Even without having visited Israel, one can discern from both Scripture and photos that a rocky landscape is the backdrop to much of what happens in the Bible. The rocks are everywhere, ever-present. Jacob lays his head on a rock, Moses splits one for water, God’s people stack them up for altars and monuments, and they constantly figure in biblical metaphor and sayings. Even God Himself is likened to a Rock (Psalm 18:2).
Yet for all their scriptural ubiquity, we don’t really expect much from rocks. They are there to be walked upon or around, to be carved and/or stacked up to create structures, or, sadly, to be thrown at others with intent to harm.
In Luke’s Palm Sunday text, chapter 19 verses 28-40, Jesus in verse 40 picturesquely assigns the rocks along the road to Jerusalem an unexpected role. If the praises of the children and others were suddenly silenced, the stones around Jesus would take up the shouting. In other words, His entrance to Jerusalem to accomplish our salvation is such a pregnant moment that it is impossible for it to happen without His praises being spoken.
One wishes that the rocks actually would speak. When our family once climbed the rocky Areopagus (Mars Hill) in Athens, it would have been fantastic to hear the rock beneath our feet tell us their memories of Paul’s conversation with the philosophers there, not to mention all the other debates that took place on that spot. Visitors to the Holy Land would be overwhelmed if the stones of the Wailing Wall or of any number of other sites might speak their recollections of God’s people and the Lord Himself in those places, among those rocks.
One is reminded by Jesus’ words to the Pharisees that the inanimate creation does, in a sense, have a voice, as in Psalm 19, “The heavens declare the glory of God.” As Christian philosophers have discussed, the fact that something, even a rock, exists is itself a witness to the reality and power of God.
Yet as those same Christian philosophers have also said, there is much to say that the rocks cannot. God has revealed Himself in the living Word who is Jesus Christ in ways that demand true speech in order to truly declare. Rocks may be able to praise God, but He assigns a better form of praise to we who can actually know and love Him.
So let’s accept the role Jesus gave to His disciples on the road to Jerusalem and to all His disciples down through time. Let us not force the stones to take our place, but gladly shout the praises of the One who comes, who came to save us.