Palm Sunday, 2003
The Rev’d Quintin Morrow
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
Fort Worth, TExas
www.st-andrews.com
Palm Sunday is a rather schizophrenic day. It begins in triumph and ends in tragedy. It is inaugurated by a joyful entrance and concludes with an ignominious departure. It starts with cheers, is punctuated with jeers, and finishes with tears.
In this brief message this morning I want you to see the capriciousness of the human heart, the matchless compassion of Jesus Christ, and the unshakeable constancy of God’s provision in effecting your forgiveness and redemption.
The day which sets in motion the events that would ultimately lead to Jesus’ betrayal, arrest, trial, and execution, and which started the clock ticking on the last few days of His pre-resurrection life, was a Spring Sunday morning, probably in A.D. 30. It is known both as the Triumphal Entry and Palm Sunday.
Because the event was of such import, all four Gospels record the events of Palm Sunday. All four Gospels also share a similar description of the Lord’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, though they differ in minor details, each accentuating or downplaying different aspects of the day as they relate to the literary picture the writers want to paint of Jesus.
You of course recall that throughout the Lord’s earthly ministry He told the disciples He had come to die. “The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many” (Mk. 10:45). Jesus was not ambiguous, and His words were not opaque: I will be betrayed in Jerusalem, handed over to the Gentiles, crucified, and after three days rise again, He said. And I tell you this now, Jesus continued, so that when these things occur, later you will remember and believe. The Gospels record the Disciples receiving this revelation in the same spiritual stupor they heard much of what Jesus told them. And they were afraid to ask Him what He meant.
Since, however, our Lord’s destiny lay in Jerusalem, and since He came not to do His own will, but the will of the Father who sent Him, the day came when Jesus entered Jerusalem. That day came at the highwater mark of Jesus’ popularity. The religious establishment hated Jesus and were determined to find a way to have Him killed. But the common people who followed Jesus everywhere He went loved Him—or so it seemed. He healed the sick; He fed the hungry; He gave sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, and mobility to the crippled; He preached; He even raised the dead.
On Palm Sunday our Lord mounted a donkey and rode into the city, amidst loud acclamations by the crowd. Some of city’s residents, usually numbering 30,000, but probably swelling to over 200,000 because of Passover pilgrims, strew blankets and cloaks, others palm branches, before the animal Jesus rode on.
The event was loaded with significance. Firstly, it had been predicted by the prophets. In Zechariah 9:9 we hear:
Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your King is coming to you; He is just and having salvation, Lowly and riding on a donkey, a colt, the foal of a donkey.
The crowd cries out “Hosanna!” meaning “Lord, save us!” and with the words of Psalm 118:26 “Blessed is who comes in the name of the LORD!” Secondly, our Lord’s entry was a political statement. In the ancient world, when a conquering king entered a city after a battle, he rode on a stallion or something even more impressive. Judas Maccabeus, after having driven the Syrians from Jerusalem in 163 B.C. entered the city on a majestic stallion. The residents of the city came out and waved palm branches as he entered, and shouted, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” Julius Caesar had returned to Rome in a golden chariot harnessed to 40 elephants in 45 B.C. But whenever a king entered a city in peace, he rode on a donkey.
Jesus entered Jerusalem amidst adulation, clapping, shouting, smiles, and dancing. The reception the U.S. Marines got from Iraqis as they entered Baghdad this past week paints a similar picture of the scene. It was a day of cheers, but the cheering wouldn’t last. This same crowd would less than a week later shout, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” before Pilate’s judgment seat.
The crowd was fickle, because our human hearts are fickle and untrustworthy. Napoleon and his army were once marching through Switzerland and were receiving thunderous applause wherever they went. The crowds shouted: “Long live the king! Viva la France! Hail to the emperor Napoleon!” But the general was unimpressed. An aid asked, “Isn’t it wonderful to hear the roar of the crowds and the love of the people?” Napoleon replied, “The same people that are cheering me today would cheer just as loudly at my execution.” You remember in the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar the Palm Sunday crowd sings, “Christ, you know I love you. Did you see, I waved?”
The miracles had stopped. The healings had stopped. The cafeteria was closed. Jesus came in peace to save souls, not in war to overthrow Caesar. Because of all that, the cheering would quickly turn to jeering.
The human heart is fickle—desperately wicked and beyond comprehension is the biblical indictment—and you dare not trust it for guidance in anything of eternal importance. See the capriciousness of the human heart. It was fickle then. It is fickle now.
Next, see the compassion of the Savior.
The next event isn’t included in Mark’s Gospel but rather in Luke’s Gospel. Upon His entry into Jerusalem, even knowing full well what would happen to Him there, and about the betrayal of the crowds, we are told by Luke that Jesus shed tears of love and grief for the city. Listen to Luke 19:41-44:
Now as He drew near, He saw the city and wept over it, saying, “If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you and close you in on every side, and level you, and your children within you, to the ground; and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visitation.”
Jesus wept because He saw the opportunity that was being missed. He wept because the nation of Israel, God’s chosen people, who had been looking and longing for their promised Redeemer since the first sin in the Garden, had stared that Savior in the face and declared Him insane and demon-possessed, and would soon reject Him and crucify Him as a common criminal. He wept because their rejection would result in the destruction of Jerusalem and scattering of the people throughout the world. “Your enemies will surround you, will raze you to the ground, will slaughter your children, and will not leave one stone on another when they leave,” Jesus said in tears, “because you didn’t recognize your salvation when it appeared.”
