Palm Sunday 2003 | Mark 11:1-11

*Preached at Grace North Church April 13, 2003.*

One of my favorite movies in the last few years is a little golf film titled "The Legend of Bagger Vance." Now, I am not a golfer, and am allergic to most aspects of the great outdoors and exercise. But this film is not really about golf, after all.

Those of you who have seen it know the story. Rannolf Junna is a washed-up golf pro, who went away to the great war and came back-well, damaged. Let us say he no longer golfs, and has very little self-esteem and even less of a sense of purpose in life. When the town fathers decide to hold a golf classic in their sleepy southern town, someone has the bright idea to ask Junna to represent the locals.

Junna gets talked into it, though it might be his hormones doing the listening, as it is against his better wisdom. Yet, in spite of this, he begins training, and here is where the film really gets interesting.

From out of nowhere there appears a caddie by the name of Bagger Vance. Bagger is a black man in the pre-civil rights south, and he knows his proper place. And, he doesn't. He says all the right things to keep the white folks from flattening him, but he also steps outside the normal caddie role, becoming Junna's trainer, confessor, and personal guru. During the course of the film, he leads Junna on a journey of self discovery that changes the golfer forever, and of course, to victory in the game.

What keeps this film on target, and what separates it from your run of the mill sports film is that it is note-for-note a retelling of the famous Hindu scripture, the Baghavad Gita. In this great work, Arjuna (Rannolf Juna-R. Junna, get it?) is surveying the field before a great battle. On the other side is the enemy. Except that they are not the enemy, really. Arjuna's opponents are his closest friends, and his family. He despairs, and sinks to the ground. Krishna is his chariot driver, but Krishna is also the Lord of the Universe. Krishna tells him to take heart, and in one of the most beautiful series of chapters in all of world literature, he reveals to Arjuna his true nature, and Arjuna's true nature as well. Now Krishna is also known as Baghavan-the holy one-which also sounds amazingly close to, you got it, Bagger Vance. Baghavan, Bagger Vance.

So, in Robert Redford's amazing little golf film, Will Smith is not just a caddie, he is, wink wink, the Lord of Heaven, and unbeknownst to Rannolf, he's on OUR side. Now, in the film, nobody objects to Bagger's ministrations, because he is not a person of any note. He is JUST a caddie, JUST a black man, and as such, is not perceived as a threat to anyone. And yet if they knew that the Lord of Heaven and Earth was carrying that bag and giving advice on the lay of the green, they might feel differently. Violence might even result.

But Bagger never tips his hand. He never uses any magical powers. Instead he simply watches, and nudges, and gives advice, and Rannolf, played impeccably by Matt Damon, finds himself along the way.

Bagger is my kind of god! I always get choked up at the end of this film, no matter how many times I watch it, because Will Smith IS Krishna, in my opinion. He plays him perfectly, and it never fails to inspire me. And the writer has done something very clever in making Krishna a disempowered person in his place and time. Because the way of power, the way of coercion, the way of the conqueror, is never the way of God.

Bagger, as the Lord of Heaven, could have used magical powers to guide Rannolf's ball, but he doesn't. He could have led the entire Hindu pantheon on a campaign of freedom to shatter the arrogant white bosses' hold on power and usher in a new age of freedom for people of color in the south. That might have been a stunning cinematic fantasy, but Bagger does not do that, either. Instead he assumes the lower place, however unjust that might be, and saves the world in a way that nobody expects, and nobody really wants, one heart at a time, starting with Rannolf's.

Now the Hindus tell us that both Krishna and Jesus are both incarnations of Vishnu, and they could very well be right, because Krishna and Jesus behave very similarly, and have very similar relationships to power.

At the time when Jesus is preaching, the Jews have been under the yoke of one conqueror or another for almost a thousand years. They are tired of being oppressed, and they long with every fiber of their being for justice and freedom. The popular religious literature circulation in that time describe fantastic scenes that can only be described as bloodthirsty divine revenge fantasies, where a mythological figure called the Son of Man raises a great army of God's faithful, and in a fateful battle, defeats the imperial powers and ushers in a time of peace and plenty where God rules the world from Jerusalem.

But, as we know, the way of the conqueror, the way of the sword, the way of coercion and bloodshed is not the way of God. When Jesus began his ministry, he frustrated many of his followers because he refused to play the role that the popular literature insisted that he would. He identified himself with this mythical Son of Man character, and yet he was raising no armies, he was making no plans to throw off the yoke of the oppressor. Quite simply, he just wasn't doing it RIGHT, or so thought his disciples.

