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Today's reading is from Matthew chapter 21, verses 1 to 17.
This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet.
Say to daughter Zion,
See, your king comes to you, gentle and riding on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
The disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them.
They brought the donkey and the colt and placed their cloaks on them for Jesus to sit on.
A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road,
while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road.
The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted,
Hosanna to the son of David.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest heaven.
When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked,
Who is this?
The crowds answered,
This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.
Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there.
He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves.
It is written, he said to them,
My house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of robbers.
The blind and the lame came to him at the temple and he healed them.
But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did,
and the children shouting in the temple courts,
Hosanna to the son of David, they were indignant.
Do you hear what those children are saying?
They asked him,
Yes, replied Jesus.
Have you never read?
From the lips of children and infants, you, Lord, have called forth your praise.
And he left them and went out of the city to Bethany, where he spent the night.
This is the gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Christ.
Good morning, Christ Church.
This Palm Sunday is the day, and it's really the doorway through which we enter into Holy Week,
at which time Christians all over the world every year gather together to read and to remember
and to prayerfully celebrate the final days of Jesus leading up to his climactic crucifixion
and his resounding resurrection.
If you're here today and you're exploring Christianity,
I want to say this is a wonderful time to have a front row seat into what Christianity is all about.
If you've ever wondered why Christians see this as the turning point in history
and the center point of humanity,
if you've ever wondered how in the world can the life and the death of someone in the first century
have an impact on me here in the 21st century,
my life, my condition, my destiny,
this is a great time.
There's no better time, really, to get involved and to come and ask these questions.
If you're a Christian, perhaps you've experienced many, many Holy Weeks through the years.
You know Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Easter Sunday like they're old friends.
And my prayer and hope for you this week is that you would be surprised by God,
that his Son and his Spirit would meet you in some fresh and powerful ways.
The Gospels have been described as passion narratives with long introductions.
And that's because all four Gospels really spend the latter half of their narratives
talking about the suffering of Jesus from four different angles, four different perspectives.
That is that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, they give us a total of 30 chapters
on this final week of Jesus' life leading up to his death on the cross.
And so I imagine that even for those of us who are deeply familiar with these events,
that somewhere in those 30 chapters,
you might encounter something that you haven't encountered before.
You might integrate this week something into your faith and life that you haven't integrated before.
And that's my prayer, that the Lord would reveal more of himself to you,
more of his presence and more of his power.
So here's Palm Sunday.
It's recorded for us in all four Gospels.
What does it mean and why does it matter for us and for our lives?
I think this narrative before us in Matthew 21 tells us that
Jesus is the King who rides a donkey and transforms the temple.
I want to focus for a minute on this theme of Jesus as the King.
A lot of us, we assume that on Palm Sunday,
he kind of just stumbles into Jerusalem and sees the reaction of the crowd.
And he says, oh, shucks.
Okay, I guess, I guess.
You know, I'll go along with this.
But really, Jesus is this reflective theologian and a strategic revolutionary
who's given a great deal of thought and energy to what he's going to do
and what he's going to say to intentionally bring his story to a climax
and to bring his public vocation to its proper conclusion.
And so what we have here is premeditated symbolic action.
Jesus is making all these decisive, calculated arrangements
to enter into the holy city on this particular Passover feast.
In verses 2 to 3, he's giving detailed directions to his advance team.
And he says, this is how I want you to set up the staged campaign.
And in many ways, Jesus is recreating an enthronement scene.
In the ancient Near East, a king would go out to battle.
They would defeat their enemies.
And then they would return in victory.
And they'd be welcomed back into their capital city with great celebration.
And Jesus says, that's what we're doing.
For one mile, for 30 minutes, there's going to be this red carpet event,
this ticker tape parade where people are going to welcome their king
in this royal reception and procession.
Now, how do the crowds and how do the disciples respond to this?
Well, it says in verse 8,
that a very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road
while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road.
