Blessed is the King

First Reading:

O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his steadfast love endures forever!
²Let Israel say, His steadfast love endures forever.

¹⁹Open to me the gates of righteousness, that I may enter through them and give thanks to the Lord.
²⁰This is the gate of the Lord; the righteous shall enter through it.
²¹I thank you that you have answered me and have become my salvation.
²²The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.
²³This is the Lord's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.
²⁴This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.
²⁵Save us, we beseech you, O Lord! O Lord, we beseech you, give us success!
²⁶Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. We bless you from the house of the Lord.
²⁷The Lord is God, and he has given us light. Bind the festal procession with branches, up to the horns of the altar.
²⁸You are my God, and I will give thanks to you; you are my God, I will extol you.
²⁹O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.

Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29

Second Reading:

²⁸After he had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. ²⁹When he had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, ³⁰saying, Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. ³¹If anyone asks you, 'Why are you untying it?' just say this, 'The Lord needs it.' ³²So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. ³³As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, Why are you untying the colt? ³⁴They said, The Lord needs it. ³⁵Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. ³⁶As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. ³⁷As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, ³⁸saying, Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven! ³⁹Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, Teacher, order your disciples to stop. ⁴⁰He answered, I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.

Luke 19:28-40

When I read that this week I thought to myself, wait a minute… did they just say king? I thought it was blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord… That's what Matthew and Mark have the people shouting…but in the gospel of Luke, Jesus is hailed as king.

All of the gospels record the triumph of the entry into Jerusalem. And in all of them the procession is fit for a king. There are definitely allusions and stuff in all of the gospels so that the people who hear and read them know that Jesus is king. John's gospel goes the farthest… that's where we get the name Palm Sunday… by that time Palms had become a symbol of nationalistic revolt and John's the only one who mentions them… but both John and Luke have the people in the story, call Jesus a king; and especially in Luke, it sets the stage for the whole confrontation to come.

The people were quoting from the part of the psalms that looks forward to the messiah coming. Hosanna means save us. And they cried out to Jesus. Save us… save us from Roman Tyranny. Save us from the current state of affairs… we will follow you and make you our king if you will only save us. None of that was lost on the Pharisees who were looking on. They knew this was messianic procession. They heard the people calling him their king and they were scared… justifiably. You see in first century Palestine, the Jews enjoyed a certain amount of freedom that was extended to them by Rome and frankly, the people who were in charge of the temple benefited greatly because of it. I don't know the history of exactly how it came about and for the time being I don't know that it matters, but there was a sort of tacit agreement between the faith of Israel and the power of imperial Rome and the people who benefited the most from it didn't want anything to mess up their system… funny how the people who have some share of power over others always have an incentive to maintain the status quo, and in the case of Jews and Rome, the status quo was a little bit shaky. Scholars estimate that there may have been as many as 60 armed rebellions against the Roman occupation during Jesus' lifetime, and with each one, the sleeping giant that was Rome would get a little more restless and a little more impatient with the bothersome fly that was the people of Israel… Eventually in 70 AD, in the neighborhood of 30 or 40 years after Jesus was executed, Rome tired of the antics and they destroyed the temple in Jerusalem. The temple elite knew that their destruction was a real possibility so any display of nationalistic pride or talk of a new king would be put down by the people in charge; unless of course it carried with it the kind of power that would be needed to actually drive Rome out of Jerusalem… and they certainly didn't see it in Jesus of Nazareth. So they told him to tell the people to be quiet. But Jesus said, nothing doing… Even if the people were silent, the stones would cry out.

It was a moment of truth, a moment of revelation… things were converging on that day to shed light on truth the Pharisees may not have liked to hear. On that day the people who watched the procession called Jesus Lord and king… and they got it right. With his answer to the Pharisees, Jesus told them that even if the people were silent, it wouldn't change who he is… right now they call him their lord but even without their honor he will always be THE Lord. And of course 4 days later, the crowd would be silenced… in fact they go further than that. Many of the same people would be in the crowd on Friday shouting for his crucifixion…What a difference a week makes.

And you know, I'm always tempted to give the crowd a hard time… how in the world could people go from one extreme to the other in the span of 4 days. Some people say that the crowd on Palm Sunday was entirely different from the crowd on Good Friday. But I don't buy that. It's hard for me to imagine that the people who were excited enough about Jesus to call him their king and shout for him to save them, would have quit caring within a couple of days. It's much easier for me to imagine that he didn't meet their expectation and so they became angry. They became upset that they had gotten their hopes up and now they thought it was for nothing. Just like the Pharisees became angry when the people called Jesus a king, the people became angry when it became clear that he wouldn't be the kind of king they expected.

You see, I think most of them didn't actually know who Jesus was…they rode the wave of the moment. They got caught up in the crowd and the joy and the excitement. I think we all know at least something of what it feels like to be swept up like that. But I tell you what, if the only building block of faith the people had was when they were caught up in the emotion of the moment of the triumphal entry, it's no wonder that they were shouting crucify him less than a week later… Robert Belah in his book Habits of the Heart says that before you can prophetically scold or warn or help, you first have to have your own moment of truth experience… you have to know what you believe… The crowd was swayed by the surge of the day and I'm reminded that our faith isn't rooted very deep if it's only in the celebrations of life. The goal isn't necessarily to be where the excitement is. It's not even necessarily to be on the side that appears to be winning… Of course we celebrate Palm Sunday and Easter, but we miss something if we don't also go through the journey of the week between the two, the betrayal and denial, the shame and desertion and even the pain of loss and the fear of death. Because God's at work there too.

