Palm Sunday is the Christian community’s celebration of Jesus Christ’s triumphal entry into the city of Jerusalem. It’s a time when we reflect on Jesus as our King. But sometimes we talk about Jesus as our king without pausing to think about just what kind of Kingdom it is that Jesus is king over.
It’s hard for us to imagine what was going through people’s minds when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. You see, Jesus rode into Jerusalem as all the people were preparing to celebrate the Jewish Passover feast. The Passover was Israel’s annual celebration of their liberation from Egypt. Each year they celebrated their national independence by celebrating Passover. But now they were under the dominion of the Romans, with a Roman puppet king named Herod ruling over them. So they’re celebrating the anniversary of their national independence at a time when they’re no longer independent but occupied by the Romans. It would be like if America was taken over by another nation and became an occupied territory. Imagine how tense our fourth of July celebration would be, celebrating the anniversary of our independence at a time when we’re no longer independent.
Then comes Jesus riding in on a donkey, visibly fulfilling ancient Jewish prophecies about the coming kingdom of God. By riding into town on a donkey as the people waved palm branches and shouted Hosanna, Jesus was throwing a powder keg into the fire of an already tense situation. When Jesus did that he sealed his fate, because there was no way the Romans would allow such a radical act to go unpunished.
But again, exactly what kind of kingdom was Jesus pointing to? Certainly not the kind of kingdom Israel was looking for. Today we’re going to talk about the Kingdom of God. Specifically we’re going to see how four characteristics of the kingdom of God are relevant to us today. To do this, we’re going to rewind the tape from Palm Sunday to an incident that occurred a few years earlier.
1. The Heart of Jesus’ Message (Matthew 11:1)
Let’s start by reading all of Matthew 11:1-15 together. The most important phrase in this section is v. 15, "He who has ears, let him hear." That’s Jesus’ way of saying, "I’m speaking in vague terms here, so you really have to really think about what I’m saying and read in between the lines." Jesus often spoke vaguely in public settings, using obscure stories and hints like we find in v. 15. He did that because he knew that the time for his death wasn’t yet here, and claiming to be the promised Messiah outright would lead to his arrest prematurely. So v. 15 tells us that we’ll have to read between the lines a little bit here to understand what Jesus is telling us about his kingdom.
Verse 1 tells us that Jesus was preaching and teaching his message throughout the towns of Galilee. We know from the rest of the Matthew that Jesus’ message in Galilee was the nearness of God’s Kingdom. In fact, Mark 1:15 tells us that the heart of Jesus’ preaching and teaching was, "The Kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news."
Now what exactly is the kingdom of God, or as Matthew describes it here, the kingdom of heaven? God’s kingdom is GOD’S REDEMPTIVE RULE OVER HIS CREATION. When we think of a "kingdom" we think of a place, like the "kingdom of Nepal" or "the united kingdom" of England. We tend to define a "kingdom" by its borders, so when we hear the phrase "kingdom of heaven" we figure this kingdom must be located in heaven. So to us it’s a "pie in the sky, sweet by and by" kind of kingdom, a kingdom whose borders are in the afterlife, not here in our world today. But in the Bible the term "kingdom" doesn’t so much refer to a place as much as it refers to a person’s right to rule as a king. In fact, some Bible translations translate the word "kingdom" as "rule" to bring out this idea. So the kingdom of God is "the rule of God."
So God’s Kingdom is God’s redemptive rule over his creation. The word "redemptive" means that God’s kingdom relates to God’s salvation and deliverance. In other words, God’s kingdom isn’t just the fact that God is in control of the universe. God’s kingdom relates to God’s work of bringing his love and salvation to people, of restoring alienated people into a right relationship with God. The word "rule" refers to God’s dominion as the rightful king of creation.