Now, you can imagine a person visiting our city
and you see a crowd of people taking off their very nice and very expensive jackets
to lay them down in the dirt for people and animals to walk on.
And what do you conclude?
You conclude this must be a very important person,
a person that's worthy of great respect and great honor.
You also conclude this is a great time to be in the dry cleaning business
because that's a lot of dirty jackets on the ground.
And what about these branches?
The Gospel of John tells us that these are palm branches.
And every Jew would know the meaning of this
because 200 years before this time, there had been a Jewish rebellion.
The Greek Empire had been oppressing the Jews,
had outlawed their practices of Sabbath and Scripture
and the sacrament of circumcision.
They went and set up pagan idols in all the Jewish towns.
They even set up pagan idols in the temple in Jerusalem itself.
And there was this one family, the Maccabean family.
They led a rebellion that was successful
and enabled Israel to practice their faith freely again.
And that's what's celebrated in the festival of Hanukkah.
But after that great rebellion,
this family made a crest and the nation minted new coins.
And you know what was on that crest and on those coins?
Palm branches.
Palm branches became the symbol of the nation.
It became a symbol of resistance and revolt.
It became a symbol of liberation and freedom.
And so they're laying down their coats,
but they're also laying down their palms before Jesus.
And what else does it say that the crowds give to him?
It says in verse 9 that the crowds went ahead of him
and those followed behind him and they shouted.
They shouted.
Now, why are they shouting so loudly?
Well, if you go back and you skim the Gospel of Matthew,
you can read all about these great deeds of supernatural power
that Jesus performed over Satan,
over the demons,
over disease and seizures and paralysis,
where he healed people who were crippled
and he healed people who were blind.
And he fed 5,000 people
and he calmed the storm
and he raised the dead.
And most outrageously of all,
he said to people,
your sins are forgiven.
Jesus is exercising the power
and the authority of God
over sickness
and over nature
and over death
and even over our greatest problem.
Sin is selfishly ignoring our Creator God
and Jesus says,
that's okay,
I can deal with that too.
And that's why these people say,
this isn't just one king
in a long line of kings.
This is the king.
This is God's only chosen king.
And so they're shouting at the top of their voices
and what are they saying?
They're saying,
Hosanna to the Son of David.
Blessed is he
who comes in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest heaven.
This is Passover.
And so this is one of their Passover hymns,
Psalm 118.
And it basically means,
long live God's king.
Because all through Moses and the prophets,
all through the Old Testament,
they were,
Israel was looking for a king
in the line of David
who would come
and put everything right.
This is a victory chant
of Israel's hope
that God will help us,
that God will save us.
That's what Hosanna means.
God, save us.
Come and defeat our foes.
Come and bring deliverance to your people.
Come and establish your kingdom of peace
in its fullest measure.
Now, I believe that hope for a king
is not just a Jewish hope,
but it's a deeply human hope.
And of course,
there's a bit of a problem
because we're Americans
and we don't suffer our sovereigns lightly,
do we?
We like to be our own masters
and the authorities of our own lives
and in charge of our own selves, right?
You look at the flag
of the Commonwealth of Virginia
and what does it say?
It says,
Sic semper tyrannis,
thus always to tyrants,
where it has Lady Liberty
or Lady Justice,
I'm not sure which.
She has her foot on the chest of a king
who's lying on the ground
and his crown is toppled off of his head.
Thus always to tyrants
is what we Americans say.
This is how we like our government,
of the people,
by the people,
and for the people.
And yet,
there's a tension there for us
because even though we're Americans,
most of our literature
and most of our movies
abounds with kings and queens
and royal figures
and messianic heroes.
Why is that?
Why are we so fascinated
by royal weddings?
I know some of you are.
Royal babies,
royal coronations.
Why is that?
Well,
C.S. Lewis wrote an essay in 1943
and he says this.
He says,
We Britons should rejoice
that we have contrived
to reach a much legal democracy
without losing our ceremonial monarchy.
