A sermon based upon Luke 19: 28-48
Dr. Charles J. Tomlin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
Palm Sunday, April 1, 2012
Since the American Revolution, America no longer has a royal family, but many Americans are still fascinated by royalty and many are “royal watchers.” The Associated Press reported that the most recent royal wedding in England had thousands of “bleary-eyed Americans waking before dawn on a Friday morning to watch Britain's Prince William marry his longtime sweetheart, Kate Middleton. On the East Coast, two hours before the wedding ceremony started in London’s Westminster Abbey, the parties began as early as 4 a.m. on the East Coast.
When I was living in Germany in the early 1990’s there was an interesting newspaper article reporting about a survey that had been recently taken among the German people. Germany no longer has an active monarchy, so the question was asked among the Germans, how many would like to bring back the royal family out of retirement and again have a King in Germany. Over 60% of Germans would love to again have a King ruling over them.
Even though Americans love to watch British royalty, I don’t think as many Americans as Germans would like to submit themselves again to a King or Queen. But if politics gets any dirtier, who knows?
AN ODD SORT OF KING
On this Palm Sunday, our Bible text resembles the coronation parade of a King. We are told that as Jesus enters Jerusalem that people “kept spreading their cloaks on the road” (19:36) and the crowd began to “praise God” quoting Scripture (Psalm 118.26), saying, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!” In the retelling of this story only Luke and John name Jesus as a King, but the event of Jesus entering Jerusalem like a King is recorded in each gospel and hearing the crowd cry out: “Hossana”, meaning “save us now!”, is exactly how a people would approach the one they would name their King. Without a doubt, the triumphant entry we call “Palm Sunday” is an unofficial coronation of Jesus as their King.
But what we should also find striking in this passage is very odd sort of way Jesus allows them to make him King. This whole story begins with a very “strange” story of Jesus sending his disciples ahead of him to find a donkey colt that had never been ridden. When the disciples start to untie the colt, its owners ask: “Why are you untying the colt?”, the disciples answer just as Jesus has told them say, “The Lord needs it”. Here, Jesus definitely commands a kind of authority, that’s for sure. But it’s a different kind of authority. It is not force, it is not domination, it’s not the kind of luxury or power worldly kings demand, but it’s humility, meekness and a sharing of the fulfillment of God’s promises, purposes and God’s power that is being revealed. Most shocking of all, as the crowd praises God with shouts of joy, we find Jesus not smiling but weeping; weeping over the city and its tragic future and later entering the temple full of anger at what it had become. Jesus does enter Jerusalem like a King, but he is a very different, even an ‘odd’ sort kind of King.
In the 70’s musical Jesus Christ Superstar, there is a line that reminds us how odd a person Jesus still is in our world. One song from the musical has Mary Magdalene singing, “I don’t know how to love you.” There are many followers of Jesus that could sing those lines. But in the most famous song, the whole chorus raises the most central question: “Jesus Christ, Superstar, Who are you? Are you who they say you are? We should not be surprised that questions about Jesus are still popular, still being asked, and some are still unanswered. And this are not just good questions, but they point to the main question that is still very much alive, and should be asked by every culture and every person in the world: Who is this Jesus? If he claims to be King, what sort of King is he?
The question of Jesus’ kingship is a question the church needs to keep asking too. As the people shouted “Hossana” they all wanted Jesus to “save them now” (Hossana), but one wonders whether or not they ready to make Jesus the King of their own lives. Most people would like to have a religious leader or spiritual guru to give them guidance at times, but it’s quite another issue make Jesus the King to whom you give charge of your own life. As theologian NT Wright once rightly suggested, most of us would love to have a religious leader who would save our souls, but having a king who would take charge of our world---that’s a whole different question. Do we really want to have Jesus as the King he claims to be?
Again, most all of us know we need leaders, even religious and political leaders, but do we want a ruler? Do we want to place our lives under the sovereignty and authority of God as the king of our lives? Just look at how dangerous “theocracies” like the one in Iran can be in our world. Who would want that? If God would actually rule, what would it look like? How would it work in practice? Would it not be quite problematic? But this really the odd sort of question the life of Jesus is asking us. For you see Jesus did not come to ride into Jerusalem to claim a Kingdom for himself, but Jesus came preaching that God’s kingdom has come to the world. And by preaching God’s kingdom you cannot ever say that Jesus was only preaching a “religious” gospel just about my or your “personal” religious viewpoint. No, Jesus came preaching God’s kingdom as a political reality in this world asking you us to make God our king so that everything changes. So, in every way, making God your King in your life right now is as much a political bombshell today as it would have been then. Jesus does not come to make you religious, nor to get you to believe in God, but Jesus comes to rule your life in everything you do and it that way making a way so that God can rule in the world in all the world does. Make no mistake about what this means. If God is your King, everything will change.
