John's gospel, more than any other, majors in the theme of misunderstanding. The disciples, for instance, are forever missing the point: either nodding with approval at a parable which had completely passed them by or mistaking metaphor upon metaphor for actual fact or fending off with zeal the very ones Jesus had come to save by grace. More culpable for their confusion are the Jews who become, in John's telling, the greatest offenders against the truth. Time and time again, they claim to have light by way of law, without so much as a nod to him who is the light and who fulfills the law. Then there are the crowds, following him everywhere, but finding in him only a miracle worker or a magician.Though with John's twelveth chapter, misunderstanding is too innocent a word to describe the actions of those who have been assembled by this author for the drama of Christ's passion. By the twelveth chapter there is malice rather than misunderstanding, and the malevolent nature of our discipleship begins to show. By the twelveth chapter, it is clear: we know just what we want to do with Jesus politically.
Judas is, of course, the easiest to accuse. The night before this very morning, while Mary poured oil on Jesus' feet, you can imagine Judas leaning on the door post of some ancient house in Bethany and, with folded arms asking, "Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?" It was what Matthew and Mark had no disciple in particular ask, at the house of Simon the Leper, about the actions of an unnamed woman. But for John, it is Judas (and in parentheses he adds, just in case we might misunderstand, "He who was to betray him"), it is Judas asking after the politics of his Lord.
In a word, Judas is the liberal of the twelve. In Karl Barth's words, he is one "who would prefer ultimately to use the power of this devotion for something which his own judgment considers to be better; one for whom Jesus is finally less important and indispensable than this better thing....For him (discipleship) is not an end in itself but a means to some other end." Judas stands at a distance, to judge Jesus by way of his social agenda rather than his social agenda by way of the Christ. On the surface, it would seem that what kept Judas following Jesus was his hope that society could be reordered, here and now, by means of this Messiah's reign.
However John will not allow appearances to pass for the truth. The protest voiced at the doorpost was not because Judas cared for the poor, the gospel writer tells us, but because he had his hand in the till. He was a thief...altruism being merely a cover for avarice! John knew that soon Judas would sell our savior for thirty pieces of silver, a fact which may have led John, in this scene, to make the lowest judgment of Judas' highest motives.
So it is, on the Saturday night before this Sunday morning, there are some of us leaning on the doorpost of the sanctuary, deciding to continue in this crowd called the church for what would appear to be the highest of social and political motives: that the hungry may be fed through the Community Cupboard; that the forgotten children be given hope through a mentor; that the outcast be included in an enlightened congregation or two; that the homeless have a place to lay their head through NPIHN or Habitat. We are the ones at the doorpost with folded arms, making sure that the resources of the church not be lavished on itself. The highest political motives--politics and motives which surely coincide with our savior's--have kept us around. As long as the Christian faith can be made to serve our social causes, we will be found in this band of zealous disciples.
But if the Christ cannot be made the means to our end, if to our liberal politics he counters with a demand for our singular devotion, then for little less than our souls, we will nail this savior up on a cross before the week is out. What the gospel writer knows about our liberal politics, what brings him to conclude that Judas is more a pilferer than an apostle, is simply the fact that the Light has come into the world and it is clear, for a price, we have preferred the darkness of our enlightened politics. We know what we want to do with Jesus, politically!
Though if Judas is the close-up given of our liberal darkness before this dawn, so the crowds--that night in Bethany and this morn in Jerusalem--portray with broad strokes, the self-serving politics in us all. Again, John tells us, it is not for reasons of devotion that the crowds had come out to greet him, but because he had revived a dead man just weeks before: "not only on account of Jesus, but to see Lazarus" did they come. The good news seemed to be that this Jesus had the power to keep old selves alive. If he could jump-start a heart at the sound of his voice--"Lazarus come out!"--then there is no telling what he might do for me: a cold cured, a fortune found, a true love met, even a death averted. To be sure, Jesus had raised Lazarus that the crowd might believe he had been sent by God. Misunderstanding, the crowd took the occasion as open season on the fulfillment of their deepest desires. Underneath the adulation, their politics were utilitarian: if Jesus is to be my candidate for the Messiah, then he had better come through for me.
