This march and this execution teach us about Jesus and
through him about God. These two events are combined because they show Jesus
had a vision of a world much different from the world around him and they show
the commitment Jesus had to that vision.
Jesus was able to go though these harrowing events of Holy Week because
he had faith that God would use them to transform our hearts.
I believe that when Jesus peaceably
entered Jerusalem he was indeed more powerful that Caesar in a chariot and all
his legions of soldiers put together.
The Roman Empire is long gone and the Kingdom of God is very much alive.
While on the cross Jesus suffered,
not in our place, but suffered with us remembering there is no situation so
terrible that it is beyond the reach of God’s transforming love. That includes death. The cross continues to point people to God
and will through the fulfillment of all time.
LUKE, WRITING THIS MUCH LATER, IS LOOKING BACK
Jesus came to Jerusalem along with pilgrims coming to
celebrate the Passover. They were waving
palm branches. After the resurrection,
when Luke was writing this, the disciples looked back over the events and
realized that this was Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem as king. They had not understood at the time. They remembered that the Jewish prophets had
foretold that the Messiah would enter Jerusalem as a humble king, riding on a
donkey, and saw it as a significant event in Jesus’ life. They saw then what they missed before...and
recorded it so we can see.
Other kings had ridden donkeys…but a colt was
different. And one that had not been
ridden…signs that Jesus was a different kind of king.
WHAT WAS JESUS THINKING
Jesus had so many choices on that day:
TO RUN AND HIDE
He has already told his disciples over and over that he
knows he is to die. He knows that the
crowd that will welcome him will, like the disciples, quit cheering and turn
against him. Soon they will cry out for
his crucifixion with the crowd.
TO ENTER AS A RELIGIOUS LEADER
For this procession, any high religious leader would have
been dressed in the finest of robes and have plenty of people, also in robes,
on all sides so that no one would have the opportunity to touch him and thereby
make him ritually unclean. Obviously
Jesus rejected that one.
TO ENTER AS A LIBERATOR KING
If you will remember that Jesus was tempted in
wilderness. He was offered the job of
being king of the known kingdoms. What
an offer. Think of the good he could
have done. This would have been the
moment to ride into Jerusalem in a war chariot with two white stallions. But what kind of king?
He had to be thinking about how people would respond. In the middle of a holiday celebrating
freedom from oppression, this would have been the time. The crowds in Jerusalem were wondering
whether Jesus was going to lead rebellion against Rome; some must have been
hoping and ready to fight. The Jews
hated foreign domination so much that there were several attempts at
rebellion. In CE 66 a full-scale
rebellion broke out and the Romans besieged Jerusalem for 4 years. They eventually destroyed the city and
devastated the Temple.
Jesus knew that if the people rose up in rebellion, it would
get a lot of people killed and would accomplish little. Rome was so powerful and little would
change. Jesus knew that the way to
change the world was to change hearts, like yours and mine. And that he has.
The way he chose was to be a different kind of king…a
servant king who would challenge and confront all of the evil of his day with
the power of love, and not the love of power. (repeat) A little donkey would not likely scare
anyone, nor inspire anyone to go to war.
This was a clear statement that Jesus entered Jerusalem a humble king.
When your heart is like this you do not need stallions. God took a shepherd and turned him into King
David. A young woman became the mother
of the Son of God. Jesus took this
carpenter and turned him into the greatest king ever on earth.
On April 21st, Itzhak Perlman will come to McCain
in their performance series. This man is
incredible. Years ago this amazing
Israeli-American violinist was performing live at the Lincoln Center. It is a major struggle for him to get out on
the stage. He contracted polio as a child
and so it takes a while for him to enter and get seated. It puts down his crutches and picks up his
instrument. At this concert, he had
hardly begun when one of his violin strings broke. The microphone on his instrument made it
sound like a weapon had gone off.
Everyone gasped. He was going to
have to do something different. Would he
have to get up and go get a string or different instrument? Could someone fix it for him? What he did was take off his coat and re-tune
the remaining three strings. Everyone
knows you cannot play with three strings.
