Choral Evensong on Palm Sunday

Canon Tim Schofield, Canon Emeritus of Chichester Cathedral

Just before Palm Sunday 2019 a church newspaper carried this headline: “People will be able to touch the stones that Jesus climbed”. The stones in question were the steps that Jesus is said to have climbed when Pontius Pilate brought him before the crowd and handed him over to be crucified. In the year 326, in a brazen act of imperialism, St. Helena purloined these stone steps and shipped them from Jerusalem to Rome. From that time on millions of pilgrims journeyed to Rome and ascended the stairs on their knees in penitence and prayer, seeking the Lord’s blessing. The downside of this was that the stones were gradually worn away until huge ruts appeared, and they had to be covered up with wooden planks. But in Holy Week 2019 the planks were removed, and, for a brief period, pilgrims could once again touch the stones where Jesus had walked.

            The crowd that welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem on the first Palm Sunday would also have included many pilgrims. They, like Jesus and his disciples, had come to the city to celebrate the Passover Festival – a festival of freedom, when vast numbers of pilgrims were drawn to Jerusalem. We heard this morning how as Jesus entered the city the crowd shouted, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord”. And when the Pharisees complained to Jesus about this he replied: “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out”. It is the beginning of what is a series of meditations on the theme of stones in the gospel of Luke.

            Having entered the city Jesus and his disciples went to the Temple, the scene for the next reflection on stones. For the Jewish people this was the holiest place on earth – the place where God had chosen to make his dwelling. And in the time of Jesus a grandiose renovation and development project had been initiated by Herod the Great. As a result, the temple was, by all accounts, an awe-inspiring sight; so much so that Luke says when the disciples saw it, they exclaimed about the beautiful stones with which the temple was adorned. And then something rather surprising happens. Instead of Jesus agreeing that the stones were a reflection, a sign, of the glory of God he sounds a note of judgement. “As for these things”, he said, “not one stone will be left upon another.” (Luke 21:6) The temple is vulnerable to ruin, not just by physical depreciation but also by spiritual degeneration.

For if temples, churches and cathedrals are made sacred by the presence of the Lord, then it implies that there is an ethical dimension to the way we use such sacred spaces    - not every activity is consonant with the presence of the Lord who consecrates the space. That’s why Jeremiah spoke to the people of his day with such scorn: “Do not trust in these deceptive words: “This is the temple of the Lord…will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, and follow other gods… and then come and stand before me in this house and say we are safe, safe to do all these detestable things? Has this house which is called by my name become a den of robbers?” And it was those very words that Jesus used when he cleansed the temple on Palm Sunday. And this note of judgement puts the onus on each one of us to build up our sacred spaces with Christlike attitudes. For the touchstone here is always Jesus. A touchstone was used for testing gold and metal for impurities and Jesus is the touchstone who asks: Are our words and actions aligned with the presence of God, or is there a contradiction that ultimately undermines the spiritual fabric of the place?

Well, Luke then continues his meditation on stones with some words that came at the end of tonight’s second lesson: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone”. These words are taken from Psalm 118, a   psalm of pilgrimage, in which Jesus identifies himself as “The stone”. Given the OT description of God as “the everlasting rock”, for Jesus to characterize himself as “the stone” is a potent message. It is aligning himself with the divine presence, a presence that is not contingent but eternal. It is saying, in the words of a famous hymn, that Jesus is the “rock of ages” – utterly faithful and dependable; someone who will support and carry us through all the changes and chances of this world into eternity.

But the disadvantage of the stone/rock image is that it can conjure up pictures of something monolithic and inhuman. So, it is important that the verse goes on to say: “The stone that the builders rejected”. Jesus is the stone who came in human flesh; came to his own and his own did not accept him. Commenting on this saying Luther observed that people rejected Jesus because they could not mould him as they wanted. In particular leaders could not manipulate or shape the stone for their own purposes, so they rejected him. And yet, while humanity rejected the stone, God did not. On the contrary, God did something marvellous in our eyes and made him to be the cornerstone of a new temple, not made with hands – a cornerstone that holds all things together.

Nearly thirty years ago Bishop Kenneth Stevenson in his Enthronement sermon in this cathedral said this: “Many people can no longer see their lives as a whole, as united…We are all scarred by life, to a greater or lesser extent. But perhaps what only adds to the pain of brokenness is that we somehow know deep within ourselves that we are meant to be whole”. Since then, the fragmentation of the human self and human society has only intensified. In a recent article the Harvard academic Jill Lepore traced this fragmentation from the 1980s, when the worldview on both sides of the Atlantic was that there was no such thing as society. It’s a worldview that, she says, is also characteristic of the internet, which is ungoverned, deregulated, and where people can say and do more or less what they like with complete anonymity, with no care or responsibility for their neighbour. The worldwide web is, she said, “a remote and barren wasteland where humans are reduced to users, individuals alone”. She might overstate her case, but we know what she means. And, as we know, the pandemic exacerbated all this with vast numbers of people living in the virtual environment of zoom and facetime, untouchable and locked in loneliness. And the church version of this was and is the lack of a tactile exchange of the Peace or, for online worshippers, being able to receive the blessed sacrament in their  hands. This is Bishop’s Kennth’s fragmentation taken into a new dimension.

But the identity of Jesus as the cornerstone is a sign of hope pointing us to the source of integration and healing. Jesus is the cornerstone who holds all things together and if we can but touch this cornerstone, as those pilgrims in Rome touched the steps he walked on, then we might start to find healing and a measure of wholeness. And that is part of what our journey through Holy Week is going to be about – looking for signs of Jesus’ presence so that we might touch him and participate in his life and glory.

But let me leave you tonight with this thought. When Jesus was in the wilderness, fasting for 40 days, he was tempted to turn stones into bread to satisfy his hunger. He refused to do this for himself. But he has done it for us. Jesus Christ, the living stone, has given himself to us in the living bread of the Eucharist. And that means we can be united to the cornerstone who binds together all that is broken and fragmented – heart and mind; body and soul; humanity and creation; communities and nations, so that Christ is all in all.