Luke 19:28-40
April 13, 2025
Rev. Amy P. McCullough, PhD
From the opening verses onward, scripture testifies to a unity pulsating through the cosmos. God, our creator and us, God’s creation, are inexplicitly, irrevocably bound together, born of the voice that said, “Let there be light” and called it good. Often, we hone our attention on the relationship of human creatures to God; but the unity encircles nature and other living creatures also. Scripture reveals this participation, with words about morning stars singing together, the lion laying down with the lamp, and a vision of a tree of life standing at the center of the redeemed earth. Our ancestors in faith were known to gather a few stones into an altar after a transformative encounter with God. Jesus used mud to heal the blind man’s eyes. God’s Spirit hums through earth’s elements, a song that speaks of God’s relentless love.
The tricky part, though, comes in how closely, within life’s forces, possibility is interwoven with pain, potential lies next to danger, death creeps alongside life. Wolves prey upon lowly lambs. Jonah ends up in a fish’s belly and Daniel finds himself in the lion’s den. Water offers a prime example. Essential for life, water quenches thirst, soothes hot skin, and washes away dirt. Baptisms and foot washings are part of Jesus’s ministry. But water can also overwhelm; drowning the Egyptians in the Red Sea and terrifying the disciples caught in a storm on the Sea of Galilee. Peril and promise. Death and life.
Like water, stones also hold potential and risk, possibility and danger. David chose five smooth stones as he faced the giant Goliath. After centuries of small, roadside altars, the Israelites built a temple to God, using stones for the foundation. Their land was a rocky terrain; stepping on stones was an everyday encounter. Such stones could build up and they could destroy.
As Jesus enters the outskirts of Jerusalem, he climbs upon a donkey, a parade forms around him, and as he rides into the city, the disciples sing songs anointing him as King. The religious leaders, ever aware of Rome’s watchful eyes, beg Jesus to halt the acclamations. He refuses, saying, “If these fall silent, I tell you, the stones would cry out.” What is Jesus saying, “the stones would cry out?”
Luke paints a unique picture of the Palm Sunday procession. Unlike his fellow gospel writers, the path is not lined with palm branches, but with coats strewn across a dusty road. And the crowd gathered is not filled with unknowing bystanders, but Jesus’s followers; those who have listened to his stories, watched him heal, feed, and console, persons who have glimpsed God in his life, sensed the power of the universe pulsating through him and want to come closer. In other words, this procession includes us. The crowd does not cry ‘Hosanna,’ but an oddly familiar phrase, “Peace in heaven and glory in
the highest heaven!” These are the words of the angels on the night of Jesus’s birth, spoken again as he enters his final earthly week. By suggesting the stones will take up the praise if his followers’ voices fade, Jesus affirms the truth of their acclamations. What they profess I am is true.
But if it is true that in Jesus God’s fullness comes to dwell, then a small parade with the tattered cloaks of Galilean fishing people, with the main attraction being one on an untamed donkey, is an odd way of expressing that truth. This procession has no mighty war horse, nor any accompanying soldiers or political officials. The crowd does not swell with new admirers, just the 70 or so followers within Jesus’s community. It is a strange scene, with paradox at its core. Here is praise mixed with humility, power alongside weakness, life mixed with death.
And yet, truth is here. The followers of Jesus know this truth. Faith is not one big, grand event noticed by those in the central corridors of power. Faith is small steps, trusting ones, taken into the unseen future. The disciples go when Jesus instructs them to find a donkey, trusting what they need will be where Jesus points them. Taking the next step of faith is going where one is lead, without knowing the outcome, stepping outward not only for yourself but while carrying the hopes of God’s wild cosmos with them, trusting the God of life is guiding us through it all.
Witnessing the praise, some Pharisees say to Jesus, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” Another translation makes the request more urgent. Teacher, rebuke your disciples, as if their words of praise oppose God. Fear likely motivates this request. It was the role of the religious leaders to manage the unmanageable relationship between Roman authority and the Jewish community. They sought a “keep the peace” middle way that didn’t speak out too loudly when Rome’s law felt harsh in hopes of warding off attention that might curtail their small freedoms. We know this position. Don’t rock the boat, it might make things worse. Keep our head down and swallow the indignities in order to keep the tiny privileges you have. It is a reasonable position, even if it is a confining one.
Jesus rejects it. If my followers stop speaking, he says, other voices will rise in their place, because truth, in the end, cannot be contained. Truth has a way of coming out. Moreover, faith cannot grow in tiny, compromised spaces. Faith must meet fear and find the risky path to life.
Most morning, I read a newspaper synopsis as I begin my day. And in the past week, like many of you, I followed the stories of tariffs and market volatility, student VISAs revoked and a mistakenly deported immigrant, the havoc of storms across the midsection of the country, and the intricacies of the Maryland legislative session. As I read, I feel the worry, despair, and grief wash over me, with some fear mixed in. I wonder if Jesus was scared as he entered Jerusalem. Surely, he knew the long history of prophets being killed in the city and how deeply entrenched the instinct for self-preservation might be in both leaders and crowds. And yet he rode in, letting the donkey, as Mary Oliver says, “lift one dusty hoof and
step, as he had to, onward.” Faith does not deny the danger, does not pretend life is devoid of risk, or that truth, when it matters most, can be quite costly.
What truths does Jesus bring with him as he arrives? The truth of God’s unwavering presence alongside our violent rejection of God’s offer. The truth of God’s desire that we learn the ways of peace, and our failure to do so. The truth of God’s command: to love our neighbors as ourselves, to protect the vulnerable, alongside the reality that such acts are life-alteringly difficult. If our voices fall silent, other voices will shout out. The risk in our silence is not to God, but to us. Speak praise. Speak love. Speak truth.
In the week ahead, the voices that are praising Jesus today will fall silent. His followers will slip away, hiding in corners, abandoning their Lord. Jesus will enter Jerusalem, weep over the city, imagine its stones tumbling to crush its inhabitants, an event that will happen a few decades later. In a few days, Jesus will be brought before Pilate, who converses with him while sitting on the judge’s bench, called the Stone Pavement. Afterwards, when Pilate asks the people, “Shall I crucify your King?” and they cheer, “Yes,” the stones remain as witnesses. The stones line the city’s streets. They fill the temple walls and Pilate’s headquarters. The stones form the boundary between city and awful hill where the cross is lifted up.
Into the silence of betrayal, brutality, and death, the stones shout out. What do they cry? We, too, absorb the pain, the risk, and the courage of this week. The saving love of God reaches all the way down, into every thread that weaves together creation, testifying to God’s labor to re-order the world. Can you hear their cry? Can you touch the truth? Can you walk into this week with a heart open to the praise, the pain, the peril and the joy to come? Amen.