Broadway Christian Church · Columbia, Missouri
Morning Worship · April 1, 2007
Palm Sunday
All-wise God, we gather this hour to join Christians around the world to celebrate the beginning of this holiest of all weeks. Let us remember with devotion your Son and our Lord as he enters into his own city to complete his work as your servant. United with him in his suffering on the cross, may we share his resurrection and new life! Amen.
Scripture
Luke 23:26-31
Rick Frost
Welcome to this service of worship on Palm Sunday, the day that Christians follow Jesus as he comes in from the countryside. He has been out and about for nearly three years, and now he is entering his city, the holy city, the capital city of Jerusalem. It is the day, as most of you know, marks the beginning of the holiest week of the Christian year.
It is the day we follow Jesus toward the cross, knowing full-well that the way of Jesus is not the way of this world, knowing full-well that the way of Jesus is not a wide way, but as he said, “It is a very narrow way,” knowing that the way of Jesus is, considered by many in this world, as absolutely foolish, stupid, absurd, ridiculous. Yet, by the Spirit of the Living God, we will be shown, I believe, it is the true way. It is the right way. It is the genuine way to new life and to a new world. It is a way that you, and I, and millions and millions of other people are going to have to accept or reject somewhere along the line.
So, here comes Jesus into the city, his city, Jerusalem. There are no troops, no Secret Service, no entourage, no black SUVs. There is just Jesus, riding, bouncing along on the back of a donkey. His followers are breaking off palm branches and waving them as signs of welcome. (Worship Jesus today, as we worship, with your palm branches as we sing. That would be a good thing.) You need to know that back in those days, evidently there wasn’t much of a crowd to receive Jesus. It didn’t even make the papers. There is no record anywhere of this event that we talk about today – the day the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of the Living God, the Lord and Savior of this world makes his grand entrance.
Even though it has not been written or read in many places – the only place we have it is in your New Testament – can you see him? Can you see him today, bouncing along on the backside of a donkey? Doesn’t he look sort of comical, lame, even foolish? Now, you know, none of us wants to look foolish.
I remember when I first arrived in Columbia in 1986. We drove a faded, old blue, rusted out, 1968 Dodge Polara. Does anybody remember that? It was ugly. It was huge, and it horrified, not only our teenage daughter, but also some of our parishioners. How could we be seen in such a car? It just didn’t say “senior minister” on the side of it. It was so uncool. It was so undignified. It was so unsophisticated. It was so beneath the image, the expectation of some at Broadway back then. It actually was quite a topic of considerable church discussion. Some of you were here. “Is this some kind of joke?” they said.
It reminds me of a story about a pulpit-search committee. They spent months searching for a new senior minister for their rather large, prestigious congregation. Dozens of candidates had been considered and eliminated along the way. No one was found to be smart enough, competent enough, good looking enough to be their new spiritual leader.
One night as they gathered for their usual meeting, one of them said, “You know, we’ve been sent a rather interesting letter here. It is an inquiry with a resume. I’d like for us to consider this person.”
They said, “OK. Read us the letter.”
It went like this.
“I would like for you to consider me as your new senior minister. I’ve only been in the ministry, however, for a couple of years. I must admit, it has been a rather tumultuous time. I, for one, did not grow up in the church, but was drawn into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ as an adult. In fact, it was such a dramatic encounter that I was incapacitated for a number of days after I encountered the Christ. Then I quit what I was doing and began roaming around preaching the gospel.
“Some people liked my sermons, but you need to know that a lot of people didn’t. You should also know that I have been arrested at least four times and I have served in three different prisons. On one occasion, after one of my sermons, the congregation was so incensed that they dragged me out of the pulpit, beat me, and dumped me on the edge of town, but, you know, it comes with the territory.
“In the churches I have served, I think I have been a rather loving pastor, but I have been a rather strict one. I’ve had to chase more than one member out of the church for immoral actions. I guess you should also know that, as I write this, I am presently in jail. I hope to be released soon, but I have found when it comes to jail time, one never knows.
“However, I hope you will consider me to be your senior minister as soon as I get out of prison. I would certainly like to be gainfully employed.”
Well, the committee, as you can imagine, went ballistic. “How dare someone write such a letter to a church of our caliber? A jailbird for a new senior minister? Is this some kind of joke? Who is this guy?” one of the people asked.
The person holding the letter said, “Well, it is signed simply ‘St. Paul.’”
That’s right. The greatest missionary the Christian faith has ever known. He is the one who founded many churches, created Christian theology, the author of most of the New Testament, and the one who boasted that he is a fool for Christ. “A fool for Christ,” (First Corinthians 4). “A fool,” he said, “because the wisdom of this world is pure foolishness, from a Christian point of view. The foolishness of the cross is true wisdom.”
So, here is Jesus. He and his disciples have come to Jerusalem. He told them on a number of occasions, “the Son of Man must suffer many things and be killed, and on the third day rise again,” (Mark 8). But they didn’t get it. They heard it, but they didn’t really hear it. In their minds, Jesus was the Messiah. He would fight Israel’s battles, put Israel’s enemies in their place. He would come and cleanse and restore the holiness of the Temple. He would re-establish Israel as a power to be reckoned with in the world, reminiscent of their golden days when David and Solomon ruled and reigned in all their radiant glory.
