Palm Sunday: Where is your hope?
Sermon given at South Sydney Anglican Church
Palm Sunday 2024
Readings taken from Luke 19.28-40, 22.39-71
Shalom. Thanks to Pastor Matt for this warm welcome again and for each of you in giving me your attention as I speak this morning. Maybe you have been watching the television and other media and you know full well that the world is a mess. Ukraine and Russia, Gaza and Hamas murdering innocents in Israel, and continued noise from Parliament here about our economy and all other problems. Where is there hope for repair?
The Jewish people talk about our religious responsibility to the planet and use the phrase “Tikkun olam” which basically relates to the “repair of the world.” We are responsible to fix what others have broken. Or that we have broken. We pray about this daily and we seek to make this happen in a social context. Are we the hope of the world’s repair? Honestly, where is there hope for repair?
Some say that war and violence is the key to repair the world.
Some say that government and its capacity to solve problems is the key to repair the world.
Some even say that religion has the power to change folks, and eventually the world.
But I’m of the opinion, and many of us in this sanctuary agree, that none of those are sufficiently significant or powerful to accomplish what is needed. We need something from the outside to make this work.
Where is there hope for repair?
In today’s Bible readings we see some answers to that question. And today is Palm Sunday which is where some of my story begins. You might know that Ps Matt sent me the actual Bible readings a few weeks ago and as I read them, I saw some of the biblical answer to our question. Of note, for those who are not sure, this building is an Anglican church, and the official doctrine or teaching of the church is that next weekend is the most dramatic and fulfilling season of a person’s life. Thus I invite you who are watching this online or listening here in the nave or online, to return next week for Part 2 of this greatest story ever told. After all, according to the story, Palm Sunday begins the Passion week, the final week in the public career of Yeshua, the central figure of the entire Bible. There is enough in today’s lesson to hear God’s answer to our question of finding hope, so let’s dig in.
There are three scenes in his final week. The first is the occasion of the palms and Yeshua’s entry into Jerusalem. Yeshua had instructed his disciples, his closest followers, to go and secure a donkey on which he would ride. This story is found in all four biographies of Jesus, and today I will cite Luke’s account, in chapter 19. Verses 28-40. There we read that Yeshua sent two fellows to “go into the village, and as you enter it, you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here.” (.28-30)
Doesn’t that sound like what a thief would organize? Hey, boys, I’ve got a job for you, see? Go to the shopping centre, see? And bring back a Mitsubishi Colt, see? But he’s not a thief.
Sure enough they went into the village, and found it as he had instructed, even telling the owner “The Lord has need of it.” (.34) Yeshua had local support and the owner must have been one of those. So, they “brought it to Jesus and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks, that is, their outer garments, on the road.” What a scene! He came down from the Mt of Olives, there on the east side of Jerusalem, and “the whole multitude began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest heaven.” (.37-38) Other Gospels record that they laid out palm branches. Others said, “Hosanna to the Son of David.” And what’s clear is that this is a fulfillment of biblical prophecy, of messianic prophecy, that the King of the Jewish people would be known. Zechariah predicted this over 500 years before. “Behold, your king is coming to you; He is just and endowed with salvation, Humble, and mounted on a donkey, even on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” (Zechariah 9.9)
Jewish people believed that this very path was to be how Messiah would enter Jerusalem. (Zech. 14.4) Josephus associates the location with a messianic figure. (Ant.20.169) “There came out of Egypt about this time to Jerusalem, one that said he was a prophet, and advised the multitude of the common people to go along with him to the Mt of Olives.” (J.W. 2.262)
Riding on a donkey according to Amy-Jill Levine in her Jewish Annotated New Testament, “indicates royalty” (see 2 Sam 18.9, 19.26, 1 King 1.33-40) (JANT, page 155)
I see in this Public Scene #1 a cry of a desperate people, a longing to make something happen, a messianic hope by the people. If you will, I see what I will label religion at work. And yes, for me this religion is Jesus-centered, which ought to be satisfactory, but unfortunately I know the rest of the story. These same people who come when it’s time for a trick or a miracle, who attend to Jesus with cloaks and palms and a magnificent show, in less than a week will cry, “Crucify him.” They will turn on him, turn their backs to him, and not only resist him but cry for his banishment and punishment. They will yell for his destruction.
