Palm Sunday 14
April 2019, Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church
Psalm 118.1-2, 19-29
Luke 19.28-40
Imagine, if you can, a population that has lost faith in its
national leaders…
Imagine a
country where political instability is the order of the day,
and
those who govern cling to power using a toxic mix
of
deceit, bullying, and outright coercion.
Imagine a
country where the alternatives aren’t much better.
Imagine a vast crowd, marching through the streets of the
capital city,
chanting
and laughing and crying out
that
the way things have turned out
is
not the way any of them wanted things to be.
Imagine a crowd longing for an alternative, a new leader,
who will
finally do things differently.
And, of course, there are others who aren’t so convinced,
who watch
the crowd from a distance, fearful of the power of the mob,
those who
want the crowds to disperse,
to
allow the processes of government to proceed,
for
better or not, in good order;
those who
are afraid of making things worse by pandering to populist opinion,
who
see the rule of law, and due process, as paramount.
Welcome, to first century Palestine.
Some of us here this morning will find it easy to visualise
the scene,
because we
were there, just late last year,
and the geography we saw hasn’t
changed all that much
over
the last two thousand years…
And as you retrace the steps of Jesus from Luke 19,
taking the
road from Jericho to Jerusalem,
you find
that it’s uphill all… the… way…
Jericho is 258 metres below sea level,
part of the
Dead Sea depression
that forms
the lowest point on the surface of the earth.
Whilst Jerusalem is 754 metres above sea level,
giving an
elevation change of over a kilometre,
all to be
climbed, in the first century, on foot in the desert heat;
a
very different experience from the air conditioned minibus
that
we were fortunate enough to have at our disposal last year.
By the time Jesus got near to Bethphage and Bethany,
situated on
the Mount of Olives facing Jerusalem,
just the other side of the Kidron
Valley,
he and his
disciples had already put in a couple of days’ of hard uphill slog.
And then Luke tells us about this slightly strange scene
where Jesus
sends his disciples on ahead into the village
to
find a young male horse that has never been ridden,
and
bring it to him.
It quickly becomes clear that this is something Jesus has
been planning for a while,
because it
seems there’s some prior arrangement with the people in the village
to let his
disciples take their animal without challenge.
And so the colt is brought to Jesus,
the
disciples throw their cloaks on it, Jesus jumps on,
and
they all set off across the Mount of Olives,
making their way towards Jerusalem.
And then, suddenly, the handful of disciples
who
had come up with Jesus from Jericho,
become a multitude of disciples, praising God
joyfully with loud voices,
loud enough to be heard across the
valley
and attract the
attention of the Pharisees
who
quickly come to see what’s going on.
And then, equally suddenly, and for the first time in the
gospel,
Jesus gets
a new title.
‘Blessed is the king
who comes in the name of the Lord!’,
people
start to chant.
After a whole ministry of assiduously avoiding the title
‘King’,
unexpectedly,
sitting on a colt on the Mount of Olives,
Jesus is loudly
hailed as King by his own disciples.
The whole thing has the air of being a massive setup.
This isn’t
happening by accident:
A
suspiciously large crowd of disciples,
the
pre-arranged availability of symbolically important horse,
and
a new chant which takes things to a whole new level in terms of impact.
It’s all starting to sound very Zechariah chapter 9 verse 9.
Let me remind you, in case you’ve forgotten.
The book of Zechariah, one of so-called ‘minor prophets’ of
the Hebrew Bible,
was written
some time after the Jewish return from Babylonian exile,
and it speaks, tantalisingly, of a hopeful future:
of a time when
Israel’s political strength would be
restored,
when the economic stability of its capital city would
be re-established,
and when
its rebuilt temple would have religious
superiority once again.
And as part of this hope for a new world order,
of a
renewed political, economic, and religious ascendancy for the people of Israel,
Zechariah painted a picture that profoundly shaped Jewish
theology
for the
next five hundred years,
giving shape to what became known
as the hope for a future messiah.
Zechariah said (in chapter 9, verse 9),
“Rejoice greatly, O daughter
Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!
Lo, your king comes to you;
triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on a donkey, on
a colt, the foal of a donkey.”
The Jews of the first century knew full well
what their
Messiah was going to look like,
and Jesus and his disciples
deliberately
enact that scene almost to the letter.
What on earth is going on here?
Well, I think it sounds like what, in community organising
terms,
we would
call an ‘action’.
Many of you will know that Bloomsbury is an active part
of the
community organising network London Citizens,
which seeks
to make our city a more just place.
And one of the key lessons of community organising,
is that you
only get the change in society
that you
have the power to demand.
You can shout about injustice until you’re blue in the face,
but if you
don’t have enough power
to
persuade the-powers-that-be to change,
nothing is
likely to change.
The Citizens method suggest that there are three kinds of
power in the world:
financial
power, political power, and people-power.
And if you don’t have a lot of money,
and if you
don’t have politicians in your pocket,
then the
way to bring about greater justice in society is to organise people.