Because this is what the kingdom of God referred to, for Jesus to proclaim the nearness of God’s kingdom was a major threat to the Romans government. You see, at this time Palestine had been conquered and was occupied by Roman troops. Back then the Jewish people had three basic ways to deal with Roman occupation of Israel (Wright). The first way was to simply withdraw and wait for God’s kingdom to come. This is what a group called the Essenes did. They believed if they prayed enough and were holy enough, God’s Kingdom would come and drive the Romans out. The monastery where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found back in 1947 was a group that did just this. These people believed withdrawal from society would bring God’s kingdom to Israel.
The second way to deal with Roman occupation was to compromise with the Romans. This is what the Jewish priests and wealthy Jewish people who ran the temple did. Most of these people were rich and powerful, and by compromising with the Romans they were allowed to keep their prestige and power. Although secretly they hoped for the downfall of the Romans, outwardly they were supportive of Rome and Rome’s puppet king Herod. This is the only reason the Jewish temple was allowed to continue functioning under Roman rule, because the people in charge of the temple chose the way of compromise.
But the third way to deal with Roman occupation was to seek to overthrow the Romans by force. The vast majority of common people took this third approach, and they did all kinds of things to undermine the Romans. Throughout the desert regions were bandits who sought to subvert Roman rule. The vast majority of Pharisees were also in favor of revolution, and all the common people knew it was just a matter of time until they took arms and drove the Romans out of their land. By fighting the Romans, they believed they’d usher in God’s kingdom.
Then comes Jesus proclaiming the coming of God’s kingdom. The kingdom of God was the heart of Jesus Christ’s message. His very first recorded sermon was, "Repent, the kingdom of God is at hand" (Matthew 4:17). He taught his followers to pray, "Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven" (Matthew 6:10). He told us to "seek first God’s kingdom." (Matthew 6:11). He began most of his parables with the phrase, "The kingdom of God is like…"
So here from v. 1 we find the first characteristic. The Kingdom of God was the heart of Jesus’ message. Since God’s Kingdom was the heart of Jesus’ message, it ought to be our message as well.
Jesus’ message was the good news of God’s kingdom, yet we hear very little about God’s kingdom in the church today. We hear about heaven a lot, but we rarely hear about God’s kingdom being accessible to us here and now through Jesus. Christian author Dallas Willard believes one of the reasons why the Christian community today is so weak and anemic is that we’ve lost our understanding of God’s kingdom. We’ve thought that becoming a Christian only means that our sins are forgiven and we’ll go to heaven when we die. So we’ve defined the Christian life as primarily relevant for the afterlife. But if the Christian life is understood as entering into and living under God’s redemptive rule now, then the Christian life is an exciting, incredible adventure. We seek to live under God’s rule today, as subjects of God’s kingdom in our homes, our workplaces, our communities and our churches. When we properly understand what it means to live under God’s kingdom, then we are ready to really live the abundant life Jesus promised.
If you’re spiritual life is boring or anemic, it’s likely that you’ve forgotten the kingdom part of being a Christian. Palm Sunday is a wonderful time to remind ourselves of this.
2. God’s Kingdom Is Unconventional (Matthew 11:2-3)
We learn in vv. 2-3 that John the Baptist was having a crisis of faith. John was Jesus’ cousin, and he began a ministry in the Judean desert baptizing and calling people to repentance. People flocked to see and hear John, and even Jesus himself came to John to be baptized. When Jesus came to be baptized, John pointed to Jesus and said, "This is the one we’ve been waiting for. He’s the one." But John’s radical call for repentance got him in trouble with King Herod. Herod had John arrested, and eventually executed.
So while John is sitting in Herod’s prison, he’s starting to wonder if Jesus really is the Messiah he thought Jesus was. After all, wasn’t the Messiah supposed to proclaim release to the captives? How could the kingdom of God be dawning and John still be sitting in a smelly, dirty prison cell? John’s problem was that his expectations of what the kingdom of God was going to be like were wrong. Perhaps John expected God’s Kingdom to come with violence and power, humiliating the Romans, toppling Herod’s throne, and exalting the nation of Israel to national greatness. Most Jewish people of John’s generation believed that the Romans and Herod would become enslaved to Israel, a kind of turning of the tables. As John sat discouraged in a prison cell, his expectations were shattered and he started to doubt.
