Sermon - March 28 - Palm Sunday

Unfortunately, we were unable to record Stuart’s talk, however, you can read the text below.

Being a Christian is like being on a journey of a lifetime. But unlike when we plan a trip, or perhaps a little like some unplanned diversions, we don’t always know where we might end up, or exactly how we will get there!

As many of you may know I have been fortunate to be able to travel a bit, something that we are all probably looking forward to increasingly with each passing week of restrictions. Our biggest ‘trip’ as a family was to Canada for myself to do a teacher exchange for a year when our children were quite young over 20 years ago and more recently going to Australia where one of our daughters lives and from there onto to New Zealand about 18 months ago. For a trip from almost one side of Canada where we lived just outside Toronto to Vancouver Island and back, which was 10000 km in total.

Then around both islands of New Zealand.

For both of these trips we considered hiring motor homes at first.

A motor home would have allowed us to put all the conveniences of home on wheels, not having to keep packing and unpacking at each new stop.

Unlike when I was a scout using campsites no longer would mean having to contend with sleeping in a sleeping bag, cooking over a fire, or hauling water from a stream or a lone tap. A camper can park a fully equipped home, often surrounded by trees and hook up to a water line, and electricity.

Many motor homes now have a satellite dish attached on top. No more bother with dirt, no more smoke from the fire, no more drudgery of walking to the stream or tap. Now it is possible to go ‘camping’ and never have to go outside if the weather is awful. So, both trips seemed to suggest a camper van would be a great option.

However, I quickly calculated that on both trips, firstly across Canada with a family of 5 and then around New Zealand with 4 adults, a camper was more expensive to hire and run than just having a car and renting places en-route. The other thing about a camper van is that we might be limited as to where we could drive and would usually be parked up on the edge of places whereas by renting different places we could experience new and different things each time from the places that we stayed in- some great, some not so good! It is always a bit more of an adventure to us to arrive at a new destination not quite sure what to expect and able to experience local variety- all a bit of an adventure.

Following Christ is a bit of an adventure, as I said we can never be sure where it will lead us and how we will get there. The adventure of new life in Christ begins when the comfortable patterns of the old life are left behind.

To truly see Jesus and his truth means more than observing what he did or said, it means a change of identity.

We don’t always see the potential in the things and the people around us. We can be blind to what really matters, we can become too familiar, a bit too comfortable perhaps.

When Jesus was living on earth, travelling around, teaching and healing, people did not understand who he really was. Some thought he was special, perhaps even a great prophet. But to others he was just a carpenter from Nazareth. For most of the time, it was as if he was in disguise.

And Jesus did nothing to discourage that.

For most of his public ministry, our Lord veiled his full identity. He played down the miracles and the extraordinary happenings. How often do we read of Jesus ministering in an extraordinary way and then disappearing into the crowd or retreating to a lonely place?

Jesus shunned popularity in the interest of a greater purpose.

He wanted people to hear the good news that the creator God really cares for humankind.

He desired everyone to know God’s love and the offer of forgiveness and cleansing that is at its heart.

He passionately proclaimed a new experience of spiritual life that would transform people and their understanding of the world and their neighbour.

He wanted everyone to realise that the best part of life was still to come, so that people would be filled with hope. And, to emphasise all these important things, Jesus got himself involved with people’s lives at an ordinary level. He became one of us and in his early ministry he did not disclose his full nature so as not to distance himself from ordinary people, who knew they were sinful.

In Philippians 2, Paul comments:

5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

6 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;

7 rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.

8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!

Only after Easter did those with eyes to see and hearts to believe come to have a right view of Jesus.

The veil of obscurity was only really cast off at that stage.

Today, we remember the celebrations as Jesus entered the Holy City. That was the point when the veil of obscurity really began to lift; people could now see their true king and worship.

Each of the four Gospels tell the story of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem but they all tell it in slightly different ways:

Matthew draws attention to the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy as the principal theme.

Luke suggests that the scene was self-evident. If the disciples were too dim to understand then the stones would declare the truth.

John emphasises the mystery of it all; the full truth would only be discovered later.

And then we have Mark, in the passage we heard this morning he is more direct than the others. He tells us about the donkey, the colt.

The donkey was an honoured beast in Palestine. The mention of a donkey in Zechariah 9:9-10 fits the description of a king who would be “righteous and victorious.” Rather than riding to conquer, this king would enter in peace”, not on a horse prepared for battle.

Kings rode to war on a horse but returned victorious on a donkey. The donkey was not a such a lowly beast as we might think in our 21st-century western world, second-best to a stallion, it was the beast for a victorious returning king to ride on.

In our gospel reading we have a returning king, arriving with authority and power, just as the kings of old would have done in their moment of triumph. The disciples’ obedience, the friends’ loaning of the animal, the clothes and branches on the path, the shouting crowd, all indicate respect and honour due to a kingly person.

People’s anticipation of something special was rewarded.

The people gathered in Jerusalem were not let down as their Messiah rode in on the donkey.

He was fulfilling the Old Testament prophecy of Zechariah:

‘9 Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’

Their liberator was coming; the one who would bring material prosperity, the one who would exercise political clout as the powerful Messiah King to break the Roman power- or so they thought, and who can really blame them. That’s why they shouted ‘Hosanna!’ Hosanna means “save now”.

The crowds were full of expectation. Expectation that the end of tyranny and oppression was at hand and that the Messiah would be able to topple the hated Roman aggressors now. We can sing ‘Hosanna’ this morning and really mean it, but in a different way from the crowds that day.

Jesus was about liberation but not in the way that the crowds imagined it.

He was setting up a kingdom, but not an earthly kingdom. Courageously, he turned their idea of political power and military might on its head.

Jesus did not reach out for political leadership because he knew that the root of the problem was not political; instead, it was the human heart. He came to challenge and reverse the human idea that right structures will produce good people.

The truth is that people are often sinfully selfish, I know that I am, and it’s only when sin is faced up to and dealt with that there is hope.

Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey to signify that he wished to establish a rule of love, respect and honesty in people’s lives and the people missed the point.

We too can miss the point this morning.

We can believe in the Jesus that best fits our expectations and forget about the rest. For example, our Jesus can be meek and mild but not strong and opinionated. He can be inoffensive and gentle, but not decisive and suffering, and before we know where we are, we are following a Jesus made in our own image.

The crowds allowed themselves to be deceived that great day when Jesus came into Jerusalem.

Yes, it was right that they cheered and waved their palm branches and made a great fuss about him. That was appropriate, but their motives weren’t. They wanted the wrong things from their Messiah King and they would be very disappointed. As written in the Psalm this morning: ‘The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone;’. The people who were cheering for him because of their own expectations would reject him. If we have our own expectations of Jesus, then we too may reject him in our own way, without realising that we are doing so.

Jesus came to Jerusalem to die. He came to lose his life, not to gain earthly power, as those shouting hosanna that day thought he was going to do. Palm Sunday should challenge us about our motives. It should force us to look at our attitudes and our assumptions and to make us think again. What is it that we see in Jesus arriving on a donkey? The Easter events give us the answer to that kind of question, but that is something for next week.

May the Holy Spirit fill and guide each of us today and always, to place our faith and hope in the real Jesus and not one made in our own image.