house of the kingdom.
Walter Brueggeman, the great Old Testament scholar, says these prophets were, in many ways, mediators between God and the people. They didn't just speak universal truths; they were not philosophers like Plato, Epictetus, Aristotle, Socrates or Pythagoras. Rather, they spoke a concrete word in a concrete situation, which told people that this was the clutter that needed to be cleared. Sometimes, the prophets even had to put their lives on the line. They had to go to monarchs, judges and priests and say, “This is the Word of God. You need to change. Things are wrong here!” Many of them were rejected, lived in danger and even had their lives threatened because they did this.
Even when mutatis mutandis - all the necessary changes were made - the prophets still had to make sure that Israel remained vigilant; that it did what it was supposed to do and did not lose sight of its original purpose, the reason for its existence. Always, the prophets said, “Not what I say, but thus sayeth the Lord.” They didn't proclaim their own ideas; they spoke the Word concretely to a situation when the people of God needed to change.
This is Palm Sunday and I honestly believe that we can't understand the power of Palm Sunday without understanding the prophetic nature of what Jesus did on that day. It is no coincidence that Jeremiah 7:11 talks about the House of God, the Temple, being a corrupt place. Jeremiah warned the people of Israel many centuries before Jesus that the House of God could become a “den of thieves.” It is no coincidence that, in Isaiah 56:11, we read that Isaiah believed all the nations would come to Jerusalem, to the Temple, and that the exiles would return. The whole world would come and worship Yahweh, the living God.
It was with these very words and in this sentiment that Jesus entered Jerusalem and put these three events together: His arrival in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, the denunciation of Jerusalem, which he wept over, and the cleaning out of the Temple. These three things are placed together in Luke's Gospel because they reveal Jesus' will, purpose and prophetic message as he came into Jerusalem that day. What he wanted to do was not to reform Jerusalem; he did not come with some new ways to carry out sacred acts within the Temple. He came to totally and completely change it. So what was Jesus doing?
First of all, he was clearing out the attic of the crowd's expectations. The crowd worshipped Jesus when he came into Jerusalem. The people sang “Hosanna!” and listened to his every word. Jesus scripted this event very carefully. Clearly, Jesus had power and control over what was taking place. He chose the donkey; he took the disciples; he came into the city and denounced Israel and Jerusalem; he went into the Temple and cleared out the money-changers. All of this, Jesus did symbolically: He knew what he was doing.
Some people have said that the writers of the Gospels wrote their own personal ideas into the story. While they clearly edited the events, and these events appear at different times in different Gospels, the fact is that Jesus knew what he was doing. He knew the Bible. He knew the Law. He knew the prophets and what he did was in keeping with their prophecies. The problem was that the people themselves, even though they welcomed him, opened their arms, put their cloaks on the road and waved branches, were following a mysterious, imaginary Jesus. They were expecting him to restore the Kingdom of Israel, to re-build the nation, to drive out the Romans; they were expecting him to be a military leader, a triumphal Messiah and king, but those expectations of Jesus were a reflection of their own wishes.
Jesus came in and did something entirely different. Rather than coming as a military leader, he came in the spirit of peace. Rather than reforming things religiously, he told people they needed to repent. Did Jesus wish the suffering of Jerusalem, as some have suggested? By no means! Jesus, in the shortest verse in the Bible, “wept over Jerusalem.” He said, “If only you had known what God was doing, if only you had seen what God was doing, this could have been avoided. But you didn't!” He wept over them. He needed to clear out all their expectations of what a Messiah would be, turn their pre-conception on its head and change it.
He does the same with us. He comes and clears out the attics of our expectations of what Jesus really is. I feel for the crowds at the original Palm Sunday. They did not know, like we do, the end of the story. We know the cross, the resurrection and everything that followed. They didn't! We are privileged; we can look back through a lens they did not have. Even so, we are often clouded by our expectations and not aware fully of what he is doing.
