One of the great things about
reading the Bible in an orderly fashion, as we’ve been doing now for almost a
year, is that you begin to see how stories connect in ways you may never have
realized. For instance, you’re probably all pretty familiar with the Palm
Sunday story. Jesus comes to Jerusalem,
people wave palm branches and shout praises at him. That is the yearly ritual.
It’s our intro-to-Holy-Week-Jesus-party. Everybody’s going to be there: Jesus,
the donkey, some disciples, people waving Palm branches; it’s going to be a
blast. However, I should warn you that since we’re reading more than just the
Hosannas and the branches, this party might not turn out quite like you would
want. You see, Jesus isn’t doing anything particularly royal in Jerusalem. He’s not
making some nice gesture for his big supporters, and he’s not having a campaign
fundraiser with $10,000 plates. Instead, Jesus is going to do what Jesus does.
He foretells the destruction of Jerusalem
(just wait about forty years) and then he heads over to the temple to throw
some of the wealthy out. You can imagine, that
was unexpected for the gathering throngs of supporters. His speech was heavy on
the judgment and his actions didn’t seem to curry any favor with the wealthy
elite. What kind of politician was this Jesus anyway?
It’s
natural for us to replicate that first part of Palm Sunday year after year. It’s
a really good excuse to get our kids waving palm branches and participating in
the service, but if we look at what Jesus’ purpose in coming to Jerusalem I think we can
safely assume that the palms are not the
part he would have wanted emphasized. On that first Palm Sunday, the people
didn’t know what they were celebrating. They thought they were welcoming a king
who was going to overthrow the government. What they got was a king who was
going to overthrow all the powers of evil and cleanse not just the temple, and
not just the land
of Israel, but who would
die for the sake of all of us to cleanse the whole world.
That was what
Jesus came to do, and it was decidedly not
what the people wanted. A normal everyday king was just fine with them, thank
you. My worry when we wave Palm branches and shout hosannas is that we are missing
the point in exactly the same way as those who stood along the road on the
first Palm Sunday. We don’t want the Jesus on the cross; we want the king who
is going to fight our wars. We don’t want the Jesus who foretells our
destruction, who condemns us for our sin; we want the celebrity Jesus with 100
million twitter followers. We don’t want the Jesus who tells us truths about us
that make us uncomfortable that make us ask, like Peter, “Lord, to whom shall
we go?” We want Jesus to be our good friend. Palm Sunday is a celebration of
the shallow things we want instead of the true Jesus.
And with that, the
pastor has ruined even Palm Sunday.
But it’s not all
bad news. In fact, it’s not bad news at all. The king we wanted is not at all
the king that we needed. If you’ve seen the most recent Batman movies, it’s
like at the end of The Dark Knight where Jim Gordon says to his son: “He’s the
hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs
right now.” Jesus is the king that the people needed, but they weren’t yet
ready for him, just as the people of Jerusalem weren’t truly ready for
Jesus—and with that, I just compared Jesus to Batman, Lord forgive me. The king
we want on Palm Sunday is one who makes our lives easier, but we don’t need
easier lives—we already live easier than almost any people in the history of
the world. The king we want is one who defeats our enemies, but we don’t realize
that the greatest enemy is within us; the part of us that is ruined by our
desire to put ourselves before God and our neighbors. The king we want is one
we can lift up on a throne, but we don’t need a king on a throne; we need a
king on a cross.
When Jesus is
crucified Pilate puts those simple words above the cross: “Jesus Christ, King
of the Jews.” Little did he know what he was saying. Little did anyone know the
truth those words spoke. Christ was a king, a ruler unlike any the world had
known or will know, because he humbled himself in the only way that could befit
a true suffering servant. He died for our sake, and he did so utterly alone.
Should we
celebrate that? I think so. I think, in fact, it’s just about the most
important thing to celebrate in this often messed up world. We wave Palm
branches today not because of the good things that are going to come to us but
out of duty for the sacrifice that has been made for us. That changes the
timbre of the celebration, but it remains a day worthy of remembering. So go
ahead and wave those palm branches, sing hosannas, do whatever it is that
befits such a time as this, because Christ the king has come to overthrow the
temple, to prophecy our destruction, and finally to die. He’s not the king we
wanted, nor the king we deserve, but he is precisely the king that we need.
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