When he came to enter Jerusalem, the people had heard of his fame, and were poised and ready to follow him into battle, to defeat the Romans and take their freedom by force. And if Jesus had played along, if he had rode through that gate on a war horse, that might have been exactly what happened. Instead, though, he confounded his followers, and defused the tension of the Roman guards sent to keep this little display under control by sending them into fits of laughter. For the King of the Jews rode not through the gates as a conqueror on a stallion trained for combat, but on a donkey, a beast of burden. And not even a full-grown donkey, but on a foal, making this an even more ridiculous spectacle.

Within a hundred years of Jesus' death, his followers were persecuted, often just as fiercely as the Jews had been, some even moreso. The fledgling Christians lost little time in adapting the bloodthirsty Jewish revenge fantasies to their own mythology, and suddenly popular religious fiction such as the Book of Revelation and the Shepherd of Hermas were circulating. The story was pretty much the same. "Okay," these authors are saying, "The first time Jesus came he came as a man of peace, but the NEXT time he comes to this planet, WATCH OUT! He's going to ride out of the sky with a great army of angels and defeat the forces of darkness once and for all. Then he will set up his Kingdom in Jerusalem where he will rule the nations for a thousand years yada yada yada."

And the popular literature along these lines just keeps coming. One of the great phenomena of the publishing world in the past ten years is the Left Behind series that has sold more copies than there are people on the planet, it seems. My own family members are hooked on these divine revenge-fantasy potboilers that just seem to keep coming-what, aren't we up to volume ten by now?

I'd like to be clear that while such fantasies are very interesting to the historian of religion, they are not simply harmless diversions. After all, Jesus was murdered when he failed to live up to them. And the violence does not stop there.

One time, when I was a freshman in high school, I invited some friends to come to our youth group meeting on Friday night. Now usually our explicit activities, such as a movie or a party were advertised, but there was a great cloud of secrecy about this particular event. We were simply encouraged to bring our friends and be ready for anything.

When my mother swung onto the long driveway of the church with a van full of youth group kids, we found our way impeded by a roadblock. Bright lights were shone in our eyes, and men in unfamiliar uniforms approached us. "Got any Bibles in this car, ma'am?" One of them asked my mother. "Any Bibles in there?!" Another shouted at us. The doors were opened, and we were ordered out of the van, which they then searched. Our bibles were thrown into a basket as one of the guards took my mother aside. She then drove off, and we were escorted up to the church property.

All of the electricity seemed to be out, and the second story of the Fellowship Hall was lit only with candles. There were about 50 of us teenagers huddled in the cold and dark with no explanation, no idea what was to come next. After about a half hour, somebody started singing hymns: low, mournful songs about hope and deliverance. About fifteen minutes later, our youth pastor, Brother Frank, Jr. came up the stairs. He was twenty-one years old, and a superlative extemporaneous preacher.

Tonight he seemed to be broken beyond his years, however. He was shaking and pale. He couldn't look any of us in the eyes, and we were all instantly concerned. Falteringly he took the podium and appeared to be choking back tears. When he finally did speak it was strained and sorrowful.

"This morning they came and took my Daddy away." He was speaking about our pastor, Brother Frank, Sr. "They charged him with preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and right in front of my very eyes they handcuffed him and pistol-whipped him. The forced him to his knees and demanded that he renounce his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. 'No' he shouted, over and over. 'I will never renounce him.' Then my Daddy began to sing, "Blessed Assurance, Jesus is Mine." The hit my Daddy on the head, and he kept singing. Then one of them put a gun to his temple, and pulled the trigger. I watched my Daddy die today."
He took a moment to get a grip on himself. "And now they are coming after me. And if you are not willing to renounce Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, they will be coming after you. It is the beginning of the end, my friends. America has been conquered by a malevolent force. The antichrist is rising, and the persecution of the church is beginning."

We met these words with both fear and hope, for we had been told such things would occur just before Jesus came back to rapture us away and begin the battle of Armageddon. We sang a few more songs, and then we heard the door being battered down one story below us. As we sang, the men in the unfamiliar uniforms burst into the room, waving their weapons and telling us all to stay seated and calm. Of course the girls were screaming, and we were all terrified. They grabbed Brother Frank and tied his hands behind his back. They forced him downstairs and out into the moonlit lawn below. We watched out of the second story window, as the uniformed men forced him to his knees and kicked him. We saw him shaking his head and screaming. Then we watched in silence as one of the men raised a pistol to his head and fired.

