April 16, 2000
This message was given by Pastor
Gene Preston on Palm Sunday, April 16, at the APEX, Floor
75, Central Plaza Tower in Hong Kong. The text: When
they were approaching Jereusalem, at Bethphage and
Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he (Jesus) sent two of
his disciples and 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. If anyone says to you, "Why are you
doing this?" just say this, 'The Lord needs it and will
send it back here immediately." They went away and found
a colt tied near a door, outside in the street. As they
were untying it, some of the bystanders said to them,
"What are you doing, untying the colt?" They told them
what Jesus had said; and they allowed them to take it.
Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their
cloaks on it; and he sat on it. Many people spread their
cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that
they had cut in the fields. Then those who went ahead and
those who followed were shouting, "Hosanna! Blessed is
the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the
coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the
highest heaven!" Then he entered Jerusalem and went into
the temple; and when he had looked around at everything,
as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the
twelve.
"RAINING ON
JESUS' PARADE!"
(or Do you see the
devil in the leafy branches?)
(Mark
11:1-11)
Eyewitnesses to dramatic events
often can't agree on what they witnessed. Some may agree
on an overall view but disagree on details; others may
agree on some details but arrive at differing overall
pictures.
The assassination of President
Kennedy in Dallas in l963 is a much cited example.
Although there were hundreds of immediate eyewitnesses,
there has never been agreement among them on how many
shots rang out that fateful day; some heard one shot,
others two, others three or more, and some none at all.
What the public sees and hears
at public events varies on where one is standing, the
angle of view, what one had for breakfast, and, perhaps
most of all, why one was at the event. The Kennedy
shooting was in the context of a fairly slow moving
parade of official vehicles through a festive crowd who
only wanted to see the President. They did not expect
what happened and ever since no consensus has emerged as
to what really did happen that fateful November 21,
l963.
The parade of Jesus into
Jerusalem was a similarly festive public event and like
most street celebrations we might hesitate to read too
much into it: weren't most of the people just out in the
streets to see and cheer the much talked about rabbi of
the moment? Surely that but expectations did vary about
who Jesus was, why he was entering the holy city, and
what the effect of it all would be.
A very similar outline of Jesus'
entry into Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday which is
found in all four gospels. They all agree that Jesus
enters Jerusalem a few days before his death; he rides in
on a donkey, symbolic of a prophecy that the Messiah
would arrive in humble fashion; he is greeted with
enthusiasm by the crowds.
However, on some details of the
happening these four gospel narrators do not agree. Of
course, probably none of the four were eyewitnesses but
each draws upon eyewitnesses and we discover that
different people saw different things.
Mark and Matthew mention leafy
branches and cloaks as the means of welcome while Luke
mentions only that cloaks were thrown before Jesus; only
the writer John sees palm branches being waved. These, of
course, are minor details; all four writers agree later
on that the "triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem"
wasn't triumphant at all. It was a tragedy. They all rain
on Jesus' parade, that is dampen down the natural
enthusiasm regarding it, and today's writer, Mark rains
the most, clearly considering the triumph not a big deal
at all.
While Matthew speaks of "great
crowds" following Jesus and concludes that "the whole
city" was in turmoil at his entrance; and Luke and John
also emphasize the big size of the welcome; Mark
downsizes the crowd count mentioning one time only "many
people" observed the parade into the city.
Matthew and John see Jesus
deriving momentum and energy from his entrance into the
city because he goes immediately to cleanse the temple.
John observes how irritated the Pharisees were by the
boisterous welcome of the upstart rabbi. But Mark ends
his Palm Sunday episode on a more offhand note: after the
entrance he has Jesus go to the temple, just look around,
and then because it was late Jesus does the sensible
thing and goes off to sleep in the nearby village of
Bethany.
Why does Mark rain on Jesus'
parade? Well, if we read on we find that all four writers
shift abruptly from happy clapping welcome to the tragic
events of the days of Jesus life: the betrayal by Judas,
the arrest of Jesus, the trial at which the same
multitudes who had welcomed Jesus with open arms, end up
the ext day cursing and spitting on him in derision and
rejection; the disappearance of his friends. In all four
gospels later actions completely undermine the enthusiasm
and happiness of Palm Sunday and reveal it for having
been superficial, a public sham.
But among them Mark is the more
willing to dampen our interpretation of its importance
because Mark sees the devil lurking in the leafy
branches.
This is because Mark, somewhat
earlier than the other eyewitnesses, is onto the insight
that the people are not welcoming Jesus at all; they are
welcoming their idea of a Messiah. We began our worship
with some verses from Psalm ll8 which by the time of
Jesus, centuries after it had been composed, had come to
be sung and interpreted as referring to one who is coming
triumphantly, as a second King David, to liberate the
people of Israel. This psalm written some 500 years
before Jesus speaks of the "day that the Lord has made"
and of welcoming with a festive procession of branches
"one who comes in the name of the Lord.' By the time of
Jesus the context for this psalm was that of a repressed
and beaten down Jewish colony of the Roman Empire hoping
above all for military rescue; this psalm sung in
Jerusalem in the year 3lAD would have been a violent cry
for liberation from the imperial yoke.
It is in the spirit of this
messianic psalm or song and with cries of "Hosanna" to
greet the conquering hero of Yahweh that the people
greeted Jesus, and, as such, they misperceived his
ministry in two ways. Expectation does influence what we
see.
First, Jesus did not enter
Jerusalem merely to revive King David's dominion in the
city. He came to show the reign of God which meant the
universal restoration of all things to God's purpose, to
God's peace or shalom.
The building blocks in God's
universal kingdom are divine love and justice. In place
of food pantry poverty, abundance for all. The yellow
face of sickness becomes the radiant face of health.