There are some of us who follow him because of what he just might have the power to affect in our lives. We want from him the continuation of our good existence; we ask of him the prolongation of our numbered days; we look to him for the restoration of our elusive happiness. In a word, we know just what we want to do with Jesus politically: we want to make him serve our self-interest. It is what make us fickle about our faith, conditional about our discipleship, critical of his church. So as long as he meets our needs, he can be our savior; as long as he satisfies our wants, we will cheer him on. But woe to him if our lives take a turn for the worse; if his usefulness appears to have run its course. Then shall our hosannas become calls to oust him from office, hang him...on a cross.
The crowd in Jerusalem waving palms is no different from the crowd in Bethany, though their politics of self-interest have been stretched to include the nation. The people who had come for the Passover were the very ones who also awaited the Messiah. It is almost too trite to recount how blindly they expected a mighty king like David, sent by God to overthrow Roman rule and restore this promised land and its throne to them. But I suppose it is only trite because it continues to be true. There are those of us who come to the Christ to conserve the old order, restore us to power, bring back the days when white, European, Protestant heterosexual men set the course of the Western world. If Judas is the liberal writ large, then this crowd can be counted on to uphold the conservative banner in any age. We use him to bless our way of life, our perfect families, our community standing by way of biblical texts; we expect him to uphold our standard of living by keeping us in control; we invoke his name to sanction our view of the world that would rule out of order, as well as out of ordination, any who deviate from the norm.
But the unspoken motive beneath our politics, beneath our shouts of "Hosanna! Blessed be he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!" would seem to be our shout against a fear which barely can be named: a fear that God's mercy might be wide enough to include the very ones we thought Christ had come to condemn; a fear that this righteousness of ours has gotten us, in the end, the very same love lavished on every prodigal who turns toward home, on every prostitute who wipes his feet with her hair. If we would crown him King in order to restore our former position of seeming favor then, in another crowd, we must condemn him who refused to fight the darkness as we have defined it.
What I know of us is that we live mistaking our politics for his own. We speak and act and bear witness mostly to a projection of our deepest fears, our private hopes, our highest dreams made flesh, forgetting that the Word which God made flesh is not ours to speak...forgetting that what to do with Jesus politically is not up to us: rather he has come to reveal the politics of God.
It is in the context of these mixed and mean political motives that John places the story of Jesus' last journey to Jerusalem. Strange this account he gives of the so-called Triumphal Entry. It seems almost like an aside, an after-thought of Jesus: no verses of detail about where the disciples were to go and what they were to say concerning the taking of a colt; no words about the garments spread on some donkey or ones laid down to cover the ground. No triumphal entry planned, nor grand procession.
Instead we are told first that the crowd gathered with palm branches crying, "Hosanna! Blessed be he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!" as Jesus begins his descent on foot down the dusty road, from atop the Mount of Olives, and into the city. Only then, records John, after the adulation had begun, does Jesus "find an ass and sit on it." In protest against our politics, as if to confound our joy, as if to question our very cause in coming out, to counter our politics with his own, "Jesus found a young ass and sat on it." In that little detail, John presents us with the Savior our politics will finally crucify. What to do with Jesus politically? Crucify him!
Though there is another little detail in John's narrative, I do believe: a redemptive detail from the night before that would lead us this day away from the crowd, that would find us rather bowed down before our savior's feet. To wit: "Mary took a pound of costly ointment of pure nard," says John, "and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair." A small detail, I know, but in two of the gospels--Mark and Matthew--the unnamed woman anoints his head: a regal sign that he is King, an act that would well have pleased the crowds amidst the waving of their palms. But in Luke, by a radical alteration of Mark, and in John by less drastic means, Jesus' feet and not his head are lavished with expensive oil. The act is an act of penitence and deep devotion...an act of preparation for our darkest day...and leads me on this day of palms to the parabolic politics of God. For the condition that caused Word to become flesh and dwell among us, the initiative that grasps me at my deepest need and claims me still and all, is simply the fact that he comes to forgive me of the very politics which keep me from his grace: the arrogance that would place my cause before his cross; the desires that order my life apart from his purposes; the fears that keep me from any glad proclamation of his love. He enters Jerusalem not as King but as confessor. That is the quiet Word on this clamorous day. So let him be that to you in this week stretching before us. Let him carry to the cross all the fears that have you bound; let him bear for you the dark night of past wrongs. Cast upon him the regrets of a lifetime and speak to him of the sadness which threatens to overtake you. What to do with Jesus politically? By his grace, may God exchange our politics for penitence, that at his feet on this Friday next, beneath the cross which Christ alone can bear for the sake of the world, we may endure the darkness of misunderstanding until the Easter dawn of God's reign.