PEOPLE'S CHURCH OF DOVER

Exodus 32:15-23; Matthew 21:6-17           The Seven Deadly Sins:  Wrath/ Palm Sunday

Palm Sunday Sermon March 16, 2008:  People's UCC, Dover, DE:  the Rev. Dan Griggs

 

            In my Lenten sermon series I've been talking about the Seven Deadly Sins, and we have one remaining:  "wrath."  But it's Palm Sunday!  It's a day when the church celebrates the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem.  He rides on an ass—the same kind of mount that Solomon rode to his coronation.[1]  And just as the people in Solomon's day greeted him with loud pipes and singing, so on Palm Sunday the people who had gathered in Jerusalem for Passover greeted him waving palm branches, laying their coats on the road before him, shouting and singing. 

            He rode across the Kidron Valley bridge and through the gate into Jerusalem itself, the holy city, the site of the temple King Herod had built on the same rock plateau where Solomon built the first temple.  On Palm Sunday we usually stop the story right there, as Jesus enters the temple.  We focus on the palms, the celebration, the psalms the people were singing,              

It's a festive day, a day of glory and expectation.  And sometimes we talk about how completely the people misunderstood Jesus' messiahship, and how that led to disillusionment, and that led to the cry, "Crucify him!"  He didn't take over from Herod or Pilate:  he just took over the eastern courts of the temple and spent the week teaching.  This is the story of Holy Week, when even one of Jesus' own chosen disciples became so disillusioned that he turned Jesus in to the temple police for a reward.  But all that lies ahead:  today is Palm Sunday, and we wave our palm branches and celebrate; because even if they didn't understand, we do understand that he came to Jerusalem to die for our sins and to be resurrected for our hope of eternity. 

I would just like to suggest one little note of caution:  How is it that it took the early church until 70 AD (forty years later) to write this story down—in the Gospel of Mark, yet we believe we understand everything about it?  I want to suggest that the real story here escapes us, too:  and that it's the mystery of it that we should attend to:  Palm Sunday, betrayal, crucifixion, resurrection.  Yes, Palm Sunday is a day the church celebrates; but let's open our eyes and behold the hidden working of God here, which is the most important thing. 
            So today is Palm Sunday.  I don't really want to talk about the deadly sin of "wrath" in my sermon series—do you?  What does "wrath" have to do with this celebration?  Actually, quite a lot.  If we don't stop at the gate  of the temple but accompany Jesus into the outer court, we see him do something completely unexpected.  What he saw there made him furious.  There were tables set up along the walls, and men dressed very well were exchanging secular money for temple money:  the rule was, the people could pay their temple tax only in temple money, so it didn't matter if you came with Roman money, or Egyptian money, or Persian money, you needed to exchange it for temple money:  these guys were providing a needed service.  Out in the middle of the courtyard were men selling animals—young bulls, sheep, goats, doves:  if you came to Jerusalem for Passover from Spain, or from Greece, you didn't try to transport a sacrificial animal on the boat—you bought it when you got there:  so these people were providing a needed service, too.  The people who managed the temple precincts had set up a sales area where worshipers could get what they needed to offer their gifts to God.  It was perfectly logical.  There's nothing in the text to suggest that anything dishonest was going on.  But it made Jesus furious.  He braided a bullwhip and drove them all out.  He turned over the currency exchange tables and drove the goats out the gate into the street.  And he explained, "Isaiah said that God's house is a house of prayer,[2] but Jeremiah was right about you—you have made it a den of thieves!"[3]  Who did he mean were thieves—the sellers or the temple board that set up the sales area?  It's easy enough  to tell—it wasn't the currency exchange people who got mad about what he did; it was (as Matthew phrases it) "the chief priests and scribes"—the temple board. 

            Now a question.  Was Jesus' anger the sin of "wrath"?  No, it was an act of justice.  Sometimes you have to get worked up in order to have the strength to get up and do what needs doing.  In our common language we often call that strength "anger," but it isn't the sin of "wrath":  it's the emotional aspect of courage.  You really can "be angry and avoid sin."[4]  People who have successful marriages figure out how to do that early on.  So just because somebody looks angry, acts angry, speaks angrily doesn't mean that they are committing the deadly sin of "wrath." 

