If These Were Silent, The Stones Would Shout Out

Now as [Jesus] was approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying,

“Blessed is the king
    who comes in the name of the Lord!
Peace in heaven,
    and glory in the highest heaven!”

Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”
(Luke 19:37-40, New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition)

Why would the stones shout out?

Jesus had performed plenty of miracles up to this point in the gospels, but nothing like that. He may have turned water into wine, but it came in ordinary containers, not as a gushing fountain. He fed thousands with a meager supply of food, but it happened so subtly that people didn’t quite realize what had happened until afterward—and he didn’t transform the loaves and fishes into a sumptuous banquet, either.

Yes, he brought people to life and made them healthy, but those miracles had a restorative quality to them. As far as we know, he didn’t give people superhuman powers. Lazarus didn’t even emerge from the tomb asking if he would be able to play the violin and then exclaim, “Great, because I never could before!” 

So was Jesus saying that his arrival in Jerusalem held so much significance that reality would warp itself to mark the occasion if the people hadn’t come forward to give him thanks and praise?

When I read the pacifist minister Jason Porterfield’s Fight Like Jesus, I get a better sense of what the crowds at the gates of Jerusalem had been shouting. You see, Luke’s account omits a word from the people’s chants which is recorded in Matthew, Mark, and John. “Nowadays,” Porterfield observes, “we use the word hosanna primarily as an expression of praise to God. It has become an interjection of adoration, similar to hallelujah.” (Those of you from an Anglican or Catholic background may already hear the echoes of “Hosanna in the highest” running through your heads.)

Hosanna and hallelujah, however, do not carry the same meaning in Hebrew.

Hoshana (or, sometimes, Hosha na) “meant ‘Oh, save us now!’ or ‘Deliver us, we plead!’” as Porterfield explains. “In essence, it was a cry for help.” Yes, the crowds thrilled to see Jesus approaching Jerusalem—but their excitement was born of their keenly felt desire for a liberator. “We are suffering here!” they were telling Jesus. “Please make things right!”

Let’s imagine Jesus riding into the city, and all the people on one side of the street chanting “Show me what democracy looks like!” and the people on the other side of the street responding “This is what democracy looks like!” Now imagine how that would have sounded to those among Jerusalem’s elite desperate not to further agitate the imperial authorities of Rome. No wonder they told Jesus to quiet his mob before things got out of hand. 

And no wonder, for those who know their Hebrew Bible, that Jesus refused.

The prophet Habakkuk, writing approximately six centuries before the time of Jesus, had harsh words for those who collaborated with the forces of occupation and oppression, “setting your nest on high to be safe from the reach of harm.”

“You have devised shame for your house
by cutting off many peoples;
you have forfeited your life.
The very stones will cry out from the wall,
and the rafter will respond from the woodwork.”

“The stones of a city cry out because of what they have witnessed,” the theologian Andrew Perriman clarifies, “and Jerusalem is a city that has witnessed—and will witness—terrible bloodshed.” We should remember that the Gospel of Luke was probably written at least a decade after the Judaeans finally did rebel against Rome, which led to the siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Second Temple. We can’t say for sure that Jesus had known what was coming, but the author of Luke certainly wanted to convince readers that he had.

(We also don’t have to hold any specific beliefs about Jesus’s divine nature to recognize that an astute observer, especially one filled with prophetic imagination, might easily identify Roman-occupied Jerusalem as a cauldron of unrest on the verge of boiling over.)

Knowing all this, it becomes easier for me to understand why James Nayler felt led by God to reproduce Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem as a sign for Puritan England to behold. It also helps me understand why other Friends would feel led to join him. And it makes me think about our present condition. “Alas for you who build a town by bloodshed and found a city on iniquity!” Habakkuk warns us. If the walls of our great cities could talk, how might their messages condemn this world? And how can we step forward to bear witness in their place?