All of this raises the question: Why did Jesus do what he did on Palm Sunday and the days after? Why did he do it? After all, you would think that Jesus would have realized that riding into Jerusalem and being claimed as a King: “Behold, this is the Saviour! Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord,” would offend the Roman powers in charge of Palestine at the time. You would think he would know that turning over the money-changers' tables in the Temple and stopping the corruption of the exchange of money and the exploitation of the poor and weak would upset the religious leaders, authorities and overseers of the Temple. You would think he would realize that threatening the destruction of the Temple would elicit the ire of the monarchs and all those who were waiting for a new Maccabean revolt.
But he did know! Jesus knew exactly what he was doing, and here's the point: He knew he would die because of it. Jesus took all the false expectations and ideas of what he was and is, and turned them on their heads. Why? He did it because he wants you and me to connect the events of Good Friday and Easter Sunday with the events of Palm Sunday. Jesus rode into Jerusalem and overturned the tables in the Temple to reveal the nature of his rule; to show the power of the Kingdom of God and what the reign of God is all about. He wanted to show that it is a reign of peace, justice, truth, purity and self-giving love. All the expectations we might have of what God is like or what God does were thrown out the window. But even so, we still have a concept of Jesus today that represents a vision of what we want him to be, rather than how he comes to us. I know there are people who think of Jesus only as a nice figure, a kind man or a good teacher; some cynics and skeptics will say, “He was a deranged megalomaniac.” But Jesus came into Jerusalem that day to reveal a Messiah for all peoples and all nations.
I think it is fitting to realize that when Jesus overturned the tables in the Temple, he overturned them for us. Why? It was because what Jesus wanted was for the whole world to worship his Father. What he wanted was for the whole world to come and be embraced by the love of God. He wanted to clear the attic completely to atone for all the problems and errors of humanity in order that we could come freely to God the Father.
The nature of his Messiah-ship was to open up the doors by cleaning out the attic and saving the house, and in so doing, to create a new people. More than anything else, he took this upon himself. The events of Good Friday and Easter Sunday are an outcropping of Jesus coming and giving of himself.
My friends, there are many people who have a misunderstanding of Jesus Christ. They think that before they come to Christ they have to clear out their own attic. They feel that they have to earn his grace and love; that they have to do something to purify themselves religiously or atone spiritually for what they have done wrong. There are many people who want to keep Jesus far, far away, because they cannot stand coming face-to-face with him. But the Jesus of Palm Sunday is the Jesus who comes into the midst of corruption, death and guilt. It is he who gives himself for the sake of making the attic clean.
I read a story about an orphaned boy who lived in a house with his grandmother. The old house caught fire one day and went up in flames. The grandmother tried to go up to the young boy's bedroom on the third floor to save him, but she was overcome by the smoke and died. As flames engulfed the building, the boy stood at the window on the top floor.
A man saw the boy in the burning house and climbed up a drain pipe to rescue him. The pipe was excruciatingly hot from the fire, but he kept climbing. Finally, he smashed the window, put the boy on his shoulder and brought him down to safety. The man singed his hands to get to the child, but because of his actions the boy lived.
A few days later, a hearing was held to determine who would have custody of the boy.
A rich man said, “I will take the young boy, and I will provide him with a glorious home.”
A teacher said she would take him in and educate him.
There was an artist in town who said, “I will adopt him because I have great artistic abilities.”
A philosopher said, “I will adopt him because I can teach him everything he needs to know.”
Meanwhile, the little boy just kept his face down, for he knew none of them. Suddenly, another man walked in and the child saw the scars on his hands as he came forward saying, “I will adopt the boy.”
The child ran to him and hugged him, knowing that those wounded hands had saved him from the fire and that he could trust that man to be his guardian.
The message of Palm Sunday is that the One who came riding into Jerusalem, the One who cleaned out the Temple, the One who risked everything - rejection by everyone - is the One who bore the scars on his hands so that we could be adopted as children of God. What an awesome reason to sing Hosanna today! Amen.