Welcome to the CommonsCast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commons.church for more information. Alright, well welcome to Holy Week.

We have moved together through Lent, we have journeyed with Jesus from Galilee all the way now to Jerusalem. Today we begin the final movement toward the cross into resurrection. Now, my name is Jeremy, I'm part of the team here at Commons and we want to welcome you to church today. We don't take for granted the fact that you take the time to be here with us, particularly after more than a year online. Although just as resurrection is now on the horizon, it is starting to feel like spring and hope and vaccines and return are all coming for us as well.

So today we begin those last steps together toward the story of resurrection. But first, let's gather up where we've been over these past five weeks. Five weeks ago we saw Jesus set out for Jerusalem, resolute in his mission to speak truth to power. This word that Luke uses there, sterozo, that's a callback to the story of Ezekiel. The prophet called to set his face against the mountain of Israel and prophesy.

And here Jesus is confronted with both his own mission and also perhaps the fact that his disciples, his friends, don't get it yet. Jesus is resolute like Ezekiel but his disciples think that means that he might be inclined to call down fire from heaven on his enemies. And it's interesting that the first hard choice Jesus has to make as he sets his face toward Jerusalem is the refusal to use violence that even his supporters expect from him. Hang on to that today, it's important. But this is perhaps the first real test of all of our convictions.

Do we know who we are? What we stand for even when our friends are cheering us on in maybe the wrong direction? And thankfully Jesus knows himself. But after being kicked out of this Samaritan town and leaving in peace, Jesus then begins to challenge his own followers. He lets them know that his is not the way of decadence and material possessions.

He says, I don't even have a home to call my own. He lets them know that his is not the way of religious adherence. He says, Following me takes precedence even over your religious obligations. He lets them know that his is the way forward and onward, resolute toward a better future, no turning back toward what's once guided us. But then we start to see that more of the crowds are now starting to pay attention and we saw a man approach Jesus asking him to adjudicate an inheritance dispute.

And Jesus ignores the question but uses the opportunity as a teaching moment for all those who are starting to listen. And basically says, look rather than worry about more maybe you should first ask about what you want in the first place. Is it just more? Is that all that you can imagine more of what you already have? Because if so, that kind of imaginative atrophy is perhaps a kind of death in itself.

From there he tells a story about parties when the goodness of wealth and excess are only ever meant to be shared. And if the guests don't want to come, well then the party needs to be expanded. More people. First those overlooked but then even those outside the walls beyond the community. Blessing is only ever real when it is shared after all.

I've been thinking about this story since we talked about it a couple weeks ago. I think part of what I'm starting to make sense of in my life at least for me is that greed and generosity are both the same energy at least in some sense. They are both gift that finds its way to me. The goodness of God that searches me out and fills me up with everything that I need, but then, then I have a choice to make. I can try to hold on to that gift, to gather up that energy and retain it for some unknown reason, somewhere, sometime.

That's greed. Or I can learn to allow that gift to come to me and then through me to receive God's goodness and then pass it on wherever it's needed next. And that is generosity. See, I think greed and generosity they both teach me something. They teach me how to receive, how to welcome and to hold my hands open and that is a necessary lesson at times.

Greed wants me to close my hand and hang on to for as long as I possibly can, more for myself. Or generosity teaches me to breathe it all in and take what I need and then breathe out as much as I can. And maybe this is where gift becomes blessing, where breath becomes breathing. And often I find that when I get a barn all I want is another barn full. And yet here Jesus reminds us that when God has a barn, God has the sense to immediately throw a party with whoever wants to sit at the table.

And I just really like that about God. But that led us then to last week where Jesus tells an inscrutable parable. This time about a manager and a boss and using dishonest wealth to win friends and influence people. We looked at three different ways to interpret that story. All of them provide something meaningful for us, I think.

But the one that captured my imagination was the idea of reading this manager not as dishonest, not as bad at his job, but perhaps as too honest for his job. I mean, what if it's the owner that is corrupt? What if it's the owner who has been seized by greed? What if it's the owner who has lost sight of the flow through that transforms our wealth into blessing? Then perhaps for Jesus it is the manager who refuses to abide by such a limited imagination of wealth, and who uses dishonest, corrupt wealth to make things right in the world for those who've been hurt, he is perhaps our model of justice in the end.

And this seems to me to be the thread that ties Jesus' words together throughout this journey that everything is, in some sense, upside down in our world. A savior, a real savior, cannot come in violence. Disciples, true disciples, cannot follow from self interest. Justice cannot be about getting more for ourselves. Blessing is not about breathing all of it in and never back out.

