Broadway Christian Church · Columbia, Missouri
The Worship of God · April 1, 2012
The Sixth Sunday of Lent
Palm Sunday
Litany and Confession
Based on Psalm 118
O give thanks to the Lord, for God is good.
Steadfast love endures forever!
Out of my distress I called on the Lord,
and the Lord answered me and set me on solid ground.
Steadfast love endures forever!
With the Lord on my side, I do not fear.
Steadfast love endures forever!
It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to put confidence in princes.
Steadfast love endures forever!
This is the gate of the Lord; the righteous shall enter through it.
Steadfast love endures forever!
Confession and Pardon
Let us confess our sin and brokenness to God:
Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought,
word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone.
We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors
As ourselves. Have mercy on us and forgive us.
God is gracious and merciful, abounding in steadfast love. The old is gone, behold the new has come. We are free and forgiven!
Kyrie Eleison
Lord, have mercy upon us.
Christ have mercy upon us.
Lord, have mercy upon us.
Pastoral Prayer
Nick Larson
During our Lenten season, we are providing a few moments of silence as a part of our prayer time. As we enter into this sacred time, let us still our minds, reflect on our lives, and welcome God into our hearts.
[Moments of Silence]
Holy God, in the midst of the loud “Hosannas,” as the waving palm leaves rustle in unison, quiet our pre-conceived notions, and hush our sure grasp of your truth, so that we may, perhaps, discover something about your vision, your hope, your purpose for our life that it will change the way we think, act, and do.
And lead us down the path of your son, Jesus, in whose name we pray the prayer that he taught us, saying…
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: for thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.
Scripture Reading
Mark 11:1-11
When they were approaching Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples and said to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately as you enter it, you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden; untie it and bring it. If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.’” They went away and found a colt tied near a door, outside in the street. As they were untying it, some of the bystanders said to them, “What are you doing, untying the colt?” They told them what Jesus had said; and they allowed them to take it. Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it; and he sat on it. Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields. Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting,
“Hosanna!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!”
Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.
Sermon
Two Parades
Tim Carson
What does it take to get your point across? Well, in a public setting it usually requires something pretty dramatic. I remember I was once poking around Vienna and was out on the Stephen Platz, the square just outside the St. Stephen’s Church, and there was a large green … man, I suppose you would call him that. Except that he was really more like a tree than a man. He was the “Green man,” that mythical character, looking something like Treebeard in Lord of the Rings. And he was really, really tall and carried a kind of shepherd’s staff with him. His message was an environmental one, something about keeping a harmonious relationship with nature. Well, he made an impression, as you can tell, because I’m telling you about it now, these many years later.
We would say that he was “making a statement” through a combination of symbol, drama and speech. It was a kind of demonstration in the public square.
And this is nothing new in the history of humanity. In fact, it’s as old as our race itself.
In the Bible, we have lots of instances of the same thing, except we name it differently. When prophets made a social statement, we call it a “prophetic act,” making a statement on behalf of God to the people. And, just like my green man in Vienna, they combined symbol, drama and speech to make their point.
Take Isaiah, for instance. He walked around naked in Jerusalem for about three years, and not because he was a nudist. That tends to get people’s attention. He caught some attention that way and the message was connected to his nudity: “Keep on making alliances with foreign powers like that, keep on compromising yourselves, and you’re going to get carried off naked as jaybirds, like the spoils of war.” That tends to make an impression.
Or there is Jeremiah. He liked to break things to make his point, like clay jars. One day he shows up in front of the temple establishment, shatters a pot on the ground, and tells them that they are ending up in the same condition unless things change fast.
Well, things didn’t, and I bet when they sat around the campfire in captivity, they talked about the day Jeremiah started smashing things. They got the point.
Ezekiel staged a miniature Jerusalem on a brick and then had a little toy army lay siege to it. He went around eating nothing to symbolize the starvation they were about to encounter.
All of these prophetic acts were like street theatre; they drew a crowd, and they made their point. And when we look at Jesus riding his donkey into Jerusalem on Passover, the biggest Jewish festival at the epicenter of their symbolic universe, surrounded by all his buddies from Galilee, chanting about the Son of David who comes in the name of the Lord, we know he’s in the same tradition as all those before him, who were engaging in prophetic acts.
He’s staging a “Flash Mob,” starting an “Occupy Jerusalem” movement.
But why? What did it mean? Why the donkey and this time and place? The only way to understand it is to talk about the two parades that were taking place at about the same time.
Every year, at Passover, the Romans sent in additional troops to provide security on the Temple Mount for what had, in the past, been very tense. In past festivals, riots and revolution broke out on the temple mount. So as a precaution, at the beginning of Passover, Pontius Pilate always sent a detachment from Caesarea, his governor’s office, to Jerusalem. Imagine the entry of the occupying forces, the signs of imperial power: horses, chariots, armor, soldiers, standards with the Roman Eagle. And imagine the response of the populous, some combination of fear and terrible resentment. If you want a historical precedent for the fictional The Hunger Games, you need look no farther; this is one – the Roman occupation of Palestine of the First Century: occupation, control, and punishment on the part of empire, and exercising freedom within very limited options on the part of those in bondage.
Jesus, and surely the Gospel writers, knew all about this. So when it came time for Passover, Jesus orchestrated an alternative parade on the other side of town, coming from the East, down the Mount of Olives. His would be the counterdemonstration to the Roman parade from the West.
