Mountain High, Valley Low
Luke 19:28-40; 23:18-23
by Jim Westmoreland
In a Peanuts cartoon, Charlie Brown and Linus are standing next to each other, staring at a star-filled sky. "Would you like to see a falling star?" Charlie Brown asks Linus.
"Sure..." Linus responds. "Then again, I don't know," he adds, after some thought. "I'd hate to have it fall just on my account."
In the book Parables of Peanuts, Robert Short uses this cartoon to make the point that a star did fall on our account. God came down to us as Jesus: like a lamb led to slaughter, He died on our account. What humility. What love and, oh, what he accomplished there.(1)
Today, we come with Jesus down the Mount of Olives after Jesus was anointed by Mary, the sister of Lazarus, at their home in Bethany. The news about raising Lazarus from the dead and all of the other healings and miracles had raised the messianic expectations of the people to a crescendo. Emotions, hopes and dreams were at a fever pitch as Jesus came down the mountain toward Jerusalem. Jesus had sent ahead for a donkey. He would come riding into Jerusalem in stark contrast to the Romans who sat atop their stallions. Jesus would fulfill the prophecy of Zechariah who said, "Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey."
Today, we have the rush and exuberance of the excitable crowds. When things are looking good and long-repeated prayers appear to be on the verge of being answered, it is like those special "mountain high" experiences when we have felt very close to God. We are willing to do anything and say anything in our highly charged religious-emotional state.
How hard it is to stay there. How hard it is to follow through. How hard it is not to begin to hear other voices that can turn our enthusiasm into rejection and into the distancing cries of childish jeering and derision. Like the crowds who greeted Jesus, we have to decide whether we will just stand and cheer or whether we will follow Him.
There are always those voices who would like to eliminate this matter of decision from Christianity. There is something in human nature that hates to decide "Yes" or "No." A radio announcement that National Procrastinators' Week was to be the next week was broadcast. "Actually," said the announcer, "they were going to hold the celebration this week, but the organizers decided to put it off until next week!"
Our modern society has made such a virtue of openness and neutrality that we forget that it is the fundamental choices we make that shape all of life, and for that matter, the life to come. To not decide is to decide. Robert Beringer wrote about a woman who said she would not become a Christian because there were too many obstacles in the path of belief. "I'm not an atheist, but I'm just not convinced that God exists, or that Christianity is the right religion. I'm going to withhold judgment, and consider the matter impartially." That's fine, except that I hope this woman decides pretty soon, wrote Beringer. She is 87 years old, and her so-called "neutrality" is fast becoming academic! To not decide is to decide.
The simple fact is no one can remain neutral on the issue of Jesus Christ. We must decide for or against him.(2)
Churches celebrate Palm Sunday in different ways. Pastor Billy Strayhorn tells this story: "We have our Palm Parade with the kids. At one church the people meet in a room beneath the sanctuary. When everyone is ready they emerge through a side door to process around the outside of the church. Joining in the procession are people waving palm leaves, others playing musical instruments, including the bagpipes, while others are shouting and singing, "Hosanna." This celebration has become an important tradition in their church.
One year when Dr. Walter Bruggemann was pastor, he and the rest of the procession were outside when a young man living in the apartment house across the street threw up the window and shouted, "What's all that noise? You sound like the Salvation Army!"
Dr. Bruggemann looked up at him and said, "Son, we are the salvation army!"