And so Jesus is resolute in his mission to turn our expectations of him and maybe even the world upside down. And that's what we move closer to today. Let's pray. Jesus, who invites us to journey with you along this path, watching you, studying you, learning from you, your way through the world to slowly teach us and shape us, transform us, help us become new creations modeled after you. God, may we begin to understand that salvation comes not in violence but in peace.

That our following is not meant to make us rich or wealthy or famous, but to make us better versions of who we are. That blessing and wealth is not meant to be hoarded and gathered up. That only becomes greed within us that atrophies our imagination the good, but instead, blessing is something that we breathe in, and we welcome, and we thank you for, and then we breathe out whatever we can. In all these ways our world has turned upside down. We begin to see you differently, but more than that we begin to see ourselves differently, each other differently, our way to the world differently.

And we realize that common sense is not the way to the Kingdom. It is the up down transformation of everything that seems to make sense to us, that invites us into a world that is dominated by grace and peace. One that reinvents our very perception of everything around us. And so as we walk with you, as we listen to you, as we study your words, and as we allow you to speak to the deepest parts of our soul, May we be transformed on this holy week. In the strong name of the Risen Christ we pray.

Amen. Okay, today is Palm Sunday. And that's where we're going to end today with Jesus' entry into Jerusalem. But first, I want to start back on the road with Jesus, just before he hits Jerusalem closer to where we left off last week. This is chapter 17 and today we're starting in verse 11 where we read, Now on his way to Jerusalem, and by the way, let's just stop here for a quick moment because notice how Luke keeps us on track here.

All of these stories, all of these interactions are part of a larger story and Luke does not want you to forget that we are all of us heading for Jerusalem. We are resolute in our destination and along the way we are slowly coming to understand the way of Jesus as we walk. On his way to Jerusalem Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. Remember, he went into Samaria at the start of this journey but he was sent back out after an uncomfortable encounter in a village. And so we now learn that he has chosen a path along the border, perhaps hoping to interact with some more Samaritans along the way, perhaps hoping to repair those relationships, or at the very least to set a new imagination for his disciples who originally wanted to call down fire from heaven.

But as he was going into a village along the border, 10 men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance from him and they called out in a loud voice, Jesus, Master, have pity on us. A couple things here. We read that as he was going into the village, they stood at a distance and they yelled. This was actually standard ancient practice.

Leprosy was very contagious. And actually, when we read about leprosy in the Bible, we're probably reading about a broad blanket term for all kinds of different skin conditions not just technically leprosy but leprosy was a particularly debilitating disease in which the senses in the skin were slowly dulled and eventually shut off. And so what happened was that people would begin to lose parts of their fingers or extremities because they just couldn't feel what was happening to them. You can imagine cooking over an open fire and not knowing when you're too close to that flame or when you've touched a pot that's too hot for you. I mean particularly in the ancient world these kinds of accidents were going to be unavoidable.

Think about that next time you burn your finger on the stove. Just think about how important pain can be for us in our lives. But because of this, skin diseases were seen as a major threat and these people were then forced to live apart from the larger society. So the reason that they are outside the village standing at a distance yelling to Jesus is because they weren't allowed to be any closer. So they call out, Master, have pity on us.

And it's interesting here, even though they are forced to live apart from society, know who Jesus is. Now, there's a story way back in Luke five where Jesus touches and heals a man with leprosy. Is it possible that the story of this one who not only heals but who touches, who embraces, who cares for the outcast has reached even to the ears of the outcasts? It is fascinating to me to think about Jesus' growing reputation in Palestine, why each group of people might be drawn to him. If you remember when we looked at the Sermon on the Mount about a year ago there in Matthew we're told that the audience is made up of rural Jewish people from the Galilee, more sophisticated, perhaps wealthy Jewish persons from Jerusalem, and Roman citizens from the Decapolis, the 10 cities.

Here in Luke we see that Samaritans are starting to pay attention to him and even those who've been pushed to the margins of society are beginning to hear the stories and be drawn to the person of Jesus. I think there's something very captivating about someone who crosses all of these boundaries and barriers the way that Jesus does. Someone who crosses all of the lines that we think are important for us. But one more thing here. These men affected by leprosy.

They call out to Jesus and they call to him Master. And we've seen Master come up in Luke before. Master was the term used of the owner of that business in last week's parable but not this Master. There are a number of different Greek words with overlapping semantic range and they all end up at different times being translated master in our Bibles. Last week's master was kurios which has the connotation of lord to it.

It's the one that is very often applied to Jesus by his followers. Another term used is Didaskalos which has more of a connotation of teacher to it. This one is also often applied to Jesus. This is the term Epistates and the connotation here leans more toward the idea of authority. So it's the person in charge of things or the person who calls the shots and I mean this is just really interesting because these men, they're not calling him Lord.

