Voltaire once said, “In the beginning God created man in His own image, and man has been trying to repay the favor ever since.” He was critiquing those who use God to justify their prejudices and maintain their own place of power.
At the beginning of the service, we read that Jesus mounted a donkey, and began the journey into Jerusalem. And as they continued on the path, the multitude of his disciples began to cry out, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”
And some of the Pharisees in the crowd, it says, told him to order his disciples to stop. But Jesus responds, “If these people would be silent, then let me tell you, even the stones would shout out!” There is nothing, Jesus is saying, that can stop God’s plan for salvation; nothing can stand in the way, and these disciples of his have understood.
Though not in the selected reading this morning, we are told that as Jesus approached the city, he began to weep. On the road to Jerusalem, on the Mount of Olives, there stands a church called Dominus Flevit, which is Latin for “The Lord Wept,” and it sits on the place in the road where tradition tells us that Jesus would have rounded a bend in the road, and for the first time, the city of Jerusalem would have been visible. … Jerusalem, the city whose very name means, “The Foundation of Peace.”
And Jesus, as he is weeping, says, “If you had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace!” Jerusalem, the foundation, the city of peace, did not know, did not recognize those things that would bring about peace.
You see, some of the people in Jerusalem had heard of Jesus, and they felt that this man would be the leader they needed to overthrow the Roman Empire, and free them from their domination by a people who cared nothing for them. Others saw Jesus as a great teacher who would help them to establish a theocracy, one in which, of course, they themselves would benefit and thrive – they too were not concerned with others, only their own welfare. And others just looked to Jesus merely for the handouts, for the miracles, hoping that they might be healed, or fed, or both.
But Jesus was on the way to Jerusalem in order to redeem humanity, to reconcile the whole world to God. And he was going to do that in the way that God desired, and not in the way that the people wanted. Jesus had in mind the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, and not the peace that the people wanted. He had in mind the grand plan that God desired, and not the false idea of the Messiah that these people had created in their own minds.
And Jesus continues on with his prophecy about Jerusalem: “the days will come upon you when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.”
Only forty years later, the Romans surrounded Jerusalem with their ramparts, destroyed the city, and along with the city, they destroyed the Temple of God, bringing to completion this prophecy by Jesus.
This was not the peace that some of these people had wanted. Instead, it was war, and it was destruction. Because, as Jesus had said, they had failed to recognize the Peace of God, and the visitation of Christ in their midst.
On the donkey, riding into Jerusalem, Jesus is being lauded and proclaimed as the King that he is. But some of the people are worshipping him for the wrong reasons, and Jesus knows this. In the midst of a triumphant entry into the City of Peace, in the midst of being praised and proclaimed king, Jesus stops on the side of the road … to weep – to cry for those whom Jesus knows are looking to the wrong things for comfort. They have turned Jesus into the person they want and desire. Instead of allowing their minds to be conformed to the likeness of Christ, who, Paul says in his letter to the Philippians, “though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited … he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.”
Jesus’ mind was so focused on God’s mission to the whole world that nothing else mattered. And it is this mind – this mindset – that Paul desires for each of us. That we might be obedient to God, even to the point of death.
Because it is within our minds that we understand the truth of Christ, and it is in our minds where we either choose to recognize the things that make for peace, or we choose to follow the path of death and destruction. It is in our minds where the battle for good and evil struggle for a foothold. This is not just some story from history of those who failed to honor God. This story repeats itself every day – in each of us.
And so the question of Holy Week is this: who is Jesus to me? In my mind, who is this Christ? And is this person, this Messiah a true reflection of God’s love and mercy? Or is he merely an image of my own making?
May we all recognize the sacrifice of Christ, who in the midst of being praised and glorified – knowing full well that he was on his way to his own crucifixion – stopped on the side of the road – to weep for us – those whom he loved – that we too might see those things that make for peace.
[This sermon was delivered at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Wickenburg, AZ on April 13, Palm Sunday, 2025.]
