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If there is one constant in the Gospels, especially the Gospel of Mark, it is that the people who think they have it all figured out are wrong—even the disciples, even the priests, and all the other smarty-pantses of the world. The Gospel story is a thriller that climaxes with a hero getting crucified. Palm Sunday marks the triumphant entry into Jerusalem of a king who never once ascends to the throne. Nothing is as it seems.
In a time of great uncertainty, like the one we are living in today, it is right and good to hang on to what is certain. Still, we should be careful that what we are hanging on to is actually certain. On that first Palm Sunday, the people lining the streets of Jerusalem put their trust in a king but not the right kind of king—a king riding a colt, not the king heading for the cross. Palm Sunday is the day where the world got it wrong. We don’t put our trust in the king of Palm Sunday.
“Go,” says Jesus in the familiar Palm Sunday story, “Go, and find a colt, untie it and bring it back.” That Jesus was going to use that colt to ride into town like a king was a big deal, because Jesus seemed to be stepping out of the shadows as the country prophet and into the limelight, claiming his status as king. The crowds anticipated a revolution that would overthrow the occupying Roman forces and restore the primacy of God’s chosen people in Israel. This was going to change everything! Peoples’ expectations were about to be realized. The king was coming! “Hosanna! Blessings on the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” they shouted. “Blessings on the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!”
Palm Sunday ushers in the Return of the King, and the people had every expectation that it would be exactly like the Lord of the Rings: Return of the King with Jesus picking up a sword and laying waste to the principalities and powers who ruled over the land. After all, if he could heal like magic, then what will his vengeance look like? Terrible, I bet! The people were revolution-ready. It all seems so silly now. I mean, what good would it have done for us today if Jesus was just another David coming to reclaim Jerusalem? Sure, it would have been great at the time, but all these covenants were temporary. How many times must the temple be destroyed before the people of God realized it’s not about the temple?
Once more, I think. We need to reminded of what is really important one more time—always once more.
It’s so easy to put out trust in these structures that are so close to the most important thing. After all, people expected Jesus to come as a military commander because that’s the frame of reference they were working with. They couldn’t imagine anything better, but God could. Jesus consistently worked against expectations, because our view was not wide enough, our expectations not good enough. Jesus entered a world where power meant wealth, where only men led, where the blind and lame were cast into the margins, and Jesus lifted up the poor, he lifted up women and Samaritans, tax collectors and the blind and the lame as the first heirs of the kingdom God. The early church continued this work, expanding the boundaries beyond ethnic heritage, widening the tent to include Jews and Gentiles alike. You can imagine the discomfort. People were sitting in the pews of other people who had claimed that pew for generations.
No,
no, no. This is too much of a change! I’m
sure they said it! In fact, I know they did, because the very same people who
were shouting “Hosanna!” after Jesus walking into the city were the ones
shouting “Crucify him!” five days later. Jesus did not meet their standards, so
they killed him. It’s the real tale as old as time.
When our expectations are quashed, we should pause to consider why they were our expectations in the first place. The current pandemic is that rare event where all of us have failing expectations. I was supposed to be at Disney last week. We were supposed to play our first baseball game on Thursday. The blizzard would have ruined that one anyway, I guess, so… silver lining?! But some of you have much more serious “supposed-tos.” Maybe you were supposed to have a big wedding. Supposed to see a loved one. Supposed to have one last visit—one last trip—one last goodbye. Maybe you were supposed to meet somebody—supposed to retire—supposed to graduate. And, yes, some of these things are still going to happen but not how they were supposed to. Other things are scarier—you’re supposed to give birth, supposed to be together as a family, supposed to live much longer. Some of these things are not guaranteed, and that is underneath all the fears we face today.
What we believe is “supposed to happen” is important. Our expectations matter. And it’s not helpful to simply say that God has a better plan, because each of us are captive to forces that mean we may not see that brighter future, not on this side of the veil. Palm Sunday is a great day to remember our limitations, because it is the day of earthly kings, and earthly kings don’t save us. The king who rides in on a colt is not the king we needed.
So, if you are feeling lost in the midst of expectations about what was supposed to happen, first know that you are not alone. We all know that this was not supposed to happen.
The even better news is that Jesus Christ meets us especially in the places and times that were never supposed to happen. He does not come to us in the waving of palm branches; he comes to us in the devastation of the cross. Holy Week is about Jesus completing the human journey, knowing despair and suffering and grief—Jesus knowing the complete extent of the burden we carry in being human. Jesus came not to lord over us but to become one of us. Jesus came not to ride on a colt and throw candy to the masses but to be beaten and condemned to death alone. Jesus came to be with us in the concentration camps, in the slums of Bangladesh, and the refugee encampments in South Sudan. Jesus came into the world to seek out the shadows and claim that every life that human beings neglect is more precious than all the gold in the world. Jesus came to turn the paradigm upside-down and to make the cross the throne. That’s Holy Week!
For the first time in generations, we are entering holy week with a hint of the uncertainty that accompanied Jesus into Jerusalem. Yes, there have been hard times before. There has been war; there has been poverty—in certain places in the world this is particularly true, and, not coincidentally, those seem to be the places in the world where Christianity spreads like wildfire. Yes, every generation deals with challenges, but today is different. We are forced from our church buildings where the comfort of coming together brought us through tough times. And it isn’t good. It isn’t good that this is happening. Death certainly is not good. We don’t want this grief, because we know the value of human life and the cost at losing any of it. There is no justification for this. And, yet, we should take notice of those Christians on the margins whose faith has emerged from a life that is fragile and uncertain and too often cut short. There are places in the world today where half the population never makes it to forty, and, yet, something about the vulnerability that permeates lives lost too soon also draws people to Jesus. You would think it would be the people living to 90 and dying in relative comfort who would be the most #blessed, but it’s exactly the opposite. Everything about life defies our expectations when the force holding the universe together is found not on a throne but on a cross.
Holy Week is a reminder that these things that kill us only make us stronger, that human beings need to remember our fragility in order to embrace the humanity in one another. We love because we are mortal, because that’s what people who know their limitations do. We don’t wave palm branches and sing “Hosannas” until we have lived through the immense gravity of the cross.
That weight you are feeling is grief—you have lost something already—and it is also fear that that loss will become all more real and painful. That weight is so heavy because this moment is so real. That doesn’t feel like it could possibly be good news, does it?
But you know what God does with expectations! We have a God who came to earth to walk among us and sit and eat with the beggars and the losers. We have a God who stands with the forgotten, who seeks out the lost. We have a promise that the one place you can reliably find God is where it hurts—in grief, in pain and in suffering—because Jesus went there before us. The cross. This week is about the cross.
If it feels more poignant today, it’s because it is. We don’t want to be here. I would much rather be preaching this to you face-to-face; I would rather be visiting in the receiving line about that NCAA championship basketball game coming up tomorrow or how the Twins are playing in this young season; I would rather be hearing about the trip you made to see the grandkids, about the beautiful new great-grandchild you got to hold, or one of the million other things we are missing. I would rather have all of that, but then again, I would probably have been out on the streets singing “Hosanna!” as well.
Seven days later, when the women went to the tomb to grieve, the world looked nothing like the world of Palm Sunday. Death won for a minute. But that’s the thing about expectations: You go far enough around and the very thing you were dreading becomes your salvation.
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