So you network people together, drawing in churches,
mosques, synagogues,
schools,
universities, and community groups,
until you have enough people who care about injustice
to begin to
make a difference.
And then you plan what’s known as an ‘action’:
a
deliberate act, involving people in sufficient numbers to get noticed,
to draw
attention to the injustice you want to challenge,
and to put
pressure on the gatekeepers of power.
So, for example:
A business
that is not paying the living wage,
may find a large group of people
outside its head office
on
the day of their AGM,
visibly
drawing attention to the fact
that they are not treating their
employees with dignity.
Or a City
Hall might find a large group of people
making
a tent camp on its doorstep,
on the very day they are taking
decisions about affordable housing…
You get the idea.
And I think that what we have going on here in Luke’s story
of Palm Sunday,
is Jesus
undertaking what we would, today, call an ‘action’.
He’s done his power analysis,
and he
knows what he is setting out to challenge:
He is setting his face
against the
economic corruption of the Herodian regime,
and against
the political domination of the Roman empire,
and against
the religious compromises of the Pharisees.
Just like Zechariah before him,
he
identifies in his society the unholy trinity of power
that
is economics, politics, and religion
all
in each other’s pockets;
and he can
see that each of these has become corrupted,
so
that it no longer serves the people,
but
rather controls and oppresses them.
So Jesus gathers his crowd, and enacts his action;
deliberately
modelling his entry into Jerusalem
on the
archetypical messianic text from the Jewish Scriptures.
“Lo, your king comes to you;
triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on a donkey, on
a colt, the foal of a donkey.”
Zechariah would have been proud.
Sometimes, on Palm Sunday, we emphasise Jesus going to
Jerusalem to die,
setting his
face towards the cross,
to
sacrifice himself for the sake of humanity.
But today, I’d like to suggest that we look at it slightly
differently.
This isn’t Jesus going to Jerusalem to die,
although clearly
that is a possible outcome.
But rather, this is Jesus going to Jerusalem to announce his
kingdom.
Just as Martin Luther King never set out to be assassinated,
but
nevertheless recognised that his actions were endangering his life
as he spoke
and acted against the oppressive powers of his day;
so Jesus didn’t set out to be crucified,
even though
his actions to call out the abuses of power
were
certainly making that a possibility.
This is not a death march,
this is not
a dead man walking.
This is Jesus symbolically embodying
all the
things he had been talking about
over the
past years of his public ministry.
All the parables, all the healings, all the exorcisms,
had been
pointing to one thing:
which is that the old world of power and domination
was not
going to get its way for ever,
because a new world is coming into being,
where evil will
be cast out, where corrupt power will be challenged,
and where
those who have been diminished will be raised up.
It’s no wonder the crowd started to go wild,
the thing
they’ve been waiting for, for five hundred years,
is finally
happening.
And the timing couldn’t have been better,
Jesus is
entering Jerusalem in fulfilment of Zechariah’s prophecy,
in the precise
week of the great Passover celebration,
which introduces a whole other layer of symbolism to Jesus
public ‘action’:
The original Passover, you will remember,
was the
final act of God in persuading the Pharaoh
to release
the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt.
After the plagues of frogs, locusts, and the like,
the angel
of death visited the houses of the Egyptians
taking
the lives of their firstborn children,
but passing
over the houses of the Israelites
who
had marked their doorposts with the blood of a lamb.
And Jesus’ symbolic entry to Jerusalem
is timed to
coincide with the annual celebration
of Israel’s
release from slavery.
The point couldn’t be clearer:
this is
God’s new exodus, it is God’s great Passover,
Jesus has come to bring into being a new world,
where the
powers of empires like Egypt and Rome
would
be challenged at their very core,
and where
the corruptions of religious compromise and economic exploitation
would
be named and shamed,
opening a
new path to freedom for those enslaved.
And so the crowd shout words from Psalm 118.26
"Blessed is the king who
comes in the name of the Lord!
Peace in heaven, and glory in the
highest heaven!" (19.38)
giving us yet another highly symbolic reference from the
Hebrew Bible.
Psalm 118 was a traditional song sung by pilgrims on the way
to Jerusalem,
it is a
hymn of praise to the God who defeats all his foes,
and
establishes his kingdom.
And the crowd around Jesus start chanting it,
pinning yet
more hopes on Jesus
as the fulfilment of all the
nation’s deepest longings
for justice, renewal, and
restoration.
And so Jesus enters Jerusalem,
taking the
path from the Mount of Olives,
though the
Kidron Valley
and back up
the hill on the other side to the city of David.
And although Luke doesn’t record it,
I don’t
think it’s too much of a stretch to hear the crowds
still
singing Psalm 118 as they draw near to the city gates:
“Open to me the gates of
righteousness,
that I may enter through them and
give thanks to the LORD.
This is the gate of the LORD; the
righteous shall enter through it.” (118.19-20)
I spoke a few minutes ago about how public actions
are
designed to challenge the gatekeepers of power,
to bring
about the possibility of change.