What causes their complete change of mind? I believe their cries of Hosanna were desperation for a change. They shouted “hosanna” which means “Oh, save us!” hoping that this guy on the donkey would overthrow Rome and relieve them of the taxation and the oppression in which they lived. They even called Yeshua “Son of David” which again is a messianic title, but one they didn’t understand. More on that later.
This first public scene is about religion, and dare I say, particularly a misunderstanding of the Christian religion itself. Thinking Jesus is coming as a trick pony to serve us, to relieve our pain, to make our lives better, to give us a new house in Vaucluse or a new wife way better than the previous one. Widening this thought, I think religion or the modern term many use, ‘spirituality’ is affixing our personal plans to a fixture of religious terminology and philosophy. This notion of religion is aspirational and yet it’s driven by our own desires. That’s why the cries of the people here which sound like praise and recognition of the messiah turn to demands in less than a week.
Friends here at South Sydney, Public Scene #1 tells me that Religion is not the hope of the world.
Public Scene #2 is in the Garden of Gethsemane. There again at the bottom of the Mt of Olives just east of Jerusalem we read about this moment in all four Gospels or biographies of Yeshua. He goes to pray there, as seems to be his habit. (Lk 21.37) He invites his inner circle of Peter, James and John to join him. They don’t exactly join him well in the late night of prayer. After they have finished sharing Passover with Jesus and drinking several cups of wine at the dinner as is our Jewish custom, they fell asleep in the garden while Yeshua continued to pray fervently. Even painfully. His prayer is intense and dramatic. It’s full of pathos and wishing. It’s the most human prayer you can imagine. Yet, his closest friends fell asleep and disappointed him in both the prayer time and in the arrest scene which follows.
I think that war and violence itself is a common assertion of people as far as how to bring hope to a world in trouble. Isn’t it an interesting conclusion? A madman somewhere in the Middle East sent 27 men to fly four different planes into American buildings on 9/11 back 23 years ago, and we around the world join forces to level country after country, bombing our way to peace. It didn’t work and never really does work, but that doesn’t change the minds of folks who think that war will bring hope to a troubled world. Not since 1837 has there been peace throughout the world. Yes, that was the last year in recorded history when no country was fighting with another country.
But that doesn’t mean there were no arguments in families. That doesn’t mean people were not ruining each other’s properties in villages in Ireland or South Africa, in Eastern Europe or in Chicago. The world is a messy place and violence is never the answer to a troubled, messy world.
Public scene #2 in Gethsemane zooms in on the prayer of Yeshua AND the guards arresting him. At the time of the arrest, we read this, “When those who were around Him saw what was going to happen, they said, “Lord, shall we strike with the sword?” And one of them struck the slave of the high priest and cut off his right ear. But Jesus answered and said, “Stop! No more of this.” And He touched his ear and healed him.” (Lk. 22.49-51)
Violence and war are not the answer. Yeshua said, “Stop! No more of this.” What is the “this” to which he referred? What did he correct immediately after? He fixed the slave’s ear; he healed a slave in his moment of pain and in Yeshua’s moments of pain.
Think about it; Yeshua had taken his friends, his closest associates with him to support him. And they abandoned him. The soldiers came with Judas, one of Jesus’ previous disciples, and Judas kissed Jesus. What a mockery. The soldiers demanded his coming with them. Verbal confrontation takes place. And then Jesus knows full well what is about to take place. He knows that he is going to die, brutally, he will suffer the mockery of a fake trial. He knows he will take on himself the sins of the entire world.
In all that malady, in all that affliction he is afflicted. (Isaiah 63.9) And yet he still takes a moment, takes a personal time-out, and heals the man Malchus, the slave of the high priest. (John 18.10)
Public Scene #2 is a painful reality about war and violence, about Peter saying he will support and guard Yeshua at all costs, but within hours he has denied the Messiah three times, even before the sun fully rose. And the conviction, the pain Peter feels is amplified in that one phrase, “Jesus looked at Peter.” (Lk. 22.61). Ouch. I feel that, too.
War and violence is not the hope of the world.
In today’s final reading we see Public Scene #3 in the Sanhedrin. That’s the official government of the Jewish people of the day. Those 70 men decide all kinds of matters of domestic and in our term, international consideration. They are government, which to many is the hope of repairing the world. They issue decrees which must be held to by the multitudes. In this moment in our history, the Sanhedrin conducts trials and classes. They pass on their conclusions about religion and about war and about all things. They are government.
