Name Calling
Isaiah 50:4-9a; Luke 19:28-40; Luke 23:1-49
Rev. Karen Goltz

            [LOUDLY]  “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!  Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!”  “Crucify him!”  “He saved others, let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!”  “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!”

            [REGULAR VOICE]  I remember chanting as a child, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me.”  It seemed a sort of talisman, a magic charm to ward off evil, or at least to soothe bruised feelings.  Too bad it’s not always true.

            Upon his entrance into Jerusalem, Jesus was hailed as the long-awaited Messiah, the one who was God’s Anointed, destined to restore the kingdom of Israel to one of justice, and might, and peace.  The people cried out to him their hails of praise, and with their hails, the people named Jesus Messiah, as he rode into Jerusalem.  And for the first time in Luke’s gospel, Jesus allowed himself to be publicly recognized.  Before this, he commanded silence regarding his identity, silencing the demons he’d exorcised, and even insisting that his disciples keep silent about him after Peter correctly identified him as the Messiah.  Throughout his ministry, Jesus never denied that he was the Christ, but he never wanted that information to be made public.  But when it came time for him to enter Jerusalem, it seems like he was ready to be known.  He even named himself when he sent two of his disciples to get the colt, instructing them to tell anyone who asked that it was ‘the Lord’ who needed it.  Never before in Luke’s gospel had Jesus allowed himself to be known publicly as ‘the Lord’, but as he prepared to enter Jerusalem, he prepared to claim that title, and everything that went along with it.

            And it seems like the crowds responded appropriately, honoring him with their hails.  And with their honor and praise and confidence, they called him names:  Lord, Messiah, Christ, King.

            And those names caught the attention of the religious leaders in Jerusalem.  In the chapters between Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and the Last Supper, Luke tells of many attempts on the part of the chief priests, the scribes, the Pharisees, and the Sadducees to test Jesus.  They were hoping to trip him up and give them something—anything—they could use to prove that he wasn’t really entitled to those names.

            Only, Jesus passed all their tests and used all their traps against them.  His wisdom made people doubt not who Jesus was, but the right of the religious leaders to call themselves religious leaders.  Truth be told, Jesus really made them all look pretty stupid and incompetent, and it became a power struggle between ‘either’ and ‘or’.  Either Jesus was the Messiah and the religious leaders were incompetent fools, or Jesus was a blasphemer with no legitimate claim to the name ‘Lord,’ and the religious leaders were the authoritative protectors and interpreters of God’s Word.  And the crowds sat back and watched the struggle, interested to see who would win this battle, who would prove to be the most powerful.

            And in the end, there really was no battle.  Jesus was arrested, and he never tried to fight back.  The only words he spoke in his own defense were a simple acknowledgement of the situation:  The chief priests and the scribes ask Jesus if he is the Son of God, and Jesus simply points out that they are saying that he is.  Later when Pilate asks him if he’s the King of the Jews, Jesus simply says, “You say so.”  And then Jesus never speaks another word until his way to the cross, when he speaks to some women who are crying for him.  None of his last words, those he spoke to those women or those he uttered from the cross, were any kind of resistance or protest against what was happening to him.

            For the crowd, Jesus’ lack of resistance proves that he must not really be the Messiah after all.  They must’ve been mistaken when they hailed him with their “blessed be’s.”  Maybe they were driven by anger at having been duped, or maybe they were driven by fear of the religious leaders, the ones who obviously had the real power, that they might be punished for having blasphemed when they hailed this powerless criminal.  Whatever the case, the shouts of praise turn into demands for his death, a demand that was met.

