Destroying false images of God and saving humanity from itself
Sermon by Andy Wurm for Palm Sunday, 14th April 2019
Today we read the account of Jesus’ Palm Sunday journey into Jerusalem from Mark’s Gospel. It is rich in symbolism and expectation.
The story begins with Jesus near the Mount of Olives, which according to tradition, is to be the place of God’s final judgement. Mark is telling us that this is ‘it’ – the final countdown to the big showdown. We are about to witness the unleashing of God’s judgement upon those who oppose God’s ways.
Jesus instructs two disciples to collect a donkey for him to ride into town. There is no question whether the donkey will be available. The donkey’s availability is a sign that God has ensured that Jesus can complete his mission. It’s not a case of God intervening in human affairs, so much as God determined to save humanity from itself. In the stories of Holy Week there will be hints throughout, that while individuals act with varying motivations, none of them will prevent God’s purpose being achieved. This is a point of faith which makes a difference, for it means we have been given all we need for humanity to flourish. As we wrestle with challenges such as climate change, appropriate energy use, economic and social justice, it’s tempting to believe the problems are insurmountable, however, if nothing can stand in the way of God giving us what we need, then we can overcome the challenges. The question is whether we choose to or not.
Jesus, riding a donkey into Jerusalem, fulfilling an ancient messianic prophecy, thereby reminds us of the expectations which people laid upon him, some passed on from tradition and some current at the time. For Jesus to ride a donkey into Jerusalem and then specifically to the temple, is a statement that he is both the king of Israel entering his city and the Messiah entering his temple. Hence the crowds chant ‘God bless the one who comes in the name of the Lord!’.
So Jesus claims Jerusalem and proceeds into the temple. His temple. He goes in, looks around, … and then leaves, afterwards withdrawing to Bethany. It’s a taste of what’s to come in the week ahead – the week we call ‘holy week’. What he’s just done is symbolically taken upon himself the roles of King and Messiah and then emptied them of content.
As the human face of God, by emptying the roles of king and Messiah, Jesus has given a preview of what he will do in the week ahead, which is to empty God of the meaning of God. By that, I mean he will allow false images of God to be destroyed, through the very means he will reveal the true nature of God, and in doing so, will also save humanity from itself.
Which God did Jesus allow to be destroyed? It was the God of dominating power. Power over the world. Power over people. Power over us. Power over our enemies.
This is the God of whom there are many variations, the God we might believe in, or more likely, the God who might reside in the depths of our being, hidden from our conscious awareness. It is God who can be packaged and presented to people as demanding, yet comprehensible. Someone has been bold enough to suggest that as this is the God of religion, then through his death, Jesus destroyed religion.
Jesuit writer Gerard W. Hughes presents a great caricature of God in his book God of Surprises. He says to imagine God to be like a family relative called Uncle George. He’s loving, a great friend of the family, very powerful and interested in us all. Eventually we pay a visit to Uncle George. He lives in a giant mansion, has a beard and is fairly gruff and threatening. We find that we cannot share our parents’ love of Uncle George. At the end of our visit, Uncle George says that he would like us to visit him every week and if we fail to come, he will show us what will happen to us. He then leads us down to the basement where he shows us little demons hurling into furnaces people who failed to visit him once a week, or acted in ways he disapproved. ‘And if you don’t visit me, that’s where you will go too’, says Uncle George. On the way home, our parents ask us if we love Uncle George with all our heart, mind and body and of course, not being keen on furnaces, we say yes. So a split is established between what we give lip service to and what we really feel, and it is what we feel about God, that matters most.
Uncle George is a caricature, but represents something of the God we create as images of our tyrannical selves. In mainstream Christianity this view of God is not as popular as it once was, although he’s not totally gone. It is this God who opponents of religion tend to reject and we too should reject, however he’s not the real problem. He’s just the tip of the iceberg. To think we have got rid of the false God by getting rid of an Uncle George-like God, is like believing you can solve the problem of world poverty by getting poor people to feel better about themselves. If they don’t feel downtrodden, won’t they be much better off? Absolutely not, because their lives are caught in systemic oppression. It’s the same with getting rid of the critical God. He’s only a symptom of the real problem, the real false God. If we remove all critical references from God and stop talking about sin, the false God will still be worshipped. The fact that we feel diminished by the critical God, is because we have accepted the game of ‘ins and outs’, the game of acquiring approval, which is following the false God.
The person who said Jesus destroyed religion didn’t mean religion in the form of Christianity, Islam, or even Anglicanism. They are formalised and imperfect versions of religion, but the religion being referred to here is that which is woven into every culture of the world. It is violent in nature, using the power of domination and it is always accepted as ‘the proper way things should be done’. It is respectable and its adherents may be people with religious beliefs, or none.
It has been fascinating to see the emergence of comedians and social commentators adopting the role of moral guardians of society, using abusive language and labels for those they deem unacceptable. Language of ‘us and them’, ‘in and out’, is the language of the false God. Most of those doing this would of course reject any sense of following a God, yet they exhibit the same patterns of justifying violence against others by appeal to a higher authority. They are playing a game, with very serious consequences, but no less a game, in which people are defined over against one another, driven by distorted desire.
This is what Jesus came to save us from. Not so much from the naughty things we do, like driving over the speed limit, or desiring the wrong person. Those are only symptoms of something much more powerful, far more deeply ingrained, so much so, that we don’t even realise it. On our own, we are as capable of realising it, as our eyes are capable of seeing their own optic nerves and the brains in which their visual input is processed. That’s why it takes something very dramatic to uncover it for us. It needs to be drawn into the open for everyone to see. When Jesus rides into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday therefore, he makes himself into bait, which the forces which run the world, the forces which run our lives, will not be able to resist crushing. He’s inviting them to do the very thing they want to do, so the world can see.
Only a God who is absolutely empty of violence would allow him/herself to be violated like that, as an act of love, simultaneously setting us free and inviting us to a new humanity.