April 2, 2023 Sermon
Sermon title: "The Ride Into Jerusalem"
Scripture: Luke 19:28-40
(Other suggested lectionary readings include Matthew 21:1-11 and Psalm 118:1-2 and 19-29.)
Luke 19:28-40
Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem
28After he had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. 29When he had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, 30saying, "Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 31If anyone asks you, "Why are you untying it?' just say this, "The Lord needs it.' " 32So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. 33As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, "Why are you untying the colt?" 34They said, "The Lord needs it." 35Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. 36As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. 37As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, 38saying, "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!" 39Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, order your disciples to stop." 40He answered, "I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out."
It is always hard for me to preach a Palm Sunday sermon. It's great to remember again the loud Hosannas the people shouted - but you and I both know what happens: peoples' minds change, and some of those who are now yelling, "Hosanna", will soon be yelling, "Crucify him!"
Are you and I that way? Great friends and supporters of Jesus until he is suddenly NOT so popular? I like the take of the Rev. Carolyn Coon Mowchan, who is a minister at Faith Lutheran Church in Duluth, Minnesota. She says, "When the cheering stops and the crowd leaves, it gets more difficult to risk trust. The way can seem dark and dangerous, painful, uncertain." In our Scripture lesson today, the signal for the person with the donkey or the colt is, "The Lord has need of it." Well, sometimes "The Lord has need of some courage ((from us)) and strength in the face of adversity. The Lord asks for some obedience, to journey with him into suffering. But alone, in the dark, under pressure, obedience is often hard to come by. The cheering stops and our courage falls asleep." In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus will sweat blood-like drops of perspiration "in the nighttime of his suffering. That's also part of our story. We fall asleep to those who go to bed hungry. We struggle to hold on to courage amid despair.....We hide when the Lord calls us to stand up and be counted. When it's clear that we might have to sacrifice, how quickly our praise songs die on our lips."
I said it was difficult for me to preach a Palm Sunday sermon, but I DO appreciate how true-to-life the Ride Into Jerusalem is. You've heard the term "fair weather friends"? In the Palm Sunday story, there it is! There is also a song that I heard in college that has the words, "Nobody loves you when you're down and out." Boy, isn't that true! And isn't today's Biblical story so true-to-life? Again, I want to say that the Bible doesn't pull any punches. Life is hard sometimes, and the Bible does not deny that fact.
Earlier I mentioned that our Scripture reading for today had the phrase, "The Lord has need of it." This was what the disciples were to say if anybody asked why they were untying that colt or donkey. Let me say right now that this wasn't "magic". Jesus had made arrangements for him to have this beast of burden ready for his ride into Jerusalem. Perhaps you first heard this story in Sunday School, and perhaps it was told to you in such a way that Jesus could make ANYTHING happen because he was the Son of God. If you want to believe that way, go ahead....but I think you're WRONG. The Scottish scholar William Barclay says this: "It was carefully planned. It was no sudden, impulsive action. Jesus did not leave things until the last moment. He had his arrangement with the owners of the colt. 'The Lord needs it' was a password chosen long ago." I'm glad Barclay said this. To me, it makes Jesus more real, more HUMAN. He was NOT Superman and he was not Captain Marvel. He was acting with courage, riding this work animal, not a war horse, symbolizing that he was coming in peace. Barclay says that Jesus riding that donkey "was an act of glorious defiance and of superlative courage."
By riding into Jerusalem this way, Jesus was acting as the prophets of old did. Sometimes they would act things out to get their points across. For example, the prophet Ezekiel, I think it was, slipped through a hole in the wall of the city NAKED in the middle of the night to symbolize that anyone who escaped the upcoming doom of an approaching military army would get out NOT EVEN with the CLOTHES on HIS BACK! (Sometimes those prophets were strange!) Jesus was doing the same thing by riding that donkey instead of a war horse. Again, William Barclay: "The donkey in Palestine was not the lowly beast that it is in this country. It was noble. Only in war did kings ride upon a horse; when they came in peace they came upon a donkey. So, Jesus by this action came as a king of love and peace, and not as the conquering military hero whom the tumultuous crowds expected and awaited."
Did you ever wonder about the disconnect - for lack of a better word - of the crowd shouting, "Hosanna", or "O Save Us", when Jesus is riding on a donkey and not a war horse? By his action of riding the donkey, he is specifically saying, "I am NOT a military leader." And yet the crowd treats him as if he were. Maybe that explains the "Crucify him!" yells later in the week: Jesus was not what the crowd wanted. They wanted to overthrow the Romans by force, and Jesus was saying by his action that he was NOT about being a military ruler.
This business of the people spreading their cloaks on the road and waving palm branches had been done before, around 165 B.C.. That's when Judas Maccabeus and his brothers overthrew their Greek oppressors, and they did it by military means. Perhaps the crowd wanted the same thing again. Maybe they were thinking, "C'mon, Jesus! Be like your countryman Judas Maccabeus! Save us from the Romans! And overthrow these infidels the same way Judas did!"
But that would involve bloodshed, and Jesus was not going to be that kind of leader. And even though he was saying that he was not for bloodshed by riding that donkey, the people were hoping to change his mind! Perhaps as it became clear that Jesus wasn't going to kill anyone, or call for the death of anyone, those "Hosanna" shouts turned to "Crucify him!" shouts. The crowd was saying, "Give us what we want or else." With great courage, Jesus was saying, "I will not shed blood. Do you want blood? Here: take mine."
Our faith asks a lot of us. When Jesus said to love your enemies, he wasn't kidding. And he proved that by letting his enemies kill him. And not only that: while he was dying on that Cross, he said, "Father, forgive them. They know not what they do." MY feeling is, YES THEY DID! They DID know what they were doing! But they did it anyway! But regardless of MY feelings, regardless of what I feel, we are called to love our enemies, and it is OH! so hard to do that.
Thankfully, we know that the eventual rejection of Jesus's way of peace is NOT the end, because after Good Friday there is an Easter. But there is an Easter because of GOD's activity, not weak mankind's. I'm sorry for such a gloomy Palm Sunday message, but everything goes downhill from here. Thanks be to God that this is not the END of the story! Amen.
Pastor Skip