But Jesus appeared to have seen it differently. Perhaps it was his careful, insightful, serious study of Scripture. Perhaps it was his prayer life. Perhaps it was revealed to him directly by the Creator of all that is. We don’t know for sure. However it happened, somewhere, somehow, somewhere along the way, it became clear to Jesus that the long-range plan of God was not to destroy this world because of evil, but to rescue and restore this world from evil. There is a big difference.
It was a rescue that would not, in fact, involve redemptive violence of any kind, but rather would involve the suffering and the death of another kind. It is a way God chooses to be victorious over the forces of evil – very real forces in this world. It is a way that involves, not just words, but in deed. God has something that is not only to be said, but is something that is to be done. According to the New Testament, the only one who can do that is Jesus.
In spite of what the Pharisees, the politicians, the soldiers, or even some of his own disciples think, Jesus has work to do. It is called “the work of the cross.” In unavoidable Christian hindsight, you see, you and I can now look back, and we can see that all that bad stuff between us and God, all of that bad stuff that goes all the way back to Adam and Eve and to the Garden of Eden, but is as real as you and I know as tonight’s news. All of that bad stuff that involves real life rebellion against a real living Spirit of God involves our arrogant desires and actions to want to be gods unto ourselves, involved even as we are this day with clinched fists, and violent pride, and arrogant self-absorption. In short, it is what the Bible calls “our sin.” All of that has to be addressed, not by words, but by a deed. One deed. You know what it is. Jesus, the Lamb of God, is going to have to go to the cross and do for us and the whole world what we have shown over and over and over we cannot do for ourselves. Would that we could, but we can’t.
He is the one who is going to face down the evil one. He is the one who is going to have to allow evil to do its very worst to the servant, and, thereby, exhaust its powers. He is the one who is going to have to take all the guilt, and the pain, and the sins, the horrific sins of the people, just as the scapegoat took the sins of Israel and was driven out into the wilderness to die. He is the one who is going to have to become the Lamb of God and take on the burdens of our sins, the whole sins of the world, our rebellion, to take on the punishment that sinful people so richly deserve. You know that, and I know that. So that we don’t have to, so that we might be free of that possibility, so that we might wipe the slate clean and have another chance, so that we might somehow make a U-turn in our life. It’s called repentance. It’s so we can live in harmony with the will of God, what the Bible calls “the righteous faithful” to live our lives and everybody living their lives the way God intended. It’s the work of the cross.
Jesus has come to Jerusalem during Passover to do just that. The choice of the Passover Festival, folks, was no accident. It is connecting the greatest story of deliverance in Israel’s history. You remember it. It was when they were freed from slavery while they were in Egypt, when Moses was the leader. It was the pivotal event in their entire history. Jesus connects that incredible story with God’s plan now to deliver the whole world from the power of sin, and evil, and death. It’s no fluke. It’s no mistake.
Come be with us this coming Thursday night. Come be with us and join into the Seder meal – a Christian Passover. We are going to try to relive and reenact that incredible evening with Jesus. We are going to make that connection as deep and as powerfully as we know how. We’d love to have you.
But there were some surprises along the way. Many in Jerusalem were surprised, for instance, that he attacked the Temple itself. Remember the Temple? He declared that the Temple was corrupt. The church was corrupt. He performed one of his greatest symbolic actions. He overturned the tables of the moneychangers. You remember that. It was a sign that the Temple, itself, was under divine judgment. The Temple was supposed to be the place where people encountered the Spirit of the Living God, and where God did business with God’s people. But according to the New Testament, it had been turned into, it had been allowed to become, a den of thieves.
After that Passover meal with his disciples, Jesus’ next few hours, as you know, were intense, and they were brutal. The meaning of this story is found in every detail found in your Bible. You know it is one thing to know what you have to do. It’s another thing to actually do it. Jesus knew what he faced. The betrayal. The insults. The mockery. The lies. The anger. The abandonment. The cruelty. The suffering. The pain of the crucifixion itself.
Luke tells us that, faced with the anguish of what Jesus faced for the next 24 hours, he does what he always has done since the beginning. Do you remember what he does? He goes out into the Garden, and he prays. From the very day of his baptism, according to the gospels, Jesus has, through the power of his prayer, lived in the will of God, regardless of what that will required. Somehow, some way, Jesus finds, Jesus is given the strength and the courage to do what this world thinks is absolutely foolish. Through prayer, it becomes clear to Jesus that the way of nonviolent, suffering love, the way of the cross, is the way God chooses to be victorious over the real powers and forces of evil, and sin, and death in this world. Somehow, some way, Jesus finds, Jesus is given, the strength and the courage to live out that drama, and to do something that changes things forever. Not only to do so on our behalf, and how wonderful that is, but according to the gospels, on behalf of the entire world.
It has been said by a lot of people in lots of different ways, Jesus’ death on the cross is either the most stupid, foolish, senseless waste and misunderstanding this world has ever seen, or it is the fulcrum upon which the history of this world pivots. It is either the stupidest, most foolish, ridiculous thing that has ever happened, or it is the tipping point upon which your future, and my future, and the future of the human race on this planet and beyond rests. Christianity, folks, is based on the belief that it was and is the latter.
My question to you today is “Do you? Do you believe that the cross is the way to the future? Your future. My future. Our children’s future. This planet’s future, and beyond. If it is not, let’s take it down [pointing to the cross in the front of the sanctuary]. But if so, let’s get with it.
And all the people say… “Amen.”
God of the universe, thank you for sending your Son. Thank you for giving us hearts that recognize and welcome him. Help us to carry on, and to shoulder the cross, as together we bring forth the kingdom of God. Amen.