THE PERFECT STORM
But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. It is important, as we examine this “odd” sort of King that Jesus comes to be, that we understand a little more about what is happening in Jerusalem in this moment. Everything that is about to happen to Jesus in this week and in this moment can best be called “A perfect Storm”. You remember that 1991 movie made about a true story concerning a small fishing boat that was out to sea when the low pressure and the high pressure met in just the right place to bring about a Nor’easter called “The Perfect Storm”? This is the kind of pressure that is brewing in this week as Jesus enters, but it didn’t start there.
The perfect storm that blew into Jerusalem during the Passover week when Jesus came to town had been brewing long before Jesus was born. It’s a storm that started all the way back in Old Testament times. It started when the newly form people called Israel came to the prophet Samuel saying, “We want to be like other nations and have a King over us?” The prophet Samuel did not like this idea, saying that Israel was rejecting God as their true King. But God granted their wish anyway.
But the rest of the story is that it did not turn out so well. King Saul was a disaster. King David was ‘a man and ruler after God’s heart’, but he also had his own failures and flaws. David’s son Solomon was wise, but his two sons, Jeroboam and Rehaboam split the Kingdom over taxation issues, so that thereafter, Israel and Judah became divided Kingdoms that could never be put back together again. They also came to be nations filled with so much corruption, so much idolatry, and so much moral social failure that they were unredeemable. Even the great words of the prophets could not put the nation back together again and they both kingdoms eventually fell, Israel in 722 BC, and Judah in 587 BC, and great was their fall. The fall of Israel was so great a hurt in their heart that it gave rise to a great hunger for a Messiah, a deliverer, who could bring Israel back to God on God’s terms so that God would be their only true king. Through their political aspirations and failures, they had learned once and for all that no “human” ruler could grant them the dream, the glory and the hope, which they once had in God. Many in Israel had come to be convinced that they needed the Messiah, God’s anointed deliverer to enable them to make God their only true King.
This is where the “perfect storm” comes in. They all know, as a small, vulnerable nation, that they need a great leader to get them free from the oppressive Roman rule and to free them from other potential oppressors in the world, but many in Jerusalem have very different views of exactly “how” this will happen and “who” can make this happen. Many of the people in Israel who are holding out hope for a God-anointed leader, a Messiah, but how people interpreted expectation had great variance. Some believe it would take a very dramatic outward and visible intervention—a miraculous work of God to deliver Israel. Others believed it would take some kind of specific, organized militant or military action; either without or with the help of god. Still others, especially those in from the upper crust, knew about the messianic expectations (as Herod did), but didn’t need or desire God’s deliverance because they are busying saving themselves by lining up with the powers that be.
Interestingly, when Jesus comes to town, he doesn’t agree with any of these camps. Jesus comes as a “camp” of his own. He comes with his own agenda. He does not look for signs. He does not desire his disciples to take up the sword, and in no way is he satisfied with the status quo. In an affront to all expectation current in his day, Jesus comes preaching God’s kingdom as already present, already upsetting things, and already working in the hearts and lives of people. This is exactly what excited many, but also made many nervous. Jesus did not side with any group nor did he settle any conflict of viewpoint. This is exactly what added fuel to the firestorm that was already smoldering. When Jesus humbled himself, setting his own agenda as his “own kind of King,” or as God’s true King, who did not have to display any power over the system, because he revealed that God’s power was already with him in a very different way, it was like putting a match to a woodpile that had been drenched in gasoline. Jesus’ marching into Jerusalem in complete humility, but also with tears of pain and with outward expressions of anger at the corrupted house of prayer, set the whole place religious structure ablaze. Jesus was coming to be his “own” kind of King, with a very different agenda, and with the kind of religious and political vision that the world did not want and still does not want.
JESUS BRINGS GODS RULE IN A DIFFERENT KIND OF WAY
What makes Jesus so disturbing among all the differing political groups of this world is that Jesus does not side with anybody; at the same time he for everybody who lives for compassion and love; he is against all those who live in oppression and hate. This is exactly what still makes people turn against Jesus. Jesus will not accept any kind of rule or ruler than the rule of God. And that is exactly what happen in Jerusalem and brought Jesus death on the cross. He came to set the agenda, to rule and claim God as King in the way Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah, the mediator of God’s Kingdom, does everything in a different kind of way.