Jesus’ words came true. Exactly forty years later—just one generation—the Roman legions under General Titus laid siege to Jerusalem to quell another Jewish rebellion in Judea. In August of A.D. 70, after months of encirclement, Jerusalem was conquered. The Romans, by now fed up with rebellions in the region, ensured that it would remain subjugated. Titus leveled the city, put its inhabitants to the sword—young, old, priest, merchant, man, woman, child—and exiled the survivors. The Temple was set ablaze. The gold on the ceiling melted in the heat, and ran down through the cracks of stone blocks in the walls. There it cooled and hardened. Following the destruction of the city Titus gave his soldiers permission to pillage and keep whatever valuables they could find. His men saw the gold streams hardened in the crevices of the walls of the Temple, and took the building apart stone by stone to get the precious metal. When they were done, not one stone was left standing on another.
But Jesus wept on this day. He wept out of love. He wept because of the sinfulness and blindness of the human heart. He wept because of the consequences that were coming upon His people for resisting God and rejecting His provision of salvation.
We have seen the capriciousness of the human heart, and the compassion of the Savior. Now see the unshakeable constancy of God, and His provision for our salvation.
What becomes abundantly clear throughout the Gospels, and especially in His trials before Herod, Caiaphas, and Pilate, is that Jesus didn’t accidentally stumble into legal difficulties with the Romans or theological trouble by the Jewish Sanhedrin. Everything the Lord did, He did intentionally. Everything He said, He said deliberately. Everywhere He went, He went purposefully. Never at any time was Jesus the victim of circumstances. The second person of blessed Trinity left His throne in glory to assume human nature and die for your sins and mine. And die He would. Satan even tried during the 40-day wilderness temptation to detour Jesus from Calvary by offering Him a crown without a cross. He failed.
At His baptism in the Jordan River John the Baptizer declared Jesus to be the agnus dei, the Lamb of God, who would die to take away the sin of the world. But His vocation to die began before that. 600 years before Jesus’ birth Isaiah the prophet spoke in chapter 53 of the coming Suffering Servant who would die as a sin offering to bring peace and forgiveness to God’s people. God would impute to Him all our sins and punish Him in our place, Isaiah said. “By His knowledge,” Isaiah continued, “my righteous servant shall justify many, for He shall bear their sins.” The punishment that brought us peace with God was inflicted upon Him, Isaiah declared. But Jesus’ vocation to die began before that. 1,000 years before Jesus’ advent David foretold the very manner of his own offspring’s death in Psalm 22. They pierce my hands and feet, and cast lots for my garments, David said. Not surprisingly, Jesus quoted Psalm 22:1 from the cross. But Jesus’ vocation to die began long before that. Immediately after Adam and Eve’s disobedience in the Garden in Genesis 3 God promised a coming sin offering by declaring the serpent would bruise the heel of one of the woman’s offspring, and by saying also that this offspring would crush the serpent’s head. But Jesus’ vocation to die began even before that. John sees a vision in the Book of Revelation of the Lamb which was slain before the foundation of the world. That Lamb was Jesus Christ. Before one particle of matter was created—from time immemorial—it was in the mind of God to send His Son to die for you. And die He did. Nothing in heaven or earth could or world thwart God’s provision to save us. Nothing.
The only question of any meaning this morning is: Are you saved? I know it isn’t a question Episcopalians normally ask. But I am asking you. I’m not asking you if you are churchmember—even a member of this church. I am not asking if you think you’re a good person and try to keep the Ten Commandments. The Bible says that all have sinned and that there is none righteous, no not one. And if you doubt Scripture’s verdict, watch the evening news, or better yet, do an unflinching, thorough inventory of your own heart. We don’t possess the moral power for self-reformation. We can’t turn over enough new leaves or pull ourselves up by our spiritual bootstraps. If we could, Jesus would not have come to die. His medicine for our souls’ sickness was severe—His suffering and death—because our disease is severe. It is fatal, actually. Left untreated we will stand condemned before God.
The angelic chorus at the Savior’s birth said they brought good news of great joy. Jesus Himself preached good news. This good news—this Gospel—is not that we must struggle and strive to be good and hope for the best. How many good works are enough in that system? And how would I know? The Gospel is not an “if/then” proposition. IF you do such and such, and so many good works, THEN God will let you into heaven.
The Gospel is rather a “because/therefore” proposition. BECAUSE Jesus came and lived in perfect obedience to the Law of God, and died as our as sin substitute so that we might be forgiven, THEREFORE repent and believe in Him. It is that simple.
Repentance is forsaking that which displeases the Lord. Repentance is never perfect, but arises as a desire in a heart sorrowful and convinced of its own failure. Remember the capriciousness of the human heart.
Belief in Jesus Christ is more than intellectual assent to a set of propositions about Him, though it begins there. It is complete and total reliance upon Him, a clinging to Him, for salvation and a submission to obey Him.
Remember the Lord’s matchless compassion. Remember also God’s unshakeable constancy. “Whosoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved,” St. Paul says. Whosoever includes you. And it will be so. Not because I say so, but because God says so.
If you are a believer already this morning, the question and appeal to you is familiar: Are you living for Him? And if not, why not? “Let the same mind be in you”—the same attitude, the same life vocation—“which was also in Christ Jesus,” Paul says in Philippians 2:5. Well, what was the mind of the Savior? Humility. Obedience. So the exhortation to us is imitation. In fact, the word “Christian” means “Little Christ.” We are supposed to be small scale models of the real thing. The goal of our life is christlikeness.
We wear palm leaves shaped into crosses on our lapels today. It is alright to wear a cross. But it is best to pick one up and follow the Savior as sold-out disciples. We must pick up our cross and follow the Master today. Picking it up leads to life. Refusing it leads to death.
AMEN.
