Jesus comes into the city of Jerusalem. The people around him were laying down palm branches, proclaiming Jesus is their savior. Jesus makes his way to the Jerusalem Temple and causes a lot of chaos in the courtyard by turning over tables, screaming at sellers of the sacrifices. Then, almost as quickly as he enters, Jesus leaves the city. The question is why did Jesus do this? I would contend that Jesus’ motivation for entering the city of Jerusalem is one of the most misunderstood aspects of Christianity. To understand what compelled Jesus to march into the Temple courts and overturn the tables of the money changers and the sellers of the sacrifices, we need to go all the way back to 26 B.C., the founding of the Roman Empire. Emperor Augustus was declared the victor after a very bloody civil war and now he was in full control of the largest empire on earth. Augustus understood that if his subjects were financially prosperous, then there would be no need for violence. Therefore, Augustus set out to stabilize Rome’s economy with the release of standardized coinage throughout the empire. This coinage made it far easier for nation states to engage in commerce with one another. Wealthy Jews loved being able to do business under the new Roman regime and, for the first 40 years of the empire’s existence (26 B.C.E – 14 C.E), Rome helped to create an incredibly robust and diversified economy in the Holy Land. During this period, everyone from aristocrats to artisans to peasants enjoyed an improved standard of living. Jesus himself would have benefited from all of this prosperity. Jesus is described in the gospels as a te,ktwn (tekton), which is often translated as carpenter into English. A better translation would be day laborer. Jesus was a guy who you would hire to do odd jobs. However, Nazareth is such a small village that Jesus would not have been able to find enough work as a handyman to support himself. Interestingly, about five miles away from the village of Nazareth was a city that was being constructed for the wealthiest citizens of Galilee. This city was called Sepphoris. More than likely, Jesus would have been part of the building efforts in Sepphoris during his teenage years. And he wouldn’t have been the only one. These building projects, which were happening all over the Holy Land, meant that the peasant population could earn extra money to feed their families. Unfortunately, the prosperity of the first 40 years of the Roman Empire would slowly be undone when Augustus’ successor came to power in 14 A.D. His name was Emperor Tiberius and he began hoarding coinage in the Roman Treasury for himself. As you can imagine, this hoarding had extremely negative effects that could be felt throughout the empire. As coinage was removed from circulation, interest rates began to soar, which created a credit crisis. By 20 A.D., when Jesus was about 24 years old, the repercussions of this credit crisis became noticeable in the region of Galilee. Most of the major building projects (like those at Sepphoris) had been completed, drying up the extra income that the peasants had come to depend upon. What’s more, with less money in circulation, the local governments were struggling to find enough funds to operate. The burden to cover this deficit fell on the tax collectors, who heavily inflated their tax rates. This is why you hear so much about tax collectors in the gospels. They were robbing people blind to support the government because of the credit crisis. By the mid-20s, a growing number of peasants were so far behind on their payments that they had to forfeit their land in order to remediate the debt. The sad irony of these circumstances is that their land was now owned by the same wealthy Jews for whom they had built homes in cities like Sepphoris. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that Jesus’ movement arose at the height of this credit crisis. He watched as families, who formerly made a living wage, became unable to support themselves. They were giving up their businesses, selling their land and finding themselves living as indentured servants. Life was very, very bleak with no real hope for change on the horizon. Things just kept getting worse and they wanted to know who was responsible for their situation. Jesus had an answer: this was all the fault of wealthy Jews colluding with the evil Roman Empire. Because Jewish aristocrats were willing to do anything to make money, Jesus felt they had make a pact with the devil. What had benefited everyone in the short term was now destroying everyone in the long-term and Jesus wanted to put an end to the corruption that had gotten them into this mess. Perhaps the greatest symbol of the corruption among the Jewish people was the Temple in Jerusalem. The Temple was where members of the Jewish faith would come to offer animal sacrifices to God. According to the laws of the Old Testament, in order for your sins to be forgiven, you needed a priest to offer an animal sacrifice on your behalf. Once the priest offered the sacrifice on the altar in the Temple, your sins would be forgiven, putting you back in good standing with God. This continual need for sacrifices had given rise to an entire industry built around the buying and selling of sacrifices. It was a big money operation and the priests responsible for running the Temple took a cut of every transaction. And it’s not like today where anyone could become a priest. It was a family job, passed from father to son and almost all the families of priests were members of the aristocracy. More importantly, every priest was vetted by the Roman government and was expected to be loyal to Rome’s interests. As a result, the Temple was almost universally viewed as a corrupt institution. Jesus travelled to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday to start a revolution. The overturning of the tables of the money changers and the sellers of the sacrifices was supposed to be the spark that ignited a fire. More than likely, the hope was to rally the commoners and inspire them to storm the Temple and clean house. They would oust all of the priests, free the Temple from Roman control and start from scratch. The aristocracy got this message loud and clear. They saw what Jesus was trying to do. They knew he was trying to foment revolt. In fact, the reason why Jesus was convicted of treason is because of this incident in the Temple. When Jesus marched into the Temple and created so much chaos, they knew it was a direct attack on the power structures of the Jewish aristocracy. This is why they made sure Jesus was arrested and executed. They wanted the insurrection to die with him. And, if we’re being honest, in many ways, they were