Thought before worship: “The Church can disturb the security
of sinners only if it us not too secure in its belief that is has the word of
God. The prophet himself stands under the judgment which he preaches. If he
does not know that, he is a false prophet.” ~ Reinhold Niebuhr, Beyond Tragedy
Palm Sunday is an exercise in holy ignorance. Its purpose
each year is to remind us that we just don’t get God. That we so often fail to
understand His purposes, His word, His answers to our questions, or His
solutions to our dilemmas. This is an odd story because we know they’re happy
now but we also know where this will lead– we’ve seen the end of the movie. So
why do we do this every year? Should we pretend that we haven’t read this
before? No, of course not. The point, however, is that even on this side of the
events surrounding Holy Week, things that are the crux of our faith, Jesus’s
final teachings, his death, burial and resurrection, he’s still mysterious,
strange, and odd. We watch him weep and almost 2,000 years after the fact we
weep too because if we’ve learned anything it’s that we still don’t get it. That’s
our final lament this morning the aching truth that we just don’t understand
God.
So our Lenten lament is not over, yet. In some ways, it is
just beginning as we enter into Holy Week. It will change so fast - from triumphalist
to being trumped, from shouts of “Hosanna” to shouts of “Crucify him.” On this
special Sunday prior to Easter, what should we finally lament? We should lament
that . . .
1.
We
don’t get the God who acts out Scripture – actually, we just don’t get scripture.
It’s important to realize that Jesus is being very
intentional with all this business about a donkey, riding into Jerusalem and
the disciples know it. What’s happening here is a sort of biblical trivia and charades
all rolled up into one – a whole host of unspoken, dramatized Scriptural clues
that Jesus’ audience immediately pick up on that most of us don’t. Jesus was
declaring himself to be king.
Right off the bat, it’s helpful to ask, “How many texts are
at work here?” “How many bible passages are being referenced?” Any guesses? Conservatively,
at least 7. Two of the five are explicit:
First, Jesus is acting out Zech. 9:9 – which speaks of a humble king riding into Jerusalem on
a donkey to save God’s people, release prisoners – it’s a cataclysmic,
apocalyptic description which identifies the messiah – the long awaited king
who would bring them out of political domination, rebuild the temple and make
Israel great once again. Jesus is deliberately acting out this text. By the
way, have you ever read Zechariah?
That the people get this reference is found by their own
political cry of praise taken directly from Psalm 118 which heralds the One who comes in the name of the LORD
who will cut off Judah’s enemies. It’s a messianic psalm.
But there is more! There are more subtle allusions like Genesis
49:10-11 – Jacob’s blessing of a coming ruler who ties a donkey to a vine; 1 Kings 1:38-40 which discusses Solomon
riding to his enthronement on a donkey; 2
Kings 9:13 – which speaks of the people placing their cloaks on the ground
for Jehu after the Lord pronounces him king; Is. 55:12 – speaks of the mountains bursting into song and the
trees clapping their hands, and finally Zech.
14:4 – tells us of God’s standing on the Mount of Olives ready to fight on
behalf of Jerusalem.
So far I’m just talking about the many biblical references
that Jesus chose to act out and for which the disciples, in turn, chose to
respond with. It’s a humbling array of texts which speak of a people steeped in
the Scriptures. But there’s more at play here than just scriptural allusions: I
haven’t even mentioned the historical
context of Roman domination and occupation in the region; the cultural context of angaria in which a civic leader or rabbi might requests the use of
an animal for a specific purpose, nor the messianic
expectations that most Israelites held – that the messiah would, at the
very least, be a military leader who would usher in the reign of God by first
vanquishing Judah’s enemies.
All of this should leave us a bit feeling like a fourth
grader in graduate level astrophysics class. We’re simply chewing on our pencil
while we wait for lunch or recess. The spiritual response of (move fingers up
and down on lips - bbbbbbbbbbbb).
My point is that Palm Sunday should once again expose us to
a reality that is all too easy to forget – not that we simply fail to do what
we should do but that we often don’t even know what we should know. We haven’t
learned enough Scripture, haven’t read it as thoroughly as we should.
Why does this matter?
Because Palm Sunday reveals that our God is a God who does everything by the
book – and guess what, there’s a lot going on in this book. One of the most
significant reasons we miss God, is that we haven’t learned God’s word, we
haven’t taken it to heart. It’s the deep theological truth that the Holy
Spirit never works independently of the word, and that the word is made
effective through the Holy Spirit. The Bible, in other words, is your “Wanted
Poster” for God. And, ironically, he wrote it himself. It’s how we recognize
him.
How do we address
this failure of knowing Scripture that Palm Sunday so aptly reveals?
First, we need to
acknowledge what all experts of any discipline know and embrace – the depths of
our own ignorance.