They're not saying they're ready to follow Jesus. They're not even calling him teacher. So they're not necessarily looking for wisdom from Jesus, at least not in this moment here. They are looking for the person in charge. And I guess the next question then is, in charge of what exactly?

Well, somehow for these men, the universe has conspired against them. They have been afflicted by some unnatural sickness. They have been unjustly weighed down with this pain. And this disease has made them more than unhealthy. It has isolated them and broken them off from community, from others.

I'm sure they have tried to repent more times than they can imagine for all the evils they've been told they did to cause this. I'm sure they have prayed over and over again and yet nothing. No healing, no salvation, no respite. And so when Jesus comes by, this one that they've heard stories about, his wisdom is interesting and his way is intriguing, but it's his mastery, His ability to reshape the story around him. This is what they're calling out for.

If you are the one in charge of this world can you do something about this injustice? Maybe, like me, your faith is generally pretty highly intellectualized. You gather in the wisdom and you meditate on the way of Jesus and for the most part that tends to satisfy. But I think for all of us at some point there comes a moment when all of the explanations of theodicy, why bad things happen to good people, all of this intellectualizing falls far short of faith. And so we cry out this is not fair, life is not right, somebody must be in charge, there must be a higher court of appeal.

Because this, whatever it is, this is not how it was meant to be. I shouldn't be going through this. In that moment to these men, Jesus responds. Luke says that when he saw them, he said, Go, show yourselves to the priests, and as they went, they were cleansed. And this is an odd moment here.

I mean, men call it for repair and Jesus responds, Go show yourselves to the ones who have cut you off from everyone. Very interesting moment here as if Jesus wants to say the healing that you need will be as much about a return to community and family and welcoming community as it ever will be about just your physical bodies. Which I think is really important whenever we begin to talk about healing, whatever that means. I mean Jesus seems to understand that our bodies break down. And no matter what divine intervention we receive, all of us, we will all age, we will all suffer, we will die.

And therefore, it's the social side of our healing, return of our relationships, the ways that we learn to care for each other, make room for each other in the midst of our suffering. This is always what will in the end take precedent. But then how does that even happen here? Are they healed as Jesus speaks? Are they healed as they turn to follow his direction?

Does the sickness fall away as they reach the temple steps? Or do their bodies slowly repair themselves as they walk? And, you know, obviously we don't know. But Luke adds that one of them, when he saw he was healed, came back praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him and he was a Samaritan.

So Jesus asked, Were not all 10 cleansed? Where are the other nine? Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner? Rise and go, your faith has made you well. We're getting to Palm Sunday, I promise.

But there are a couple important things here that we really need to talk about. First is this curious statement that Luke makes. One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back. A more wooden reading in the Greek here would be something like, One of them, seeing why he was healed, returned. So the emphasis here is not just on the fact that he came back, the emphasis is that he saw he was healed, he recognized that he was healed, maybe even that he understood how or why or that he was unhealed.

That might sound kind of bizarre to us. Mean, how could you have leprosy one moment and then not realize that you don't the next? I mean, how could that happen? But imagine you have a skin disease that separates you from those around you and over years you learn to stay at a distance from everyone. And people rush away if you come too close and so you learn to cover yourself and stay out of sight, slip into the background.

You learn to hate the skin you're in. I mean how long in that story would it take for you to look again? How long would it take for you to notice yourself in a new way? How long would it take for you to see yourself untainted by all of their bias toward you? Remember, this was a physical condition, but it really was a social disease.

Luke even seems to make a distinction here on purpose. He says that as the men went they were cleansed. The word there is katharazo. It's where we get our word cathartic from. But when the man returns to Jesus he praises God because he was healed.

It's a different word. This time it's the Greek word Iomai. And that word has meaning because in Luke 61 where the prophet speaks about the Messiah he says, The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted. That's a passage that Jesus appropriates to describe his mission earlier in this same Gospel, Luke four.

But there in the Hebrew Scriptures the phrase bind up the brokenhearted in the Greek Old Testament called the Septuagint, that word is Iomai, the same one that Luke uses here. Perhaps what Luke is saying is that part of what sets this man, this Samaritan apart from his contemporaries is that while everyone in the story is cleansed, it is this one, this man who is healed and restored and put right again on the inside. Like he was cleansed, sure, but it was his broken heart that was in the words of the prophet bound up and healed. Implication being, I think God is interested in fixing much more than the broken pieces that sit on the surface of our lives. God is interested in healing, restoring the damage that has settled into the core of our being.

