Turmoil Over Jesus
Matthew 21:1-11
by Jim Westmoreland
Today is Palm Sunday. It is the day when we remember the waving of the palm branches and the shouts of Hosanna. It is the beginning of the last act of the drama of the life of Jesus. Jesus entered Jerusalem that day riding on a donkey. He was celebrated as the long-awaited Messiah. The stories of His miracles and healing and teaching had been gaining momentum and messianic fever was at a high pitch.
Yes, they wanted to worship Him, but they believed that the promised Messiah would be a conquering hero. They were impatiently waiting for Him to make His move, to overthrow the Roman government which ruled over their conquered territory called Judea. They were ready for Him to come in power and might and re-establish the glory of Israel that they remembered from the days of King David.
Their human nature and instincts were a lot like our human nature and instincts. The expectation and excitement of the crowd that day was really more about them than it was about God. When they waved their palms and laid down there outer garments for Jesus to pass across, they were ready for their prayers to be answered according to their wishes and for their dreams to be realized.
When Jesus didn't make His moves to overthrow Rome and set up an earthly kingdom, they were disappointed and confused. They were surely a mixed group that day as Jesus came by. By the end of the week, there would be no doubt about their confusion and turmoil over who Jesus was and what he was here to do.
Michael Yaconelli wrote an interestingly titled book, Messy Spirituality: God's Annoying Love for Imperfect People. In it he includes a poem by Shel Silverstein that is about people who have been silenced, called "The One Who Stayed." The setting for the poem is the children's story of the Pied Piper. To the story of the Pied Piper who comes to Hamlin Town and pipes away all the children to follow him, Silverstein adds a twist by having one boy who didn't go, but stayed home.
The boys's father said his son was lucky he wasn't found by the piper's music or he would have been cast under a spell like the rest. But the son knew better. He knew the piper's music had stirred something in him, something that was life-giving, and that he would regret silencing his longings to follow him. The boy's words were "I cannot say I did not hear/ That sound so haunting hollow./ I heard, I heard, I heard it clear . . ./ I was afraid to follow."
In Silverstein's story we pity the one who stayed. We cry a tear for the one who heard and was afraid to follow. We mourn the one who let the town grow old around him. Pity all of us who are surrounded by those who are afraid to follow the one who came to get us all "dancin', spinnin', and turnin'.
"But those of us who have heard the haunting sound of Jesus' voice, those who sense life and hope and adventure in the gospel, those who are willing to speak up, to question the deadness around us, to express our desire for life, we must not keep quiet, even if everyone around us tells we are crazy. And the crowd will call you crazy. And the masses will try to silence you."(1) Then and now, there is still turmoil over Jesus.
This familiar Palm Sunday story is really quite a shocking story. "It forces us to tell the truth about God. God rides in on a donkey, as a humble teacher rather than as a conquering hero. God takes the blow, endures the suffering and dies. What a peculiar way for a God to act."(2) No wonder there is turmoil over Jesus.
When Jesus rode into Jerusalem, it was Passover time, and Jerusalem and the whole region would be crowded with pilgrims who had made the journey to be at the Temple during Passover. Based on a Roman report a few years later of the number of lambs slain during the Jewish Passover, and based on the Passover regulation that there must be a minimum of ten people represented for each lamb that was slain, we have a pretty good estimate that more than 2½ million people were crowded into Jerusalem for Passover.(3) They not only came from Judea and Palestine, but they came from all over the world as the Jews of the diaspora, which was the scattering of the Jews following the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians and the destruction of the Temple.
So, not all of the people there had previously had the opportunity to hear Jesus teach or witness his healing of the sick. But, the buzz in town would have been about Jesus for any who had not yet heard. Jesus could not have picked a more dramatic moment to make his entrance into Jerusalem with the city surging with people and with Messianic expectations running high.
Jesus' entrance into Jerusalem on the donkey would evoke memories of Simon Maccabaeus, a freedom-fighting hero of Jewish history and folklore who won a victory to restore the Temple after Antiochus Epiphanes had desecrated it by sacrificing pigs to Zeus on the Temple altar and by turning the Temple chambers into public brothels. Though later defeated, Maccabaeus was welcomed into Jerusalem with palm branches and throwing down garments, and with shouts of Hosanna. The meaning of Hoanna is actually, "save now." In the initial response of the crowd Jesus was greeted as a king and as a savior, but by the end of the week, things would change.
How often it is that we begin our journey with Jesus with the enthusiasm of the Palm Sunday crowd. We wave our symbolic branches of commitment and participation in the church. We are energetic, vocal and are telling others about our journey with Christ and inviting them to church, but somewhere along the way, turmoil sets in. We don't want to appear fanatic to anyone, and we sure don't want to be accused of going off the deep end with our religion. Perhaps, we don't directly deny Christ or directly attack Him. But the turmoil of conflicting values, our quest for comfort, earthly rewards, and self-centered activities and life styles-all of these things distort our understanding of who Jesus is and who we are as His disciples.
Will Willimon tells about what he learned about preaching in seminary. "When you preach, you try to lessen the gap between your congregation and the gospel. You start with the Bible over here, and then you reach out - through careful illustration, real-life stories, references to the daily newspaper - to those who are seated over there in the pews. The preacher is the person who closes the gap, that great divide between contemporary people and today's gospel.
He writes, "But this Sunday, with Jesus coming into Jerusalem and about to bring out the worst in us, I wonder. Perhaps my best role as a preacher is to widen the gap, to point out the vast difference between Jesus and us. We look at Jesus - God in the flesh - and find him, well, peculiar. This is not exactly what we expected of God, and not exactly what we expected God to expect of us."(4) The turmoil over Jesus did not stop during those days between Palm Sunday and the shouts to crucify Him. It continues today.
As we have gathered to worship this Palm Sunday, we share the enthusiasm of the crowd calling out, "Hosanna, Hosanna." "Save us, Save us." Let us confess that we still live with the turmoil over Jesus, of deciding who He is for our daily lives. If we confess Him as Lord on Sunday, how do we confess Him on Monday? Or Thursday or Friday? . . . Let us covenant to confess Him everyday as we let His light shine through us and as we serve Him by serving and caring for others.
Century Christian Church, March 20, 2005 - Sermon by Jim Westmoreland
1. Michael Yaconelli, Messy Spirituality: God's Annoying Love for Imperfect People, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002.
2. William H. Willimon, Pulpit Resource, Jan-March, 2005, p. 50.
3. William Barclay, Gospel of Matthew, Edinburgh: St. Andrews Press, 1956.
4. Willimon, p. 52.