Where the family member glares at others with alienation,
there is to be mutuality and patience. The reign of God
is much, much bigger than the reign of David. It conveys
peace to all.
And secondly, in the first phase
of breaking forth with the kingdom of God Jesus was no
guerilla warrior, like the Maccabees had been a century
before him. Jesus saw himself as the Suffering Servant of
God. Jesus is not going to be a David-like conqueror. To
the contrary, Jesus must "undergo great suffering, and be
rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the
scribes, and be killed, and after three days, rise
again." (Mark 8:3l).
Mark is skeptical of the crowd's
ability in anyway to discern rightly who is Jesus and
what his entry into Jerusalem means for them. In fact,
Jesus' own group of friends are unable to discern
correctly who he is and why he has come to the city.
Suffering is the farthest idea from their minds and
loyalties.
Let us be clear about this
point, however. Neither Mark nor any of the writers have
Jesus replacing a crude Jewish nationalistic hope with a
superior, universal Christian one. That became a later
Christian spin. The notion of the universal reign of God
which would bring peace to all nations and all peoples is
thoroughly Jewish (e.g. Isaiah 40:3-5, 60:5-7). The
Christian discernment that God works in the world
through divine suffering and in contrast to the brassy,
violent ways of the nations is quite Jewish at its
source.(e.g. Isaiah 52:l3-53:l3, 4 Maccabees
l7:7-22).
It's just that there are two
very Jewish and very opposite views of what happened on
that first Palm Sunday. There is the view of the crowds
and the disciples which is nationalistic and militant;
there is the view of Jesus, and Jesus alone, which is
pacific and universal.
The development of a theology of
divine suffering comes, of course, with Christ. The
Christian church at the outset had to face the debate:
why couldn't God just overpower his enemies; why couldn't
Jesus put on the armor or righteous goodness and
judgement and crush all his enemies &endash; the scribes
and elders and priests and Romans. Why couldn't Jesus
live up to the expectations of the crowd, giving them
what they wanted?
The Christian answer, derived
from Jesus' own teaching but anticipated in Hebrew
scriptures especially the prophecies of Isaiah, is that
God chooses not to overpower power with power because
that would continue the cycle of interaction of violence
and force. God breaks the endless spiral with divine
suffering.
Sometimes in the Hebrew
scriptures, God's power is played out on the same plane
as the power of the lesser gods. The idols have fire, God
has more fire.
But also in the Hebrew
scriptures the God Yahweh appears to be less in His
power, less than His power really is, so that humans can
begin to discern the contrast between God's ways and
purposes, and the powers and purposes of the lesser gods
and human idols.
When God decided to call the
human race back to his guidance, he did not act in glossy
and rich Mesopotamia, calling some suburban couple;
instead he went to the outlying desert and called an aged
couple already well into their golden years.
When God called some of the
prophets he did so not through earthquakes, winds and
fire but through the still, small voice of divine
truth.
Ultimately, when God decided to
give his greatest gift to the human race he acted, not
through a prince of religion or of the world, but through
a baby who grew up to be a humble carpenter.
With God less is
more.
God does not cause suffering.,
But God works through what appears to be defeat in order
to confirm divine promises of revival and redemption.
Through an old couple, as good as dead, God shows the way
for blessing for all human families through the Jewish
people. God brings Israel home from exile. God then
raises Jesus from the dead.
The Palm Sunday crowd could not
comprehend this divine route which winds through
suffering. The crowd just wanted a parade whose meaning
would be obviously triumphalistic. So the crowds cry out
for David-like power to once more be demonstrated in a
David-like way. They've had enough of suffering under the
Romans. They want muscle. They want the security of being
on the same side of the street with the person with a
bigger stick than anyone else's.
This way of thinking assumes
that God works the same way as everyone else, only more
so, because God is bigger.
By letting us follow the crowd
through the rest of the week, Mark shows us what happens
to people who think this way. The crowd cheered on Palm
Sunday; by three days later they were a near demonic
rabble crying out for his blood. The crowd is not just
fickle; the crowd deteriorates into a wholly irrational
mob easily manipulated by the powers which purposefully
choose to resist the reign of God and use the
multitudes, so easily bent to evil, for their ploy
against God.
By the next, Easter Sunday, the
crowds, having served the devil's purpose, are dispersed.
People are sleeping; making breakfast; carrying out the
trash. Follow the crowd and miss the
Resurrection!
Every Christian and every
Christian congregation faces the temptation to follow the
crowd and miss the Resurrection. We want to bask in the
glory and power of Jesus; we are less eager to identify
with his suffering and weakness. We want to begin Easter
Week singing some happy, clappy songs on Palm Sunday and
wrap it up the next Sunday with nice Easter allelulias.
I hope many of you this Good
Friday will attend our service here so as to identify
with Jesus' suffering which fills up Easter week; or if
unable to be here, will you take some time, for Friday is
a legal holiday, to read further in any of the four
Gospels which go into detail about how wrong things go
after this Palm Sunday.
That this text of Mark is not
the triumphal entry of traditional Palm Sunday theology
is confirmed in vs. ll. The end of the story is an
anti-climax. Jesus simply walks through the temple, looks
at everything, and returns to Bethany to spend the
night.
Mark rains on Jesus' parade
because he sees, rightly, that it wasn't really Jesus'
parade; it was really the devil's parade with the crowd
seeing what they wanted to see and not what God wanted
them to see. As for Jesus has had quite enough for one
day. He had more important things to attend to on the
morrow. He had to tell his disciples to return that
borrowed colt. And so he went to bed.
Pastor Gene
Preston
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