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Where Are You Headed? Following Jesus Beyond Hosanna · Faith at Work

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  SPEAKER_00: Each year,
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  we reimagine the same momentous day that we just heard read
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  about in Matthew
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  SPEAKER_00: chapter 21.
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  SPEAKER_00: We imagine that we are in Jerusalem.
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  The city is beginning to hum with an energy that always
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  precedes Passover.
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  SPEAKER_00: Pilgrims are pouring in from all kinds of different places.
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  SPEAKER_00: Vendors are crowding the streets.
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  SPEAKER_00: The Roman soldiers posted on every corner are watching the crowd.
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  SPEAKER_00: And the city is already tense.
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  And it is always tense at Passover because Passover is a feast
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  about Israel's liberation.
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  SPEAKER_00: And liberation is exactly what Rome is in the business of preventing.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then, something new happens.
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  SPEAKER_00: Something new is coming down from the Mount of Olives.
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  SPEAKER_00: Word passes through the crowd the way word always passes through a crowd.
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  In fragments,
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  half heard,
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  then half invented,
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  like the kids' game we play.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's a prophet from Galilee.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's the one who raised Lazarus.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's the son of David.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's the coming liberator.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's the Messiah.
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  People are tearing branches from the trees and throwing their
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  cloaks on the road.
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  SPEAKER_00: And someone begins to shout.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then everybody is shouting, Hosanna, Hosanna, save us.
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  SPEAKER_00: Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then they see him on a donkey.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not a war horse, not surrounded by an armed escort.
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  SPEAKER_00: He's sitting on a borrowed donkey,
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  riding into the capital city of an occupied nation with a crowd
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  of ragtag pilgrims
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  SPEAKER_00: and peasants waving branches around him like this is a coronation.
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  SPEAKER_00: And they find themselves asking a new question.
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  SPEAKER_00: What is this?
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  SPEAKER_00: What's exactly happening here?
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  SPEAKER_00: What is he going to do?
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  Matthew tells us that when Jesus entered Jerusalem,
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  the whole city was in turmoil.
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  SPEAKER_00: The Greek word he uses is seio, the same word used for an earthquake.
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  SPEAKER_00: The city was shaking, and the question shaking it was a what question.
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  SPEAKER_00: What is this guy going to do?
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  SPEAKER_00: It is a fair question.
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  Because what Jesus is doing is either the bravest thing anyone
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  has ever done,
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  SPEAKER_00: or it is by far the most reckless.
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  SPEAKER_00: He is riding directly into the seat of power that want him dead.
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  SPEAKER_00: The chief priests have already been plotting against him.
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  SPEAKER_00: Judas has already begun to calculate the price of a betrayal.
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  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus...
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  SPEAKER_00: He knows all of this.
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  SPEAKER_00: And instead, he arranges a donkey.
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  SPEAKER_00: He fulfills a prophecy.
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  He deliberately fulfills Zachariah's ancient image of a king
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  who comes not in
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  SPEAKER_00: conquest,
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  SPEAKER_00: but in humility and rides straight into the seat of power.
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  SPEAKER_00: What is he doing?
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  Well,
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  he is answering with his actions the question that his entire
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  ministry has been raising.
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  SPEAKER_00: He is saying this is the direction that love travels.
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  SPEAKER_00: Love does not protect itself.
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  SPEAKER_00: Love does not retreat to the safe distance of good intentions.
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  SPEAKER_00: Love rides towards the suffering
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  SPEAKER_00: toward the broken city,
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  SPEAKER_00: toward the cross,
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  SPEAKER_00: if that is where the road leads,
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  because love has decided that the destination matters more than
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  the survival of the
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  SPEAKER_00: traveler.
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  He is also doing something that his followers will not
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  understand until much later.
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  SPEAKER_00: The crowd sees a king arriving and shouts for salvation.
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  SPEAKER_00: They are not wrong,
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  SPEAKER_00: exactly,
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  SPEAKER_00: but they are imagining the wrong kind of salvation,
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  SPEAKER_00: the kind that drives out Rome and restores the throne of David,
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  SPEAKER_00: the kind that answers power with greater power.
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  They do not yet know that the restoration and liberation Jesus
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  is bringing required
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  SPEAKER_00: him to do things none of them are prepared to follow.
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  SPEAKER_00: This season of Lent has asked us good questions.
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  Questions about our spiritual lives,
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  our practices,
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  our interior condition.
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  SPEAKER_00: But Palm Sunday asks us something different and harder.
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  SPEAKER_00: It does not ask us about our beliefs.
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  SPEAKER_00: It asks us about our direction.
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  SPEAKER_00: It asks, where are we headed?
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  SPEAKER_00: Because the crowd on Palm Sunday believed in Jesus,
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  for about a week they shouted his praises on sunday and they
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  were silent by friday
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  the distance between hosanna and crucify him is not as far as
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  we would like to
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  think it can be traveled in five days by people who were
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  entirely sincere when they
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  SPEAKER_00: waved the branches so what
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  SPEAKER_00: They were following a what.
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  SPEAKER_00: They were following their vision of what Jesus ought to do.
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  SPEAKER_00: What salvation ought to look like.
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  SPEAKER_00: What kind of king he ought to be.
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  SPEAKER_00: And when he turned out to be something other than what they expected...
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  SPEAKER_00: when he cleansed the temple instead of storming the praetorium,
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  SPEAKER_00: when he went to a love feast,
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  SPEAKER_00: a dinner party instead of rallying an army,
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  SPEAKER_00: when he let himself be arrested without a fight,
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  SPEAKER_00: they had nothing left to hold on to.
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  SPEAKER_00: Their what had failed them.
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  SPEAKER_00: The question for us this morning is...
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  Have the things we have re-imagined this Lenten season actually
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  changed the
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  SPEAKER_00: direction we are walking?
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  Belief that does not change behavior is not yet belief in the
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  fullest sense.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's just agreement.
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  SPEAKER_00: And agreement is not the same thing as following.
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  SPEAKER_00: Jesus is on the road to Jerusalem,
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  SPEAKER_00: to the cross,
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  SPEAKER_00: to the worst the human beings can do to another one.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then beyond it is something no one has yet to imagine.
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  SPEAKER_00: The question is not whether you admire the journey.
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  SPEAKER_00: The question is whether we are willing to walk the same road.
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  SPEAKER_00: Here is what I want to leave with you as we move from this place into the
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  SPEAKER_00: fellowship hall to the table and the basin and the towel.
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  SPEAKER_00: The crowd on Palm Sunday was focused on the wrong question.
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  SPEAKER_00: What is this?
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  SPEAKER_00: But the city's deeper question,
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  SPEAKER_00: the one that will not be answered until a garden on Easter morning,
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  SPEAKER_00: is the one that Matthew records in verse 10.
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  SPEAKER_00: Who is this?
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  SPEAKER_00: And all we call, Jesus will be showing us.
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  SPEAKER_00: In the upper room, breaking bread and washing feet, he will show us.
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  SPEAKER_00: In Gethsemane, praying until his sweat falls like blood, he will show us.
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  SPEAKER_00: On the cross, forgiving the ones who are killing him, he will show us.
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  SPEAKER_00: And in the silence of Holy Saturday,
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  SPEAKER_00: when hope itself seems to have been buried,
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  SPEAKER_00: we will wait for the answer that only Easter can give.
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  SPEAKER_00: So today, take up your branch.
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  SPEAKER_00: Walk the road or the corridor.
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  Do not look away from where it leads and hold the question that
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  is coming.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not what is this, but who is this?