Yet, he did. He signaled the
conductor to start and they did and he played with such passion and power and
purity that everyone was astounded. At
the end of the concert there was silence then a roar as everyone cheered. His statement was in humility: “You know, sometimes it is the artist’s task
to see how much music you can still make with what you have left.”
With Jesus God took what was left after the world fell apart
for Jesus and gave us the greatest gift ever.
WE NEED KINGS WHO ARE FIRST OF ALL SHEPHERDS
I had a chance this week to talk to Rev. Loren Wertz. I can always count on him to come up with
some interesting quip. I asked him for
his early assessment of the new Pope. He
smiled from ear to ear and said, “We have a shepherd and not a king. That is just what we need. This world has too many kings and not enough
shepherds.” I added my, “AMEN!”
JERUSALEM
I pray for peace in the Middle East often. This one city is claimed by Jews, Christians,
and Muslims. The word Jerusalem means
the Foundation of Peace. Jerusalem had
been destroyed in war 17 times and yet is still there. Our own church building has been almost
destroyed twice, once by fire and a second by a tornado.
If we could learn to live side by side, in mutual respect,
then the world would have an amazing model of what life could be. Our President has been in Jerusalem, hoping
his words will encourage Jews and Palestinians to go back to the negotiating
table.
Here are two scenes from a movie called Blood Diamond. It is a very violent movie and I do not
recommend it. It pictures how people
have done terrible things get things…drugs or diamonds or oil. The first scene is one where smuggler asks
the question if God would ever forgive us for what we have done? They are struggling to get a diamond. The fisherman wants to re-unite his
family. In an act of self-sacrifice at
the end the smuggler helps the man and his family.
SHOW THE FIRST SCENE
The second scene involves a man who was forced to mine for
diamonds and his son who was forced to do awful things. In this scene the son has decided to turn on
his own father. These two actors do a
great job in portraying the force that will transform the human heart: the gift
of love.
SHOW THE SECOND SCENE
Rev. Diana Chapel works very hard during the year in some
powerful work in our prisons. She is one
of the persons who goes into the prisons and offers weekend workshops similar
to the Walk to Emmaus. The idea is that
God’s redemption is for everyone and that God is powerful enough to do just
that
And Luke even mentions the stones. It is all set in place and it is going
forward, this plan of God. There is no
stopping it. If human beings do not do
their parts, the earth will do God’s work.
Even the stones will shout
WHO IS THIS JESUS
There are so many different interpretations of Jesus over
the centuries. Some of them have such
distortions. Over the centuries people
have twisted Jesus into a way for God to bless what they were doing, even if it
was not good. There is the white Jesus
used by the early settlers of Kansas to turn Native Americans being just like
white people or worse to practice genocide.
There is the colonial Jesus used to justify taking land and resources. There a get-rich-quick Jesus. The male-chauvinist Jesus. On and on and on. Luke writes the story that tells of Jesus.
Luke makes certain we know that the Glory and peace were
going to be inside and then in heaven, not on earth, right then through a
military battle led by Jesus.
He does include the comments by the Pharisees. If Jesus and his disciples cause a ruckus,
then Rome will stomp out all the Jewish people.
They want to protect themselves and their positions. If the government decided to crack down,
their jobs would be among he first to go.
The world needs lots
of changes and some of them are social, political, and they all involve
spiritual change. Luke wants us to know
that even a few wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ can make a big change in
the world. We are to live a way of life
that allows the Grace of God to bring our bodies in line with our redeemed
Spirits.
The church totally underestimates the power of grace, of
forgiveness.
This church did not forget how powerful God is when the
needs of Ogden Friendship House was needed.
This church did not forget how powerful God is when the
Crisis Center was started.
I am convinced that the human heart can be transformed by
the power of God. The Jesus knows the
difference between the love of power and the power of love. God’s anointed liberator is not the
Terminator, threatening revenge for all who refuse to honor him, groveling:
“I’ll be back.” God’s liberator is the
one we beat up, who promises mercy to those who strike him, whispering,
“Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” The suffering, serving one who bled on a
cross, not the one with a commitment to make others suffer and bleed is the
King of kings and the Lord of lords. I
am eager bow my knee to Jesus, the King of Glory. How about you?
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