Scripture Reading: Mark 11:1-10
11When they were approaching Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples 2and said to them, ‘Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately as you enter it, you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden; untie it and bring it. 3If anyone says to you, “Why are you doing this?” just say this, “The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.” ’ 4They went away and found a colt tied near a door, outside in the street. As they were untying it, 5some of the bystanders said to them, ‘What are you doing, untying the colt?’ 6They told them what Jesus had said; and they allowed them to take it. 7Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it; and he sat on it. 8Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields. 9Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting,
‘Hosanna!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
10 Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!’
Sermon Title: "WHAT'S ALL THE SHOUTING ABOUT?" Sunday, March 16, 2008
PASTOR HUDSON: Today we want to explore
the subject of noise, shouting and celebration because
that's what this classic Palm Sunday passage speaks
to us about.
You know the story, the story of the triumphal
entry. How that on that final week as Jesus returned
to Jerusalem, he made arrangements so as to fulfill a
prophetic passage in the Old Testament for him to
enter on the back of what we would think would be a
simple donkey.
There were those that gathered and scattered palm
branches and their garments before him, and they
shouted and just gave a huge cry, Hosanna, blessed is
the one who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna to
the king of David's kingdom.
It's a marvelous story, and we re-enact it in
some way or another in many churches across our land
every year. It's an expression as simple as the
waving of palm fronds as we process into the
sanctuary, or anything that might even be more
elaborate. It's a traditional, very time-honored
celebration.
Let's ask the question, what is ultimately all
the shouting about? The way to ask that is to explore
this text for just a few minutes and ask a
fundamental question about the text: What really
happened on the way into Jerusalem 2,000 years ago
when that procession took place?
I think I can do that by sharing just really two
simple observations about the text to help us, and the
goal is to help us reflect in our own Holy Week what
the nature of the noise is that we're sharing with
Christ.
No matter how we observe Palm Sunday and the holy
days of this next week, when we come to Maundy
Thursday or Good Friday or Easter Sunday, it's
appropriate for us to think about and reflect as
Christians what is the nature of the noise that we are
making. Let's do that today.
Number one, I believe that when we look at the
biblical text, we see that there was a great deal of
noise, but first, not a lot of substance; secondly,
not a lot of true understanding about what Jesus was
doing in Jerusalem during that last week.
Now let me take those one at a time for just a
moment. When I say that there was not a lot of
substance, what do I mean by that? I mean simply that
the shout, in and of itself, is never an accurate
measurement of what's going on in the heart of the
individual that is doing the shouting. We may make a
lot of noise in the context of worship or in the
context of this celebration called the triumphal entry
and yet it not be sufficient to stay with us in the
days to come.
For example, all of these individuals that were
casting the palm fronds before the feet of Jesus,
taking their garments and spreading them on the
roadway, lifting their voices out loud to such an
extent that ultimately it brought the criticism of the
religious authorities because they were being too
noisy, they were not there just a scant four days
later when Christ was arrested and put into the
position of being put on trial for his life.
You couldn't find a single person who would own
that they had been on that roadway that day, up to and
including the disciples. They were all gone. Even
Peter, who the gospel tells us, followed at a
distance, followed so as to be far enough away that if
it became necessary he could say, well, I don't know
who this is. I just happened to be in the
neighborhood and wondered what was going on. Thought
I'd stopped by and see.
Kind of like the rubberneckers that slow down to
look at a traffic accident when they drive by: I'm
not involved. I'm just interested. Somebody is hurt?
They just keep on cruising, and so it was with even
Peter. The substance was not there.
Now think with me for a moment. I want to
take you back into the Old Testament. In the book of
First Samuel there is a story about an interesting
experience that Israel had. I'm going to sketch it
out for you very briefly. The point of the story will
be to illustrate how noise alone does not say anything
about the substance of what is behind the noise.
It's a time when Israel is in a conflict with the
Philistines. Warfare has broken out. As the Old
Testament is wont to say, the two camps were pitched
against each other. They were arrayed in battle, as
the King James version would say, and warfare broke
out. The shots, as it were, were being fired. I'm
playing a little loose there with my images, but they
were exchanging blows. Israel is thoroughly and
completely whipped.
