“A CELL PHONE FOR CHRIST”
Matthew 21:1-11
The Rev. Ms. Laurie A. McNeill
Montclair, New Jersey
March 20, 2005
Carl Pfeifer and I were talking about telephones.
I told Carl that I was old enough to remember the days when we actually dialed the numbers.
There were no touch-tone phones in my childhood, only rotaries. And I told Carl I was old enough to
remember the days when we only had to dial 4 numbers, unlike the 10 numbers now required to place a
call in Montclair.
Carl, who is 90 years old, told me he was old enough to remember the days when no numbers
were dialed. He simply picked up the phone and told the operator whom he was trying to reach.
Telephones have changed over the years. For the longest time, there was only one telephone in
a home, and that was tethered to a phone line that was plugged into a jack in the wall. When you called
your friends you knew where they were located when talking to them. If the phone was in the kitchen,
your friend was in the kitchen when talking on the phone.
If you called a business number, the person on the other end of the line was in the office of that business.
In those days, talking on the telephone required being in the same location as the phone itself.
The location of the phone was fixed; it did not move. The location of the people with whom you were
speaking was fixed; they did not move.
Cell phones have revolutionized the way we are able to connect with one another. A person on
a cell phone has incredible mobility. Cell phones provide freedom of movement. You do not
necessarily know where a person an a cell phone is located. The person on a cell phone no longer is in
a fixed place.
Christians would be wise to provide a cell phone for Christ. We would do well to let Christ
have some mobility.
We have spent 2000 years keeping Jesus in Jerusalem. We have tethered him to the Holy
Land. When we speak of Christ on Palm Sunday, we picture him back in time. We see him on that
donkey. We know where Jesus is. It is as if he is permanently located in the past.
Christians would be wise to allow Christ to live in the 21st century. It is time to let Christ travel
in places we have yet to envision. Instead of keeping Christ stuck in the past, we would do well to let
Christ go before us. We would do well to let Christ be a present-future Savior. (The concept of a
present-future Christ comes from Tom Driver in his book, Christ in a Changing World: Toward at
Ethical Christology, 1981)
There was a time when Christ was before us, leading us, guiding us into the future. In the first
century, the early Christians believed Jesus would lead them out of their oppression. The early
followers of Christ needed to move away from their station in life, and they had faith that Christ would
be the one to liberate them.
Consider the context in which Christianity took hold. The people living in Palestine were
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