“No Turning Back”

Palm Sunday

Sunday, March 16, 2008

Isaiah 50:4-9a                    

Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29                       

Philippians 2:5-11                                             

So often, when people are asked what they desire from their participation in a church, they will quickly mention the word ‘relevance’. 

And there is nothing wrong with this desire.  We all want our faith to be relevant to our lives.  We all long to come to a better grasp on how the words of Bible present us with clear and certain insights into the best ways to live our faith.  We all long to see and to understand how prayer and worship can serve to guide and shape our lives and the events of our world.  Relevance is a noble pursuit.

So often, however, when we state that we want to be shown the relevance of some passage, what we actually mean is that we want to go away with some easily applicable moral or lesson by which we can try to shape our lives. 

As much as I value such moral guidance, and as much as I believe in the surprising – and often the shocking – relevance of the Bible, for our lives, I would invite us, this morning, to put the quest for that particular type of relevance on hold. 

That is, I would invite us not to ask how ‘we’ are supposed to act in light of this text from the Gospel of Matthew, but rather to focus our attention almost exclusively on how Jesus himself acted in the story that this text presents to us.  By the end of this sermon, we may not have an easily applicable moral lesson to go away with, but we may, I hope, be opened to a deeper level of reflection on the ways that we might understand – and even experience -- the events that will unfold before us through the coming week.

The Gospel text recounts the famous story of the entry of Jesus, into Jerusalem, at the beginning of the week that would end with Jesus’ death.  So quickly, he who entered the city on the back of a donkey, to the sound of crowds screaming ‘Hosanna’, would be driven out of the city, with a cross upon his own back, to the sound of crowds screaming ‘crucify’.  His experience that week – which would begin with expectation and adulation would end with revulsion and humiliation. 

As we read this text on Palm Sunday – that day when we sing and celebrate the coming of the longed-for Prince of Peace to his ancestral home in the City of David, the City of Jerusalem -- it is interesting to pay particular attention to the structure of today’s Gospel reading.  It was not until I read this passage, this week, that I noticed for the first time that the Gospel writer seems to have placed as much – or more -- emphasis on the description of the preparations for Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem as that writer placed on the description of the entry itself.

Consider how many of the verses concentrate on the preparations. Our text is eleven verses long – and the first seven, of those eleven verses, focus entirely on the preparations for the triumphant entry.  We read about how Jesus sent two disciples ahead of him to find and to bring, to him, a donkey and a colt.  The text goes to great length to describe how those two disciples were told where to find the animals; they were told what they were to say to the animal’s owners after they had found them; and we, as readers, are offered an explanation, by way of a quotation from Zechariah chapter 9, as to the meaning of why those two animals were chosen – even though the story offers no explanation as to how Jesus actually rode on two animals at once!   After that quotation, we are informed that the disciples did as Jesus told them, they found the animals, placed their cloaks on them, and in so doing made all of the necessary preparations for Jesus’ entry.

It is not until verse 8, however, that the actual procession into Jerusalem is described, along with the description of the crowds that waved the palm branches and spread their cloaks in front of him.  For all of our focus on the waving palms on Palm Sunday, the Gospel writer’s focus seemed to be far more on the preparations that the disciples made for that glorious arrival.  And then, almost as quickly as the description of the triumphal, palm-waving entry begins, it ends.  The last two verses – verses 10 and 11 – describe the reaction of people, in the city, after the entry was completed. 

Fully seven verses out of eleven, therefore, are focused on the preparations; only two verses describe the event itself; and the last two verses describe what happened after.  So what meaning, what message, might the text be trying to convey to us, by dedicating the vast majority of this passage to a focus on the preparations that were made for Jesus’ entry?

The only conclusion that we can draw from the structuring of this passage, in fact, is that the Gospel writer intended for us, as readers, to come to the clear and unmistakable conclusion that Jesus knew exactly what he was doing.  He knew that he was about to be welcomed into the city; he knew the ancient prophecies about the meaning of a king of peace, who would ride humbly into Jerusalem rather than with the arrogance and triumph of a returning military hero.   The text is shaped – even to the point of having Jesus ride on two animals at once – to send the clear signal that Jesus knew what was happening,

And if, as the text suggests, he knew where the donkey and the colt were to be found; if he knew what the animals’ owners were going to say; if he knew what the disciples should say in order to convince the animals’ owners to let them borrow them; and if he knew how those actions would fulfill the ancient prophecies, then we can only draw one conclusion.

Jesus knew exactly what was going on. 

He made all of the preparations, all the while knowing what was about to happen to him. 

And, even though he knew what was about to happen, what is remarkable is that he made the journey anyways.

