Palm Sunday. On this occasion in Jesus’ life, the triumphal entry into Jerusalem happens, and it is a big deal. Now I have my questions. Was this merely a publicity stunt to prove that Jesus is the one who fulfilled messianic prophecy and expectation? I mean anytime the text says something was done to fulfill prophecy, then it seems staged to me. It seems like self-fulfilling prophecy. I mean if I could find a beast with four heads coming out of the sea and a white horse, I could fulfill prophecy through the knowledge of retrospective, and say that is was talking about me. But there was an undeniable buzz in the air on that Palm Sunday long ago. Even clueless people were caught up in the moment.
I have experienced this kind of buzz when something exciting was happening where most people were clueless to what it was. I remember some years ago we were in Niagara Falls Canada, and something big was happening. There were people everywhere, by the thousands. Serious TV equipment lined the streets. We kept asking what was going on, and nobody seemed to know. We finally heard that the Arkansan John Daley was attempting to hit a golf ball across Niagara Falls, which would require a 500 yard stroke. He almost did it. The whole place was abuzz with excitement, and many like us didn’t know what was going on, but everyone was asking others about it and trying to see anyway. I think the crowd was similar here, and it was a dramatic entry none-the-less. Jesus certainly got their attention, and the whole city had heard before long what was happening. Word of who he was spread quickly as people asked “who is this.”
But maybe a more important question, why did Jesus act to comply with the people’s expectation for a kingly leader, if that is what this procession is all about? Nothing else in his ministry catered to anyone’s expectations, in fact, he did his darndest to askew convention and rewrite people’s traditional political and faith expectations. He was never that kind of leader, never that kind of person. Yes, I get the irony of entering on a donkey, but I am sure this subtlety was lost on this crowd, and is only appreciated only by the informed post resurrection reader.
At the end of the day, whatever his motive, it was his time, and as you know, things turned south in a hurry. And if the last few weeks have taught us anything, it has taught us how fast our whole world can change. So it’s not hard to imagine how Jesus went from hero to goat in a week’s time. The cries of hosanna and blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord turned to “I don’t know him” and to crucify him. He wasn’t who they thought he was. And why would he be? At least some should have known better, but even those closest to him were in the dark.
But not on this day. On this day there was great excitement and celebration. Most of it was jumping on the bandwagon as many people had no clue as to what the excitement was about, but got in on it anyway. It was a coronation for a king. It was sort of a flash mob without YouTube there to document it.
You see, here is the deal: people see only what they want to see. He was very clear in his entire ministry that the meek would inherit the earth but it didn’t make any sense; conventional wisdom says the mighty carry the biggest stick. He said, that we were to love our friends AND our enemies but that is crazy talk; What kind of cowardice is that? And to an oppressed people who longed for deliverance from the imperial cultus, he said don’t worry about what you eat or drink or anything else. He said turn the other cheek at aggression and to repay evil with good. What kind of foreign policy is that? He redefined power when he said for what will it profit one if you gain the whole world but lose you very soul? What kind of economic policy is that? He said whoever would be great would be servant of all? They had been subservient to Rome long enough, what kind of authority is that for a king?
I’ll tell you what kind—the kind that gets you killed. He threatened their most fundamental understandings and definitions. He threatened life as they understood it, and they were very insecure. He threatened everything that they knew about everything. They were threatened because they had everything all wrong. Yet knowing this, he entered Jerusalem anyway, knowing that the price would be high.
You see he was destined to suffer. Now, I refuse to believe it was to simply satisfy a payment for sin. That back tracks to nowhere but to a capricious God who is a fundamentally angry, bloodthirsty, and a sadistic father. It leads to a God who has to have his ego stroked in a certain way by defectively created people who in the history of the planet never lived up to expectations, but are going to be severely punished anyway even though they never had capacity to do anything else. That is a dysfunctional understanding of a God who is love. I believe instead that his suffering was inevitable, necessary and utterly predictable because people and powers were threatened, and like cornered animals, they responded with aggression. So he suffered. As Bonhoeffer said, he was edged out of this world and to a cross, and the truth is only a suffering God can come to us and address our human predicament. You see, Jesus was broken on the cross because the world was broken and the world is broken because we are broken pieces of that world.
I have always said this in my teaching of crisis intervention, and like I have personally experienced, that every single day, someone who was on top of the world yesterday finds that today the world is on top of them, an it happens just that fast. Today Jesus is on top of the world. It will be on top of him on Friday. The same is true for us in life. On top one day, and it turns over on us the next. Sometimes we know why, sometimes it is our own doing, sometimes we are clueless, sometimes fate is disconcertingly random, but it always results from brokenness or broken systems. Always.
The truth is, we see fleshed out in or text today that people put too much stock in other people. Jesus was not the savior they were looking for and they didn’t know what to do with him, and thy went to a very dark place and purged their consciences. People idealize and idolize reality, they look for virtue in others that compensates for their own deficiencies. We all live vicariously through others who we perceive as better, stronger, smarter, better looking, more popular or charismatic than us. To live through others helps us ignore our own shortcomings, and that is why they wanted Jesus to be something other than he was. They thought they needed Jesus to be something else, something less threatening to who they were at their core. Jesus was anything but kingly as it turns out, and they wanted no part of him.
We evidently not only need heroes, we need superheroes. And then there is this: We can’t tolerate brokenness, it is too close to home, it is mirror we can’t stand to look into. Being around brokenness reminds us of our own pain, character flaws, sin, and mortality. I am painting a bleak vibe of humanity, it is enough this morning to make you believe in sin. It is enough to make you believe in desperate measures to fix it. It is enough to lead you to a cross. And that is precisely why he had to suffer; you can’t fully immerse yourself in a broken system without falling prey to its brokenness. All too often, this brokenness is the inevitable end. Or maybe, just maybe it is really the beginning.
So no happy ending today, you will have to wait till next Sunday. But if there is Good News to ponder each day of the downhill spiral we call Holy Week, it is this: Jesus didn’t shy away from brokenness—he faced it head on. And in doing so, our salvation begins with Jesus showing all of us all too humans the way. The way to forgiveness, to reconciliation, to healing and wholeness. That is the meta narrative that we all continue to write as people of the way.
And to me, that is Good News indeed. And when you really get it, it’s enough to make you want to shout Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, indeed. Thanks be to God.
Providence Cyber Church 