What better way to sum up the events of the first Palm Sunday
than to call it a salvation army parade? Jesus and his ragtag
army paraded outside the city gates. The time had come. The
day of salvation was at hand."(3)
Palm Sunday IS a day of celebration. Or at least it always starts
that way because we try to relive a small portion of that day
when Jesus rode triumphantly into Jerusalem. It's a day of
victory filled with laying down outer garments and palm
branches in front of Jesus. It was a "mountain high" kind of
day. But as events changed as the crowds came under the influence
of other loud voices, they became a mob, and Friday became a
"valley low" kind of day. Shame, mockery, cruelty, all came
out of the mouths of the crowd as they yelled "Crucify, crucify
Him!" Pilate wanted to release Jesus, but Luke writes, "they
kept urgently demanding with loud shouts that he should be
crucified; and their voices prevailed." What moves us from triumphant days to days of despair and
denial? How can we celebrate Jesus one day and refuse to
follow Him just a few days later? Despite what some people
say, all roads don't lead to God! Some pathways reject God,
reject Jesus and that denial leads to darkness and to attitudes
that deny God's very purposes for us as His children. When we descend from the mountain tops of praise into the
valleys of indifference, rebellion and denial, God can still take
our darkest moments and overcome them with good. Author, speaker and teacher, Tony Campolo, tells how he was
asked to be a counselor in a junior high camp. He says
everybody ought to be a counselor at a junior high camp. A
junior high kid's concept of a good time, Tony says, is picking
on people. "And in this particular case, at this particular camp,
there was a little boy who was suffering from cerebral palsy. His
name was Billy. And they picked on him." As Billy walked across the camp with his uncoordinated body
the other kids would line up and imitate his grotesque
movements. Tony watched him one day as he was asking for
direction. "Which . . . way is . . . the . . . craft . . . shop?" he
stammered, his mouth contorting. And the boys mimicked in
that same awful stammer, "It's . . . over . . . there . . . Billy." And
then they laughed at him. Tony was irate. Tony's furor reached
its highest pitch on Thursday morning. It was Billy's cabin's turn
to give devotions. Tony wondered what would happen, because
they had appointed Billy to be the speaker. Tony knew that they
just wanted to get Billy up there to make fun of him. As Billy
dragged his way to the front, you could hear the giggles rolling
over the crowd. It took him a long time to say just seven words.
These were the words: "Jesus . . . loves . . . me . . . and . . . I . . .
love . . . Jesus." When Billy finished, there was dead silence. Tony looked over
his shoulder and saw junior high boys bawling all over the
place. A revival broke out in that camp after Billy's short
testimony. Tony says that as he travels all over the world, he
finds missionaries and preachers who say, "Remember me? I
was converted at that junior high camp." The counselors had
tried everything to get those kids interested in Jesus, says Tony.
They even imported baseball players whose batting averages
had gone up since they had started praying. But God didn't use
the superstars. He chose to use a kid with cerebral palsy. How are we going to follow Jesus into the future? Will we be
paralyzed from holding tightly to memories of past "mountain
highs?" Will we be defeated when following Jesus calls for
decisions that we don't want to make? To hear some people
talk, God only uses big churches, kind of like the superstars of
sports, entertainment and business. I don't think that's true. I
believe that every person and every church that is willing to be
used for the glory of God will have an impact far beyond what
we can even imagine, just like that kid who touched so many
lives when he said, "Jesus loves me, and I love Jesus." Why did I tell that story now? Because the crowds, the
Pharisees, the Sadduccees, Herod, Pilate everyone involved,
even the disciples believed that the Cross was defeat. Everyone
that is except Jesus. But Jesus knew that our God is a God who likes to take our
beliefs and stand them on their head, who likes to take the weak
and make us strong, who loves taking the least and making us
the most, and who loves taking the small and defeating the
mighty. What God did through Billy at that Junior High camp is exactly
what God did for the world through the Cross. God took the
most unlikely scenrario possible and stood it on its head to save
us from sin and death. God took the tragedy of the cross and
turned it into a triumph over sin and death. Even though we
get to the valley and scatter and run, don't give up on Jesus.
When your life feels like Mountain High, Valley Low,
remember Billy's words, "Jesus loves me, and I love Jesus."
And let them change your life! Amen.
Century Christian Church, April 1, 2007 - Sermon by Jim Westmoreland
www.centurychristian.org
1. Charles Schultz, Peanuts, quoted by Robert Short.
2. Robert A. Beringer, Turning Points, CSS Publishing Company.
3. The Rev. Billy D. Strayhorn, "Exalted," April 4, 2004, Pastor of First United Methodist Church, Joshua, Texas.