A man's reaction to monarchy
is a kind of test.
Monarchy can be easily debunked,
but watch the faces.
Mark the accents of the debunkers.
These are the men
whose taproot in Eden
has been cut.
Whom no rumor
of the polyphony,
the dance can reach.
Men to whom pebbles
laid in a row
are more beautiful
than an arch.
Now,
that's an Oxford professor's way
of insulting me,
right?
And people like me.
But here's what he says.
He says,
Yet even if they desire equality,
they cannot reach it.
Where men
are forbidden
to honor a king,
they honor millionaires,
athletes,
or film stars instead.
Even famous prostitutes
or gangsters.
For spiritual nature,
like bodily nature,
will be served,
deny it food,
and it will gobble poison.
See,
Lewis is telling us
that in our heart of hearts,
we long to honor a king.
And you can tell yourself
you don't need a king,
but your spiritual nature
says otherwise.
We're starving
to crown someone
who has the authority
to give us identity
and belonging
and meaning
and purpose
and significance
and value.
We're longing to say
to someone
who's much greater
than ourselves,
much higher
than ourselves,
please tell me
that I matter.
Please give me
a peace
that I cannot achieve
on my own.
Please give me
a glory
that's greater
than what I've got.
Now,
why do we do that
as human beings
psychologically
and culturally?
Well,
before the breaking
of our world,
the human race
stood in the presence
of the true king
in absolute glory
and splendor,
a king of justice
and power
and wisdom,
a king of great compassion
and nobility
and beauty
who was shining
like the sun
and yet evil
entered our world
and we became
our own masters
and we lost
that king
and yet we did gain
this promise
in Genesis 3.15
that said
this great one
is going to come
and he's going to
trample on evil
and even though
he will be wounded
and he'll suffer terribly,
he will triumph,
right?
And the whole Bible
from that point on
is just rustling
with this whisper
and this rumor
of a king
who's going to come
so that on Palm Sunday
when Jesus comes in
and people begin
to treat him
as a king,
he does not blush,
he smiles.
Jesus receives
their praises
and he embraces
their hopes
and he affirms
all of their desires
and he says,
yes indeed,
I have come
in the name
of the Lord.
I do intend
to be your king,
I do hear
your cries
of Hosanna
and I do intend
to save you.
Now those are
incredible,
audacious,
implicit,
really immodest
claims
that Jesus
is making
on Palm Sunday
and I believe
his dramatic entry
into the capital city
is a throwing down
of the gauntlet.
It's Jesus saying,
crown me
or kill me.
I'm either
of ultimate
importance
or of no
importance
whatsoever
but the one
thing I cannot
be is of
marginal importance
to any of you.
Jesus is saying,
I've not come
to be admired,
no,
I've come to force
my identity
upon you.
I've come
to be a supreme
and absolute monarch
who's to be worshipped
and to be obeyed.
And so if you're
here today
and you're exploring
Christianity,
I want to ask you
as you hear
about these mass
shootings,
you know,
as you take in
the news
about these
school shootings
with these
small children
and their teachers,
isn't there
something inside
of you
that's crying
out and longing
for evil
to be trampled
upon
and to be triumphed
over?
And my question
to you is,
if that longing
is in your heart,
how in the world
is that going
to happen?
How will that
possibly happen
within the reigning
plausibility structures
and paradigms
of modernity
and post-modernity?
Who will make
it happen?
Who will usher
in a new age?
And if you can't
come up with anyone
to fill in that blank,
I want to ask you,
might it be
that Jesus
really is the king
who's come to undo
all the powers
of evil
and Jesus is the king
who's come to
ultimately eradicate
the presence of evil
in this world?
Your heart is crying
out for that.
If you're a Christian,
you've come to see
that Jesus is
your supreme
and absolute monarch,
but the question
for you today is,
how are you going
to roll out
the red carpet
for your king
this week
and in this next season?