Second, we need
to learn to love God’s word and ruminate on it – chewing it, or as the Psalmist
puts it, “murmuring” it day and night. We need to give the time necessary
to allow Scripture to sink in. We have a phrase for what I’m talking about – “to know something by heart.” It’s to
have knowledge become such a part of your life that it can show up without
effort - to memorize it so that it remains fixed in our memory molding our
minds and our will. I know this isn’t a fun tasks – and many of you are saying,
“I have a terrible memory.” It’s interesting to remember, however, that our
forbearers in the Covenant who sparked a massive revival were often called
“readers.”
Finally, we memorize it not so that
we can be Biblical experts but so that we can pray. Learning the Bible is a
lot like learning a language and that requires a certain amount of memorizing
but for use not for some esoteric knowledge. There’s a lot to remember when
speaking a language. Words matter – illus.
Marianne and the beaver story
2.
Palm
Sunday reminds us that reading isn’t enough. You can read and still
misunderstand Jesus.
The scariest part of this story is that these good readers,
the “multitude of the disciples,” Luke tells us, don’t get it. So Palm Sunday
leads us even further down the rabbit hole of the reality that to not get it is
more than a problem of deeper knowledge or awareness – it exposes the myth that if we truly knew God’s will, God’s way, we
would want to do it.
Luke goes to great lengths to reveal that the disciples
don’t get it – Luke 19:11 – they thought the kingdom of God would immediately
appear, they thought it would be the destruction of Rome, the vanquishing of
real and imagined enemies. Even after Jesus’ talk about turning the other
cheek, taking up one’s cross, they believed that spilling Roman blood would
save them. The irony that Jerusalem, which means the “city of peace” did not
understand what makes for peace. They believed that military might, revolution
would be God’s glory but in AD 70 Jesus was proven right as the Roman General
Titus destroyed Jerusalem and the temple.
Palm Sunday reminds us that our God often doesn’t live up to
our expectations. We struggle to understand why God doesn’t act as we would
want Him to, behave the way He is supposed to. It reveals that those who praise
him are also quite willing to betray him when we encounter something that we
don’t like – that cuts across the grain of our personal beliefs, our political
hopes, our own ethical visions. Jesus himself was aware of this – in vs. 14 he
cryptically describes his hearers, the disciples, no less, as citizens of a
country who “hated” the one sent to them saying, “We do not want this man to
rule over us.”
Jesus doesn’t betray us but sometimes his message can feel
like betrayal. It grates against a desire to define ourselves by our nation, by
our enemies, by our kinship, by our own vision of peace and prosperity. But he
has declared that there is only one side for peace, one side for salvation,
only one who is King. Jesus tells us that there is no side but mine – and then
he weeps.
Why should we
remember this story every year? We need to remember this story because it
intersects with ours. They are us. How do I know this? Because we still don’t
understand our own suffering let alone his. Because I still so easily praise
Him and believe that someone who follows Jesus will have an easy life, a
successful life, a life of only wonder and joy. Because many of us still
believe that we can bomb our enemies to find “peace on earth and good will
towards men.” Because we still often refuse to believe that power is located in
the cross. We want Jesus to stop his crying and do something to fix our world –
refusing to realize that he has done it.
And we are reminded – we just don’t get it. But remember,
there is grace inside of ignorance.
Some words of
encouragement for a people who don’t get it:
We don’t get it – but
we still can praise him.
This is a story about praising someone we don’t understand.
About worshipping with Scripture on our lips and failing to fully grasp what we
are saying. In many respects that’s what worship is.
The author Kathleen Norris writes, “As a poet, I am used to
saying what I don’t thoroughly comprehend. And once I realized that this was
all it was – that in worship you are asked to say words you don’t understand,
or worse still, words you presume to think you have mastered well enough to
accept or reject – I had a way through my impasse.
Even though they get it wrong, Jesus still doesn’t silence
them. Even in the depths of our ignorance, praising him is the right thing to
do.
We don’t get it – but
we can still be saved.
Their praise gets it right. He is THE king not OUR king.
Jesus did not run for president. He rules whether we like it or not. He weeps for
what is true whether we weep or not. And his kingship turns out NOT to be what
they or we always imagine. They’re wrongness doesn’t change his ability to make
us right. He may weep but he will not stop!
Palm Sunday reveals a gracious ignorance that we can jump
into the Christian life with both feet and even more abandon, ever mindful that
our failure to comprehend is hardly God’s failure to act compassionately. He
doesn’t allow their ignorance to thwart his plan, to change his mind. They
didn’t get that the cross would be their victory but their getting it didn’t
stop God. What was God’s plan? Well – it’s there right in front of us to see in
Luke 19.
Luke 19 begins with Jesus’ own military counteroffensive,
his true design to bring a traitor to justice, to enact kingdom rule, to
vanquish enemies, to reveal God’s real plan for the wicked – I’m speaking of
Zacchaeus. What does Jesus do? He seeks him out, eats with him, loves on him
changing him from the inside out. And when their love turns to betrayal – he
does what all prophets do – he goes with them, ahead of them into the very
judgment that he preaches – death at the hands of the Romans.
Friends, we don’t get
it – but He still is God
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