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April 5, 2009--Palm Sunday

Lectionary Texts: Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 31:9-16; Philippians 2:5-11; Mark 14:1-15:47 or Mark 15:1-47

Sermon Text: John 12:12-16

Hopeful Steps

As the lights dim, a sense of anticipation sweeps over those who have gathered in the lecture hall. Without any introduction, each student’s attention is drawn to those three simple words that have suddenly appeared on the screen. It simply says, “The Last Lecture.” What do you think is going through each student’s mind?

Certainly some are overjoyed that an end is in sight. But do you think there may be others who now are panicked that they may have missed an opportunity for deeper learning, especially when the final exam is now just around the corner? Or could it be that even a few are confused, or rather ignorant of what all this means? Someone might lean over to a friend and say, “I thought we had one more week of classes!” And what about that poor lost soul who begins to frantically look in his or her previous lecture notes to see what article they were supposed to have read entitled “The Last Lecture.”

The very first Palm Sunday didn’t include a lecture hall or the use of media presentations. Honestly, the crowd gathered that day wasn’t a group of formal students waiting for a teacher. This crowd instead was looking for a king. But one thing is similar for sure, a lesson is what they were about to receive. It may have been more than ironic that just as many people were confused in the crowd that day as they might have been in our modern lecture hall, especially those who didn’t know they were students after all.

The question was whether this lecture was about the ability of the crowd to “get it,” or whether it was about the lesson and the teacher himself?

That’s the funny thing about biblical hope: it is a message that relies less on our ability to manage it or to get it, and more on our ability to be gotten by it or to cling to it as it takes us up into its possibilities. Truthfully, isn’t the former reliance the heart of panic?

With great futility, we manage our escape routes and we organize our plans for life, only to find out that we had no clue that certain news or events are before us. In a sense of helplessness we need something to cling to, something to hang onto. So what do we grab? Is it more forced bravado from deep within, or is it a particular apathetic worldview? Or maybe it is a certain politic that seeks to craft a new reality for our own life? Is there even room in the realities of our lives for a surrendered hope in the message and person of Jesus?

That’s where this story hit the people gathered that day. They carried with them their own nationally, home-brewed version of hope. They seemed to be filled with the possibilities of lifting Jesus up to the place of doing what they wanted. They seemed intent on seeing their personally-designed life stories built upon the back of a Messianic King.

You’d think this would make Jesus furious, but it doesn’t. Jesus seems to go along with it. He seems to play the part with the crowd, at least to the point of riding into Jerusalem. The donkey He chooses seems then to be His little way of subverting what may be misdirected hope. The biblical text tells us that unfortunately all this does is confuse the disciples. One has to wonder, is that the way the Savior of the world is supposed to come, in confusion? Is that the way your life is to be saved?

For those of us within the Church, or with some background experience of “church-life,” we know what we are supposed to believe about Jesus. We know what we are to say, and what we are not to say. Does the reality of our droning existence cause us to know more cynicism than hope? Have our unrealized or underdeveloped hopes driven us to making our own way with Jesus? Or is Jesus still able to have His way with us?

Zechariah long ago prophesied the coming of a king. He foreshadowed to whom this king would come, and he told them how this king would come. The most obvious, and maybe the most important part of Zechariah’s message, was simply that the king was coming.

In the fullness of our place in this story of Jesus, it is easy to collect Jesus’ story of birth, ministry, death, and resurrection. We can recite it as a catechism of Christian doctrine. But to know the reality of a God who steps into human history, leaving such miraculous life-change, is more than mere information, it is a source of hope.
With tears skating past a wide smile, Dr. David Cubie, now retired professor of theology at Mount Vernon Nazarene University would often say to his students, “If God stepped into human history 2,000 years ago, what hope we have that God will also step into our human history!”

Jesus didn’t approach the crowd with scowls, nor with militaristic demands. He let them sing. He let them dream. Yet He didn’t just leave them to their version of how those dreams would end. Instead He offered to them himself and the hope of a Kingdom that would last beyond the limits of our worst enemy--death.

The question for you and I is whether this story is more than merely a story, and if it may just be proof enough for our own hopeful experience of Christ’s participation with us in each of our own stories this Passion Week?