Every Stone Shall Cry

Luke 19:28-48

I’ve learned how helpful it is to learn Scripture songs. When my thoughts become a whirlwind, and I can’t seem to remember any scripture, songs can help me focus, to again “fix my eyes on Jesus.”

Recently, though, it’s been the other way around. As I’ve been reading our assigned daily passages, I often hear in my mind music I’ve known in the past, that was inspired by these stories. So, as Jesus wept over Jerusalem, in Luke 13, and again in today’s reading, it’s my old record of the Medical Mission Sisters singing, “How I have longed to draw you to myself, as when a hen covets her brood, but you went darting like chicks in a storm, how could you know that my wing was warm . . .” And when, in the Luke 14 parable, men give excuses for not following Jesus, I hear the voices singing again, “A certain man held a feast on his fine estate in town. He laid a festive table and wore a wedding gown. He sent invitations to his neighbors far and wide, but when the meal was ready, each of them replied . . . I cannot come to the banquet, don’t trouble me now. I have married a wife. I have bought me a cow. . .”

Lately, since we have celebrated Palm Sunday, I keep hearing the 80’s song by Gary McSpadden - “If we keep our voices silent, all creation will rise and shout. If we fail to praise You, Father, then will the very rocks cry out.”

In today’s reading of the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem, Jesus counters his opponents by saying that if his followers keep quiet, the stones themselves will cry out. And as Jesus weeps again for those who refuse to understand the ways of peace, he foretells the time when not a single stone will be left in place.

Stones. I heard Rev. Omar Gjerness preach during Lent. As he described Jesus’ scourging and crucifixion, he reminded us of the earthquake which occurred when Jesus gave up his spirit (Matthew 27:50-54). At that moment, the stones did indeed cry out!

A favorite poem of mine is this one written by Richard Wilbur -

A stable-lamp is lighted
Whose glow shall wake the sky;
The stars shall bend their voices,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry,
And straw like gold shall shine;
A barn shall harbor heaven,
A stall become a shrine.

This child through David’s city
Shall ride in triumph by;
The palm shall strew its branches,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry,
Though heavy, dull, and dumb,
And lie within the roadway
To pave his kingdom come.

Yet he shall be forsaken
And yielded up to die;
The sky shall groan and darken,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry
For stony hearts of men:
God’s blood upon the spearhead,
God’s love refused again.

But now, as at the ending,
The low is shifted high:
The stars shall bend their voices,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry
In praises of the child
By whose descent among us
The worlds are reconciled.

Deetje Wildes