The hurt that has been done to our sense of self. Jesus is once again changing the narrative of what it means to be healed and Jesus is not done yet. Jesus asks, Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner? And let's be honest here, I know that sounds a little hard, maybe even a little politically uncorrect. Especially when we've been arguing that Jesus is trying to repair the relationships between these ethnic groups with these stories.

But now to refer to this man as a foreigner it sounds a little grating to our ears. But you have to understand that this word for foreigners is the Greek allogenes, which is what we call hapax legomena. That means it's the only time it's used in the Bible, which sometimes can throw us off when it comes to translation. It can make it hard to understand what the author is intending when you don't have other examples to compare it to. But in this case, it's actually very clear what the author is doing because while Allogenes is not common in the New Testament, it did have a very specific and very familiar use in the world of the New Testament, particularly in the Jewish world of the New Testament.

The Allogenes was used on the gates of the Jewish temple. This was the word used on the gate that divided the Gentile courts from the inner sanctuary. It was the warning that made clear that anyone could come to worship God, but only the Jewish people could enter the space closest to God. One of the biggest divides between the Jewish and the Samaritan peoples was where to worship God, who could come close. We see this illustrated in Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well.

She says to him in John four, Sir, I can see that you're a prophet, but our ancestors, the Samaritans, we worship on this mountain while you, Jews, claim that the place where we must worship God is in Jerusalem. And there Jesus says to her a time is coming when none of that will matter. And here Jesus says this man, segregated from God by a gate, the only one who knows where to actually look for the Divine. In other words, all of these stories from the moment Jesus has set out from Galilee resolute on his commitment to turn his face against the mountains of Israel, he is intent on changing all of our narratives. Repairing relationships between ethnic communities.

Restructuring our imaginations about divine violence. Rebuilding our concepts about wealth and greed and generosity and all of that leading to this. Luke nineteen thirty seven, when he came near where the road goes down the Mount Of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen. They spread their cloaks on the road, they waved palm branches in celebration. Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord, peace in heaven and glory in the highest.

And yet as he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, Jesus wept over it and said, If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace. But now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and your children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another because you did not recognize the time of God's coming to you.

And this is exactly what happened. See, the Jewish people wanted freedom from Rome and many thought the only way to achieve that was through military intervention. A holy war that would bring peace, a war that only a savior could lead. But when Jesus refused, they found another to lead them, and then another, and then another, and every time, every war led not to peace, but to more bloodshed and suffering. And the point that Jesus is trying to make here on Palm Sunday at every point along the way to get to here on Palm Sunday from Galilee to Samaria to the Mount Of Olives to Jerusalem to the Cross to the Resurrection that violence is never inevitable.

It is always a choice. It is always a product of our twisted imagination of the world. It is always a choice to fear those who are different from us. A choice to exploit those who have less than us. A choice to erect gates that keep some at a distance from us.

And it doesn't matter if those gates are religious or ethnic or even erected for public health safety. If they exclude people, if they keep people apart and behind, if they count human beings as collateral damage on the way to our goals, then Jesus walks through them and takes our hand and walks us back toward our humanity. See, Palm Sunday is a day for celebration, the entrance into Holy Week, but it is only a celebration in reverse. The crowds that cheer here have misapprehended God. And they may not call for fire as the disciples once did, but they, like us, have bought the lie that violence can save us.

And looking back, we see in this moment a Jesus who knows exactly what must be done. A Jesus that knows the cost of his convictions. A Jesus that knows the God who is willing to die before kill. Because that's what everything in this travelogue has been about. All the ways that Jesus reinterprets our Scriptures, reinterprets our imaginations, and if we let him reinterprets everything in our lives.

May we be willing to turn over everything that is twisted and broken within us. Everything that we believe about the world that can be turned upside down, flipped around, turned into the new narrative of grace and peace and welcome that Jesus brings flooding into us. And if we can embrace that story, the upside down way of Jesus that leads from the Galilee to Jerusalem to the cross and to new life, Then we can trust that it will transform all of us this Holy Week. Let's pray. God, we have been on this journey with you now, since the beginning of Lent.

But in some ways we have been on this journey with you for all of our lives. The ways that you call us to see things in new way. The ways that you open our eyes to imagine the world with new imaginations. The ways that you take our lives and you flip them upside down. Showing us that what we thought was right can be seen in a new way.

That you are leading us forward one step at a time. That you don't expect us to get to the end all at once, but that you are willing to journey with us. And every time we see you, every time we allow your Spirit to speak to us, every time we allow your grace and peace to guide us in one small step, we are in that moment transformed in some way into your likeness. And we come to be the people you imagine us to be. In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray.

Amen.