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April 01, 2007
Jesus’ Big Moment in Jerusalem
Zechariah 14: 1-8/John 12: 12-19
April 1st, 2007
Everybody, everywhere loves a parade. A parade celebrates something or other, sometimes something important. Sometimes a parade seems just to celebrate celebrating. I remember with strange fondness when I played the bugle in our Boy Scout troop drum and bugle corps in India.
I have a picture of us marching along some dusty road in Ooty, blasting our bugles and pounding our drums. I don’t remember what we celebrated. I can visualize people standing along the roadside grinning and plugging their ears as they watched us khaki clad white boys march by making an awful din. It’s the parade that counts. It doesn’t have to sound good.
We have the idea of a parade when we think of Palm Sunday and Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. It was a parade with excited people lining the roadsides, waving palm branches and shouting “Hosannah!” a word that sounds a bit to us like “Hooray.” We wave our American flags. They waved palm branches. John’s Gospel doesn’t tell about the people throwing down their sweaters and jackets before Jesus as He rode along—quietly.
Usually we read from Zechariah 9 on Palm Sunday. This prophet who prophesied as the Second Temple was being built five-hundred years earlier, wrote one line that captured the attention of early Christians: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you, triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on an ass, on a colt the foal of an ass.”
The early Christians were Jews. In those difficult days when the Jews looked for deliverance from the Romans they searched the Scriptures for hints of how God would deliver them.
Just as you and I read the prophets of the Old Testament and find comfort from some verses, no matter what their context, so did the early Jews. You and I read Isaiah 43: 1-2 and quote it to one another in times of stress or sadness: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you . . .” And we rightly find comfort in those words written long ago in another context.
In a similar way Jews in Jesus’ day read the Scriptures written long before and recognized that the prophets of old were talking specifically about much later times—about now, specifically.
You remember when Jesus understood the prophet Isaiah in this way. One Sabbath He was invited to read in the synagogue in His hometown. After he read from Isaiah 61 Jesus gave the scroll back to the attendant and said, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” Isaiah was talking about NOW.
It was just this idea that came to Jesus’ disciples as they thought back on that charged moment when Jesus rode into Jerusalem from Bethany five days before the Passover that ended with Jesus’ crucifixion. The old prophet was looking down the corridors of time when he wrote, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you, triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on an ass, on a colt the foal of an ass.”
John could have read more than this from the prophet Zechariah. The passage we read this morning included, “On that day living waters shall flow out from Jerusalem . . . and the Lord will become king over all the earth.”
Back in John 7 we read that Jesus had this prophecy in mind when he was in Jerusalem at the Feast of Tabernacles. Then Jesus said, “If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me . . . out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.”
You and I read this that Jesus said long ago and couple it with the story of the Samaritan woman at the well and sing a beloved song, “Fill my cup Lord, I lift it up Lord, come and quench this thirsting in my soul.” Jesus is the living water who quenches our deepest thirst. Thus we see Zechariah 14 and John 4 and 7 speaking to us now.
We look back at the first Palm Sunday and because of what Jesus’ disciples saw, we see broad hints of things to come. This was Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. But what was the triumph? When did it happen?
Churches around the world commemorate that first Palm Sunday parade with parades of their own. Little children and grown-ups will walk around the block waving palm branches before entering their churches for their Palm Sunday service. Why?
Because five days before the Passover, John’s Gospel tells us, “a great crowd who had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying, ‘Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!’ And Jesus found a young ass and sat upon it.”
We imagine that “Hosannah” must have meant something like “Hooray!” But it was a shout with more urgency than celebration to it. It derives from the same Hebrew word as the name Jesus Yeshuah is the name in Hebrew, and means “the Lord delivers.” Hosannah (Hosh’iah na) was a cry that meant, “Deliver us NOW!” What was the tone of voice in that crowd? It was a cry that if it had echoed through the streets of Jerusalem would surely have brought the Roman soldiers running. It would have had the effect of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, summoning the nation to arms. The great leader is passing by. Let’s join Him and put off the dreadful yoke of Rome. Pontius Pilate was the worst of the Roman governors assigned to the Province of Judea.
Something like this, in fact, happened thirty-six years later after a Roman army mysteriously gave up putting down Jewish rebels near Jerusalem. When the Roman consul, Cestius Gallus quit Jewish rebels in Jerusalem took heart and began to mobilize for major war. This started the War with Rome that ended with the destruction of the Temple that Jesus came to after His “triumphal entry.”
Nothing like a revolt was conceivable when Jesus came quietly and humbly into Jerusalem. We don’t know what fraction of the great crowd (oxlos polus) in Jerusalem that day watched Jesus ride by. Some think it could not have been huge or Roman soldiers would have come running to smother the potential insurrection. But clearly it was a large enough number that it caught the attention of Jesus’ disciples. What are we to think of this?
