I enjoyed catching up with the last episode of White Lotus – the last episode of the 3rd series. There was much to admire. Also, there was much for the devil to admire from his hideaway above the White Lotus resort in Thailand—a place he’d convinced the wealthy was a paradise they had somehow earned.
“Good things happen to good people”. That is what we are tempted to believe. And they’re the words used by a son to persuade his newly minted mother to break a promise she’d made to a prospective business partner.
A mother follows the same line of thought as she encourages her daughter to get over unease at the unfairness of the world. Wealth and comfort are a matter of luck, she suggests. “Enjoy it” becomes the best advice that she can offer her daughter as she lowers her resistance to the smug arrogance of her mother and elder brother.
Of course, the opposite must also be true in this mindset. If good things only happen to good people then bad things only happen to bad people. Follow that line of thought and you’re already looking down your nose at those who suffer bad things – refugees, the poor and all those who suffer the abuse and neglect of the powerful and wealthy.
I watched White Lotus with Holy Week on my mind. This is a week which undermines the devil’s myth that good things happen to good people. Jesus’ crucifixion turns that on its head. In this world bad things happen to good people because of people behaving badly. Jesus’ crucifixion embodies the suffering of the good. His love endures the suffering and has become the constant encouragement for those who have no resort to any sort of paradise island.
These are bad people at the White Lotus. I wouldn’t want to be in the same pool as any of them. These are people who think they come first, who think they’re entitled to comfort. Don’t turn to them if you need help because all appeals for help will fall on deaf ears. Theirs is a wealth without commitment. These are selfish people who do nothing right and everything wrong. This is a paradise where noone listens to anyone. This is the devil’s playground. It’s not paradise..
White Lotus is a great watch on the vanity and futility of our times. When the wealthy succumb to the temptation that confuses wealth with worth so many suffer devastating consequences.
Here’s a sermon with donkeys, trees and their glad hosannasfor two churches in the heart of Warwickshire countryside. We used Mark 11:1-11 and Philippians 2:5-11 as our readings.
March 24th 2024
The Cubbington Pear, European Tree of the Year 2015
They announced the winner of the European Tree of the Year this week. The winner is a Polish Beech called Heart of the Garden. It’s the third year in a row that a Polish tree has won. The UK Tree of the Year is a Sweet Chestnut in Acton Park in Wrexham. The Cubbington Pear won the award in 2015.
The Heart of the Garden took me all the way back to the tree at the heart of the Garden of Eden to the pomegranate tree we know as the Tree of Life where we made the choice of listening to one another, making our own decisions, breaking free and breaking bad in the same moment. In Holy Week we follow a carpenter to a cross made from a broken tree – a tree they broke to break Jesus. That tree is for us the Tree of Life. That’s the tree we gather round. It is the Tree of the Year all our years. It is where we meet God, hear him, and learn the practice of obedience in following him.
We can trace the roots of the tree broken for Jesus to the tree grown for us, the tree at the heart of the garden. Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem traces that route.
It begins with temptation. When Jesus told his followers that he must go to Jerusalem and will face suffering, Peter took him aside and rebuked him suggesting that there was an easier way of life for Jesus. Jesus dismissed this temptation of Peter in the same way he’d dismissed the temptations he faced in the wilderness. He used the same words to Peter as he had to the other tempter – “get behind me Satan”.
The journey to Jerusalem goes from the tree at the heart of the garden, all the way to the tree that was broken, bruised and cut for the crucifixion of the one they wanted to break, bruise and cut. Trees play their part all the way. Branches from palm trees cheer him on his way to the olives of the Garden of Gethsemane to the greatest of all tests of obedience as he faced up to his betrayal, arrest and murder. The journey to Jerusalem takes us from the first sense of human shame all the way to the final sense of divine glory, when, in the words of Isaiah, the mountains and hills will burst into song and the trees of the field will clap their hands.
The journey to Jerusalem goes from the wilderness of temptation to the heart of power, to the religious and political capital. Jesus moves from the edge, from the margins to the centre. Hosannas ring in his ears. Palms are waving, clapping their hands.
We left last week’s gospel with the promise that “Now is the judgement of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out”. (John 12:20-33) That is what the Hosannas are about. That’s the reason for the palm waving. That’s the point of the donkey.
Hosanna is a cry for help from those who need helping. It means “help, I pray”, or “save us, I pray”. It’s a cry as old as time, reverberating from the tree at the heart of the garden of Eden, that weeping pomegranate. It’s the sound of despair. But it’s also the sound of jubilation for those who realise that the one who is able to help and save is with them. They are seeing the ruler of this world being driven out. They have been the victims of those who have made them struggle, who have made them poor and who have made them suffer. They clap their hands. They wave their palms. Celebration is in the air. Their help is in the name of the one who comes riding a donkey.
