No Going Back ©
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester UU Church
April 10, 2022
This past Thursday evening, there was a march here in downtown Gloucester, something that hasn’t happened much in the past two years. Each April, for many years, the Gloucester Coalition for the Prevention of Domestic Abuse has organized an event called Take Back the Night, to encourage and speak up for all those who are survivors of abuse. Folks came out and marched in the cold wind, and a number of you met here to cheer them on and to join in the march. It felt good to get out there, to raise our voices and chant, and to be seen and heard. “No more silence – stop the violence!” we chanted.
“No more silence!”
Today is Palm Sunday, and as we heard earlier, it the day that Christians all over the world commemorate the day when Jesus entered Jerusalem to loud cheering and shouts of ‘Hosanna!’ It was the day when all the events of what is now known as Holy Week were set into motion. As the days progressed, Jesus entered the temple at Jerusalem, packed with people visiting for Passover, and drove out all the money-changers, turning over their tables. He continued his healing ministry, caring for the blind and the lame who sought him out. He taught parables to the crowds who gathered. He shared a Seder, a Passover meal with his disciples that we have come to know as the Last Supper. And as all these events unfolded, the community leaders known as the Pharisees became more and more concerned, as they watched his power over the crowds and felt increasingly threatened by him.
We know what happens when those in power begin to feel threatened. They want to silence the crowd. The Gospel of Luke recounts this exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees, when they observed the crowd shouting ‘hosanna’ and asked him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” Jesus answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.” (Luke 19:39-40)
“Stop the silence. No more violence!”
When I think about the Bible story of Jesus’s last days, this heartbreaking story of a young man entering a city in triumph and within days being tortured and executed, what strikes me is how he allows himself to be carried forward into it and through it, all the way to the tortured end. As the Gospels of Matthew and Luke tell the story, you feel the inevitability, the sense of being drawn ever closer, into a maelstrom, into the whirlwind. And yet, Jesus kept going. Could he have stopped? Escaped?
In the words of UU minister Gretchen Haley, “All you can do is walk into Jerusalem,
with the Hosannas ringing in your ears, and the palms
coming at you in every direction,
when you are already remembering the bitter of what comes next
even then, all you have is the moving forward
into the city, and the call that says:
you’ve been preparing for this your whole life.”
“No, no, there is no going back,” wrote our poet.
Often people wonder why we tell the old stories from the Bible year after year, especially at Christmas, and Easter. It surprises me how very often I see the relevance of the stories, how they apply to our lives today. While our daily lives are so different that they are practically unrecognizable, the way that we treat one another and the way we struggle for power and authority never seems to change. It just takes different forms.
And one of the realities of human existence through all the centuries is that those in power never want to share it, never want to give it up. The abolitionist Frederick Douglass famously put it this way: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will.” Douglass spoke those words in 1857. Perhaps he was thinking of Jesus and his time in Jerusalem.
The drive to be heard propels people forward. It propels a prophet into a city that turns from welcoming to hostile almost overnight. It propels people down city streets – here in Gloucester last week, and everywhere there are wrongs that need to be righted. The drive to be heard emerges out of desperation; of a sense of no other way, no recourse. There are examples throughout history, but we remember well some of the ones from our own time. The march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. The March on Washington. The Women’s March in 2017. The demonstrations for weeks after the murder of George Floyd. In each of these stories, had the peoples’ voices been silenced, we had a sense that the stones would have cried out. And yet, over and over, attempts have always been made to silence those who demand to be heard. Think of the beatings in Selma. Think of the response to the demonstrations triggered by George Floyd’s murder: from police in riot gear to helicopters overhead, to tear gas and stun grenades.
In recent days, we witnessed, often painfully, another instance when someone stepped forward to raise her voice. We watched as Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson entered a hearing room at the US Capitol, and allowed herself to be subjected to withering and often insulting questioning from those who are threatened by what she represents: a loss of their power.
Judge Jackson stepped forward toward the posturing by the white men questioning her, stayed steadfast as they shouted, as they tried to trip her up, as they accused her of things that were not true. She went on, she did not turn back.
In her case, of course, there was a positive outcome. But once again we witnessed the courage of someone willing to risk her reputation, possibly her safety, in order to live into her destiny, to become a leader, and to shift the balance of power from those who would try to keep it for themselves and for those like them. As stressful, and painful, and probably infuriating as it must have been, Judge Jackson was willing to go forward into the moment, in order to speak.
That’s really what life is all about, that demand to never go back. As I was writing this I found myself singing the Emma’s Revolution song to myself. The words go like this: “Gonna keep on moving forward, gonna keep on moving proudly, gonna keep on singing loudly, gonna keep on loving boldly, never turning back, never turning back.”
This demand to be heard, to refuse to be silenced, to keep moving forward, is the force of life that is welling in each of us. Sometimes we might feel that we have no choice but to ignore it; sometimes the circumstances are so threatening that we must step away, must keep silent, at least for a time. But throughout history, we see, over and over again, that need for people to make themselves heard, to demand better treatment, demand basic rights. We see that that need pushes them out into the streets, causes them to take risks, or else the very stones would cry out.
We saw this in Jesus’ time. In the first century of the Common Era, life was extraordinarily difficult for the people of Palestine. Their country was occupied by the Romans, who had completely upended the traditional way of life for the Jewish farmers and peasants. Their society had always been an agricultural one; small villages and small farms.
But now, there were rulers put into place by the Roman oppressors, rulers such as King Herod and his sons, who started building palaces and large cities, and a huge temple in Jerusalem. To finance all this building, the rulers taxed the residents of Palestine. Some scholars estimate that upward of 40-50% of small farmers’ incomes were paid in taxes – to the Romans themselves, to the local rulers, and to maintain the Temple. And then there came a drought.
Within a generation, people began losing their land. Former landowners were forced to move to the new cities, and to become day laborers. Families were fragmented, as there was no longer enough property to pass down to other children after the oldest son. Younger children in families were cast off, and were known as ‘expendables’, forced to fend for themselves as best they could. (Source: Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, by Reza Aslan, (New York: Random House, 2013)
Into this context, Jesus appeared out of the wilderness, “full of the Spirit”, said the Gospel.
He began travelling from village to village, telling stories known as parables. He was inclusive and spoke for the poor and the oppressed. “Blessed are the poor,” he said. He healed the sick. And his popularity and notoriety grew until he entered Jerusalem, until he was considered such a threat to the government that he was put to death just days later.
No, no, there is no going back. The force that is life itself, that we might think of as holy, is within each of us. It is calling us forward, to move ahead, to speak up. Our poet told us, “Every day you have less reason not to give yourself away.” In other words, the stakes grow higher, the losses mount, and yet we move forward. Perhaps we can see a door opening in the distance, or perhaps we move forward on faith that the door is just ahead, just out of our sight. But to turn back will mean silencing, will mean stopping the force of life within us.
Stop the silence, we shouted as we marched.
My friends, the impulse to resist oppression is an inherent quality of human life, and it has been present throughout our history. So much of our ways of life changes over time, but not that instinct to protest, to speak up, and to be forced into danger, forced to be willing to give ourselves away. We retell the ancient stories because they offer us this insight; that we are not so different, that others have gone before us and raised their voices and found themselves refusing to turn back.
Let’s pause now for a moment to hold this old story in our hearts, and to wonder to ourselves: when do we speak up? How do we feel the upwelling of life within us that calls us to respond with our bodies and our voices?
Spirit of Life, we ask that we remember the examples of people who moved forward, who could have turned back but did not, who were willing to give themselves away.
Blessed be,
Amen.