Some authors even point to those times as when we need the stones Jesus refers to in our passage. What are the things that are going to remind us that Jesus is Lord… not only when I feel like it or when things are going well, but also when the rest of the world is silent or even shouting against him, or falling apart around us?… Things like cultivating patterns of fellowship, service and accountability… fostering behaviors like reading scripture, spending time in prayer, being regularly involved with the faith community… these are a few of the practices that can be stones in our lives, and I would encourage you to find them because even on Palm Sunday, we know that Good Friday's coming.

But more than our own behaviors and practices the triumphal entry into Jerusalem directs us toward the strength of our Lord Jesus Christ and his ability to save, as the people asked him to. On the day when he has arguably the most public good will of his whole life, he stands alone and says to the people who challenge him… their opinion isn't what makes him who he is… Our vote doesn't make him the son of God… the people's cries don't make him the savior. He is who he is because that's who God has made him to be… whether we claim it or not. His identity affects us, but it is not determined by us. He is for us, but he is not for us to control… He is king, but he is the kind of king that he is… and not necessarily the kind of king we thought we wanted. And I'll leave you with a story about a theologian who seemed to understand all of this better than most…

During WW2, Nazi Germany attempted to squash anything that presented itself as a threat to their total control, and that included God. By many accounts they attempted to rewrite history on the strength of people alone, without acknowledging the role God played at all. So when it came to the church one of the strategies of the Nazi party was to remove anyone who refused to proclaim their doctrine from teaching positions and pastoral positions, and to replace them with people who would teach the right things. So two separate churches emerged: those which had leadership replaced became known as the occupied church… and the other, who primarily met in secret, called themselves Confessing churches. And there was one document that gave unity to the confessing church of WW2. Since then has become one of the constitutional confessions of the Presbyterian Church. It was called the Barmen Declaration… it denounced Nazi ideals and upheld Jesus Christ as the only head of the church… It was written by Karl Barth. He was one of the people removed from his teaching post at a university and to this day, he's considered to be the most influential theologian of the 20th century.

In 1962 Karl Barth made his only trip to US and a pastor who's a friend and mentor of mine went to hear him speak at Princeton University and he told this story. He got there more than an hour early because he wanted to see Karl Barth up close to be able to look at him as he spoke… the atmosphere was electric. By the time Mr. Barth started to speak there were well over a thousand people there, everyone was standing uncomfortably close to one another… not another person would have fit into the room and people were in the hallway hoping to still be able to hear. The lecture he gave was incredible, but what happened after the lecture was even better. You see there was a question and answer time. Someone would ask a question in English and Mr. Barth's son would hear the question, then ask it to his dad in German and then Mr. Barth would answer in English. It was amazing. One of the people who has had the most influence on how Christians all over the world understand God was sitting there answering question after question.

Just a few months before that lecture, Adolf Eichmann, who was known as the architect of the Holocaust had been executed and knowing what role Karl Barth had played in the anti-Nazi movement, one person asked the question, Do you think that now that Adolf Eichmann has been executed, the guilt of Nazi Germany can be placed on his shoulders and we can move on? And the room was filled with silence as the question was translated. And when the answer came, the place erupted into applause. It was what my friend imagined Palm Sunday might have been like. Because a deep truth was spoken and everyone knew it.

And this was the answer that Karl Barth gave. He said No, the guilt of Nazi Germany doesn't need to be placed on Mr Eichmann's shoulders because it has been placed on quite another man's shoulders. And that man is Jesus Christ.

Friends, that's hosanna! The people cried Lord save us. And that's the big question of Palm Sunday: who can save us? Who can make us whole and who can make us well?

On that day the crowd thought Jesus could. In a few days they wouldn't be so sure. But even when the crowd is silent, the rocks will cry out. Even when the crowd isn't sure that he can save them, he is still the Lord. He is still the son of God and he is still the one to whom we can turn. That's what Palm Sunday teaches us. Even when you aren't sure, even when I'm not sure that Jesus is Lord, that doesn't change the fact that he is. And it's to him that we can turn… on Palm Sunday, on Good Friday and on every other day. Thanks be to God… Let's pray.

Lord thank you that the crowd shouted hosanna, and thank you that you are still able to save. Thank you that the guilt of Germany, the guilt of America, the guilt of my family, the guilt of me and the guilt of everyone here has been placed on quite another man's shoulders. God thank you for who Jesus was and thank you for who Jesus is. God thank you that the crowd recognized him on Palm Sunday and Lord I pray that we too will see him this day, this Holy week this Easter Season and beyond. In Jesus Name we pray. Amen.

The foregoing sermon was given by Rev. Dan Holland at the United Parish of Bowie on the Palm Sunday, March 28, 2010.

© 2010 Daniel Holland