Here we find the second characteristic of God’s kingdom. God’s Kingdom is unconventional. Since God’s kingdom is unconventional, we should guard our expectations about it.
By "unconventional" I mean that the Kingdom Jesus proclaimed was very different than the kind of kingdom the people of Israel were expecting. It’s an upside down kind of Kingdom. Throughout his ministry Jesus challenged the Jewish people to give up their revolutionary agenda to topple Roman rule and to give themselves fully to Jesus’ kingdom agenda (Wright). The kingdom Jesus proclaimed was a kingdom where forgiveness ruled, a kingdom where non-Jewish people were invited to participate in God’s love, a kingdom where social status was rendered irrelevant. It was a kingdom where the meek and the lowly were considered important, a kingdom where our wealth doesn’t give us an advantage.
If just by using the phrase "kingdom of God" Jesus made the Romans nervous, by defining God’s kingdom the way Jesus defined it, Jesus made most Jewish people angry. Those who favored revolution thought Jesus wasn’t patriotic enough. How on earth could God’s kingdom come by turning the other cheek, overcoming evil by doing good, and praying for those who spit on you? The people of Jesus’ generation couldn’t imagine God’s kingdom coming without a sword in their hands drenched with Roman blood?
Even we in the church today sometimes forget that God’s kingdom is unconventional. We sometimes think that if we’re doing something as a church, it must be kingdom work. After all, the church is doing it. Yet some of the church’s work throughout the years has worked in opposition to God’s kingdom. I’ve been reading a biography of William Tyndale (Daniell). William Tyndale was the first person to translate the Bible from Greek and Hebrew into the English language. But the established church was so threatened by common, everyday people reading the Bible that they made Tyndale’s work illegal. Eventually he ended up being burned at the stake for simply translating the Bible into English. The church was working against God’s kingdom instead of for it.
We need to guard our expectations of God’s kingdom as much as John needed to, or we too will grow disillusioned. God’s kingdom is not a political kingdom, it’s not an American kingdom, it’s not a Republican or Democrat kingdom. God’s kingdom will not be ushered in by human effort or conquest, but it comes in God’s way through God’s timing. God’s kingdom is unconventional, even for us.
3. God’s Kingdom Opens God’s Blessings to People (Matthew 11:4-6)
Jesus responds to John’s followers in vv. 4-6 by telling them to report back to John what they see and hear. Jesus alludes here to predictions about the Messiah’s work from the book of Isaiah. Each category of people--the blind, the lame, those with leprosy, and the deaf, the poor--were considered unfit for participation in God’s kingdom. You see, if God’s kingdom was about overthrowing the Romans, what good were disabled people? They couldn’t be of any use, if God’s kingdom was about turning the tables on the Romans.
But instead of throwing away these broken people as unfit for God’s kingdom, Jesus has given the blind sight, enabled the lame to walk, cleansed those with leprosy, and enabled the deaf to hear. These are things Jewish people expected to occur in God’s future kingdom, and Jesus is saying that God’s kingdom has invaded the present. These changed lives are evidence that the future has invaded the present.
Then Jesus warns John not to fall away because of Jesus. Up to this point John had been pointing people to Jesus, encouraging his followers to trust Jesus and follow his agenda. In fact, when John baptized Jesus he told two of his own disciples--Peter and Andrew--to leave John and follow Jesus. But now John is tempted to stop doing that because he’s not sure about Jesus.
Here we find the third characteristic. God’s Kingdom opens up God’s blessings to people. Since God’s kingdom opens up God’s blessings to people, we should help people enter it.
