Sermon: Majesty in transit

SERMONS

FROM RIVERSIDE

MAJESTY IN TRANSIT

Dr. Ernest T. Campbell

MARCH 22, 1970

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in 2012 with funding from

Princeton Theological Seminary Library

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MAJESTY IN TRANSIT

"Pussy-cat, pussy-cat, where have you been?
iVe been to London to visit the queen.
Pussy-cat, pussy-cat, what did you there ?
I chased a little mouse under a chair."

What a pity to settle for a mouse when one might have seen
the queen I

We may be sure that on that first Palm Sunday many
in the crowd undershot their opportunity. Every happening
can be experienced on a variety of levels. On that occasion
some enjoyed only the excitement and exhileration of a good
parade. Some were fascinated by the possibility of verify-
ing the rumor that Lazarus had been raised from the dead.
Others were grateful for the Passover homecoming that
would enable them to touch base again with friend and kin.
Still others, aware of the tension that prevailed between
Jesus and the authority of church and state, thirsted for the
showdown that was sure to come since Jesus had gone public
with His claim to be the king

Only a few, less than we are prone to imagine,
sensed what was really up — a city, a culture, a religion,
a people, were living out their moment of truth. And the
rigor of the test was intensified by the fact that Jesus was
in motion. "Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the
Lord." (John 12:13b) "Fear not, daughter of Zion; behold
thy king cometh, sitting on an ass*s coitl" (John 12:15)
Watch Him as He comes ! See Him as He goes I "Majesty
in Transit."

I don f t mean only that Jesus was a busy man. He
was that to be sure. He crowded an incredible amount of
activity into those three short years . And always without
a sense of flurry or a sign of panic. Wherever one touches

down in the gospels he becomes aware of motion, "Passing
through the midst of them He went away." (Luke 4:30) "Let
us pass over unto the other side." (Mark 4:35) "He entered
into Jericho and was passing through." (Luke 19:1)
Zacchaeus climbed up into a sycamore tree for Jesus was
to pass that way." (Luke 19:4) "Two blind men sitting by
the roadside when they heard that Jesus was passing by,
cried out." (Mat. 20:30a) "They went on from there and
passed through Galilee." (Mark 9:30) "As he passed he
saw a man blind from his birth." (John 9:1) Following the
resurrection in the beautiful Emmaus story: "They drew
near to the village to which they were going. And he ap-
peared to be going further. " (Luke 24:28a)

He was busy all right. One has the impression that
whoever sat down with Jesus had all of Jesus that there was
for those moments, but that He would soon be off and mov-
ing to another place to help someone else. Samuel Johnson
was bothered by the busyness of John Wesley. Boswell re-
ports his hero saying, "Wesley^ conversation is good, but
he is never at leisure. He is always obliged to go at a cer-
tain hour. This is very disagreeable to a man who loves to
fold his legs and have out his talk, as I do." 1 Like all who
are propelled by a vision from within, Jesus was alive with
a sense of all that remains to be done. "No time for rest
till glows the western sky."

But something more is involved in this passingness
of Jesus. What is symbolized in the pageantry of Palm Sun-
day is that God speaks to men through actions in their histo-
ry. If in what Whitehead called "The Galilean Vision" the
eternal has been disciosed,then we know that God is not a
problem to be solved, a proposition to be mastered, an es-
sence to be discerned, but a worker to be joined. He is up
to something in the world. He has a will for His creation
that involves the whole universe, And He shares this work
with us. It is a real work, not simply a made work to occu-
py us. It is a work in which even God Himself is becoming.
One can rightly translate the awesome term "Yaweh" to

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mean "I will be what I will be." "God is at work in the
structures of the given world, in the concrete processes of
every man's experience, in the galaxies as well as in sub-
atomic phenomena, in the evolution of new biological species
as well as in the development of metropolis." 2 So wrote
Kenneth Cauthen.

And so God calls a people, Israel, to help Him work
his purpose out. They were not called to settle down and
build a lasting civilization. They were called to be a mobile,
useful, servant people, bearers of a vision. Their prototype
was Abraham who "went out now knowing whither he went."
(Heb. 11:8) Their battle cry, "make straight in the desert
a highway for our God." (Isaiah 40:3) The divine majesty
that confronted and inspired them was always majesty in
transit. A pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night,
A bush aflame, a small voice, now famine, then pestilence,
here war, prophets coming and going, arriving and departing.

The Israelites knew God in the passingness of history,
not in some isolated contemplation of the divine essence. The
religious question is always the life question, and the life
question is always the religious question. The points of de-
cision to which we are called are to be found in our history,
not in some disciplined mental removing of ourselves from
history. And not in something that happened in the past in
history, but in our current history. Why seek ye the living
among the dead?" (Luke 24:5)

For us the God question is posed when we reckon with
such things as race, and sex, and poverty, and war. When
we are made to decide whether we will value for themselves
money, property and status, or see them as a means to a
higher end. There are people in the Christian church today
who insist that the church should get back to "spiritual"
matters. They imply that the issues of the day having to
do with the city, poverty, race, national priorities, etc.
are altogether extraneous to faith. I am trying to suggest
that God confronts us in the ever moving events of our own
history. It is in our actions and inactions that we know him
or deny him. "Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the

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of the Lord." (Luke 12:13) He is always coming or
moving off. He does not stay.

