Luke's version of the entry into Jerusalem

The story of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is a piece of triple tradition, based – assuming Markan priority – on Mark's account (Mark 11:1–10//Matt 21:1–11; Luke 19:29–40). Jesus sends his disciples to find a donkey, on which he then rides into Jerusalem, acclaimed by the crowds who hail him in words from Psalm 117:26 (LXX): ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord’ (; Mark 11:9, repeated identically in Matt and Luke, though Luke uniquely adds ‘king’, , after ). Matthew uniquely cites Zechariah 9:9 to interpret this event as a fulfilment of the prophetic vision of Israel's king coming to Jerusalem on a donkey (Matt 21:4–5).

Luke's redaction reshapes the story significantly. First, he introduces a second reference to the Mount of Olives, which all three accounts give as the initial location from where Jesus sends his disciples to find the donkey (Mark 11:1; Matt 21:1; Luke 19:29), as Jesus commences the actual entry (Luke 19:37). Thus Luke reiterates the location which itself has an important resonance with prophetic and apocalyptic expectation (Zech 14:4). More significantly, for our purposes here, Luke expands the brief reference to the crowd's crying out, and recasts it as an explicit expression of praise. While Mark introduces the acclamation of Jesus with a brief phrase – ‘And those who went before and those who followed were shouting . . .’ (Mark 11:9, ESV) – Luke describes it in much more detail: ‘the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen’ (Luke 19:37, ESV). As is frequently remarked, Luke's is a gospel particularly full of prayer and praise (e.g. Luke 1:46–55; 2:29–32; 7:16; 13:13; 17:16–18) and Luke often introduces this theme where his sources do not have it (e.g. Luke 15:6–7//Matt 18:13; Luke 18:43//Mark 10:52//Matt 20:32).Footnote ¹⁴ Here he emphasises it and makes it unmissable.

Luke also edits the cry of the crowd from the Markan account, omitting ‘Hosanna’ in both places where it occurs in Mark (Mark 11:9, 10) and adding to the acclamation of the coming one, identifying him explicitly as ‘the king’ (). Also omitted by Luke is the second cry of blessing: ‘Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David’ (Mark 11:10). Instead, Luke follows the initial blessing on the king who comes in the name of the Lord with a continued song of praise: ‘peace in heaven and glory in the highest’ (Luke 19:38), words which clearly echo the praise voiced by the heavenly host with the angel in Luke 2:14. Indeed, it is interesting to note the complementary parallels here: the heavenly host proclaim ‘peace on earth’, while the earthly host in Luke 19 proclaim ‘peace in heaven’.Footnote ¹⁵

Only in Luke is the crowd's acclamation of Jesus followed by a report concerning ‘some of the Pharisees’ – interestingly described as being ‘among the crowd’ () – who urge Jesus to rebuke his disciples (Luke 19.39). It is this request which evokes Jesus’ answer: ‘I tell you, if these are silent, the stones will cry out’ (v. 40).

This is followed, again only in Luke,Footnote ¹⁶ by a further report of Jesus’ reaction on drawing near to Jerusalem (vv. 41–4): he weeps over the city, lamenting her failure to know ‘the things that make for peace’ and to recognise the time of her ‘visitation’, and predicting her violent destruction at the hands of her enemies – a destruction so total that ‘they will not leave one stone upon another’ (v. 44, ESV).

Interpreting ‘the stones would cry out’

The crucial phrase for our purposes here, as we have already made clear, is Jesus’ comment, unique to Luke, that, if his disciples were silent, ‘the stones would cry out’ (, 19:40). Two questions are of obvious interest: To what extent should we take this reference as (merely?) some form of poetic hyperbole? What is envisaged as the content and character of the stones’ hypothetical cry?

Most commentators have noted the parallel to Luke 19:40 in Habakkuk 2:11: ‘For the stone () will cry out from the wall, and the beam from the woodwork () respond’ (ESV). The context is a prophetic oracle against the wealthy and arrogant wicked who oppress the righteous, who ‘build a town by bloodshed, and found a city on iniquity’ (2:12, NRSV). Joseph Fitzmyer labels it ‘a threat uttered against a nation which plunders people and acquires gain by violence’.Footnote ¹⁷ It is by no means surprising, in the context of the ancient Near East, that stones should be cast in this role. Not only were stones often venerated and seen as animate beings, but also appear to have delivered oracles. Indeed, some texts from Ugarit ‘mention an announcement . . . and a whispering . . . of stones . . ., paralleled by the speech of trees’, an interesting parallel to Habakkuk's stone and wood imagery.Footnote ¹⁸