I think of how we reckon importance by largeness. John underscored the importance of this moment by saying a large number of people saw Jesus ride into Jerusalem. Similarly he and the other Gospel writers emphasized the grandeur of Jesus’ care for people by telling us He fed 5,000 men plus women and children on one occasion, and 4,000 people on another—with a small shepherd boy’s lunch. We look at the great numbers, but we also look at the small lunch with which Jesus began.
I wonder when I read the story of Jesus’ triumphal entry. It had no marks of triumph to it except the suggestive imagery of Jesus riding on a donkey-colt, reminiscent of the understatement by which conquering generals sometimes proclaimed their great conquests. Thus they rub it in. “It was a piece of cake, conquering you.” Perhaps this suggested false humility.
I think back to the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Mark’s Gospel puts it most simply. “Now after John the Baptist was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God and saying, “The Kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel.” Who heard Jesus say this? How many? Did He say this loudly or softly?
We see on the television pictures of evangelists preaching to vast throngs of people. I think of the televised crusades in Africa of that fellow from Akron, Ohio. As far as the eye can see there are people—who cannot see what’s going on up there where the evangelist makes people fall backward under the Spirit’s impulse--and tells them they are healed. Nowadays it is important to show that a lot of people are present to suggest the importance of the religious event. But the great moments in Jesus’ life that we celebrate grandly happened in out of the way places—like Bethlehem in a stable, and in tiny Jericho, on a hillside overlooking the Sea of Galilee, in a modest upper room in Jerusalem, on a bleak hill where three crosses stood on Good Friday, and very early when all were asleep in a tomb near Jerusalem and now, five days before Passover.
I wonder if when Jesus came into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday it was a similar understatement. The importance of the event was not measured by how many people watched, but by the consequences that awaited, the way a mighty oak tree is foretold in a little acorn. If we cut open the acorn we’ll see no hint of the immense tree that would grow from it if we hadn’t cut it open. The secret of that oak tree to come lies hidden in the DNA tucked into the acorn. It takes a long time for an oak tree to grow quietly through the winters and summers of many years. Even so the DNA of Palm Sunday waited a long time to produce something that looked like a conquest.
What happened after the first Palm Sunday hardly looked like a victory. The victory Jesus achieved on the cross looked like utter defeat. But everyone ever after who has found her life changed by the Gospel recognizes the power of the cross. This victory in the human heart doesn’t come in mass production like Henry Ford’s model-Ts. This victory comes quietly, from person to person as solitary people look at that gentle Man who, five days after riding humbly on a colt into Jerusalem hung on a cross.
When people watch a parade they feed off the excitement generated by so many people. But when we come to Jesus, there is not much gained by feeding off the excitement of the crowd. We come to Jesus in our personal and private need and that’s where He meets us.
I believe a problem many people have in finding satisfaction for their inner needs is that they think of themselves as others seem to be, in the crowd watching the parade. So if I can reproduce what you said, or what was your apparent “experience” of Jesus, I will find God’s satisfaction of my need. It doesn’t work that way very often.
One of the most interesting aspects of my years as a pastor is recognizing the difference between what I don’t know when I look out over a crowd assembled for worship and what I discover when individuals sit with me to talk alone. How often I’ve totally misread people. The look on the face belied the need in the heart.
The other Gospels that tell of Jesus’ ride into Jerusalem remark, as in Matthew, quoting Zechariah, how humble Jesus was. He did not wave to the crowd, enjoying His celebrity. Luke tells us that when Jesus drew near to Jerusalem he wept over it. “Would that even today you knew the things that make for peace!”
Even so there are those of you who come to this festive day with your hearts heavy. You hear the grand hymns and feel the excitement but what you want is a drink from that flowing stream that Jesus said is available if we come to Him. Does it help you to see the look on Jesus’ face? It has been the experience of many people that they had to reach their bottom-out experience of feeling need before they could see the look on Jesus’ face, and then take the drink that would satisfy them.
“Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden,” Jesus said. Indeed, unless we are weary and heavy laden we’ll probably just join in the noise of the crowd at the parade. Unless we know we’re thirsty we’ll look at the water but not DRINK.
When you come to Jesus, weary and heavy laden, don’t cling to your burden. Don’t hold onto it “out of principle,” sure that you have to cherish what is crushing your spirit. Jesus said, “My yoke is heavy, my burden is light.” You and I, one by one, have to exchange our heavy burden for Jesus’ light burden. I wonder if today might be such a day for you. Come to Jesus. Don’t just stand in the Palm Sunday parade and try to get caught up in the excitement. See into that quiet and humble face of Jesus as He rides by on that little donkey colt and know that He has you in mind. May I pray that you will see Jesus in your need today, and that you will come to Him and drink of the living water He has ready to pour to overflowing into your cup.
Let us pray: O Lord God, grant to us to see into the face of Jesus riding by, and to listen to Him speak to us, and to respond to His invitation, “Come to me, and I will give you rest.” Amen.
Pastor Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at April 1, 2007 09:00 AM