Scripture: John 12:12-27
We might say that Jesus was “out of sorts” when he arrived in Jerusalem for the final time.
He was “out of sorts” because he knew that the chief religious authorities have decided they are going to attempt to have him killed. As he says to his disciples, “unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” Jesus the kernel with many seeds knows that this will be his final trip to Jerusalem. But instead of running and hiding in the hills or deserts, he presses onward into the clutch of his adversaries.
The people of Jerusalem who have come to meet his arrival to celebrate the Passover feast are “out of sorts” too. They are shouting “Hosannah,” “Hosannah,” meaning “save us now!” Waving their S.O.S. palms like protesters’ signs. “Save us,” they say, from the police state of the Roman emperors and governors who disregard justice and who imperil the lives of the people.
“Hosannah!”
“Save us now.”
Everything, they say, is “out of sorts.”
To be “out of sorts” is a phrase that comes to be with the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth-century. Before the printing press, books were mostly copied out by hand by scribes. But printing press technology made books mass producible by inking cases of individual letters, or type, called sorts, and pressing them onto paper.
If you were working a printing press and you all out of the needed letters to write what you needed to write, it meant that you were “out of sorts.” Virtually nobody uses actual “sorts” today, but we still know what someone means when the say something is out of sorts.
How frustrating when we are missing just the thing that we need.
Jesus sends his friends into Jerusalem ahead of him to find a place where they can celebrate the Passover meal and where he can teach them a few more important lessons. In a sense, he sends them to find a few missing “sorts” so that he can complete his life’s work — sharing the gospel vision of the beloved community with those who will carry it on after he is going.
As the disciples say in the musical Jesus Christ Superstar, “when we retire, we can write the gospels, so they’ll all talk about us when we die.”
The invention of the printing press was a paradigm shift. It changed the world — it made the mass distribution of Bibles possible; it aided the work of religious reformers by allowing the rapid distribution of pamphlets; it allowed people to read for themselves and challenge traditional authority.
Books literally changed the world.
This week at the church I received an email from someone in Rumford who had been doing a kitchen renovation project and while tearing out cabinets, they found an old book tucked into the wall of their kitchen. The book was the “Church Treasurer’s Record” of Newman Church. In beautiful handwriting, the book’s owner lovingly recorded the membership’s financial contributions to the church between 1917 and 1920. Many of the grandparents and great grandparents and great-great grandparents of current Newman church members are among the givers.
I’ll have the book available at coffee hour today for you to look at. We’ll take pictures of the book, and then later this year I will bring it to Newman Church archive collection at the Rhode Island Historical Society.
This book may someday be the missing “sort” to complete the picture of understanding how a church like ours lived during the First World War. Scores of men from East Providence and Seekonk served in this war, and dozens died.1
People started gardens to support the war effort. Some may have had less money to give to their church. Others may have had more to give.
One-hundred and fifteen years from now, people who wonder what we did during the Iran War will find evidence that millions marched in opposition to the leaders who initiated a war of choice. I pray that they will find also evidence that the people organized themselves, and that the older generations taught the younger generations how to offer mutual aid, and the younger generations figured out how to break the cycles of harm for all generations, and that the abundance of God’s creation was shared among the people according to their needs, and war became no more.
I imagine Jesus had this same hope in Jerusalem during the last week of his life. Our reading today is a book about the people of Jerusalem in an occupied territory who cry out to Jesus to save them from the warring forces around them.
If only…
If only Jesus could give the last measure of his devotion to his followers and those looking to him for their physical salvation — perhaps a new era of peace would begin.
His dream has not yet been realized. It’s been two thousand years but there is still hope as long as there as Christians willing to pick up the non-violent mantel in pursuit of the Beloved Community.
Even as we see American troops deployed into a warzone right before our eyes, like the Roman Governor Pilate and his forces processing into Jerusalem before the Passover for the stated purpose of “keeping the peace” — we brace ourselves for the wrong kind of conflict.
Oh, Lord. We pray for the peace of the conflict zone. We pray for the well-being of all people. Forgive the chaos that we have wrought.
Over the past six weeks in worship we have read the stories that begin right after this one — from the Last Supper to the Crucifixion.
And so today we have rewound the tape back to the beginning. We have changed the frequency of this old story to remember before Easter where Jesus has been so that we can appreciated again with fresh hearts where he is going.
With hope that we might also appreciate where we are going.
Be kind, rewind. Today, we press play again so that we can hear the promises of peace and new life for ourselves, and recommit ourselves to seeking the Beloved Community in our own time.