C. F. Evans has drawn attention to the further use of this motif in apocalyptic writing, where the crying stone is a sign of the end, one indication of the cosmic catastrophe that is unfolding.Footnote ¹⁹ 4 Ezra 5:5, for example, includes as part of the depiction of the terrible days to come upon the earth the following: ‘Blood shall drip from wood, and the stone shall utter its voice; the peoples shall be troubled, and the stars shall fall’ (NRSV). The Lives of the Prophets, a Jewish work probably dated to the first century ce, is even more specific about the context of the stone's cry: ‘he [Jonah] gave a portent concerning Jerusalem and the whole land, that whenever they should see a stone crying out piteously the end was at hand. And whenever they should see all the gentiles in Jerusalem, the entire city should be razed to the ground’ (11:10–11).Footnote ²⁰ What these various references suggest is that, while the idea of stones crying out tends to appear as part of a series of striking events which mark some impending krisis, and thus as a sign of unusual and potentially catastrophic cosmic activity, the motif itself is reasonably well-established, and not to be seen as merely a hyperbolic image (any more than the idea of cosmic catastrophe should be seen in these terms).Footnote ²¹

These Jewish parallels also begin to suggest some possible answers to the second question we posed above: what is the envisaged content and character of the stones’ cry? Evans’ conclusion from Jewish exegesis of Habakkuk 2:11 is that the stone's cry was understood as an accusation, and that the cry in Luke 19:40 is similarly to be interpreted.Footnote ²² Linking v. 40 with vv. 41–4, and citing Adolf Schlatter's comments, he suggests that the stones’ cry is ‘factual and not hypothetical’ and relates to the fall of Jerusalem: ‘When the confession of the disciples comes to be silenced by the opposition of Jerusalem, the stones of the already ruined Jerusalem will cry out that Jesus was king, and was rejected.’Footnote ²³ Fitzmyer similarly links verses 40 and 44. He sees the stones’ cry as an acclamation of Jesus as God's agent of salvation, but then links this with v. 44, which ‘now specifies how the stones will cry out’.Footnote ²⁴

The apocalyptic and eschatological parallels to the image of the stones crying out make such a link attractive: the entry into Jerusalem is followed (only in Luke) by a depiction of destruction and judgement on the city and its inhabitants, comparable in some respects with the so-called Markan apocalypse (Mark 13), paralleled in Luke 21 (and Matt 24). Certainly, the context of eschatological judgement for Jewish uses of the ‘stones crying’ image makes it feasible to see that context here too, and thus to read the stones’ cry as a cry of accusation or protest, a warning of judgement on those who failed to recognise ‘the time of your visitation’ (, Luke 19.44).Footnote ²⁵

However, to link vv. 40 and 44 closely, and thus to see the stones’ crying as their being brought to ruins, is questionable in a number of respects. First, it assumes that the stones of v. 40 are the stones of the buildings of Jerusalem, which is certainly open to question, given that the words are uttered by Jesus while ‘drawing near’ to Jerusalem, ‘on his way down from the Mount of Olives’ (v. 37). The stones most likely to take the place of the shouting crowds at that point in the journey might well be the stones along the way, rather than those that form part of the city's buildings in the distance.Footnote ²⁶

Second, the lament over Jerusalem (vv. 41–4) is rather distinct from the exchange with the Pharisees regarding the crowd's praise, and it is doubtful that the (hypothetical) role Jesus claims the stones might (actively) fill in v. 40 is to be equated with their (passive) overturning in v. 44.

Third, and most importantly, there are strong reasons to suggest that what the stones might do in v. 40 is take up the crowd's cry of praise. The neatly balanced and concise phrasing implies that if the crowd were to be silent () the stones would take up the acclamation of Jesus (), since this simply cannot be silenced or contained. Luke has, as we have noted, made a point of describing the crowd's shouts explicitly as those of praise to God and of recasting their words accordingly. Since it is Luke alone who offers this description, and Luke alone who provides the comment about the stones, the possibility that these two facets of Lukan redaction are related is strong. One of the few commentators to develop this idea is Joel Green, who rejects the apocalyptic reading of 19:40, and the relevance of any parallel with Habakkuk 2:11 (mistakenly cited as Hos 2:11), arguing instead that the claim is that the stones would ‘pick up the chorus of joyful praise’ if necessary.Footnote ²⁷ By way of Hebrew Bible parallel, Green notes the theme of ‘creation responding with joy’ in Psalm 96:11–13 and Isaiah 55:12.Footnote ²⁸ There seems much to be said for the idea that what the stones would voice is praise, though this does not perhaps exhaust the meaning of our verse.

