#so if you thought this was me on a high horse preaching at the lowly fools; no; I get full well I'm included

[medicinemane]

You know... well first off all this is a complex topic and this is me throwing stuff at the wall with my thoughts in the middle of the night, so I hope any place I don't phrase things the best or fully think things out, you can get that that's why

That said, I'm thinking about any kind of fuck nazis media from Indiana Jones to Wolfenstien to whatever, and I'm thinking about how popular they are (which is good) but... the thought goes something along the lines of I think part of that is it's very easy to say fuck you to horrible people from going towards 100 years ago, in part because you don't have to analyze anything about yourself or your own beliefs

Most people find it easy to say fuck nazis (good) particularly when it's historical nazis

I suppose my point here is I wonder how much this ends up being kind of thought terminating for people where they feel like "well I said fuck nazis, so clearly I couldn't share anything in common with them"

It's a complex topic, it's a touchy topic, and frankly I don't think I have the bona fides to lead the discussion... at best to point in a direction and say it's worth thinking one

Most people don't think of themselves as someone that would be a nazi, clearly they'd be part of the resistance, they'd never let it get that bad cause they're a good person... but like... do you really think that the majority of flesh and blood day to day people in nazi Germany were sitting there thinking about how much they'd love to commit genocide?

Complacency, ideas like "I care about people... but these acceptable targets are different because...", being tuned out and saying "well surely they'd never actually do something that bad"; I just feel like if you can't look at yourself and see that the right arguments given the right way stand a chance of causing you to be willing to allow bad things, well I think you're not being honest with yourself or not doing very much introspection

It's not secret why this is on my mind right now. The left says "I couldn't be a nazi because they were right wing and I'm not", and the right says "I couldn't be a nazi because I only want what's best for people, I don't really want to see anyone hurt", and magically everything's absolved from everyone and isn't it great that no one would ever behave like a nazi

Never mind the rising antisemitism in all directions, never mind people on all sides dismissing horrible behavior so long as it comes from people similarly aligned to them; you hate historical nazis so what more could anyone ask from you?

I'm reminded of a story from a Rwandan preacher (and I wish I knew his name, by the time I tried to find my source, I couldn't track it down... cause tumblr has a great search function) where he talked about hiding people during the genocide

Specifically he talked about how the people who forced their way into the church and grabbed him and the people sheltering there... these people getting ready to kill were people he'd know for years, members of his congregation, good people... ready to murder, to kill the cockroaches because he just didn't see, this is something that had to be done

(The reason he survived was he more or less said "well at least I know where I'm going when you kill me, can you say the same for yourselves?" and people hesitated enough to say more or less "you freaks aren't worth our time, get out of here before we change out minds")

I don't know... you look at yourself, and can you honestly say there's zero chance you'd ever be the ones breaking in, pulling people out to murder them because someone somewhere had whipped you up into a fervor in the right ways?

Obviously not, you'll introspect, and you'll come back here and say obviously not. Maybe it'll be true... maybe you've already got a list in your head of people who aren't human where it wouldn't count. How should I know? I'm not the judge of true morals, I can't see your inner secrets

Regardless, no, you obviously wouldn't fall to that. You have your reasons why you know for a fact that you wouldn't. Besides, you hate historical nazis, so how could you be anything like them

(To be clear, I'm not asking anyone to tear themselves to pieces looking for secret shame, last thing I need is people with anxiety worrying they're secretly a horrible person)

(I'm more just asking something pretty impossible, which is for people to take a real honest look and acknowledge that like... yeah... maybe my hatred of trans people for whatever reason I give why it's fine is getting pretty fucked up... maybe in my valid criticisms of Israel I'm starting to slide into actual full on antisemitism... maybe I've gotten so caught up in some dogma that I'm starting to excuse some pretty awful shit so long as it comes from people I agree with)

(It's bad times, and I see a lot of people, even people I like, turning a blind eye to a lot of awful stuff because "well no, it's not meant like that" or similar and... man, no one is going to fucking listen, it's called a blindspot for a reason and people really really hate being wrong but man... what I wouldn't give to just be able to open a few people's eyes to where their actions are leading them)

[woodworkingpastor]

Things that make for peace Luke 19:29-44 Sunday, March 28, 2021 Palm Sunday

Please pray with me:

