Do You Hear the People Sing?

Matthew 21:1-11

_{They said to Him, “Do You hear what these are saying?” And Jesus said to them, “Yes. Have you never read, “Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have perfected praise’?” (Matthew 21:16, NKJV)}

Do You Hear the People Sing?^[1]

It’s stating the obvious that we are in confusing and untenable times. Our economic and political apparatus are in a tailspin. People are reeling from the effects of social distancing and isolation. The Church is assessing the vitality of its future. All the while a global health crisis has exposed and exacerbated a broken state of affairs that for too long continues to leave too many people subject to the perils of injustice.

Rev. Liz Theoharis makes the point poignantly that “[A]s the current public health emergency deepens its revealing and worsening broader economic and social emergencies . . . caused by a lack of health care, affordable housing, living wages, labor rights, voting rights, and environmental protections.”^[2] Thus, in the wake of this most critical health emergency, and as the Church finds itself entering into the most prescient of Holy Weeks, we must grapple with the question: how do we wish to fashion our world in the aftermath of this crisis?

As Christians across the nation think critically about new and innovative ways to meet the immediate needs of the people in their congregation and community, we must also seek a long term vision for the transformation of a political, social, and economic system which has too long thrived on the proliferation of injustice. On the heels of Palm Sunday, one thing is clear, this current state of affairs cannot be left to remain if we wish to finally be free from this seemingly never-ending cycle of calamity and deprivation.^[3]

Therefore, what this prescient Holy Week helps us see is that moderate approaches to freedom will not do! And like the multitudes who thronged Jesus on His way into Jerusalem, we must wave our palms of protest, we must shout our discontent, we must organize and march inside the halls of power, and we must fight for a needed revolution to transform the values and the institutions of our nation that has failed too many of God’s people.

When we visit the sacred text of our tradition, we recognize Matthew 21:1-16 as Jesus’ Triumphal entry into Jerusalem and the beginning of His fateful journey to Golgotha. Although His journey ends with him being socially distanced, betrayed, and crucified, His journey begins by being surrounded by a multitude of the marginalized, cleansing the Temple of the those who would desecrate the house of God, and ministering to the outcast as a sign of a monumental shift to the status quo of the nation that He is poised to lead.

In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus enters Jerusalem riding on a donkey and on a colt – signifying His humility. And Matthew quotes the prophet Zechariah to describe Jesus’ entrance into the city in order to evoke an image of the kingship of Jesus juxtaposed to the reign of kings present and past.

First, Jesus’s ride into the city recalls the coronation of King Solomon who rode on a mule to be anointed King over Israel and Judah following a shrewd political ploy by his mother Bathsheba, the prophet Nathan, and the high Priest Zadok to undermine the attempted monarchy of Solomon’s half-brother Adonijah (1 Kings 1:1-36).

Second, Matthew’s story of the crowds spreading their clothes on the road and cutting down branches from trees to welcome Jesus into the city recalls a similar act 200 years prior when people celebrated the purification and reclamation of the Temple following their revolt against foreign control that was led by Judas Maccabeus (2 Maccabees 10:7).

Therefore, what Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem means for the multitude is a call for revolution to supplant and purify their government from corrupt, imperialist control, and from its policies of evil and sin that have neglected the people of God. Likewise, Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem signaled that the time had come for the people to impeach and remove leaders who are no ally of poor people, working-class people, immigrants, who would willingly sacrifice the vulnerable on the altar of profits and economic stability, and who attempt to disguise clear political malfeasance through gaslighting of their constituency.

Contrary to a sanitized Palm Sunday narrative, Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem was a moment of protest as the palms the multitude carried were the protest signs of discontent. Shouts of “Hosanna” were the “songs of angry people” pleading for healing and salvation. Moreover, Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem was good news of the reign of a new King, whose administration would prioritize care for the poor, clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, giving sight to the blind, offering release of the captives, and proclaiming a never ending year of Jubilee (Luke 4:16-18).

What should the Church learn from this while walking our own path of Holy Week?

First, we must take our cue from the multitude and we must mobilize around Jesus as the symbol of our hope. Next, we must no longer stand by idly as those who claim to be Christians hide behind their faith as a cover up for evil. Third, we must listen to the songs of angry people who have been neglected, excluded, and marginalized by the purveyors of power. And, ultimately, we must fashion a world rooted in justice so that all God’s people will be saved.

We must mobilize around our hope because too many are organizing from a posture and spirit of fear which has brought us short of legitimate, revolutionary change. We end up excited for crumbs when what we truly deserve is an entire loaf!^[4] In our stress, anxiety, and panic we end up settling for candidates who – once they get our vote, support, and indifference – end up betraying us or abandoning us or both; we end up in a political ground hog’s day reliving the same experience again and again, and our efforts to outsmart our opponent in a game of political chess only ends with us playing ourselves.