Now behind the scenes back at the homeplace,
there was a priestly family, the priestly family of
Eli, who had fallen on hard times spiritually. In
fact, Eli was becoming a very aged high priest and did
not have the kind of spiritual substance and authority
over the religious affairs of Israel in order to
maintain the purity and the essence, the holiness of
that institution.
In fact, Eli's two sons, Hophni and Phineas, had
become notorious because they as individuals were
absolute rascals. They were scallywags in every sense
of the word. They defrauded the people. They
corrupted the people. They manipulated the funds of
the tabernacle. There was a lot of underhanded things
going on.
In fact, it was because of this that God's favor
and blessing was not resting upon Israel; and hence,
they lost round one with the Philistines. So after
they were thoroughly drubbed and had lost some
thousands of warriors on the battlefield, they came
back to camp to lick their wounds, and they begin to
do an inventory because they knew all the stories.
They knew that they were God's chosen people and
that God had led them out of Egypt and all the miracle
stories, and they were wondering what in the world
went wrong. Why was God not with us in this battle?
As they begin to do the inventory, somebody who was a
little more creative and intuitive than the rest said,
I know what the common denominator is. We didn't have
the ark of the covenant with us.
In those entire wonderful, miracle stories that
we grew up hearing about, the crossing of the River
Jordan, going into the land of Canan and going around
the City of Jericho and so forth, the ark of the
covenant always was with the people out in front, led
us into those events, and the miracle occurred because
the ark was there. We left the ark at home.
So they sent back to the home place, and they had
Hophni and Phineas and some other priests bear the
Ark from the tabernacle down to the battlefield where
Israel was licking its wounds.
Now the writer of Samuel tells us that when the
Ark of the covenant came into the camp of Israel, a
tremendous shout went up among the people of God. The
shout was a shout of celebration and praise and just
all the excitement knowing that now they had what they
needed, truly the weapon of mass destruction that
would give them the victory the next day, and that
shout rolled across the valley to the other side to
where the Philistines were, and the Philistines found
themselves, according to Samuel, asking the question,
what does this noise mean? What's all the shouting
about?
Someone told them -- maybe some of their advanced
scouts told them the ark of the covenant of the God of
Israel has come into the camp. The Philistines,
apparently, had heard the stories, too, and they said,
we're toast. We are in trouble because we've heard
those stories, and we know that it means that God is
going to be with them. Tremendous things are going to
happen, and tomorrow is going to be a bad day.
Someone among them, I don't know who it was, the
text doesn't tell us, but they said, listen, maybe
we're going to die, maybe we're going to fail
tomorrow, but we're Philistines. Kind of like those
movies about Star Trek. You know, we're Klingons.
Today is a good day to die, let's go do it. So that's
what they said, let's be Philistines, get out there,
do our best, and if we fail, at least we'll fail like
Philistines.
So the next morning the battle engaged again, and
if you know that story you know what happened, Israel
lost the battle big time. They were thoroughly
drubbed the second time in a row with more losses of
life, and to add insult to injury, the Philistines
even overran their ranks and captured the ark of the
covenant and carried it off to their own home base.
Now what does that story mean? It means that God
is not in every shout. God is not in the noise simply
because there is noise. There had to be more on the
battlefield than just the ark of the covenant and a
bunch of shouting. Most people needed to be tuned
into what God was doing in their midst, and they
needed to have their house set in order in such a
manner that they truly were centered in the will of
God.
There was questions of purity and questions of
holiness and questions of commitment, and all the rest
that goes into that imagery of a relationship with
God. Then and only then did the shout mean anything.
In fact, when those other things are in place, it
really doesn't matter much whether you shout or not
because you've got the real stuff to put up.
Let's go back to the triumphal entry for just a
moment. People shouted, but the substance was
lacking. Now I mentioned another thing. It's not
just the idea that they didn't have the substance, but
they didn't have understanding because they said
blessed is the one who has come to restore the kingdom
of our father, David.
For them that was a way of saying blessed is the
one who has come to declare his kingship here on
earth, to declare that he is re-establishing the
throne of David, to kick the Romans out and send them
running, to clean the government house, to get rid of
the corrupt collaborators among us, you know, the
people like King Herod and others, and to restore to
us the glory that was Israel's as we've heard the
story told from the time of David and Solomon.