Green also notes, significantly, that the motif of stones replacing humans occurs earlier in Luke, at 3:8: ‘do not begin to say to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our father.” For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham’ (ESV).Footnote ²⁹ It is notable that in this text too, the context is one of rebuke. One facet of the rebuke is, undoubtedly, the implication that the idea of stones being made into Abraham's children, or acclaiming the coming of Israel's king, is, or seems, unlikely.Footnote ³⁰ The statements are hyperbolic to the extent that they challenge a particular stance – that those who count themselves sons of Abraham do not need to repent (3:8), or that the disciples should cease their acclamation of Jesus (19:39) – with an extreme counter-example: God can make children even from stones, or can evoke praise even from stones, should human beings refuse to respond as they should. The use of the stones in these texts is thus another example of Luke's rhetoric of reversal, his insistence that the good news turns the world's hierarchies upside-down, lifts up the lowly and thus calls forth their response of praise.Footnote ³¹ These comments invite consideration as to whether the themes of praise and protest or rebuke can somehow be combined and the apocalyptic setting of the stones’ cry be taken into account.

Indeed, taking seriously the features of the Lukan context and redaction, it seems that we should find a way to take both these aspects of the stones’ cry into account.Footnote ³² The function of the stones’ cry as a replacement for the shout of the crowd, explicitly described by Luke as a shout of joyful praise, strongly suggests that this is the theme the stones would take up, were the disciples to fall silent. Yet both the Lukan context and the Jewish parallels also suggest that the stones’ cry is depicted as an implicit expression of rebuke and protest. Just as the complacency of those who reckon themselves children of Abraham can be shaken by the insistence that God could raise up children for Abraham from the stones, so if the acclamation of God's anointed were silenced, the very stones would take up the cry.Footnote ³³ Moreover, both the Lukan context and the Jewish parallels point strongly to an apocalyptic and eschatological understanding of the stones’ cry: this kind of extraordinary voicing of praise and protest by the stones is a sign of the impending day of reckoning (). What significance all this might have for an ecological engagement with this text is our next topic for consideration.

An ecological reading of Luke 19:40

Any attempt to use biblical texts to resource a theological and ethical response to the ecological issues of today faces with particular sharpness the challenge entailed in all attempts to bridge the gap between the horizon of the text and the horizon of the contemporary interpreter. While inhabitants of the ancient world were by no means unaware of the potential damage human activity could do to the earth,Footnote ³⁴ nor ignorant of the ways in which patterns of agricultural practice could be more or less sustainable, our location as post-industrial, scientifically informed inhabitants of a global society facing massive ecological challenges is worlds apart from the consciousness of the biblical writers. That means, despite plenty of somewhat superficial appeals to biblical texts in ecotheological writing, that any attempt to read the Bible ecologically should be cautious and candid in the hermeneutical moves it develops and entails. On the other hand, despite the need to stress and acknowledge the cultural and historical ‘gap’,Footnote ³⁵ it is vital for Christian theology to find ways to draw on the biblical tradition in formulating and articulating responses to changing contexts and challenges. Luke 19:40 is, of course, only one tiny and enigmatic piece in the tapestry of biblical texts which, in various ways, allude to the theme of creation's praise. And an ecotheological reading of these texts moves far beyond their original contexts and authors’ intentions. Yet a deliberately creative and constructive engagement with such texts can, we would argue, help to resource an ecotheological ethic.

Bauckham's proposal, one we would want to affirm and develop, is that the theme of creation's praise can make an important contribution to an ecological theology. Put differently, we would propose that creation's praise can serve as a doctrinal or hermeneutical lens, which can help to enable a fruitful engagement with the Bible in the contemporary task of rearticulating the theological tradition in the light of ecological issues we face.Footnote ³⁶ The biblical theme of creation's praise can help to reconfigure the tradition in ways which avoid the sense that creation is merely the stage on which the story of human redemption takes place. To take but one example, the famous Westminster Larger Catechism of 1647 opens with a headline question and response: ‘What is the chief and highest end of man? Man's chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy him forever.’ Feminist criticism has taught us to resist the androcentrism implicit in gender-exclusive language, such that we would immediately wish to replace ‘man’ with ‘humanity’, or some such similar term. But what if we were to take a further step, recasting the heavily anthropocentric focus of this theological tradition, and replace ‘humanity’ with ‘creation’?Footnote ³⁷

How might Luke 19:40 help us to develop our reflection on this biblical contribution to an ecological theology? A number of points deserve comment and reflection.