But when we mobilize around our hope rather than our fears then nothing less than true and genuine justice will do! When we mobilize around our hope it does not matter what type of difficult days may lay ahead because the will of God and the full promises of democracy are too good to sacrifice on the altar of moderation.

We mobilize around our hope so we can boldly stand in the face of power, in the face of a false moral narrative, and like a tree planted by the water we shall not be moved.

Likewise, we must follow Jesus’ example to call out those who would use their faith as a “den” to shield them in their acts of evil and injustice.

Jesus’ casting out of the Temple those who bought and sold and turning over the tables of the money changers gives us a good example of this. As New Testament scholar M. Eugene Boring points out, what we are to take from this is not a critique of the money changers and sellers “robbing” people in the temple, per se. Rather, through the context of Jeremiah 7:11, Jesus directs His words at those who worship in the Temple yet oppress the stranger, the fatherless, the widow, and shed innocent blood; who steal, murder, commit adultery, lie, practice idolatry and hypocrisy, and use the house of God as a “den” to shield them in their acts of injustice.^[5]

Said differently, Jesus uses the text in Jeremiah to call out those who practice evil whilst hiding behind their faith. And as Jesus points out, these are robbers. These are crooks. These are thieves. These are hypocrites! They may be children of God, but they are not followers of God. Thus, like Christ, it is our responsibility to call out and cast out any person attempting to hide behind their faith as a cover up for their blatant acts of evil and injustice!

As followers of Jesus we must no longer call things Christian that are not Christ-like! Instead, we must call out, and if necessary, cast out, those whose actions and/or rhetoric support the maintenance of an economic system that serves the rich at the expense of the poor.^[6] We must call out churches and their leadership who jeopardize the health and safety of their congregations because they have no vision of church unbounded by its walls. We must no longer stand by as the progenitor of our faith is caricatured as some prosperity gospel pimp and manipulated into a mascot for a superficial pro-life theology that ignores the lives of women, mothers, immigrants, black and brown people, and queer and transgender youth.

And most importantly, we must not only flip over the tables but also the values and the patterns of our world by listening to the songs of the oppressed, the disenfranchised, the disinherited – those whom Victor Hugo describes as Les Misérables – by drawing near to hear their pleas and crafting a world that address their desires for healing and salvation.

In the world renowned musical, Les Miserable, adapted from the tale by Victor Hugo, the major climax dramatizes the true story of the June 1832 Uprising in Paris when tens of thousands of poor people, students, low wage workers, and immigrants from around Europe revolted against the monarchy in France.

In the true story of the Uprising, what is understood as having precipitated the revolt was that for decades after the French Revolution, the government in Paris was in constant flux and disarray. Government officials had shown themselves to be corrupt and untrustworthy. The nation was shackled with severe debt and was riddled with an economic crisis. And to make matters worse, the country was in the troughs of a global health pandemic – cholera – which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Parisian people.

In one of the most famous scenes of Act I, while preparing to launch their rebellion in the streets of Paris, the characters perform one of the play’s most recognizable songs “Do You Hear the People Sing?”, and the lyrics are:

Do you hear the people sing?
Singing the songs of angry men?
It is the music of the people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!

Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?
Somewhere beyond the barricade
Is there a world you long to see?

Then join in the fight
That will give you the right to be free!

Thus, on June 5, 1832, gathered at the funeral of General Jean Maximilien Lamarque, widely respected as a champion of the people, thousands of Paris’s poor and disposed engaged in a violent revolt which gave them control of important sites and major districts in Paris. However, after 24 hours, the rebels were unable to advance any further and the uprising was ended by the French military. In the end, hundreds of rebels were killed, and the monarchy was able to keep its power.

However, this does not have to be our fate! Unlike the rebels of the June 1832 Uprising, we do not have to succumb to the temptation of an armed and violent revolution in order to bring to pass a change of the status quo in this country.

Instead, like our Lord Jesus Christ, we are on the precipice of a non-violent revolution that does not have to recycle the patterns of injustice that we are vehemently fighting to overthrow. Like our Lord Jesus Christ, we are not mobilizing out of a posture of fear, but we are marching with our head held high in the confidence of our hope that one day, soon on the horizon, will come down the reign of the justice of God.

In our hope we can say in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, “I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land.” Therefore, we need not worry about anything! We need not fear any person. Because our eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord^[7]

Thus, like our Lord Jesus Christ we must listen to the people sing. Listen to the people in our nation as they sing for universal healthcare, living wages, liberty to the captive, forgiveness of debts. We must listen to the sounds of the vulnerable who have perfected praise and trust that beyond the barricades of the triple evils of racism, militarism, and greed we will find the world we have longed to see–

A world where those who are persecuted are healed from their afflictions. A world that brings about a revolution proclaiming the sacredness of all life. A world where betrayal, death and the grave are not the end, but where all who call on the name of the Lord shall be saved!

Darrell R. Hamilton
First Baptist Church, Jamaica Plain, NY

[1]From the musical Les Misérables (“À la volonté du peuple”, The people’s will, in the original French version)