To give you some idea, as the crow flies, the Romans would be deploying troops from the West, around Arrow Rock, and keep marching them until they came up Broadway, passed by Wal-Mart, and came into our parking lot. Jesus and his disciples, on the other hand, would be coming down from the North, from Cairo (Missouri!), and then coming in on Broadway from the East, passing Shelter Insurance, and then pulling into our parking lot.
The Gospel of Mark tells us that Jesus’ entry was deliberate, carefully pre-arranged and choreographed. It was all set up in advance. In other words, it was a planned counter-demonstration to the Roman entry, a huge contrast. But what kind of contrast?
Jesus’ action was based on a passage from the prophets that spoke of the servant king entering the holy city on a donkey, a simple beast of burden, and that he would be the king of peace who would bring a different way to the city. It would not be the Pax Romana enforced by raw brutality, but the Pax Christi, which is always a different kingdom and realm than that of this world.
So often, we paint Jesus’ entry as more like the Roman one. We even call it triumphal. But the truth is there was nothing triumphal about it. It was anti-triumphal, making a public statement against the triumphalism of Rome. Here is the Roman Eagle, the chariot and all the power of Rome, coming in from the West, and there is a man riding a donkey, coming in from the East, whose procession doesn’t begin to resemble its counterpart on the other side of town.
Here in this public statement, this prophetic act, this first-century flash mob and counter-demonstration. We are presented a choice between two kingdoms. In fact, the choice is between two entirely different notions of what life means or should mean. And we have to decide.
But it isn’t as though his symbolic, dramatic enactments stopped at the city gate.
Jesus goes to the temple mount, in clear view of religious authorities and that whole Roman garrison stationed adjacent to the temple in Fortress Antonia that overlooks the temple mount. They’re watching everything. It is super-heated with tension. Do you think any kind of displays are going to be tolerated by either religious authorities who have been charged with keeping the peace, or else, or the Romans, who will do that by forec.
Then Jesus comes in the temple mount area. He comes to the outside courts – the courts of the Gentiles, and turns over the tables, quoting the prophets speaking of making the temple into a den of thieves. The popular reading is that he was outraged at the commercialism of the temple. But a closer reading shows that this act, like the entrance into Jerusalem, was most likely also a very carefully planned prophetic statement, a prophetic action, meant to indict the whole temple enterprise – which Jesus felt was compromised and corrupted from top to bottom – and its collusion with occupying powers. What he did was interrupt the sacrificial system that required the money changing in the first place. His protest prevented business as usual. That did not go well, either with the Romans but especially with the temple cult.
Of course, this drew a crowd, and he began to teach. It also may have been the beginning of the end for Jesus, as he disrupted the powers and principalities of temple and empire alike.
The whole week following, the week that has come to be called Holy Week, was filled with confrontation, argument, and preaching to the pilgrims. I want you to think about this carefully. All this, in the end, is what got Jesus killed. And why would it be worth it?
Through his whole ministry, Jesus was presenting a new vision of God, a new way of understanding the reign of God in this world, and it was for him a matter of life and death. His followers were becoming transformed by it. And Jesus took the fight to the center of their religious universe, before the authorities of his day, telling the truth until they broke him for it. It was for that kingdom that he rode into Jerusalem. It was for the love for all who might find that new life that he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey rather than a steed, in lowly humility rather than brazen power.
You might think that all that would be enough, that the public displays, the symbolic dramas would surely come to an end, but no. He rides all the way down, all the way into life. Soon enough he will be gathering for a Passover meal only to engage in another prophetic act, the shock of a master washing the feet of his disciples. Soon enough he will be lifted up as no Messiah could be, confounding every expectation.
In fact, his whole life is one long prophetic act, the Word made flesh. And we are to come down on one side or the other, but never neutral. Jesus is an aggravation, an embarrassing street clown, the nanny you never had but wished you did, and the closest thing you’ll get to the good and holy in this world.
You know, we use lots of different language to talk about Jesus, and it all makes sense in its own way. We ask our baptismal candidates if they believe Jesus is the Christ (Messiah) and the son of God. We say he is Lord, Savior and Redeemer. He’s the good shepherd, the way, the truth, the resurrection, and the life. He is the Lamb of God and our High Priest, too.
We reach way down into our bag of titles and affix them to his weary brow. And they are all true, somehow, to some degree. “What language shall we borrow?” asks the hymn, O Sacred Head. Well, what language indeed?
But I want to tell you what it comes down to for me.
When I listen to his parables, watch him take on the powerful and lift up the weak, see him ride his filthy little beast into Jerusalem, and speak of a kingdom that is as close as your own heartbeat and still on the way, too, I am moved to love. I have to tell you, I just love the guy. And the older I get, the more I do. And when I do, it seems like I’m pulling on the end of a some loose sacred thread. It’s not one I understand completely, but understand enough. I suppose trust is a better word than even understand. I trust that I’ve found the right guy, or he’s found me, and I intuitively know that the God that is in everything has found its way into me.
So if you asked me, very personally, what Jesus means to me I would say something as simple as this:
I keep on falling in love with who he is, in all his strangeness and inconvenience. Most of all, love just breaks your heart, and when it does, it takes you to places you’ve never been before. And Jesus breaks my heart.
I can hardly see him riding into Jerusalem without weeping. And if my heart is breaking in ways I don’t really understand, if I am hyper aware of that Grand Canyon that stretches between him and me, then just try to imagine the breaking heart of God.
It’s a heart that never stops riding, not once, until every face turns from the west side of town to the east, to the place where he enters, into every longing heart that finds its rest when it rests on him.
And that’s the good news from Columbia, Missouri. Thanks be to God.
Benediction
And now, may the grace of our Lord, Jesus Christ, the love of God, the fellowship and communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
