Down in the Mud       

 

            Have you ever read the Iliad? Homer’s ancient story about the Trojan War was required reading in college years ago.

 

            One fascinating part about the book is what it reveals about the theology of the times. As Homer tells it, this epic conflict was not so much a test of strength and will between Greeks and Trojans as it was a board game between two competing groups of gods—kind of a deluxe version of chess or Stratego or Risk, with humans as the little plastic playing pieces.

 

            Human life existed for entertainment purposes only—the gods’ entertainment. There was no point in pretending you had any control over your life or a purpose other than to amuse the gods. If it pleased the gods to have you dead or happy or miserable, then that’s what you were.

 

            The really disturbing thing is that there was no purpose to the gods’ lives either, other than to amuse themselves. Gods weren’t particular admirable beings. They could be mean, vindictive, selfish, petty. In this Trojan War competition they cheated shamelessly.

 

            And what did this say about the relationship between people and the gods? There really was none. Sure, gods had their favorites among humans, but then people tend to have their favorite Monopoly token or favorite color cribbage peg, and there’s no relationship there. People worshipped and praised the gods not because the gods were good and deserving but because they were powerful. Flattery worked on these vain deities and your only hope for a decent life was to use it to become a favorite token of one of the gods.

 

            There was as huge a gap between the gods and humans as there is between a grandmaster and the chess pieces. The key to life was understanding and accepting the fact that the gods were privileged beings way up in the sky and humans were game pieces down on the Earth. That’s where each belonged, and that’s the way it would always be.

 

            The influence of the ancient Greeks is more powerful than we think. You hear it every day in religious circles:

 

 

 

 

 

 

             God took her from us.                                                                                

            This tragedy was God’s will.

            This disaster is God’s punishment for sinful living..

            Thank you, God for giving us the riches and safety and security that other people don’t have.

            Everything happens for a reason, because it’s all part of God’s plan.

            God doesn’t give anyone more trouble or sorrow than they can handle.

            When your number’s up, your number’s up. 

           

            That’s all Greek stuff--right out of the Iliad. When you don’t work very hard at spirituality, and most people don’t, you slide back into primitive notions.

 

            For many people today, the only differences between us and Homer are that God is good, not devious, and that God doesn’t have any serious competition. Lucky for us, or we’d be in exactly the same boat as the Trojans and Greeks, playing out our meaningless existence, slaughtering each other for the sake of some divine competition.

 

            For many, God is still that privileged being way up there in the mysterious cosmos, manipulating the little chess pieces from afar for his own entertainment. There’s a huge gap between God and us, and that’s the way God likes it. What separates us from God is power and goodness. God has it, we don’t. The key to life is understanding and accepting that God is way up in the sky, and we are down in the mud. That’s where each belongs, and that’s the way it will always be. 

 

            This was largely the mindset of the people of Jerusalem who welcomed Jesus on Palm Sunday. God is far off in the pure, rarified air; humans are in the mud. They knew their place in the world. So when someone divine came into their midst, their job was to show that they knew their place. To maintain that huge distance between God and humans.

 

            Do you wonder why we walk around with palm branches on this Sunday that commemorates Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem? Why did the people have palm branches?

            They weren’t just decorations. They did not just wave them like flags at a Memorial Day parade. They laid them on the road in front of Jesus. And that wasn’t the only thing they put on the road; they also spread out their coats. Why did they do that?

 

 

 

 

            There are stories from the days of European royalty about the proper etiquette for when the queen was walking around outside. If there was a patch of mud in the queen’s path, which could often be the case in an era before sidewalks, a true and loyal subject was expected to take off his coat and place it over the mud so that the queen would not get her feet dirty. Everyone knew their place. The privileged queen was up there. She didn’t belong in the dirt and the mud; that’s where the rest of us lived.

 

            The same thing happened in this Palm Sunday ride. The palm branches and the coats were placed on the road to cover the dirt. They were put there so that even the beast upon which Jesus rides would not have to touch the dirt and the mud.

            Jesus had been proclaimed the Messiah—the Savior and the very presence of God. In their gestures with the palm branches and their coats, the crowd was saying, “We know our place. We know your place. We know you don’t belong down in our world.

            “It’s shocking enough that you would even make an appearance in our dirty sinful world.        The least we can do is limit your contact with the dirt.”

 

 

            If Jesus behaved the way divine beings are supposed to behave, he would have accepted this as his due. “Excellent, you little mud dwellers know your place. Because of that I will be merciful to you and allow you to live. Don’t expect me to get involved in your lives, though. Like I could get involved with playing pieces. As long as you keep treating me this way, I’ll let you enjoy some benefits and blessings that you don’t deserve, just because I am such a generous person, and it amuses me to allow this to happen. So carry on.”