Up to this point John had been helping people enter God’s kingdom by pointing them to Jesus. This is also how the Christian Church serves God’s kingdom, by helping people enter God’s Kingdom. Jesus said, "Unless you are born again, you cannot enter God’s kingdom" (John 3:3). The message of the Church is the message that enables people to be reconciled to God so they can enter God’s Kingdom. Only by trusting in Jesus Christ’s perfect life, sacrificial death, and victorious resurrection can we live under the redemptive rule of God.
Far too often the church tries to control the door to God’s kingdom rather than helping people enter. I think of a Christian pro-life activist named Randall Terry. According to Christian author Phillip Yancey, a few years ago Terry actually encouraged Christians to let hatred wash over them because hatred is, according to Randall Terry, what it takes for us to conquer or country for God (Yancey 231). That doesn’t sound like helping people through the doors into God’s kingdom.
Our mission as a church is to help unchurched people enter God’s kingdom by introducing them to Christ and then helping them grow into fully devoted followers of Jesus. We exist to reach unchurched people of the Inland Valley and beyond with Christ’s love and to help them grow into fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ. Our mission is to open the doors to God’s kingdom for people. We’re not the gatekeepers, but we’re the ambassadors, sent to invite people through the door.
Palm Sunday is a good time to remind ourselves of that fact, especially since our Easter Sunday services next week are enirely geared toward helping people through the doors into God’s kingdom.
4. God’s Kingdom Has Come Through Jesus (Matthew 11:7-15)
Then in vv. 7-15 Jesus turns to the crowd and asks them who they thought John the Baptist really was. This is where we have to read between the lines a bit. Did they expect to see a reed swayed by the wind? I always thought that phrase "a reed swayed by the wind" referred to someone who was wishy washy. But I’ve discovered an interesting little fact. Herod, the Roman’s puppet king over the Jews, adopted the Judean reed as a symbol of his reign (Wright). You can see this reed on the coins minted by Herod. So Jesus could be asking, "Did you go to the desert expecting to see someone like king Herod?"
If that’s what the reed refers to, then it makes sense in light of the next question. Did you expect a guy in expensive clothing? Of course not, because those in expensive clothes are in kings’ palaces not living in the Judean desert. Reading between the lines, Herod is the one sitting in his own palace in expensive clothing right now.
What Jesus seems to be saying here is that when they went into the desert to see John, they were expecting to see a prophet, not a king. But Jesus says that John was more than a prophet because John’s coming marked the end of an era. John was the final prophet before the in breaking of God’s kingdom. Back then the Jews expected a prophet like the Old Testament prophet Elijah to come right before God’s kingdom dawned. Jesus says that John was this Elijah-like prophet, but only if they trusted in Jesus and his agenda for God’s kingdom. By referring to John as the final prophet, Jesus is in a very subtle way claiming to be the one all the law and prophets looked forward to. Jesus is claiming to be the fulfillment of everything the nation of Israel was looking and hoping for. This is why from now on even the least person in God’s kingdom is greater than John, because John merely looked forward to God’s kingdom, but now that Jesus has come to inaugurate God’s kingdom, the blessings and privileges are greater.
Now v. 12 seems strange at first. Some take the phrase "the kingdom of heaven forcibly advancing" as a reference to the fact that no one can stop God’s kingdom from coming. But I think this phrase "forcibly advancing" is better translated from the Greek as "suffers violence." That’s how the New American Standard Bible translates this Greek verb, as well as the New King James Version and the New Revised Standard Version. So this isn’t a positive phrase, but it’s a reference to people inflicting violence on God’s kingdom. Who are these people inflicting violence on God’s kingdom? Jesus calls them "forceful men," or literally "violent men."
