NUCC

Palm/Passion Sunday

March 20, 2005

Psalm 118:19-29

Isaiah 50:4-9a

Matthew 21:1-11

Matthew 26:14-Matthew 27:66

            Down in Milwaukee people got pretty excited about the success of the UW-Milwaukee bastketball team in the NCAA tournament.  After they beat Georgia in the first round a number of students and alumni who had never even attended a game the Panthers played were clamoring for tickets and buying up t-shirts.

That’s how it is with many of us sports fans.  I think they call us “fair weather fans.”  The challenge of being a true sports fan is to stick with your team not just during the Super Bowl years ----- but also during the cellar years.  The true Packer Backer was watching them way back in the 50s when people like Lisle Blackburn and Scooter McLean were guiding the Pack to consecutive losing seasons ------ and not just when Vince Lombardi or Mike Holmgren were there.

            The challenge of being a true Christian is to stick with Jesus not just when the stock market is rising, but also when your temperature is rising.  The true East German Christian was going to Confirmation class when the communists made it difficult for a loyal confirmand to get the grades necessary for college.  The true American Christian is willing to follow the Prince of Peace and the Lord of Life even when that means not being “cool.”

            Today on this Palm/Passion Sunday these are the kinds of thoughts which enter my mind as I hear the crowds yell “Hosannah” on Sunday and then shout “Crucify him!” on Friday.  This is the reality of how Matthew describes the story of Jesus’ last week of life in Jerusalem.  You will hear the whole story this morning.

            In a way this two-sided feeling of praise and damnation, courage and timidity, joy and sorrow, is symbolized by a goof that Matthew makes.  He has Jesus almost performing the circus feat of riding on two animals while coming into the city of Jerusalem.  Perhaps this comes from his misreading of Zechariah, whom he quotes:

“Look, your king is coming to you,

humble, and mounted on

a donkey,

and on a colt, the foal of

a donkey.”

Actually Zechariah was just using repetition for emphasis.  He wasn’t talking about two animals.

            But today we have this two donkey feeling ----- of praise and ridicule, loyalty and betrayal, joy and sorrow, words and deeds.  As I read how these crowds changed, it is not just a change of attitude.  It is also a change of action.  Or rather lack of action.

M. Eugene Boring tells it this way:

When the crowds cry “Hosanna to the Song of David!” and “This is the prophet,” they use the right words, but they still miss the point.  They have all of the notes and none of the music.  They have the theology straight, but they will still end up rejecting Jesus and calling for his death. (27:20-23)  Matthew is striking a familiar note:  Knowing the truth is not the same thing as doing the truth (7:21)  What one social psychologist said of university students is also true of the kingdom:  “It is possible to make an A+ in the course on ethics and still flunk life.”

Matthew 7:21

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.”

            So, here we are on Palm Sunday in 2005.  We read about the humble king, the servant savior coming into Jerusalem to the cheers of the crowd, knowing full well that those cheers would soon turn into jeers and that even his own disciples would be afraid to admit they were his disciples.  Fickle, superficial loyalty.  That is what took place in ancient Jerusalem.  I’m afraid we can still find it in modern day Neillsville.

Fred Craddock

…all Jerusalem is affected by the presence of Jesus.  Mathew had said this earlier when the Magi came seeking the king of the Jews.  That disturbance of the city initiated a plot on the life of Jesus while he was yet a child.  Now he comes again, and again he is childlike.  He is humble, riding on a donkey; he is “gentle and lowly in heart”; he is the suffering servant of Isaiah 42 who “will not wrangle or cry aloud , nor will any one hear his voice in the streets…”

We know, of course, what happened to Jesus in the city.  But let us not pick on Jerusalem.  What city is there today with its values, its centers of power, its established institutions, that would not resist strongly the radical realignment of values and relationships, of priorities and commitments, that Jesus teaches and models in his own life?