How will you put
your donkey
at his service,
as it were?
How will you put
all of your possessions
at his disposal
for him to use
as he sees fit?
How will we spread
out our cloaks
for him to walk upon
and give him
our highest
and our best
to honor him
this week?
How will we wave
our palm branches
and give him
public allegiance
and let the world
know that all
of our hopes
for freedom
and liberation
are found in him
and him alone?
How will we sing
these psalms
and hymns
and songs of the Spirit
giving him
the passionate worship
that he deserves?
I want to encourage
you this week,
if you do see Jesus
as your king,
to wake up every morning
praying this prayer,
blessed are you.
Blessed are you
who's come
in the name
of the Lord.
Hosanna.
Save us.
Lord, save us.
Friends, Jesus is the king.
But Jesus is not just any king.
He's the king
who rides a donkey.
Jesus is the king
who rides a donkey.
Now, many of us,
this idea,
this notion
of living under a sovereign
is perhaps threatening.
I mean, I'm like you.
I want to be in control.
I don't want to submit
my will and my desires
to the will and desires
of another.
And I've read enough
history like you
to know that history
is full of kings
and queens
that are marked
by overweening pride
and oppressive power.
Kings who rule
not to enhance human life
but to diminish
human life.
But I want to suggest
to you today
that Jesus is different.
I want you to notice
his chosen means
of transportation.
It's not a war horse.
It's a donkey.
And in the first century
and in our century,
everybody looks at that
and goes,
what?
Jesus,
what are you thinking?
This is your moment
to make history.
This is your moment
to be like Alexander the Great
and Caesar Augustus.
This is your moment
to have your name up there
with Attila the Hun
and Charlemagne
and William the Conqueror
and Genghis Khan
and Napoleon.
Jesus,
don't you realize
that right now
is your moment.
You can either triumph
and deliver
or you can be trampled upon
and demolished.
But this is the moment.
This is a do or die situation.
So Jesus,
let us come around you
with all of our wisdom
and be your PR consultants
for a moment.
Let us be your marketing team.
If we're going to give you a brand,
if we're going to give you a logo,
if we're going to give you a message,
we really want to encourage you,
Jesus,
to come up with something
that exudes power and pride.
And what does Jesus do?
How does he respond
to this great advice
that we have to give him?
He chooses a little baby donkey.
And he says,
I don't need the mighty steed
of a triumphant king.
I want this donkey.
And Jesus,
when he says that,
he's making a statement
about the kind of king
he would be
because he's a serious student
of the Bible.
His main purpose and aim
is to bring his life
under the authority
of the Bible
and to live in alignment
with the power
of God's word.
And he knows,
since he's been
a small child,
he's memorized
the prophecies of the Bible
like this one
in Genesis 49.
It says,
the scepter of the king
will not depart from Judah
nor the ruler's staff
from between his feet
until he to whom it belongs
shall come
and the obedience
of the nation
shall be his.
He will tether his donkey
to a vine,
his colt
to the choicest branch.
Jesus also probably
memorized these words
that are in our text today,
Zechariah chapter 9.
which says,
Rejoice greatly,
daughter Zion.
Shout,
daughter Jerusalem.
See,
your king comes to you
righteous and victorious,
lowly
and riding on a donkey,
on a colt,
the foal of a donkey.
And then the next verse
that's not printed for us,
it says this.
It says,
I will take away
the chariots
from Ephraim,
the war horses
from Jerusalem.
The battle bow
will be broken.
He will proclaim peace
to the nations.
His rule will extend
from sea to sea
and from the river
to the ends
of the earth.
Jesus says,
my brand,
my logo,
my message
is definitively
not the chariot
and not the war horse
and not the battle bow.
And Jesus has so arranged
this moment
to deliberately fulfill
these prophecies.
He says,
don't get me wrong,
I have come to rule
and to reign
as your king,
but I've not come
to rule
in any of the ways
you're used to ruling.