            But now, let's look at the "chief priests and scribes."  They get angry, too.  They saw Jesus disrupting the sales area, and they heard what the people were saying about Jesus, "Hosanna to the son of David!"  And they called an emergency meeting of the temple board.  Jesus was threatening their authority; and so in order to defend their own power they sent a delegation of priests and scribes to confront Jesus.  "Do you hear what these people are saying?  Aren't you ashamed?  Stop all this disruption!  The temple is serious business."  Matthew says they were "indignant"—but what they were indignant about was that Jesus was healing the sick and giving sight to the blind, right there in their own temple.  Their anger was not about justice, it was about privilege, power and control.  The way Matthew tells it, they may not even have raised their voices—they were white-hot with rage.  And it was all about themselves, what they might lose.  Jesus was right:  the temple had indeed become "a den of thieves"—the authorities had stolen God's honor.  THIS anger is "wrath."  It's selfish, and it wants to hurt somebody—they will end the week by murdering Jesus. 

            St. John Cassian wrote about "wrath":[5] 

 

 

            This distinction between anger and wrath, justice and selfishness is just as clear in the First Lesson,[6] the story of Moses' hurling down the two tablets on which God had written the Law, because in his absence to go commune with God the people, led by his own brother, had given God up and made a golden idol.  They turned their worship, their devotion, their love away from God and concentrated it on a false image—a god they themselves could manipulate.  It wasn't Moses who broke the Law-tablets:  it was the people themselves who broke the Law.  And Moses was incensed.  The description of what he did to the idol is a bit strange:  he burned it, ground it down, scattered the powder in the water and made the people drink it.  This was probably a ritual everybody understood as the way to destroy a defeated idol.[7]  Already Moses' rage was being channeled into the rituals that would bring the Hebrew people back to the worship of the One God.  His anger was not the sin of "wrath":  it was an act of justice, not selfishness. 

 

            Now what about you?  What is your temper about?  We all have a temper—the Desert Saints called it "the incensive power of the soul," and they taught that its proper use is to defend yourself against temptation.  Your anger gives you strength.  But "wrath" is using your "incensive power" for selfish pride, or to hurt others:  it's a sort of grown-up temper tantrum.  But it can continue for years. 

            After the defeat of the Central Powers in World War One, after the winners had forced Germany to pay a staggering reparations bill, had stripped Germany of its army and navy, had given pieces of Germany to other countries, and then along came the Great Depression—after all that humiliation and loss, they chose a man to lead their government who preached revenge.  He would avenge the German people's humiliation by taking economic power away from the Jews, by taking back the pieces of Germany that had been stolen, and he would create a new Germany that would be the greatest country in the world.  They chose Adolph Hitler, and the motive for their choice was "wrath."  For twelve years Hitler guided German wrath and did incredible harm everywhere—even, or especially, to the German people.  THAT is "wrath." 

 

            But here is Jesus on Palm Sunday, the songs of the children still ringing in his ears.  He enters the temple gate on the east, expecting to be drawn into the presence of God's sacred communion.  Instead he sees business being transacted so that the temple can manage as much of the people's money, as much of the people's respect, as much of the people's devotion as possible.  He sees selfishness, pride and not one shred of spiritual presence.  In anger he braids a bullwhip and drives the animals out into the street.  He turns over the currency exchange tables and sends the merchants flying.  Yes, this is "anger":  as the Gospel of John describes it, "Zeal for God's house shall consume me."[8] 

            Anger—the just anger, righteous indignation—has its proper place in the human heart, even on Palm Sunday amid the shouts of "Hosanna."  He left Galilee six weeks ago on this journey to Jerusalem because of his desire to serve the will of God.  Along the way he taught his disciples, he preached in the towns, he healed the sick and made the lame walk, he left a path so that we who are blind in other ways may also come to see and follow him.  He set his face toward Jerusalem with firm purpose:  to do the will of God, that "the lame walk, lepers be cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead be raised, and the poor have good news preached to them."[9]  He rode into Jerusalem with this in his heart.  But what was waiting for him there?  Waiting for him were those who were blind and deaf because they didn't want to see and hear him:  they wanted it their own way, even if it robbed God of glory.  This is what he found in the city that is called "holy."  So:[10]