By the way, today in the Jewish world is a holiday. Many people have calendar notes. In Persia today continues Nowruz, the Persian new year. In our calendars, many of us noted the 21st as the equinox. But in the Jewish calendar last night began the festival of Purim, the story of Queen Esther and her uncle Mordecai. It’s about the defeat of Haman, the evil sinister anti-hero of the story recorded in the book of Esther. He got King Ahashuerus of Persia to sign a governmental decree that was to eradicate in his world, his empire which stretched from India to Ethiopia, 127 provinces in total. The king signed a decree at Haman’s advice to remove all Jews from his domain. If you will, from the river to the sea, and then some. Haman was an evil man and if you re-read the story of Esther later today, you will see the similarities between Haman in those days and Hamas in our day. But that’s for another sermon.
For us, I want you to see the government, whether in Persia in Esther’s day or the Sanhedrin in these days of the Gospels, as insufficient to provide all the hope of a desperate world. The Sanhedrin conducted an inquiry, if you will, an inquisition. Listen again to the words at the end of our chapter today.
"If You are the Christ, tell us.” But He said to them, “If I tell you, you will not believe; and if I ask a question, you will not answer. But from now on THE SON OF MAN WILL BE SEATED AT THE RIGHT HAND of the power OF GOD.” And they all said, “Are You the Son of God, then?” And He said to them, “You say that I am.” Then they said, “What further need do we have of testimony? For we have heard it ourselves from His own mouth.” (Lk. 22. 67-71)
Amy-Jill Levine says, “Jesus does not answer directly (cf. Mk 14.62) No charge directly applies to Jesus; he has technically neither blasphemed nor engaged in sedition” (JANT, page 162)
Look, the reality is that Jesus came for this trial. He came to bear our sins. He came to die. That’s why you need to come back on Friday and Sunday next week to hear Part 2 of this Greatest Story. The trial by Jewish government of the greatest Jew who ever lived stands out but within the context of the whole story it makes sense. Without the death and resurrection which will be Part 2, this just stands out as inhumane and wrong. Please return. Thanks.
In light of my talk today, Public Scene #3 in the Sanhedrin highlights for me how government is not the answer to our woes. We live so close to the scene in television reporting every day from State government. We hear from Canberra all the time about their working out fixes to our systems. But really, government cannot fix our morals; they cannot fix human interaction with humans. Yes, they can regulate our speed on the highways and try to diminish accidents. Yes, they can regulate the drinking age and try to slow down youth crimes. But at the end of the day, government cannot fix the brokenness of humanity. Look at Russia and Ukraine, Poland and Ukraine, Hamas and everyone around them. No government near them wants to open their doors to Hamas. Government can regulate; they cannot fix.
Public Scene #3 tells me that no human institution can repair the world.
BUT, and you knew this was coming, look at verse 69.
“But from now on THE SON OF MAN WILL BE SEATED AT THE RIGHT HAND of the power OF GOD.”
The answer to who can repair the world is the King, the Son of Man, seated as King, enthroned as King, ruling the world in his ways. It’s God, and it’s specifically the Son of Man, the Son of God, who will repair our worlds, one by one, life by life, yielded to him. It’s Jesus or Yeshua, in whatever language you speak; it’s the Messiah the Saviour who is the Son of David. If we yield our lives to him and trust him today, with or without palms, with or without grand statements of declaration of our own loyalty. It’s letting him have his way in our lives that will repair our world.
I don’t know if you saw the movie last year “One Life.” Featuring the true story of London stockbroker Nicholas "Nicky" Winton who helps rescue hundreds of mostly Jewish children from Czechoslovakia in the time before the Nazi occupation closes the borders. Fifty years later, he's still haunted by the fate of those he wasn't able to bring to safety. The phrase, ‘one life’ is taken from the Talmud, “Whoever saves a single life is considered to have saved the whole world.’ (Sanhedrin 37A)
So when I tell you that Jesus wants to repair our world, it starts with you. He wants to repair you and your world, and then you get to go and help share his love and bring repair to those around you. Even in your world.
If you want that, if you have never given your life to him, not religiously and not violently. If you want to yield to him, to surrender your life to the One who will heal more than your right ear, he will heal your heart, and your world, one person at a time, then do so just now. Please. I urge you. Be reconciled to God. Today can be your day of freedom.
Thanks Ps Matt and all you here at South Sydney. Happy Palm Sunday. Happy end of Lent. Happy Easter and a joyful walk with the Lord. Shalom.