He says,
I've not come
in the shining armor
of a war horse.
He says,
I've come to make
donkeys great again.
This is a king
who's going to ride Eeyore.
He's riding this beast
that's fit for a child,
that's fit for a hobbit.
A beast of such
extraordinary humility.
Now,
I want us to think
for a second.
Why do we resist
submitting to a sovereign?
Well,
we resist
because a sovereign
by nature
demands
total surrender,
an exclusive allegiance,
an absolute obedience.
And Jesus says,
I have,
in fact,
come to demand
those things of you,
but I'm unlike
any king
the world has ever seen.
Again,
if you go back
and read the Gospels,
you see Jesus
time and time again.
First of all,
he resists
the offer of the devil
to rule over
the kingdoms
of this world
through illicit means.
And then,
having resisted
that offer,
he goes out
and he preaches
the Sermon on the Mount
where he says,
love your enemies,
do good to those
who hate you,
pray for those
who persecute you,
and blessed
are the peacemakers
for they will be called
the children of God.
At one point,
they tried to come
and make Jesus king
by force,
but he resisted
that as well
and he withdrew himself
into the wilderness.
And we'll see
later this week
when he's on trial
before the Roman Empire,
on trial under
Pontius Pilate,
he tells Pilate,
he says,
if my kingdom
were of this world,
my people would fight
for me.
But as it is,
my kingdom
is from another place
and therefore,
it's altogether
different
from your kingdom.
Friends,
Jesus rides
in humble
and meek
and gentle
and lowly
on a donkey
to tell us,
I'm a king
that you can trust.
My power
is the power
of my lowliness.
My power
is the power
of giving up
my power.
Friedrich Nietzsche
philosophized
in the 19th century,
he philosophized
about the will
to power.
He said,
modernity
should be marked
by dominating,
an ethic
of dominating power.
And then
in Nietzsche's wake
came another philosopher,
his successor,
Michel Foucault
in the 20th century
and he said,
we should unmask
all of these
power relations,
these pervasive,
internalized,
structured powers
of modernity
need to be
subverted
into a post-modernity
if any of us
are going to survive.
And of course,
the world we're living in
in the 21st century
is some strange brew,
some powerful cocktail
between Nietzsche
and Foucault,
is it not?
But what if the world
needs not
the uber power
of Nietzsche
or the deconstructed
power
of Foucault?
No.
But what if the world
needs a different kind
of power altogether?
The power of a sovereign
who comes not to take life
but to give life.
The power of a sovereign
who comes not bearing arms
but comes to disarm us all.
This donkey king
comes to us
not saying
surrender or else.
No,
he comes with no horse,
no sword,
no army.
He does not use
any brute force
to seize
and coerce
and demolish
and pillage
and enslave
and oppress.
He comes vulnerable
and defenseless
on a donkey.
And he says,
I've come to serve you
as a gentle
and a lowly
prince of peace.
I've come not to threaten you
and to surrender.
I've come,
in fact,
to surrender myself
and my life
to you.
And we're going to see that
this next week
as we go through the events
of Holy Week.
Jesus washing
the feet of his disciples.
Jesus giving
the poured out
wine
and the broken bread.
And Jesus literally
doing that
on the cross.
Taking our judgment
upon himself.
God's just judgment
for our sins.
And again,
if you're exploring
Christianity,
is there any other
power like this?
Is this not utterly
unique in all the world,
all the philosophies
of this world,
all the religions,
all the life systems
of this world?
Is there any other
kind of power
like this?
And even more
to the point,
what are you afraid
is going to happen
to you
if you submit yourself
to this donkey king?
He's not going
to oppress you.
He's going to liberate you
and humanize you.
He's not going
to disempower you.
He's going to empower you
with this sacrificial love.
And so,
I want to implore you,
open the gates
of your city.
Open the doors
of your heart
to welcome this king
of lowliness,
this king of gentleness
to come and be your king
even this week.