How absurd.
How absurd to have a king on a donkey.
Donkeys are known as beasts of burden and carry those burdens with patient determination. This donkey carried the one who himself had burdened himself with the world and was bearing it with patient suffering. Those who waved their palms could see that. They could see in the absurdity a different sort of power – the power of humility which would drive out the ruler of this world.
They had a picture in their minds, drawn for them by Zechariah the prophet. Here’s what Zechariah envisaged:
Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. I will take away the chariots from Ephraim and the warhorses from Jerusalem, and the battle bow will be broken. He will proclaim peace to the nations.
Zechariah 9:9-10
You get the picture. It’s the one who rides the donkey against the riders of chariots and those who sit on their high horses – and the humble donkey wins. Jesus drew on the faith of the Psalms. He will have known Psalm 147 – where God’s delight is not in the strength of the horse, nor his pleasure in the speed of a runner. The Lord takes pleasure in those who hope in his steadfast love, like those whgo shout “Hosanna!”
Many rulers of this world will have come and gone in Jerusalem invading with their war horses. The people of Jerusalem will have been used to the sight of the chariots used by their Roman occupiers and overrulers. And, here on a donkey, is the peasant teacher who walks alongside the poor as their helper and deliverer, driving out the rulers of their world. The donkey highlights Jesus’ affrontery and the scorn he pours on those who use their power to exploit and oppress others.
We may think that the way our gospel ends this morning is a bit of an anticlimax. Mark says, Jesus went into Jerusalem. He went into the temple, looked around at everything, as it was already late and then went away again. But he comes back later in the week with his disciples. While they are awestruck by the magnificence of the Temple, particularly the wonderful stonework (Mark 13:1-2), Jesus is condemning the Temple and its rulers for turning the house of prayer for all nations into a den of thieves. Not one stone would be left standing on another as the rulers of that world would be driven out.
The rulers Jesus has in his sights are not those who run their affairs with love and compassion. He would have been delighted if he had found the temple was being run so that it was truly of place of prayer for all nations.
The rulers he wants to drive out are the same ones all those who shout “Hosanna” want out. Those who are self-serving, cruel, exploitative and oppressive. They are the tyrants and dictators – not just those in government, or with empires, but all those who abuse their power becoming bullies in the playground, tyrants in the workplace and violent abusers in their homes.
Jesus plodded into Jerusalem, at the same pace as those he walked alongside, their hosannas ringing in his ears. Just being on the back of the donkey was like a parody sketch through which Jesus poured scorn on the rulers of this world. It is an insult to them high and mighty and an assault on their fortifications and defences. Of course, they are going to fight back, and they did get their own back. They were able to turn the weapons of betrayal and the force of empire on Jesus, manipulating the crowd into calling for his crucifixion.
This is how hope arrives. It plods alongside the slowest, the weakest, the last and the least. It is as David to Goliath. It is an absurd way. It is the way of the cross. It is the way of love. It is the way the rulers of this world are driven out and the just and gentle rule of God begins. It is the way the “Hosannas” of desparation become the “Hosannas” of joyous celebration. Our help is in the name of the Lord (Psalm 124:8). The Lord is here. His spirit is with us.
The fight goes on – not on horseback, but on donkeyback. With our palms we join the trees of the field as they clap their hands and we sing our hosannas.
Our second reading, Philippians 2:5-11 explains how we believe the just and gentle rule of God begins:
In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Mark 11:1-11
When they were approaching Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples and said to them, ‘Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately as you enter it, you will find there a colt that has never been ridden; untie it and bring it. If anyone says to you, “Why are you doing this?” just say this, “The Lord needs it and will send it back immediately.”’
They went away and found a cold tied near a door, outside in the street. As they were untying it, some of the bystanders said to them, ‘What are you doing, untying the colt?’ They told them what Jesus had said; and they allowed them to take it. Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it; and he sat on it.
Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields. Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting, ‘Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!’
Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.
I don’t read that much but every now and then I come across something that takes my breath away. Julian Barnes, through his book The Noise of Time, has me intrigued with the noise of time. This is a poetic book that is well crafted and beautifully composed. It tells us the time and the time is telling. It is a short book in which a lot of time is told in a short time. It is a time of terror.