Well, the triumphal entry of Jesus to Jerusalem is just such
an action,
and by
anyone’s measure it was supremely effective.
We get the initial response within our passage from Luke’s
gospel,
as the
Pharisees who have joined the crowd
tell Jesus
to order his disciples to stop.
But of course, Jesus is having none of it,
the moment
of his great public action has arrived,
and nothing
is going to get in its way.
So he tells the Pharisees that it’s useless
to try and
put a plug in the dam once the crack has appeared,
and that
the flood of God’s new kingdom is coming whether they like it or not.
‘If these disciples were silent, the stones would shout
out’, he says.
And, of course, so it proves to be.
The
revolution is coming, and nothing, nothing at all, can stop it.
Of course, as we who have heard the story before know very
well,
the
revolution doesn’t come in the way that the crowd around Jesus expected.
There’s the horror of Good Friday to get through
before
Easter Sunday dawns.
But the tide has turned, the dam has cracked,
the
possibility of a new way of being has been glimpsed,
and the good news of the in-breaking kingdom of God
will not be
silenced.
People are going to find release from their sins,
those who
are bowed down by the powerful trinity
of
politics, economics, and religion,
are going
to find a way through the darkness
to
new life and new hope,
as they
encounter a new trinity of faith, hope, and love.
The revolution that Jesus brought to Jerusalem
wasn’t, in
the end, the revolution the crowd were shouting for.
He didn’t take David’s throne, overthrow Rome, depose Herod,
and send
the Pharisees packing.
He did something far more significant.
The kingdom that Jesus inaugurated,
was not a
renewed kingdom of Israel,
based in
Jerusalem and defined by geographic limits.
It was the kingdom of God,
which
extends to all people, in all places, in all times.
It was the universal kingdom of love
which
always, in all places, and in all times,
offers
a persistent, unquenchable challenge
to those
unholy powers that seek to deny love,
and
to require people to live in fear.
And so we come to ourselves,
gathered
here in central London,
celebrating the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem.
And I wonder what the significance of this event is for us?
What is the
good news of the in-breaking kingdom for us, in this place?
Lent and passiontide are probably the most depressing
season in
the Christian year.
Some of us have been echoing Jesus’ fasting in the
wilderness for 40 days and nights,
by denying ourselves
of something through Lent.
Some of us have already fixed our sights on the cross of
Good Friday.
We know the
desolation of Easter Saturday is coming.
We know
there is a journey of suffering before we get to Easter Sunday.
And yet, what do we meet today on Passion Sunday,
Palm Sunday
as it is sometimes called?
Here at the start of the Octave of Holy Week?
We meet Jesus triumphant!
We meet
Jesus entering the city
to
a fiesta of praise and acclamation
as the
crowds cast their cloaks before him
honouring
and praising him
as
the king who comes to bring good news to the city.
And I can’t help but think, sometimes,
that if
Jesus, the week before his crucifixion,
with the
weight of the world on his shoulders,
can enter the city and share in the joy of its citizens at
his arrival,
then maybe
we too can find joy in the midst of the troubles of our lives.
You see, another one of the lessons of community organising,
is that
changing the world should be fun.
Laughter is a powerful tool for healing hurt and defusing
tension,
a smile can
unlock gates that no battering will shift.
And you don’t need me to tell you this morning
what the
problems are in our world.
Death and despair, politics and power, suffering and
starvation
confront us
every time we turn on our TVs
or open a
newspaper or news app.
And Jesus knew all about the difficulties and dramas of
human life,
he knew
what the Romans were doing to people,
he knew
that Herod had betrayed his people
in
exchange for money and power,
he knew
that the religious leaders
had
sold their souls in exchange for security.
But that didn’t stop him from entering into the triumphant
joy
of his
people at the coming of their messiah.
We often speak of the gospel
of Jesus,
we often
proclaim the good news of his coming.
But all too often we live as though the message he
proclaimed
was one of
middle class guilt and mild self loathing,
rather than one of triumph in the face of death,
and joy in
the face of sorrow.
There is good news to be found on Palm Sunday,
there is
joy to be found in following Jesus into Jerusalem.
Sure, it may not turn out as we expect,
and I’m
pretty sure that this time next week,
even
after we have lived through the cross and got to resurrection,
there will
still be news of corrupt politicians,
morally
bankrupt economics, and religious compromise.
But this is what Jesus came to challenge,
and he
invites us to join him not just in sorrow
but in the moments of joy and laughter
that summon
into being a new world.
He calls us to create with him a world
where power
is transformed, where oppression is challenged,
and where the mourning of death
is
turned to the bright day of new life.
So as we march together over the threshold of Palm Sunday
and enter
the sacred, powerful ground of Holy Week,
as we open the gates to a future unknown and unchartered,
which
certainly includes suffering and death
every bit
as much as it includes resurrection and new life,
let us do so with joy,
because we
are following in the footsteps
of the one who came to Jerusalem
to enact a
message of good news for all people.
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