Brother Frank's head snapped forward, and he collapsed to the grass. Wordlessly we were escorted downstairs. Then the sirens began. We were told we could go home, but that "they" would be visiting us soon.

These kind of psychodramas were everyday fare in the church I was in during high school, and it was not unusual. Most evangelical and charismatic churches share the same apocalyptic worldview, and religious scare movies such as "A Thief in the Night" and "A Distant Thunder" were all the rage, combining horrid production values with frightening scenarios about teenagers whose families and friends get caught up in the rapture while they are left behind on earth to contend with men in black vans trying to tattoo the mark of the beast on their foreheads.

Which is all very exciting and dangerous, but unfortunately, misses the entire point of what Jesus was all about in a way that just seems unfathomable to me. Jesus didn't ride out of the sky to defeat the Romans and set up his kingdom on earth 2,000 years ago. He is not going to ride out of the sky to defeat Satan, the United Nations, or the Walt Disney company, or whoever else the fundamentalists pinpoint as the harbingers of the antichrist today.

And the reason is very simple. They way of power, of coercion, the way of conquering and the sword, is NOT the way of Jesus. God sides with us not by vanquishing the strong, but by becoming WEAK WITH US. Our Christian mythology tells us that to win our love again, God emptied himself of power and became weak, He was born as a vulnerable baby. And he did not preach war and retribution from the back of a war stallion, but healing and forgiveness from atop a baby donkey, a case of conscious self-mockery if there ever was one. Let it never be said Jesus did not have a sense of humor. Jesus didn't come the first time in power, likewise when he comes again, it will not be in power, but by standing in solidarity with the weak, the poor, the downtrodden, those without hope, those who are poor in spirit, those whom the world has deemed unworthy, crazy, of no account, hopeless, or ignorant. You want power? That's power. Not as the world would have it. Not with bombs or stallions or armies or competent strategizing. But as God would have it, as God has always done it. By becoming weak, by being vulnerable, by being real, by doing the right thing, even though everyone around is saying this is suicide, this is crazy, this is doomed.

But God knows better. God, after all, has the luxury of time, which we, with our limited span of years, do not. But we can learn from God. We can learn from Krishna, who refused to fight, but agreed only to drive a chariot; to be a servant, not a warrior. Or even from Bagger Vance, who could have caused a violent uprising for civil rights, but instead, carried a golf bag and gave advice. We can learn from the carpenter of Nazareth, who refused to take up arms, but saved the world anyway, one heart at a time.

I am as glad to see the war in Iraq come to a close as anyone. I am as happy as anyone that those people who have lived under the yoke of oppression have been freed. And I am even happier now that it looks like our work there might be coming to a close. We might have been victorious, but let us not fool ourselves into thinking that our way was the way of Jesus, because it is not. We are celebrating now, but we do not know what consequences our actions may hold. We have spent every penny of goodwill we have in the world, we have destroyed our credibility, and defeated the power and purpose of the United Nations. We do not know what retaliation may be in store for us, or how badly we have alienated the nations of the middle east. And I fear for what is just around the corner.

The temptation of the War Horse, the gun, the bomb, the way of power and force is a strong one. And we are only human; temptation and succumbing to temptation are in our very sinews. But let us not confuse our way with God's. The way of Jesus is always the eschewing of power, the rejection of force, and the willingness to be vulnerable. Sure it's counterintuitive, maybe even crazy, perhaps even suicidal. But it is God's way. And if we would call ourselves people of faith, it should be ours, as well. The war horse or the baby donkey? Jesus left no doubt as to the kind of steed we should be riding. Let us pray

We call thee the Lord of Hosts, for you command the armies of heaven itself. Odd, however, that you have never used them. God, it is our way to want to right the wrongs we see now, rather than practicing patience; it is our way to want to punish the evildoers, while we stumble about wreaking havoc for the blindness caused by the timber in our own eye. Gandhi offered a corrective to thy holy word when he said, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth leaves the world blind and toothless." And yet I do not think you would disagree with him. Gandhi, who drew his inspiration from the Baghavad Gita and its tale of Arjuna and Krishna, also told us that "Christianity is a wonderful idea-too bad it has never been tried." Give us the courage and the wisdom to challenge at least that saying. Let us put on Christ, and learn from him about solidarity with the poor, the helpless, and the hopeless, eschewing power, and championing peace, before the world wakes up to find itself more blind and toothless than it already is. For we ask this in the name of the Prince of Peace, even Jesus Christ. Amen.