What they wanted was for Jesus in this entrance
into Jerusalem to put out his shingle that says I have
arrived a call to arms, let's get rid of the Romans,
let's get rid of the corrupt politicians. Let's bring
Israel back to the place as God's chosen people and
the autonomous dwellers within the land of Palestine;
that's not what Jesus was about.
In fact, some scholars suggest that by the time
you reach mid week of that final week in Jerusalem
when Jesus did not hang that banner out that said I am
going to be the one who overthrows the Romans, that
that was a large factor in why the crowd just
evaporated. Their expectations were not met by a
Jesus who was not political, but was spiritual.
Do you remember when he stood in front of Pilate
and he was giving an account of himself? Then also
when he was with Herod Antipas and in that trial time
he was asked, are you, indeed, a king? Jesus's
response at one point was simply, yes, I am a king,
but my kingdom is not of this world. If it was, then
my servants would fight, but it's not. Jesus in
Matthew's gospel told us that his reason for coming
was to fulfill the law, that means something very,
very different.
You see, there is yet a third thing I want to
share with you today. When we talk about what
actually happened on Palm Sunday, it was not just the
failure of the crowd to plug into who Jesus was or to
commit and really draw substance from that commitment,
but it was also an underappreciated miracle that took
place that week. They didn't appreciate it, and my
challenge to us as Christians would be to ask, do we
fully appreciate it because I believe it's easy for us
to lose sight of it.
The underappreciated miracle is simply this, in
Matthew's gospel, the fifth chapter, Jesus said, I
have come to fulfill the law. In that word "fulfill"
is carried the idea of bringing the law to its fullest
potential and promise.
I believe that Jesus understood that the purpose
for the Old Testament law was to ultimately bring us
to full and free and complete salvation. A salvation
not based in what we do or don't do, accomplish or
fail to accomplish, but a salvation that's based in
the work of Jesus Christ that we can invest ourselves
into by an act of appropriating faith, that we can
believe in Jesus Christ, and by believing in him and
the sacrifice he made for us, we can discover that
peace that passes understanding, that serenity that
keeps us in every avenue of life no matter what it is.
Holy Week was the culmination of all of God's plan of
salvation history.
If you go all the way back to the creation when
Adam and Eve blew it, and we found ourselves living
with the fragmented existence that was the result of
that fall, from that time onward God's historical time
line was about bringing us to that moment when Christ
would give himself as the once-for-all sacrifice for
every man and woman who needed that kind of covering,
that kind of forgiveness, that kind of redemption,
that is bringing the law to fullness. It's the
culmination of God's plan of salvation.
Now when we understand that, then something
changes in what we do when we have these moments of
great celebration, whether they're palm frond kinds of
celebrations or whether they're hymns or choir anthems
or praise songs or just time in our private closet of
prayer. What comes is an experience that arises out
of our heart that has been touched by God's converting
grace.
The noise we make, whether it's very quiet or
very loud, becomes a noise that is driven by the
awareness that Jesus is and has died and risen again
for me. We're not looking for a physical king. We're
not looking for someone to simply re-order our world
and somehow or another convert our country into either
a democratic paradise or a republican paradise or an
independent paradise, that's not what we're about.
What we're about is plugging into a God, a
Christ, who converts us, changes our world first
within, and does so in such a way that we move in joy,
life abundant from that moment onward, and out of that
experience comes a celebration that lasts literally
year round.
So let's come back to that question that we
started with: What's all the shouting about? As we
stand here on Palm Sunday, we've sung the hymns, we've
sung the praise songs, we've heard the choir sing,
we've enjoyed and watched the youngsters come in with
the palm fronds. We've done many different things,
all of which have been good moments, but it's
appropriate now to ask ourselves this, what does that
noise mean in here?
Am I living and moving with the kind of joy and
celebration that says, I get it, I understand it?
It's not about a political king. It's not about
anything superficial or temporal in nature. It is
about my redeemer who has entered my heart and created
his kingdom here.
What kind of noise, in short, are we making? The
answer to that will give us a deep and abiding clue,
not only to how Holy Week will be for us, but how
Easter will be a week away, and indeed, how every day
of our life in Christ will be.
I invite us, as we come to a time of prayer, to
ask that question. Let the Holy Spirit whisper the
answer, and then invite the Holy Spirit to renew us so
that we will not be those who wave the fronds today
and by mid-week are far removed from Christ.
Rather, let's draw close. Let's make the journey
with him every day of our life. In the name of the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.