The only proper response to a God who acts is a
servant who obeys. The implicit cry of Palm Sunday can be
summed up in two words: "Follow me!" Follow me to
Gethsemane, to crucifixion, to resurrection, to witness and
to service. Obedience is the method of understanding in the
kingdom of God. When Jesus touched the lepers, he bade
them go to the temple and show themselves to the priests.
When he told them this their skin was still spotted. The rec-
ord says that "as they went they were healed." (Mat. 8:4b)
Their healing lay in their obedience. This is why Ralph
Sockman is fond of noting that most of us enter the kingdom
feet-first, rather than head-first.

But it is always obedience in some immediate situa-
tion that is required of us. The confrontation does not con-
tinue in one stand. The question will not be frozen at one
point so that we can drop it at our pleasure and pick it up
again later on. The inner three tried to freeze divine maj-
esty on the Mount of Transfiguration so that it might stay
for them and us. But Jesus rejected the notion of the three
tabernacles, one for himself, one for Moses and one for
Elijah. "Behold he goeth before you into Galilee." (Mat. 28:7)
This is the tenor of New Testament thought. "So they de-
parted quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and
suddenly he was there in their path. " (Mat. 28:8) This is
where we find him.

There are voices that continually cry, "America,
back to God !" As though there were some locus behind us
to which we could make our way. Better to speak of Ameri-
ca on to God . Better still, on with God. The majesty we
reverence is always in transit. God is forever in motion.
It was not for nothing that the early Christians were described
as "followers of the Way." Moltmann says "The risen Lord
encounters us as the living Lord, inasmuch as he is in mo-
tion, on the march towards his goal. He is still future to

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Himself. With the resurrection, his work is not yet com-
pleted, not yet concluded. " 13 How close are the way and
the truth.

The majesty we see is always "Majesty in Transit,"
which is to say God comes to us in life situations. Not
above them, or behind them, or around them, but through
them. The majesty is always in transit but it does not ren-
der our life trivial. The way we respond to the glimpses
of the majesty we see is a matter of life or death. God has
a purpose. This is the stirring news of Palm Sunday. Man
has a future else Jesus would not have said, "Follow me."
He yearns to bring us back into alignment with a purpose
that really matters.

All the world's a stage. We prefer not to be actors
on that stage, but critics of those already in the action.
The call of Palm Sunday is a call to participation in the
work of God. It summons us to forego the stance of the
critic and become a fellow-worker with God in the world.

Back in the days when men believed in the Ptolemaic
view of the universe they comforted themselves with the
illusion that earth was the center of everything. All the
stars and planets and heavenly bodies rotated around
the earth. When Copernicus discovered that the earth turned
around the sun he shattered the composure of many. Some
of us still hold a Ptolemaic view of ourselves and assume
that the world turns for us. We see our small ventures as
the hearts of what its all about.

The message of Palm Sunday is the good news that
we need not stay in the back waters of some small unworthy
purpose. God by His grace calls us into the mainstream of
history to effect His will. When the majesty goes by and
eternity speaks, the coin may drop for some. All the scat-
tered fragments of their lives coalesce as they see them-
selves the servants of the living God for which they were
born.

The difference between people is not that some have

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seen the vision and others haven't. The difference is that
some have been faithful to the vision and some have not.

"If thou hadst stayed I would have fled,
this is what the vision said."

I have never exposed myself to the rigors of skiing.
(Although I have frequently wished that my weekends might
be as long and free as those of some of my lay friends.) I
know that when one goes skiing he had better stick to the
grade of slope that he can handle. When families go skiing,
each member tends to go his separate way according to his
ability. Out of a snow covered hill in New England a few
weeks back came the story of a man who cried out half in
desperation: "I lost my wife. I lost my children. And now
I've lost my trail. " Some of us may be in that fix today.
For those who have lost the trail there is a majesty passing
by. Above it a voice speaks out, "Follow me." "Behold
thy king cometh unto thee, sitting on an ass's colt." (John

12:15)

"To every man there openeth

a Way, and Ways, and a Way,
And the High Soul climbs the High Way,

And the Low Soul gropes the Low,
And in between, on the misty flats,

the rest drift to and fro.
But to every man there openeth

a High Way, and a Low,
And every man decideth

the Way his sould shall go." 4

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CLOSING PRAYER

Eyes we have, O God, but we see not,

and ears but we do not hear.
Help us to trace Thy form and discern

Thy voice in what is going on

within us and around us now.
Sanctify to us our clock time by

embracing it within Thy will,
And lead us on.

Through Jesus Christ Our Lord.

Amen.

FOOTNOTES:

l e Bosweil, James , The Life of Samuel Johnson,, p. 767
Modern Library

2. Cauthen, Kenneth, Science, Secularization and God 9
p. 47 ? Abingdon Press, New York, 1967

3o Moltmann, Jurgen, Theology of Hope g pp., 86-7
Harper & Row, New York, 1967

4 e Oxenham, John, Selected Poems , edited bjr Charles
Lo Waiiis, p„ 47, Harper & Bros. ? New York f 1948

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