Jesus is the king
and he rides
on a donkey.
but he also comes
to transform the temple
and I just want to say
a final word
about this transformation
of the temple.
Jesus comes
and he comes over
the Mount of Olives.
He comes in full view
of Jerusalem
and its magnificent temple
at the center
which is not only
the beating heart
of Israel,
it's the center
of the cosmos.
This is the place
where heaven and earth
come together,
the house of
I am who I am
where he dwells
among his people.
And it says
Jesus in verse 12,
he entered into that place,
he entered the temple courts
and he drove out
all who were buying
and selling there.
He overturned the tables
and the money changers
and the benches
of those selling doves.
Why in the world
is Jesus relocating
all the people
and rearranging
all the furniture?
Why is he disrupting
this sacrificial system?
Doesn't he know
this is not how
to win friends
and influence people?
Why in the world
is he making
such a ruckus
in the temple
of Almighty God?
Well he says
in verse 12,
he says,
verse 13,
he says,
it is written,
my house will be called
a house of prayer
but you're making it
a den of robbers.
That's a provocative quote
from the prophet Jeremiah
where Jesus is begging
the question,
whose house is this?
And Jesus says,
well it's my house.
Wait,
what do you mean?
Jesus,
God's house
or your house?
Yes,
Jesus says.
This is the place
where you're to come
in contact
with your creator God.
The place where
by his word
and by prayer
and by the sacrifices
of blood
you can have
a personal,
intimate communion
and relationship
with God himself.
But Jesus is signaling
to us
that something
has gone deeply wrong
with this place
of sacrifice
and this place
of worship
and this is why
he's come
to enter Jerusalem.
This is why
he's marching
to Good Friday
so that he
can become
the true temple.
So that he can become
the true priest
and the true sacrifice
and the true place
of communion
between humanity
and God.
He's come
so that people
who are far away
from this temple
can be brought near
to God
so that people
who are enemies
of this temple
can be made
children of God
and that's why
Jesus is not surprised
at all
by this great turn
from Palm Sunday
to Good Friday.
He comes in
as a king
on Palm Sunday
but he leaves
as a criminal
on Good Friday.
He comes on a donkey
but he leaves
under a cross.
He comes hailed
with palms
but he leaves
bearing a crown
yet it's a crown
of thorns.
He comes in
hearing hosannas
but he leaves
with this cry
of crucify.
He comes in
bearing our praises
and yet he leaves
bearing our reproach.
So why Jesus?
Why?
Why would you do that?
Why would you
so deliberately
and even joyfully
enter into
all of this suffering?
Well we'll learn
and hear it
at the end of this week
from Matthew chapter 27
verse 51.
It says that
when Jesus Christ
our king
died on his cross
the veil
in this great
magnificent temple
that separated
a holy God
from unholy humanity
would be torn in two
from top to bottom.
And that's a picture
of the very hands
of God
rending
this separation
between us.
Of God saying
as it were
my innocent sons
once for all
sacrifice
of himself
on his cross
is throwing down
the sin barriers
throwing down
this separation
so that the way
in
the way
into my holy
presence
is opened up
for all people.
The whole
wide world
can come back in
and that's why
our king
came
riding
on a donkey
to transform
this temple.
Jesus has come
to bring us
back to the
house
of almighty
God.
Jesus has come
so that
each of us
could be at home
again with our
heavenly father.
Jesus has come
so that we can
enjoy a relationship
with him
as dearly
loved
and dependent
children.
Each of us
enjoying such a
personal and intimate
communion with God
that our church
and our homes
and our very
hearts
might be called
a house
of prayer
so that God
can look upon us
that God can look
upon you
God can look
upon me
and he can say
that's
my house
that's the place
where I delight
to dwell
among these people
and in this place
this
is my home
and this is where
God wants us
to be at home
with him.
May it be so
as we enter
into this
most holy of weeks
in the name
of the Father,
Son,
and Holy Spirit.
Amen.