Almighty and everliving God, in your tender love for the human race you sent your Son our Savior Jesus Christ to take upon him our nature, and to suffer death upon the cross, giving us the example of his great humility. Mercifully grant that we may walk in the way of his suffering, and also share in his resurrection; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

When our children were little, Lynette and I read to them nearly ever day. We started out with age-appropriate books for babies and toddlers, before moving up into chapter books: The Chronicles of Narnia, Nancy Drew, The Phantom Toolbooth, and the entire Harry Potterseries. If you’ve ever read regularly to young children, you know that they don’t mind having the same story read to them over and over again. You also know that, as a parent, that gets kind of old. So I would try to do things to “liven it up��� a bit. Sometimes I’d give the characters voices, other times I’d mis-read the story to see if they were paying attention.

I don’t know about your kids, but my kids hated that. When I’d add voices, they’d say, “Dad, read it right.” And one night, Rose took the story book to Lynette and asked her to read; I’d been mis-reading it too much for her liking and she told Lynette, “Daddy doesn’t know how to read it.”

This is not unrelated to how preachers feel at Christmas and Easter. We’ve preached these texts so many times that we look at these events that are crucial to our faith and kind of scratch our heads and say, “How do we tell the story this year.” I finally decided that I wasn’t going to worry about it; one lesson we can learn from our children is that there is value in telling the story over and over again. I didn’t just pull an old sermon out of the file, but I decided to be less concerned with possibly repeating myself.

Staying with this theme of things that are important to children, I’m curious to know how many of you have been to the Grandin Holiday Parade recently? If you’ve been to it, you know that parade is the coolest, quirkiest, family-focused parade ever. Right in the heart of Roanoke we have what is essentially a small-town parade, complete with Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops, someone from 7-Eleven dressed up in a Slurpee costume, Brandon from Pops Ice Cream playing the bagpipes, preschool groups, greyhound rescue groups—it’s a fantastic event. The most fun I’ve ever had at a parade was the year Zach and I marched with the Cub Scouts, and Zach and I rode our unicycles.

If you’ve seen the parade, then you know that the Kazim clowns are always in it with their cars and their various hijinks and comedy acts. Get a picture of the Kazim clowns in your head for a moment. Now ask yourself, what would the Kazim clowns look like if they had airplanes instead of cars?

Hang on to that picture and follow me in your mind to the opening of Super Bowl 55. Eric Church and Jazmine Sullivan sang the National Anthem, and then there was a military fly-over. This year—because it was Super Bowl 55—the fly-over included a B-1, a B-2, and a B-52, because the numbers add up to 55. But imagine how the crowd would have reacted if, as the last notes of the National Anthem were being sung, the military fly-over would have been handled by the Kazim clowns.

If you can see that—and how people might react to it—then you have a better picture of what actually happened at Jesus’ “Triumphal entry” into Jerusalem. This is another of those cases where what we think is happening in the story is different from what is actually happening. Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem tells a story about what God is doing in the world, and it is a different story that the one the world tells. You see, Jesus wasn’t the only person of power showing up in Jerusalem that week. King Herod was coming to town, too, and Herod would have had his own parade. When earthly rulers enter a town, it is intended to show off their power. For Herod, this would have meant riding in on a powerful war horse, surrounded by elite troops. Their entry is designed to demonstrate who is in control, and it is designed to intimidate any troublemakers along the way with a not-so-subtle message of “if you want to take us on, go ahead and try.”

If you remember the victory parade at the end of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, celebrating the liberation of Naboo, you see what military parades are about. It’s the same with the military fly-overs at the Super Bowl—they are about establishing how evil will be conquered.

But Jesus doesn’t enter Jerusalem that way. Jesus is telling God’s story, and in God’s story the Savior comes in weakness, riding into town on a young donkey. It’s a story that was first told by the Old Testament prophet Zechariah; Jesus is just filling a role here, and it’s a role designed to be attention-getting; it’s the Kazim clowns showing up to declare the victory of God. And if you’re having trouble wrapping your minds around that—if you’re like Rose that one night at our house and want someone else to tell you the story because you don’t think I’m telling it right—think back to what Luke has been telling us since the Sunday before Christmas. It’s Mary’s song all over again:

He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty (Luke 1:51-53).

Have we not heard Luke tell us this story over and over again?

