Monday Invocation | Lenten Series: If These Were Silent

Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to [Jesus], “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.” (Luke 19:39-40)

Yesterday was Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week. For those who grew up in church, you may remember walking into the sanctuary and being handed a palm frond to wave (and maybe even lay it down in the aisle) when called upon in the service. This was done to honor the events of Palm Sunday, which marks the occasion of Jesus’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem; crowds gathered around him, laying their cloaks on the ground, shouting:

“Blessed is the king
who comes in the name of the Lord!
Peace in heaven,
and glory in the highest heaven.”
(Luke 19:38 NRSV)

When challenged by the assembled religious leaders to quiet his followers, Jesus dismisses them: “If these were silent, the stones would shout out.” He offers imagery that borders on absurd—lest the people offer their praise and celebration of Jesus’s arrival, the most inanimate and mundane of natural objects would cry out in kind.

Scripture is filled with references to Creation’s intrinsic praise of God. The psalmists write of the heavens and of the sky declaring God’s creative power (Psalm 19:1). Isaiah writes “the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.” (Isaiah 55:12 NRSV)

In his response to the Pharisees, Jesus—God in flesh, Christ incarnate—both appeals to this familiar imagery and affirms that the jubilation of the assembled throng cannot be contained.

Creation responds to its Creator.

You, a created being, are a beautiful image of your Creator. How and whom you love, express your gender, and uniquely reflect God’s creativity is an echo of those first words in Genesis 1 when God saw all that God had made and called it good.

How much more precious is your life and its witness than the rocks to which Jesus pointed?

May we be responsive to our Creator. May we have open hands and open hearts, leaning intently into the Spirit’s presence. The rhythms of this week can be familiar, and if you’ve been through it many times, it may even have become ritual. Prayerfully, may we enter into this season with anticipation of God’s good gifts, and may we be willing to see anew the eternity-shifting significance of Christ’s death and resurrection.

Take a few moments to contemplate this selection Adapted from Morning Prayer For Fellow-Prisoners, written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

O Heavenly Mother,
I praise and thank you
For rest in the night;
I praise and thank you for this new day;
I praise and thank you for all your goodness
and faithfulness throughout my life.

Lord Jesus Christ,
You were poor and in distress, a captive and forsaken as I am.
You know all our troubles;
You abide with me when all others fail me;
You remember and seek me;
It is your will that I should know you and turn to you.
Lord, I hear your call and follow;
Help me.

O Holy Spirit,
Give me faith that will protect me
from despair, from passions, and from vice;
Give me such love for God and others
as will blot out all hatred and bitterness;
Give me the hope that will deliver me
from fear and faint-heartedness.