            The charge against Jesus was that he claimed to be the King of the Jews.  It was even inscribed above his head as he hung there on the cross, slowly suffocating.  The charge was an automatic death sentence in the Roman Empire.  The authorities didn’t really think that this Jewish peasant might actually topple the mighty Caesar, but any challenge to the Roman rule had to be dealt with swiftly and violently.  That was policy.  This same charge was also a threat to the Jewish religious officials because it challenged their authority to interpret and enforce the Word of God.  Their prophesies told them that the Son of God, God’s Messiah, would restore the kingdom of Israel, and he would rule it in such a way that the people would live in peace and righteousness with God.  That this poor peasant would dare claim to be that Messiah was personally offensive to them.  Surely God’s Messiah would come in power and glory, a stately presence that just oozed authority, as their traditions remembered their beloved King David.  David had ruled over Israel when she was a powerful unified nation, a nation to be contended with.  If such a man as that had come claiming to be the Messiah, and he proved the validity of his claim by affirming the teachings of the religious leaders as he worked to unify Israel once again, then perhaps they would have supported him.  Instead, the one claiming to be the Messiah seemed intent on challenging the religious leaders and debunking their claims of righteousness before God, and he had no armies with which to unify the people of Israel back into a single powerful nation.

            It’s ironic, really.  The Romans wanted to kill Jesus just as a matter of policy; his claims implied a threat to the Emperor, and, even though he obviously wasn’t really a threat, they had to kill him anyway, just in case.  The Jews wanted to kill Jesus because he wasn’t really a threat to the Emperor.  If he had been, then he might really be the Messiah, and of course the religious leaders would have supported the real Messiah.

            So the charge that Jesus was the King of the Jews was a joke to both the Romans and the Jews.  They mocked him, they nailed him to a cross, and then they continued to mock him and call him names.  They called him the same names he was called when the crowds had hailed his coming into Jerusalem, when the crowds thought he might actually be deserving of them.  After all, despite Jesus’ commands for silence, word about him had spread anyway, and it had seemed like he was fulfilling the prophesies of God’s Anointed One.  Even the way he came into Jerusalem, riding a colt, fulfilled the prophesies.  But now, as he hung there on the cross, his life slowly and painfully draining away, the crowds and religious leaders called him those same names.  Only this time they were being sarcastic, and they meant to be cruel.  They wanted their name-calling to cause as much pain and suffering as the actual crucifixion did.

            And the greatest irony of all is that the charge against Jesus correctly identified who he was.  He was the King of the Jews.  He was God’s Anointed One.  And even suffering, hanging from the cross, he was still just as deserving of the names Lord, Messiah, Christ, and King as he had been when he rode into Jerusalem in honor and glory.  Even suffering, hanging from the cross, he was fulfilling the prophesies.  “I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting.”

            But the crowds would not consider a Messiah who suffered.  They would probably claim with confidence that their Messiah was so powerful that he could even defeat death, but they would be appalled by the suggestion that he would first have to confront death and succumb to it in order to defeat it.  The crowds would boldly claim that their Lord was a forgiving Lord, forgiving them all their sins, but they would deny that the Lord himself would have to pay the penalty for those sins, including the sin of murdering God’s own Son, forgiving them for that sin even as he paid the price for it.

            The crowds are a funny group.  They shouted their praise when Jesus seemed to be what they were looking for, then changed their cries to ‘crucify him!’ when it appeared that his lordship differed from what they wanted or expected.  After his resurrection some of them were able to believe, and boldly called him ‘Lord’ once again, proclaiming that he ruled their lives.  Yet even believing, they try to put limits on that lordship, naming him Lord but keeping their own authority and counsel.  They attend worship services and hear the triumphant Easter proclamation that he is risen, and they try to forget that in order to rise, he first had to die.  They sing, “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine” as they conveniently overlook the fact that for Jesus to be theirs they also have to be his, and that his commandment to obey the law and love all their neighbors is meant for them to actually obey.  They gratefully accept the forgiveness of their sins, but they want to do that without accepting that they are sinners in need of forgiveness, no matter what they do or how hard they try or how good a person they think they are.  They don’t acknowledge how often they praise Christ with their shouts of “blessed be” only to turn on him and crucify him with their words and actions, then turning their words back into ‘blessed be’s’ again when it’s convenient for them.  They would much rather just remember the promise, and forget why that promise is needed.

            The crowds named Jesus Lord and Christ, and that name accomplished his death.  But after his death came his resurrection, his triumph over death, the saving act that reconciles us with the God who so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish, but have eternal life.  That saving act caused those who believe to be named Christians.  What will that name accomplish in us?