Concordia Lutheran Church
Passion Sunday, March 28, 2010
For this purpose He came to this hour!
John 12:20-43
† IN JESUS NAME †
As we, like the crowd, cry out Hosanna, may we realize the depth of Christ’s passionate love for us, His people, which will drive Him to the cross, for the joy laid before Him!
Frustrated at the Blindness…
The miracles – they don’t believe
The voice
Those that believe won’t confess
What will it take for them to believe and confess?
This day, the church festival we call Palm Sunday, has frustrated me as long as I can remember. I picture the crowds laying the palms, and their jackets on the road, crying out praises as Jesus rides on to die, and my frustration grows.
I hear them shout their Hosanna’s, and their praise of God and of His Christ, and my discord grows. I get angry. The gospel said they came out because they had heard of what He had done, and they gather and worship.
I cannot stop the frustration as I consider what it says in verse 37 of our Gospel reading, “Though he had done many signs before them, they still did not believe in Him”
They hear the voice from heaven, testify to the glory of God that has been, and the glory that is about to be revealed, and they don’t get it.
The end of our gospel tells us that even among the authorities, the rulers of Israel, there were men who believed, yet wouldn’t confess, and my frustration grows.
This day is an enigma, it perplexes and troubles me. Because I know that despite their praise, which Christ is due, they will kill him. They will call for His beating, and torment, and they will answer Pilate with the horrible words, Crucify Him.!
How can I celebrate alongside those who are blinded to what the very salvation they cry for in desperation will cost? Can I join in their worship, their praise of God?
Don’t they see His Passion?
The heart troubled?
Perhaps it is because in hearing the story year after year, the paradox of Palm Sunday becomes so real. We hear the gospels talk of Jesus setting his face towards Jerusalem. We hear His lament over the children of Israel, wishing that for once He could gather them as a hen gathers is chicks. We see that passion here, as we hear John recount,
“27 “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. 28 Father, glorify your name.”
I hear those words echo in my mind, as I watch Jesus our Master ride the colt down the mount of Olives, and then up the hill towards Jerusalem’s gates. “But for this purpose I have come to this hour!” And I wish the crowd would realize it.
I sometimes wonder if we realize it, truly realize it today…
Don’t they hear His teaching?
The seed must die
The Messiah must be lifted up
If they would only hear what He is saying to them. Even in this passage, he talks of the need for the seed to die, that it could bear much fruit. He talks of needing to destroy his life, that we could have life eternally. He talks of being lifted up – and the crowd all to well realizes he is talking of death, for they comment,
We have heard from the Law that the Christ remains forever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?
They grasp so much, and they grasp so little…
It leads me to wonder about us. Are we like the crowd singing praises, happy and cheering on the Messiah, not realizing that we need Him to physically go through the torment of Good Friday?
I think that is the purpose of these days we spend in Lent. To help us remember the need. Robert Webber wrote of it this way,
During Lent we are called on to look at our own deadness and to act on it. In this week we look at the juxtaposition of death and resurrection. We are called not to remain dead but to be raised to newness of life, to new birth, to a fresh and new encounter with Jesus. Some of us are spiritually dead because our faith is purely intellectual. We believe the right things. We adhere to the creeds, the confessions, and the doctrines of the church. But there is no life in us, we simply acquiesce to the tradition for tradition’s sake. We believe that we believe, but we know that is not enough. Others of us are dead because we have a total lack of feeling. We are not moved by the worship of the church, by song and prayer, by Eucharist and festivity. It is there, but it isn’t real, it doesn’t touch us in the inner recesses of our being. And we feel cold, numb, and dead.
Lent exists, these forty days that are ending soon, to help us realize these very simple words of Jesus,
for this purpose I have come to this hour!
It’s why He came….
In our gospel passage, it doesn’t hide the fact of the people’s struggle with believing in Jesus, with their inability to confess, to proclaim He is the Messiah. Listen to the words again,
37 Though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him, 38 so that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: “Lord, who has believed what he heard from us, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” 39 Therefore they could not believe. For again Isaiah said, 40 “He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they see with their eyes, and understand with their heart, and turn, and I would heal them.
Paul said it this way, in the letter to the church in Corinth,
6 Yet when I am among mature believers, I do speak with words of wisdom, but not the kind of wisdom that belongs to this world or to the rulers of this world, who are soon forgotten. 7 No, the wisdom we speak of is the mystery of God—his plan that was previously hidden, even though he made it for our ultimate glory before the world began. 8 But the rulers of this world have not understood it; if they had, they would not have crucified our glorious Lord. 1 Corinthians 2:6-8 (NLT)
This is going to sound a bit strange perhaps, but we needed them to be blinded, so that they would sacrifice our glorious Lord.
It was for this purpose he came to this hour – to die for those who were sinners and cried out for salvation. That is the biggest enigma, the most incredible paradox, that a un-crucified Messiah is not the Savior we need, or that they needed. We needed Him to cleanse us, to declare us righteous, that we might truly know God, and walk with Him.
That is why the more Jesus sees the crowds, the more passionate He will become, the more love will drive Him towards the cross. As he cleans the temple again, during this week, it is so people can have access to the God who loves them. The very greeks that would ask Phillip to see him, as well as you and I. For even knowing the facts, we still struggle with sin. We still struggle with proclaiming His name on Sunday, and needing for Him to die for us, for the sins we will commit during the week ahead of us.
As He teaches in the temple, the lessons will point even more clearly to the cross, and to the need for something radical to change. We still need that change, even daily, as we realize His love that cleanses us.
As we celebrate today, and will again on Thursday night, He will take bread and wine and say that it is His body that is given, broken and shed for us, who know not what we do.
HOSANNA – save us..too
Perhaps that is the beauty of Palm Sunday, that despite the ignorance, Christ rode on, through the crowd to die at the place of the Skull. For He knew we needed it.
It was for this purpose He came to this hour!
Hebrews tells us, that it was joy that He endured the cross, despising its shame. TO bring us to life, to help us go from a intellectual knowledge of the cross, to being in His presence, in awe of the glory, in awe of the love.
As I have struggled again this year, the more I realize I need not be trying to shake the crowd into sanity, or into realizing what will happen on Friday. We need to be out there, praising the God willing to humble Himself, and come and do what it takes to save us to Himself.
We need to worship and proclaim, Son of David, HOSANNA – save us!
To know that was His purpose, and that purpose included the cross, and the grave, that he would be placed there, and that it would be found empty.
So come and worship, even more so because we do know He came for this purpose. To die, for us. So we proclaim as all will, that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
As we realize this, we begin to grasp how high, how deep, how wide, how broad is the love of God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ. How great that love is for us. AMEN!
