Wave Your Palm Branch

Based on Isaiah 50:4-9

It’s a hard life as a prophet. Poor Isaiah. God was giving him messages of encouragement to those who were weary. And what thanks does he get? He gets his back struck. He is insulted and spit on. And, as one who has a beard, I particularly grimace at this. People pull out the hair on his cheeks. Wow, that stings! But just imagine how that happens. Someone probably has to come from behind Isaiah to hold his arms back while someone else forcefully holds his head steady while a third person, looking at Isaiah in the eye with a smirk on his face, grabs a chunk of his beard and pulls it out while the others are laughing at him. Ugh.

It is baffling to me. Isn’t it to you? Every morning, God wakened Isaiah’s ear to speak to him a word that he could then pass on to those who were weary. He is allowing himself to be used of God to lift up the downtrodden, to encourage the discouraged. Isaiah is speaking a good word. Why would anyone be against this? Why is it that the God inspired words Isaiah is speaking would inspire others to treat him so terribly? It is a mystery to me.

Regrettably, we don’t know the specifics of what Isaiah was saying or who those people were that persecuted and abused him. We are only left to guess. Was what Isaiah said to lift up the weary provocative in some way? Was his message that lifted up the oppressed and downtrodden sound threatening to those in power? It can’t be the case that it was the weary ones who would do such a thing to the one who is encouraging them. So, are the ones who spat in his face and pulled out his beard thugs hired by the powers that be to try to intimidate Isaiah and get him to stop speaking his message? We are just left to guess.

We do know throughout history that those who speak words of comfort to those who are weary, who proclaim good news to the poor, experience resistance. Sometimes the resistance comes from people who have been manipulated or don’t understand what it’s about. Sometimes the resistance comes from high places.

This being Palm Sunday and the beginning of Holy Week, we are reminded of how Jesus as a prophet experienced something similar to what Isaiah had to endure. When Jesus began his public ministry, as we find recorded in the gospel of Luke, he read a passage from Isaiah, the first few verses of Isaiah 61, “The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” This is good news to the poor, the downcast, the weary. And many of them were happy to hear it, demonstrated by the waving of the palm branches as Jesus triumphantly enters into Jerusalem. But not everyone felt the same way. And, as we will be reminded on Friday, Jesus will be mocked and spit upon. He will have his back whipped and beaten. But he will not have his beard pulled out. It will be much worse. He will be nailed to a cross and left to die of asphyxiation in public view for all to see. Those who were threatened by the prophetic message of Jesus saw to it that he could no longer speak.

But Jesus knew something his enemies didn’t know. Just like Isaiah, Jesus knew that God would vindicate him. He knew that his enemies would be overpowered. God won’t prevent the persecution and abuse. But God’s truth will be vindicated. Jesus, like Isaiah, set his face like flint and with confidence made his way through the suffering and abuse. And on Sunday morning, Jesus was vindicated. The power of death was broken. Liberation for those weighed down by the powers of sin and death was secured.

William Wilberforce was a British politician who became convinced by friends and colleagues that slavery was a moral evil and not of God. He was convinced to introduce legislation in the parliament to end slavery in the British empire. That’s what he did. And he was laughed at. No one in parliament took him seriously. Some, of course, had financial interest in the slave trade, so they were not about to end this evil system. Year after year, Wilberforce introduced legislation to end the slave trade and year after year he was ignored. For twenty years, Wilberforce persisted. He did it in spite of the ridicule because he knew that it was the right and moral thing to do. He was convinced that his position was ordained of God. Slowly public opinion also shifted. Finally, in 1807, parliament acted and the slave trade was abolished. One month after his death, in 1834, slavery itself was abolished in most of the empire.

Martin Luther King initially planned to follow his father’s footsteps and be a Baptist preacher. But destiny opened the door and he stepped into the arena to become a drum major for justice. We are all familiar with his oratorical skills and the clarity of his moral call for equality and justice, not just for black people, but for poor whites as well. Yes, his early work was around ending segregation and insuring that black people could vote. He had many champions for this cause along with many who resisted mightily. King was arrested numerous times. He was beaten. He was stabbed. His house was fire bombed. But he persisted because he knew that he was doing God’s will. He carried the message of a prophet. And although there was resistance from all corners, there were many triumphs along the way.

But then King began to expand his prophetic message. He called for the end of the war in Vietnam. He challenged militarism. Drifting away from the Republican party he started identifying himself as a Democratic Socialist. He called for the federal government to be the employer of last resort, to guarantee every American a job or a basic income so that poverty would end. He sought to bring poor white people together with people of color in a poor people’s campaign. All of this prompted more and more pushback. People told King he needed to get back in his lane. He was sounding like a communist. And as he worked to organize sanitation workers in Memphis he was assassinated. Martin Luther King was a prophet. He spoke a prophetic word, inspired by the gospel, with the firm conviction that every human being is a beloved child of God who possessed inherent dignity. He carried a vision that guided his passion, which was to create beloved community. But when he was assassinated, there were a lot of people in America who thought to themselves, “Good riddance. He had it coming.” Many white people cheered.

Isaiah, Jesus, William Wilberforce, Martin Luther King, were prophets. They fulfilled their prophetic role in the face of resistance confident that in time they would be vindicated. It was their conviction that God, who was the source and inspiration of their message, would see them through. And even if they lost their lives, God’s message and God’s will would someday be fulfilled. The abuse each of them received was different. It varied in severity. Wilberforce was laughed at and not taken seriously. Jesus was crucified. God’s prophetic message of good news to the oppressed, the binding up of the brokenhearted, the proclamation of liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners, the proclamation of jubilee, it continues. Messengers are lifted up and brought low. The message persists. God’s truth marches on.

Maybe right now you are saying to yourself, “Thank God I am not called to be a prophet.” The life of the prophet is not an easy one. It takes a lot of courage, endurance, and persistence. It’s not for everyone. But I don’t want to let us off the hook. Do we sometimes find ourselves in situations where we could speak up for the weary, offer good news to the poor, comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, but we are too afraid to speak up? Are we worried about offending someone? There are more times than I want to acknowledge where I failed to be prophetic because I didn’t want to ruffle any feathers or because I was worried about being offensive or too political. I don’t think I’m alone.

At this point I could call on us to be courageous, trust in God and speak that good news, proclaim that call for justice and liberty. But that may be asking too much of us. There just isn’t very many Isaiah’s, William Wilberforces and Martin Luther King’s in the world. And, of course, there’s only one Jesus. So, I want to leave us with a word of grace. If we don’t have enough courage to speak up like a prophet, can we at least champion those who do? Can we not hold with respect those who do take the risk to speak hard truths into the public square and call for a moral revival in which every human being is treated with dignity? Even if the message that the prophet speaks does challenge us, provoke us, unsettle us. Can we at least commit to be the ones who wave the palm branches and not be the ones who cry out, “Crucify!”?