It’s the Rich man and Lazarus—whose life is vindicated? Lazarus, the poor beggar at the gate who probably starved to death just a few yards away from a sumptuous feast.

It’s Zacchaeus, the despised local villain, who demonstrates his salvation by giving back what he’s stolen because he loves God more than his earthly position.

It’s the Prodigal Son dragging himself back home on the outside chance that he can be hired on a seasonal help only to find that his father has been waiting for him the entire time.

Jesus is proclaiming a kingdom where the last shall be first and the least shall be the greatest, where the worst of sinners are welcomed guests at the banquet of God. This is what Jesus will be about.

The people that go to the Grandin Holiday parade understand what is happening and they enjoy it; it’s fun to stand alongside Grandin Road on the Saturday before Thanksgiving and see all children and civic groups march by. And in one sense, the parade probably doesn’t accomplish all that much—except to help us celebrate things we find important. Just that! Amidst all the children’s groups and middle and high school marching bands and clowns and characters, the parade affirms what we love about the place we live.

The crowd that is on the side of the road at Jesus’ parade understands this, so they throw their cloaks down on the road in front of him. They lift Jesus up and declare him to be their Lord with the chorus of Psalm 118,

Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest heaven!

Psalm 118 is a somewhat complicated Psalm that acknowledges a time when God’s people had been in trouble and God rescued them. So, of course, the people celebrate. The thing is, not everyone got it. Some people missed the meaning of what God was doing; as the Psalmist says,

The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. (Psalm 118:22)

Not everyone gets it in our day, either.

Palm Sunday is one of those tradition-rich holidays that brings back memories—possibly of robed children’s choir processing into the sanctuary, then taking their place at the front of the church to sing. But this isn’t where Jesus’ parade ends up. Jesus’ parade route brings him to an overlook where he can see all of the city of Jerusalem; seeing this, he begins to weep because the people’s inability to know the things that make for peace is killing them. This is where we begin to realize that the story Jesus is telling is different from the story we think we want to hear; the events of Holy Week are God retelling the foundational story of our existence as human beings.

To understand the story, we have to go all the way back to creation and see where things went wrong. We need to go back to the Cain and Abel story and see Cain take his anger and disappointment that God did not accept his offering and vent that frustration on his brother, Abel, killing him. We need to hear Cain say to God, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Yes, Cain, you are. But Cain missed that because wired deep within us is this belief that violence is the only tried and true method to get what we want in life. It’s the basic story of humanity, and it’s a story that works its way into the stories we tell:

J.R.R. Tolkein told a story about two friends: Deagol and Smeagol. Deagol has a ring, and Smeagol covets it and asks Deagol if he can have it because it’s his birthday. Deagol refuses, and Smeagol kills him. That deed haunts Smeagol for the remainder of his life and transforms him into the pathetic creature known as Gollum.

Anakin Skywalker is consumed with the fear that he will lose his beloved Padme in the same way that he could not protect his mother Shmi. That fear twists him into giving into the dark side of the force, where he becomes the evil Darth Vader.

This story finds it’s way into our own believing the “good guy with a gun” mythology, where we believe that by carrying a gun with us we’ll be ready to overcome the despicable violence of our enemies with our own redemptive violence.

But Jesus knows this way of thinking is killing us. He sees what will happen if his people continue to believe that they can throw off the Roman government through force—an idea that will become incredibly important on Good Friday, when the people choose Barabbas over Jesus.

Jesus knows that the only way to peace is to eliminate our enemies. The issue becomes how. How do we eliminate our enemies?

Love them and pray for them: “But I say to you, ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you’” (Matthew 5:44).

Bless them. “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’ No, ‘if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.’ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” (Romans 12:19-21).

This is the story Jesus is retelling on Holy Week. And one of the reasons he can retell the story this way is because this is how God has responded to us:

For if, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! (Romans 5:10).

The story that Jesus is retelling is how God eliminated us as enemies through Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross. It can be a difficult story to hear because what we prefer is for God to come along and bless our thoughts, our dreams, our plans for how we will get along in the world. But do not be confused: just because Jesus is leading a parade does not mean that Jesus will be our mascot, something to prop up and celebrate our plans and schemes. The crowd gets it right when they sing “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord.” Jesus will not be our mascot; he will be our Lord or nothing at all.