Essentially I think what Jesus is saying in v. 12 is this. Violent people are exploiting the promise of God’s kingdom and using it as an excuse to rebel against the Romans. Revolutionaries, bandits and would-be messiahs were high jacking the promise of God’s Kingdom and under the banner of God’s Kingdom they were trying to motivate people to rise up in an armed revolution against Rome. I read a book by a historian named Richard Horsley just this week called Bandits, Prophets and Messiahs that looks at these popular movements in Galilee at the time of Jesus and I was amazed at the number of revolutionaries who lived back then (Horsley). In fact, we know that just a few decades after Jesus’ death this is exactly what would happen, ultimately leading to the destruction of Jerusalem.
Here we find the final characteristic of God’s kingdom. God’s Kingdom has come to us through Jesus Christ. Since God’s kingdom has come to us through Jesus, our response to Jesus is decisive.
Jesus himself is the king, and how we respond to the king indicates where we stand in relation to God’s kingdom.
This story from Jesus’ life illustrates for us why so many people wanted Jesus dead. On the one hand, the Romans, Herod, and the rich temple priests hated Jesus because he spoke of the coming of God’s Kingdom. To the Romans that sounded like a call to revolution, a threat to the great Roman Empire. To Herod and the temple priests it threatened their power because the only reason they were in power was because they compromised with the Romans. So the Romans, Herod, and the temple priests wanted to get rid of Jesus. But on the other hand, Jesus challenged the people of Israel to give up their ambition to bring God’s kingdom by violence. He challenged them to turn the other cheek, to go the extra mile for the Roman soldier, to overcome evil by love, to trust and follow Jesus’ agenda. He warned them of coming judgment if they didn’t give up their obsession to conquer their conquerors by force. So the Pharisees hated Jesus, as well as the various revolutionary groups who were just waiting for their chance to rebel. You can see why so many people wanted Jesus dead.
Yet the claim of the Bible is that somehow through Jesus’ life, death and resurrection God’s kingdom has dawned. Through his death and resurrection we can be made right with God, incorporated into God’s new community, and live as subjects of God’s redemptive rule here and now. The very act that sought to silence Jesus’ message was the act that made the presence of God’s Kingdom a present reality.
Conclusion
Palm Sunday begins what Christians often call holy week. This week we think about the various events of Jesus’ last week. Palm Sunday is a good time to remember what God’s kingdom is really about. God’s Kingdom was the heart of Jesus’ message, it’s unconventional, it opens God’s blessings to people, and it has come to us through the events of holy week and Easter Sunday. Palm Sunday is a good time to think about how we as a church are living under God’s rule and reign. Are we proclaiming Jesus’ kingdom message? Are we guarding our expectations about God’s Kingdom, resisting the urge to identify it with politics or church? Are we helping people enter into that kingdom, and are we responding to Jesus’ rule and reign today?
I was thinking about God’s Kingdom last week when I picked up the LA Times Inland Valley News section. I started reading an article, and soon realized I was reading about members of our church. Perhaps you saw the story about a little girl from Romania with brain cancer that needed a life saving surgery. A doctor offered to perform the surgery for free, but the girl and her family needed a place to stay, a host family. So two members of our church opened their home to this Romanian family so the girl could have surgery and recovery. I asked myself, "Why would someone do something like that?" Gina told me its completely turned their lives upside down. The only reason a person would do that is because they’re living under the rule of God. That challenged me to ask myself if I was living under God’s redemptive rule. Are we as a church living under God’s redemptive rule? Palm Sunday is an appropriate time for us to tell God, "Won’t you rule in my life once again!"
Sources
Daniell, David. 1994. William Tyndale: A Biography. Yale University Press.
Horsley, Richard. 1999. Bandits, Prophets and Messiahs: Popular Movements in the Time of Jesus. Trinity Press International.
Willard, Dallas. 1998. The Divine Conspiracy. Harper San Francisco.
Wright, N. T. 1996. Jesus and the Victory of God. Fortress Press.
Yancey, Phillip. 1997. What’s So Amazing About Grace? Zondervan Publishing House.