successful. By executing Jesus, he wasn’t able to lead a crowd into the Temple. The goal he set out to achieve on Palm Sunday would not come to fruition in that moment. The justice Jesus was seeking on that day would have to be postponed. Indeed, this is a common problem in human society—justice is elusive. And this is what the parable we read this morning is really talking about. So there are two characters in this parable—a judge and a widow. The parable tells us that the judge has no fear of God and does not respect people. In other words, what Jesus is telling us is that the judge doesn’t care about doing the right thing. The judge is not concerned with seeking a just outcome in the cases that come before him. Instead, the judge makes decisions based on what suits him best. The other character in this parable is a widow. We are not told why she is coming to court, but given that she is a widow, it likely has something to do with assets associated with her family. As a woman, she has no rights to assets. The only way she could retain them is if a judge found there were extenuating circumstances and ruled in her favor. The implication of Jesus’ parable is that the judge should rule in her favor, but that seems unlikely given that the judge doesn’t really care about justice. So the widow employs a strategy—she’s going to keep coming back the judge, again and again, demanding that he give her justice. The judge doesn’t want to find in her favor, but he weighs his options: he can keep saying, “No,” and this woman will keep bothering him or, he could say, “Yes,” and she will be out of his life. Ultimately, the judge finds in her favor, not because it’s the right thing to do for her, but because it’s right thing to do for him. When people read this parable, they often believe that it’s speaking about how you have to keep pestering God for justice and God will eventually give it to you. This is not really what Jesus is getting at in the parable. Jesus wants us to understand that justice is not a straight line. Justice is often a path that requires a great deal of persistence because the world is not designed to give us justice. Take for example the story of Nathaniel Johnson, a black man accused of raping a white woman in Augusta, Georgia in 1959. The arresting officer takes Johnson to the interrogation room at the police station, but he’s not getting anywhere with a confession, so the chief of police ushers all the people out of the room and spends a few hours alone with Johnson. When the chief of police emerges, he has in his hand a written confession from Johnson that he committed the rape. Of course, with the confession in hand, the case very quickly went to trial. [Revisionist History – Part 1] As you might guess, Johnson was convicted and sentenced to death. The recording you just heard was of Vernon Jordan, one of two black attorneys who tried to stop the execution. And the reason why they tried to stop the execution is because Nathaniel Johnson told them a very different story of what transpired that evening. You see, Nathaniel Johnson and this white woman, who he was accused of raping, were having an affair together. She was married, obviously to another white man, and became pregnant with Nathaniel’s child. When he found out, they had a disagreement and Nathaniel hit her. So in order to explain the bruises and the pregnancy to her husband, she told her husband that she had been raped by a black man, which is what lead to Nathaniel’s arrest. Here is Vernon Jordan describing what happened the day before Nathaniel Johnson was executed. [Revisionist History – Part 2] I wish I could say that this story is unique, but it is not. It is consistent with the experience of so many who are trying to seek justice in our legal system and other legal systems around the world. I don’t know if you noticed, but Vernon Jordan’s description of going to judge after and judge and being turned away is exactly the same situation as what Jesus is trying to convey in his parable. They are seeking justice, but the judges don’t care and don’t have any desire to do what is right. Vernon Jordan and his boss, the famous lawyer, Donald Hollowell, dedicated their professional careers to being like the widow in this parable. They were up against a system that had no desire to give justice to their people, and yet, they continued to return to the judges in case after case, knowing that many of their efforts would prove fruitless, but believing it was important to seek justice nonetheless. Therefore, the point of this parable is that if you really want to achieve justice, one has to truly make it a life’s work. Everyone believes that justice is important, but few are willing to put in the work to make it happen, which brings us back to the story of Jesus and Palm Sunday. Similar to Vernon Jordan in the case of Nathaniel Johnson, the chances of Jesus overturning such a large power structure such as the Jerusalem Temple were slim. As we know, Jesus was unsuccessful. But even though Jesus was killed, that would not be the last time Jesus would attempt to seek justice for the oppressed. Like the widow in the parable, Jesus’ disciples would carry on his work. Every generation would continue to return to the people in power, seeking a just outcome for those subdued by oppressive regimes and economic systems. What’s important for us to understand is that seeking justice for the poor and the marginalized is a critical part of the DNA of Christianity. To be a Christian without making justice a priority is like trying to play soccer without a soccer ball—it strips Christianity of its meaning and purpose. But the truth is that many Christians ignore and deny this component of Christianity because it is so hard. To be like the widow in the parable or Vernon Jordan takes tenacity, courage and a willingness to deal with disappointment after disappointment. Furthermore, if you happen to sit at the top of the justice mountain, which many of us in this church do because we are affluent and white, then it becomes that much harder for us to want to change anything because we are in a position of privilege. Since the system works so well for us, it’s hard for us to see how it doesn’t work well for others. So my hope and my prayer for you is that you might stand for justice. I hope that you might be willing to come down off the mountain to help those who are helpless. Palm Sunday is a reminder that a major part of our spiritual calling as Christians is making justice our life’s work. We need to move off of our perch and stand next to all those who have been denied justice again and again so that one day we might live in a world where no one is oppressed and justice is truly blind. Amen.