I read this book for the first time at the end of Holy Week, through the three days known as the TriDuum, Maundy Thursday through till Holy Saturday – the short time it took to tell so much of time. I was attentive to the noises of that other time told through three days: the crushing noise of religious and political authority almost overpowering a more faithful and resilient strain.
There are three main characters in The Noise of Time. There’s the “author” who is the one who remembers. There’s Shostakovich, who is the one who hears. And there is the one less than human, Power deformed. Arguably there is a cast of three in the Triduum. There’s the one who remembers (the witnesses), the one who hears (on the cross) and the ones Power deformed (who know not what they do).
Running through my mind while I read this book were lines from a poem by Anna Lightart called The Second Music:
Now I understand that there are two melodies playing,
one below the other, one easier to hear, the other
lower, steady, perhaps more faithful for being less heard
yet always present.
The Noise of Time is a book full of threes – if you like, there are three hands: an hour hand, minute hand and second hand. The three chapters measure three movements: On the Landing, On the Plane and In the Car.
There are three brands of cigarettes (Kazbeks, Belamors, Herzegovinas). There are three vodka glasses for three vodka drinkers (the perfect number for vodka drinking). There are three wives (Nina, Margarita and Irina). There are three ways to destroy your soul: “by what others did to you, by what others made you do to yourself, and by what you voluntarily chose to do to yourself”. (p.181)
There are three Conversations with Power and there are three leap years twelve years apart from each other (1936, 1948 and 1960). This is the time frame of a crushing history. It is a history which crushes the human spirit and twists arts and artists to the ends of empire, turning them into cowards – which threatened to be a life’s work (being a coward, just to survive).
“It was not easy being a coward. Being a hero was much easier than being a coward. To be a hero, you only had to be brave for a moment – when you took out the gun, threw the bomb, pressed the detonator, did away with the tyrant, and with yourself as well. To be a coward was to embark on a career that lasted a lifetime. You couldn’t ever relax. You had to anticipate the next occasion when you would have to make excuses for yourself, dither, cringe, reacquaint yourself with the taste of rubber boots and the state of your fallen, abject character. Being a coward required pertinacity, persistence, a refusal to change – which made it, in a way, a kind of courage. He smiled to himself and lit another cigarette. The pleasures of irony had not yet deserted him.” (p.171)
Dimitiri Shostakovich was one of the major composers of the twentieth century. I’m no musician but I do know that there are usually four movements to a symphony. That is music’s shape. In his threes, is Barnes describing the way in which totalitarianism deforms truth and beauty? There is the hint of a fourth movement in the opening and closing of the book in epigraph and coda. In these there are the three characters on stage (it’s a station platform). There’s one who remembers, there’s one who hears and there’s one who is a vulgar “half man” (reduced by the noise of time to being less than himself, a mere “technique of survival”. The one who remembered, remembers the vodka and remembers how the one who heard pricked up his ears as he heard the notes of the clinking vodka glasses.
This is what was remembered:
“They were in the middle of Russia, in the middle of a war, in the middle of all kinds of suffering within that war. There was a long station platform, on which the sun had just come up. There was a man, half a man really, wheeling himself along on a trolley, attached to it by a rope threaded through the top of his trousers. The two passengers had a bottle of vodka. They descended from the train. The beggar stopped singing his filthy song. Dimitri Dmitrievich held the bottle, he the glasses. Dimitri Dmitrievich poured vodka into each glass …
He was no barman, and the level of vodka in each glass was slightly different …
But Dimitri Dmitrievich was listening , and hearing as he always did. So when the three glasses with their different levels came together in a single chink, he had smiled, and put his head on one side so that the sunlight flashed briefly off his spectacles, and murmured, “A triad”.
And that was what the one who remembered had remembered. War, fear, poverty, typhus and filth, yet in the middle of it, above it and beneath it and through it all, Dimitri Dmitrievich had heard a perfect triad… a triad put together by three not very clean vodka glasses and their contents was a sound that rang clear of the noise of time, and would outlive everyone and everything. And perhaps, finally, this was all that mattered.” (p.196)
So the tragedy is told in The Noise of Time. There is a lot of time told in a short time. In one moment there is a note of beauty, a sound of music ringing above the noise of time, testimony to the human spirit, crushed, humiliated for so much of the time. There is the sounding of hope.
“Art belongs to everybody and nobody. Art belongs to all time and no time. Art belongs to those who create it and those who savour it. Art no more belongs to the People and the Party than it once belonged to the aristocracy and the patron. Art is the whisper of history, heard above the noise of time.” (p.97)
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I don’t read that much but every now and then I come across something that takes my breath away. 
Grits and Grains 