 

            That way was open to Jesus. And according to virtually all other religions in the world, that was the path he should have and would have taken. There really was no choice. We belong in the mud; God does not. Never the two shall mix.

 

            In our readings today, though, Palm Sunday suddenly turns to Passion Sunday. Jesus does the unimaginable. He does what the gods have warned against from the dawn of time. He does not know his place. He does not accept the huge barrier between God and human. After this ride through town, he gets down off the horse, kicks aside the palm branches and coats, and gets into the mud of the Garden of Gethsemane, of the palaces of Pilate and Herod, and on the hill of Golgatha.

 

 

 

            To anyone who thinks that all world religions are basically the same, the story of Palm Sunday/Passion Sunday offers stunning evidence to the contrary. It turns previously accepted ideas of religion on their heads. The reason I believe the Christian message is so important and needs to be proclaimed everywhere is not because it prescribes a code of behavior. You don’t need religion to do that, much less Christianity—there are codes of behavior everywhere.

 

            The insight that God has revealed in the Bible is that God is far different from humanity has imagined. God is not a privileged being who sits up in the clouds and avoids all contaminating contact with humans, whom he has created for his entertainment. God created us for an entirely different reason—to share relationship. And in order to do that, God is willing to meet us where we live, down in the mud.

 

            That truth is declared in the beautiful hymn recorded in Philippians 2. In the modern translation of The Message version of the Bible:

            “Jesus Christ did not think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of a deity and took on the status of a slave, became human.

            “Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He did not claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion.”

 

            That is not the kind of behavior we expect from the divine, but once it is explained to us, it is so logical, it’s hard to see that God could be any other way. Would God’s ultimate purpose be to preside over a collection of playing pieces? What kind of shallow existence is that? You can worship a God like that out of self-preservation instincts but you can’t respect that God. You can’t love that God.

 

            But what if God’s purpose was to share love with as many other beings as possible? The Bible tells us that it’s true. And if that is true, then there is no way God sits far off on an antiseptic throne, manipulating what goes on in the universe without getting his hands dirty. A God truly interested in sharing love is going to come down into the mud where we are floundering and pull us out of it.

 

            That is the unique message that Christians are called to proclaim.

 

            We know it’s true because we feel the presence of God most strongly when we see people imitating this mud-slogging characteristic of God.

 

 

            Has there been any human being more admired in the past century than Mother Teresa? Why is she admired? Because she spent her whole adult life in the muck with those who could not escape it—with the desperately poor and diseased in the slums of Calcutta. When we looked at Mother Teresa’s life, we saw as clear a reflection of God as we can see.

 

            Habitat for Humanity was a small, struggling enterprise when it first began. Do you know when it grabbed the nation’s consciousness and swelled into a huge movement with branches all across the country? It was about the time when people discovered a former president, Jimmy Carter, quietly showing up every day in a work shirt and jeans to pound nails to help build a house for someone in need. In the unskilled labor of powerful man of privilege, who had no need ever to go into the mud again, we saw a clear reflection of God.

 

            It’s no fun changing dirty diapers, or cleaning up after an aged person who no longer has control over bodily functions. But there are few acts of love as pure and honorable as those. 

 

            Two years ago, there was a devastating mudslide in LaConchita, California. A 30-foot wall of mud slammed into a neighborhood in this small mountain community, swallowing up houses and killing ten people.

 

            Listen to excerpts of an interview with one of the residents, Bill Harbison, who happened to be out riding his bike in the neighborhood when the mountainside came down.

 

            “I just jumped in—calling out for people—climbing through the mud and all the wreckage.”

            Harbison heard the voices of two women trapped deep in the mud, about 25 feet apart. He remembers pulling one of them out and, as he says, “I put her on my back and carried her out piggyback. I handed her off and then jumped back in the mud. I dug and dug and finally found the second woman.” She was alive only because she was in a little pocket of air that kept her from being suffocated.

            “I got down to her, and was actually able to look her in the eye—make eye contact and hold her hand and say, “I’m here. We’re not going to leave you. We’re going to get you out.” Help then arrived and the woman was rescued.

 

 

 

 

 

 

            Watch this week as Jesus kicks aside the palm branches and jumps into the mud, to save a floundering humanity trapped in its own selfishness and sin and hatred. Watch as he digs down with his bare hands into the mess that we have made of the world. Watch as he goes to the cross, looks us in the eye and holds our hand, saying, “I’m here. I’m not going to leave you. I’m going to get you out.”

            Watch as help arrives, and he does get us out.

 

            “Christ Jesus did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross.”

 

            That is the story we are given to tell the world. This is what God is really like.