First, it is notable that the theme of creation's praise is very rare in the New Testament, most of the prominent examples, as noted above, coming from the Hebrew scriptures. Of the two New Testament examples Bauckham mentions, Philippians 2:10 seems rather centred on the acclamation of articulate beings, human, angelic and demonic, especially given the close conjunction of bending the knee (2:10) with confessing that Jesus is Lord (2:11). This anthropomorphic depiction of universal acclamation need not exclude a sense that all creation will be encompassed in its scope, but neither does it do much to promote that idea. By contrast, the second text, Revelation 5:13, expresses much more clearly the praise and acclamation of ‘every creature () in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them’ (NRSV). Luke 19:40 is thus not only a significant addition to a limited New Testament repertoire, but also the sole New Testament reference to the explicit possibility of praise uttered by what we might call inanimate creation, and one found on the lips of Jesus too. While we would firmly reject any pseudo-Marcionite tendency to relativise the value of Old Testament texts vis-à-vis the New Testament, it is both proper and inevitable that Jesus Christ stands at the centre of any Christian theological construal of the biblical narrative. The phrase in Luke 19:40 may be just one short phrase, but it can nonetheless be a crucial one, alluding briefly to the wider biblical theme of the whole of creation's praise and thus providing that theme with an echo in the Gospel tradition. As such it could function in a way similar to the equally brief phrase in Mark 1:13 – ‘He was with the wild animals’ – which Bauckham has elsewhere explored as a brief allusion to the wider theme of the messianic establishment of peace among all creatures in the eschatological age.Footnote ³⁸ (These images are interestingly combined in Job 5:23, where the depiction of God's deliverance includes the declaration that ‘you shall be in covenant () with the stones of the field, and the wild animals shall be at peace with you’.)

Second, we might wonder whether Luke 19:40 raises some questions about the way in which Bauckham and others depict the reality of creation's praise. Daniel Hardy and David Ford, for example, comment that ‘[c]reation's praise . . . is the shining of its being, the overflowing significance it has in pointing to its Creator simply by being itself’.Footnote ³⁹ Similarly, Bauckham, as we have seen, insists that the biblical depiction is indeed one in which ‘all creatures bring glory to God simply by being themselves and fulfilling their God-given roles in God's creation’.Footnote ⁴⁰ As he puts it elsewhere: ‘The creation worships God just by being itself, as God made it, existing for God's glory. Only humans desist from worshipping God; other creatures, without having to think about it, worship God all the time. There is no indication in the Bible of the notion that the other creatures need us to voice their praise for them.’Footnote ⁴¹ It should be noted, however, that none of the biblical examples of the theme cited by Bauckham quite says that creation worships ‘simply by being itself’. Many are an invocation to praise, with no more indication that non-human creation necessarily responds to the call, or already fulfils it, than that humanity does (Dan 3:52–90; Ps 69:34; 96:11–12; 98:7–8; 103:22; 148; 150:6; Isa 42:10–11; Joel 2:21–2). Some have (or in some cases, also have) a clearly eschatological context in view (Ps 96:11–12; 98:7–8; Isa 42:10–11; Joel 2:21–2; Phil 2:10–11; Rev 5:13). Some texts indicate that creation stands as testimony to God's glory and greatness (Ps 19:1–4; 104). Moreover, none says explicitly that the creation's praise consists in its simply being itself, although some of the images – the sea roaring, etc. – would imply that the ‘natural’ movements and noises could indeed constitute the praise. This might lead us to question, not least in light of Luke 19:40, whether the biblical notion of creation's praise should be seen as something creation does and has always done, simply ‘by being itself’, or whether it is better interpreted as an eschatological goal, the calling and telos of all creation, just as is the praise of all humanity.Footnote ⁴² The (potential) cry of the stones in Luke 19 does not consist of a continuation of what the stones have always done, in their very existence as stones, but rather of a dramatic and eschatological cry of praise, which at the same time protests against the failure of humanity to recognise God's anointed. Similarly, the visions of creation's praise in both testaments are often focused on the coming day of visitation or judgement, or on the final revelation of God's cosmic victory and unbounded glory.