Over the past century and a half, and particularly since the rise of historical-critical biblical scholarship, one of the great pursuits, amongst many biblical scholars, relates to the question of who Jesus understood himself to be, and what were the ideas and contexts in which he formed his ideas and lived his life.  That broad search -- which is often referred to as the ‘quest for the historical Jesus’ – sought to use historical and sociological methods, rather than religious criteria, in order to establish a verifiable biography of Jesus.  The work of Albert Schweitzer – whose book, entitled, ‘The Quest for the Historical Jesus’ was one of the first popularly embraced works in that genre – has been followed by many scholars and writers, right up to the modern day.  Those of you who have heard of the Jesus Seminar, or read the works of Tom Harpur, or saw the movie “The Last Temptation of Christ” or have read the recent book on Christ which was written by the novelist Anne Rice, of the Interview with a Vampire fame – and who, interestingly enough, wrote the book as a testament to her recent conversion to Christianity -- will know that this quest for a deeper understanding of who the historical person named Jesus was, and what influences played out upon him, has continued onto the shelves of even the most secular bookstores and onto the movie screens of this modern world.

And one of the great questions, that lies at the heart of all of these pursuits, concerns the question about how much Jesus actually understood about what was about to happen to him in Jerusalem.  Could he really predict the future, and did he know that he was going to die in Jerusalem -- or were his predictions about those events simply placed onto his lips by the Gospel writers who were writing after the death and resurrection had taken place?  Did he really know that Judas was going to betray him, and if so, was Judas entirely to blame or was he simply fulfilling a nasty but necessary role in the unfolding journey towards the crucifixion?   And, for me, one of the most interesting questions that these speculations invite us to ponder is this – did Jesus go to the cross knowing that he was going to rise again?   Many of the Gospel texts seem to suggest that he did – but did this knowledge affect his own experience of the pain of death?    

This pursuit of the historical Jesus is an interesting quest, and opens us to some truly engaging questions.  The difficulty with them, however, is that they all leave us, at some point or another, lost in speculation.  Aside from the biblical texts, we have no way to come to any clear or definitive understanding of who Jesus was.  For a time, it was widely believed that there were references to Jesus in the writings of the historian Josephus, but these references have been widely disputed. 

Which leaves us, in the end, with the strange, sometimes contradictory, and always inspiring texts of the Gospel accounts.  And those Gospel narratives, such as the one that we read today, go to great lengths to suggest that Jesus did, in fact, know exactly what was going to happen to him in Jerusalem. 

And he made the journey anyways.

It is in light of this fact  -- that Jesus knew what was about to happen -- that our text from Isaiah seems to take on an added meaning and a deeper resonance, when the prophet writes, of the suffering servant, that “I did not turn backward.  I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting.”

Jesus knew what was about to happen.  In today’s reading, he went to great length to help the disciples to make the necessary preparations for that journey.

He did not turn back.

Which actually leaves us in a strange situation, as Christians.

As the events of this coming week unfold, we will lament his betrayal and abandonment by his disciples and friends.  We will reel, in horror, at the travesty of justice that surrounded his arrest, his conviction and his sentence.  We might squirm in discomfort and in shock when we ponder just how inhumane, degrading, painful and horrific was the nature of execution on a cross. 

But, at some point, the Gospel texts invite us to realize – and even to believe – that Jesus consciously and intentionally made that fateful journey straight into the depths of suffering, straight into the heart of pain, straight into the experience of humiliation, straight into the presence of death. 

It is humbling to realize that that the only reason for him to make that journey, the only reason for him to help his disciples to make preparations for it was so that he could accomplish what God had sent him to do.

And what was that? 

Jesus made that journey into the depths of pain and death in order to demonstrate the death-defying power of the love of God; he made that journey in order to break the cycle of this world’s destructive violence; to accomplish the salvation of this world; to redeem us, and forgive us and reconcile us to God.

And he did all of those things simply for the sake of love.  For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son…

This story does not leave us, therefore, with any easily applicable, relevant moral lessons.  It leaves us, instead, with a song of love upon our lips.

My song is love unknown, my Saviour’s love for me,

Love to the loveless shown that they might lovely be.

Oh who am I that for my sake,

my Lord should take frail flesh and die?

He came from his blest throne salvation to bestow

But we made strange and none the longed-for Christ would know.

But oh, my Friend, my Friend indeed,

who at my need his life did spend.

Sometimes they strew his way and his sweet praises sing,

Resounding all the day hosannas to their King;

Then ‘crucify’ is all their breath

And for his death they thirst and cry.

Here might I stay and sing, no story so divine;

Never was love, dear King, never was grief like thine.

This is my friend, in whose sweet praise,

I all my days could gladly spend.