Fwd: PBPC Update - Palm Sunday Sermon
Dear PBPC Friends,
Grace and peace to you on this blessed Palm Sunday and beginning of Holy Week! Below is a link to today's sermon, and there is an attached manuscript if you would prefer to read it.
Please watch your email throughout this week for daily readings as well as information about our Maundy Thursday and Easter Sunday observances. May this be a week in which you are reminded of how incomprehensibly vast God's love for you is!
Blessings,
Pastor Chris
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"Storming the Gates"
April 2, 2020 – Palm Sunday
Chris Coon, Park Boulevard Presbyterian Church
Matthew 21:1-11
When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, 2saying to them, 'Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. 3If anyone says anything to you, just say this, "The Lord needs them." And he will send them immediately.' 4This took place to fulfil what had been spoken through the prophet, saying,
5 'Tell the daughter of Zion,
Look, your king is coming to you,
humble, and mounted on a donkey,
and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.'
6The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; 7they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them. 8A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 9The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting,
'Hosanna to the Son of David!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!'
10When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, 'Who is this?' 11The crowds were saying, 'This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.'
Holy Week begins with the drama of Palm Sunday. Jesus has made the long trek from Galilee in the north down to Jerusalem, a distance of over a hundred miles. A crowd of mostly Galileans has followed him, and there is a clear sense of expectation among them. The rumors have been swirling around that Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah, the one who will seize the throne and deliver Israel from the hated Roman occupiers, bringing peace and prosperity back to the God's people. And of course, to do this, Jesus must go to Jerusalem, the capital and heart of Israel, the location of God's Temple, and the City of David, Israel's greatest king. There could be no Messiah that did not ultimately achieve his destiny in Jerusalem. So as Jesus prepared to enter the city, the crowds gathered around him to witness this moment of confrontation and revolution.
Read Matthew 21:1-11
Now it's worth spending a few moments to understand what is happening here. Let's start with the crowd, which Matthew describes as a very large and very worked up. There is an energy and excitement that is building among them. Spontaneously, as Jesus approaches them, they begin to lay their cloaks and tree branches upon the ground for Jesus to ride over. Why? This is their version of the red carpet treatment. It is a way of demonstrating that Jesus is too special to walk on the ordinary ground.
There is a famous story of Sir Walter Raleigh, who was an English explorer in the time of Queen Elizabeth in the 16th century. On one occasion he was with the Queen, and when they came to a place where the road was muddy and they could not get around it, he took off his cloak and laid it on the ground so that the queen could walk over it without getting any mud on her. This is a gesture of honor, a way of celebrating and valuing this person as highly as possible. This is what is being communicated by the crowd to Jesus in the fervor of the moment. And how especially meaningful it was, given the likelihood that most of those people probably had no more than one cloak.
But there is more going on here; this passage is actually full of Old Testament allusions. In 2 Kings 9:13, when one of Israel's famous kings was proclaimed king in defiance of the existing one, his followers spread their cloaks under his feet as a sign of loyalty. They also waved branches they'd cut from the trees to make a celebratory procession for him. So these were self-conscious expressions of royal honor. And to add to the effect, the crowd was shouting and chanting, "Hosanna to the Son of David!" To say Son of David is clearly to identify Jesus as the king, the rightful heir to the throne, and the promised Messiah, or savior. And the term Hosanna, which means "save us now," comes right out of Psalm 118 and had become for the Jews a shout of praise, like Hallelujah.
So what is going on the mind of the crowd – if a crowd can have a mind? They were fully ready to recognize Jesus as the promised Messiah, the fulfillment of prophecy. Why? Because they had experienced enough of him to believe that he was the one who could take control of the country and save them from their afflictions. That he was the one who could bring justice, who could overthrow the tyrants and bring God's righteousness –all of the things that the promised Messiah was supposed to do. In short, he could make everything right.
But there is more, because after all, what does "make everything right" look like? Perhaps, bring us prosperity. Put us back on top. Show the rest of the world that we are the chosen people. Pay back those who have wronged us. Give our enemies what they deserve. A mixture of pure and tainted motives, certainly. Which also certainly describes each of us. What causes us to cry to God, to call on the Messiah? What is it that we want? Do we call to God because we realize we are helpless and hopeless, that we need his power and grace? Or do we call on God to deliver us from evil so that things will return to how they should be and we can get on with our lives? What kind of king do we actually want?
How does Jesus respond to all of this? It is important to note first of all that he has never denied nor discouraged those who have proclaimed him to be the Messiah. Earlier in his ministry, he has told them to keep it a secret – but now that time is past. Far from being swept up in the moment, Jesus is firmly in control of the situation. Jesus makes it very clear that he is the promised king and savior of Israel. But he is a king that is very different from what the crowd was hoping for.
The key to understanding the nature of this king is Jesus' choice to enter Jerusalem riding on a donkey. He has evidently made arrangements for his disciples to borrow a donkey for Jesus to ride (in Matthew's version of the story, it is actually a donkey and its foal, but Jesus is only riding one of them.) The Mount of Olives is only a short distance from Jerusalem; why would Jesus need to ride now after walking almost the entire way? For one reason only: to fulfill Scripture. Matthew quotes the prophet Zechariah 9:9, "Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey." This is actually a reference to 2 Samuel 20, when King David returned to Jerusalem after the defeat of Absalom's rebellion, when he came in triumph as king, and yet humbly and in peace. But it is also a messianic prophecy.
So Jesus comes as a king – as the rightful, promised king – to the city. We often call this the triumphal entry, because that is what an ancient conqueror would do: triumphantly process into the city whose army had been conquered, making it clear to all who was now the Master and King. But Jesus' entry is both triumphal – he receives the praises of the crowd – and humble – he enters in humility, on a donkey, without an army. Certainly there are many ways Jesus could have entered, including with an army of angels, if he had intended to conquer.
Jesus' grand, but surprising, entry into Jerusalem is an object lesson in the mismatch between our expectations and God's answer. We can learn some important things about Jesus here. First of all, Jesus is the answer to the prayers of all those who cry out to him – but not necessarily in the way that we expect. We want to be rescued from evil and oppression, and Jesus wants to rescue us from evil in its full depths, not just the surface evil that we see around us. And because Jesus wants to give us healing and freedom at the deepest level of who we are, he may say "no" or "wait" to some of the desires we are conscious of.
Second, for Jesus the path to victory is the path of suffering. Salvation is dawning, but in order for Jesus to give us what we most need he is going to have to face the powers of sin and evil, to suffer, and to die. The experience of holy week shows us that Christ did not merely snap his fingers and defeat evil, nor did he simply whisk all of his people out of harm's way. Instead Jesus faces sin and evil head on, and in experiencing it, he overcomes it and defeats it. The way to victory was right through the center of it. In the same way, as his followers, we can expect to have our portion of suffering. Jesus said as much, and while he doesn't promise our lives will be easy, he does promise that he will be with us and will bring us through to the victory that he has won.
And finally, that image of Jesus approaching the city on a donkey communicates to us that Jesus has no interest in conquering us, in forcing himself on us. Rather, he offers himself to us. Make no mistake – he is God's king and is entitled to be sovereign over all creation, over all people. But what he offers to us is the invitation to receive him as our king and our savior – to receive his love and to love him in return – to receive the gift of life and life abundantly that he promises to each one who put their trust in him.
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