The different ecological significance of the two views of creation's praise is considerable. On the view that creation praises God simply by its very being, the primary ecological-ethical imperative would seem to be to ‘let it be’. Indeed, Bauckham has suggested precisely this point, noting some of the difficulties with the influential model of human stewardship over creation.Footnote ⁴³ But this view – notwithstanding the value of the suggestion that we should ‘interfere’ less, should resist the urge to manage, colonise and exploit every corner of the planet – faces serious difficulties.Footnote ⁴⁴ One is that this view of creation's praise as always and already inherent in its very being suggests that creation is as it should be, with only human beings resisting and refusing the call to praise God. In one sense, given the scientific implausibility of any kind of historical ‘fall’, this is preferable to a view which requires a past ‘event’ of creation's corruption which its eventual redemption will reverse.Footnote ⁴⁵ However, the biblical visions of creation's corruption and restoration can be seen, in part, as intimations of a human perception that creation is not as it should be, and as expressions of hope for its possible future. For the problem with the view of creation as already as it should be, praising God by its very being, with only humans failing to get this right, is that it heightens the theodical problem of the immense and ongoing suffering which the processes of creation – understood scientifically as evolutionary processes – have necessarily entailed.Footnote ⁴⁶ A second problem is that the imperative of ‘letting creation be’, while not without some value, is both unrealistic and unhelpful. It is unrealistic since, as Bauckham has noted in response to those who reject any form of anthropocentrism, human beings evidently do, de facto, have ‘unique power to affect most of the rest of creation on this planet’.Footnote ⁴⁷ Indeed, one of the most obvious and sobering aspects of the issue of global warming is the indication that human action affects the entire surface of our biosphere, however apparently removed from human habitation and activity. Moreover, this view fails sufficiently to acknowledge the extent to which many of the landscapes and species we see around us are already the product of the interaction of human and non-human creation. Consequently the idea, that creation's praise consists in it being what it is, is of limited ethical value, since it has little scope to foster realistic and scientifically informed ecological engagement. The call to ‘leave alone’ might help us, say, in pressing for an end to the destruction of the Amazonian rain forest, on the theological grounds that the praise of that wondrous and complex ecosystem, and of the individual elements of it, is in each act of destruction cruelly curtailed. But many other beautiful landscapes – such as the area of moorland on our doorstep – are already the product of centuries of human–nonhuman synergy.Footnote ⁴⁸ It simply makes no sense to call for Dartmoor to be ‘left alone’.

The eschatological view of creation's praise, a view in which the voicing of praise may also be an expression of protest, is perhaps a much more fruitful theological and ethical resource. The idea implicit in Luke 19:40 that even inanimate creation might voice its praise if and when humanity fails to do so, might play some part in a depiction of creation as able to react, theologically, in protest at human failure.Footnote ⁴⁹ And insofar as human failings include the failure to relate to non-human creation in ways informed by justice and peace, this notion of creation's praise as rebuke might contribute to a notion of ecological sin: creation's cry of praise is at the same time a rebuke of humanity's acquisitive self-absorption. With typically elegant expression, Barth makes a similar point: ‘even the smallest creatures’, he says, make their jubilant if inadequate response to the divine glory. ‘They do it along with us or without us. They do it also against us to shame us and instruct us. They do it because they cannot help doing it.’ Thus:

Barth is here closer to Bauckham in depicting creation's praise as something that non-human creation, in contrast to humanity, always and already does. Indeed, it may in the end be most fruitful to combine the notions of present and eschatological praise, rather than argue for one or the other. As with humanity, creation does already praise God, but in ways which are partial and inadequate, marred not only by human activity, but also by the ongoing suffering in which creation and humanity remain enmeshed (cf. Rom 8:19–23). But the eschatologically focused notion of creation's praise is important not least because of the potential it offers to provide a theological basis for a serious ecological ethic. It implies that the ethical imperative is to act in such a way as to enable the coming to fruition and expression of creation's praise. Of course, we must immediately acknowledge that this theological motif does not provide any easy or direct answers to our ecological ethical challenges. But it does recast the question in ways which might invite interesting and significant ethical responses: what actions will most foster the ability of creation to express its praise? It is by no means illegitimate or surprising if, for example, a notion of beauty – along with other non-utilitarian, non-economic, non-anthropocentric criteria – plays a significant part in answers to that question.

Finally, though, Luke 19:40 (along with other texts, of course) raises the question for contemporary interpreters, who wish to make constructive appeal to the biblical theme of creation's praise, how the notion of praise can be meaningfully construed in the case of inanimate matter. What kind of theological ontology and epistemology, what notions of existence and relationality, are required in order for the idea of stones praising God to be ‘non-laughable’;Footnote ⁵¹ and can these be expressed in terms which are also scientifically cogent, or must theology here insist that it expresses, in John Milbank's terms, a competing narrative, which offers a different story about the world?Footnote ⁵² Our initial answer to that challenging question – which requires a systematic theological response – is that, just as a theological analysis of sickness and disease would need to be informed by medical science but might at the same time offer a radical challenge to the regnant ideologies of the medical profession, so too an ecologically focused notion of creation's praise will need to be informed by scientific understanding, even while it offers a distinctive and fundamentally theological account of what creation is, and of how its telos is focused on its praise of God.Footnote ⁵³