So, now with this understanding of just what brought the perfect storm to Jerusalem, we must stop to ask ourselves today, how is Jesus still a “different” kind of King, who brings God rule into our world in a very different kind of way? This is still very much a question worth asking, because on the surface, we can admit that now, just like then, the way the world is doesn’t look much like God rules anything, does it? How can we say that Jesus makes God King by surrendering to his enemies and dying a horrible death on the cross? How does the way of Jesus make God King in this world? It’s a good question, isn’t it? I believe it is the most important question: Who really rules the world? If God rules, then that rule must be very different.
The first thing the life and death of Jesus teaches us is that God rules through forgiveness and healing. Jesus does not force God’s rule, but calls for that rule through repentance and faith. God’s rule has power, not because we are made to submit, but we submit because we realize once and for all that we are fallible, fractured, fragile creatures who are broken, bruised and battered in this world. It’s only a matter of time until we recognize that only God can rule; and God rules as we realize who we are and who we are not. That’s why the way into God’s kingdom is the humble way Jesus takes, not the high and mighty way some seek. The only way into God’s kingdom is the way of the cross that forgives and heals us from who we have become without God.
Secondly, Jesus shows us how God rules through transformed hearts. God’s kingdom is within you, Jesus said. You don’t look and say here it is or there it is. You don’t look for the kingdom to be born out in the ways of the world because the kingdom begins in your heart; in your deepest emotion and feeling. The kingdom only comes when you want it to come. And when really you want God’s rule; you find it’s already there, as it starts to change you from the inside out. As you change from the inside out you can’t help but see how the world around you also changes. The greatest ruler of the greatest kingdom does not make you his subjects, he welcomes those who desire to be his servants. They desire God because God is who changes them instead of a king who controls them. God rules through the way of love---an irresistible life changing, love.
Thirdly, Jesus also shows how God rules from the future, not merely the present. Interestingly, God’s rule does not take place all at once. In fact, God’s rule may not be visibility present at the moment, just as Jesus was not the visible the kind of King the world could see in his moment. It is important to realize that the King who has not yet fully seized the throne, can’t be overthrown. His kingdom is always coming. This is how God rules in our world, not by what has been, but by what is yet to be. God rules our world and our hearts because we are a people who live our lives faced forward, toward the future that belongs only to God. There is unbreakable power in a kingdom that is still coming as God rules through our expectations, our hopes and our faith in what is yet to be. Is there a greater way to rule than from the future? In this way, God’s rule is a rule that is “forever young” and forever new, as only God makes all things new.
Finally, Jesus enables us to see the rule of God through worship of the true God. How do we come to know this future, transforming, healing rule of God in this world where humans continue to “fall short of the glory” and “purposes” of God? How do we live in this kingdom that touches and changes us, but is still not fully revealed or realized in this world?
We can only live in the kingdom as we give our lives to the King and as we become citizens of the Kingdom that is coming. We do this through worship of the true God. Worship---that is giving full worth and unhindered praise to God is how we participate in God’s kingdom fully now, before it is fully realized in this world. But don’t think of worship as simply going to church, singing hymns, saying prayers, hearing a sermon and saying Amen. The apostle Paul reminds us that worshiping God is what Jesus was doing when he humbled himself as he entered Jerusalem to do follow God’s will, no matter what happened. Paul wrote that “our true worship” is, as Romans 12: 1 says: “....to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Whereas God asks of Jesus to be a dying sacrifice, we worship God by being a “living sacrifice”as our spiritual worship. If you read the rest of this passage, you will clearly see what it means to worship God with your life. He speaks of not living by the “rules” of this world, but living to seek, find, know the “perfect” will of God. We show we know God’s will by living in humble submission to God’s purposes as we express love to each other do good works in the world. He reminds us that our greatest act of worship is to “live decently” as people of the “daytime”, refusing to be people of darkness, and as we “put on the Lord Jesus”, by living in a desire for God’s Spirit of love, not living according to our own selfish “fleshly” desires. Thus, worship is to love God and to love God’s will more than your own.
Jesus comes to Jerusalem as a different kind of King because he reveals the true God who rules our world and our hearts in a different kind of way. It is a way that is different because it is the only way that forgives, heals, transforms, and promises a future for our world and for us. Jesus lays down his life as a dying sacrifice; we are called to give our lives as “living” sacrifices to the true way that leads to hope and eternal life. Amen.
© 2012 All rights reserved Charles J. Tomlin, B.A., M.Div. D.Min.
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