“The Coming Kingdom” Colchester Federated Church, March 24, 2024, Palm Sunday (Mark 11:1-11)

Holy Week begins on a high note, with Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem.  We act it out every year in our CFC way (thank you for participating and going with the flow).  We gather on the front steps of our historic church to wave our palm branches and process inside the sanctuary.  We shout our “Hosannas!” and do our best to imagine ourselves in the crowd that gathered before Jesus as he rode the colt down the Mount of Olives and into the temple in Jerusalem.  On Palm Sunday, we too have our Palm Sunday Processional and Parade to help place ourselves inside the story.

Honestly, if there was ever a time in Jesus’ three-year ministry that he could have sparked an armed revolution—today was the day.  The crowds were with him.  The people were enthusiastically shouting their “Hosannas” which can be translated as “Save us” or “Save now.”  Jesus could have inspired the crowds—all of us—to storm the temple or the Roman garrison.  But Jesus doesn’t do that.  That’s not the kind of Messiah Jesus was (and is) and that’s not the kind of Kingdom on earth Jesus spent his years of ministry teaching about and embodying as best he could.

Perhaps the most anti-climactic part of our story is when Mark tells us “Jesus entered Jerusalem and went into the temple.  After he looked around at everything, because it was already late in the evening, he returned to Bethany with the Twelve.”[1]  No pre-battle speech from the general to rally the troops.  No locker room speech from the coach at halftime to rally the team.  Jesus appears to go inside the temple (the holiest place in the holiest city), look around at everything there is to see, and then go back up the Mount of Olives to Bethany with the disciples because it was late in the evening by then.  It’s almost a let down.  We can’t help but wonder what Jesus must have been thinking as he was inside the temple just quietly taking it all in.  Was it an introspective moment where Jesus was preparing himself for all that was to come?

Because the very next day, Jesus and his disciples go back into the temple and that’s when some fireworks happen.  We explored these events together on the Third Sunday in Lent—Jesus overturning the tables of the money changers and driving out everyone who was selling and buying goods and temple sacrifices.  This event happened on Monday of Holy Week in the Synoptic Gospels.  Jesus taught those who had gathered, “Hasn’t it been written, My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations?  But you’ve turned it into a hideout for crooks.”[2]  After this prophetic action, the chief priests and legal experts viewed Jesus as dangerous and looked for a way to kill him.  Meanwhile the crowds were still enthralled by his teachings. 

Very few people have ever risked their lives to speak truth to power in such a transformative way.  Jesus taught that the Kingdom of God was here and now.  Jesus tried to build the upside-down Kingdom of God on earth as it will be in heaven.  A Kingdom where the first will be last and the last will be first.  A Kingdom where a widow with one coin can give more than the rich in the temple.  A Kingdom where a father runs out to embrace his wayward son who finally comes home.  A Kingdom where a shepherd will leave behind 99 sheep to go out looking for the one that is lost.  A Kingdom where everyone is invited to the banquet until the house can be full.  A Kingdom where those who mourn will be comforted.  A Kingdom where the merciful will receive mercy and the meek will inherit the earth.  A Kingdom where the pure in heart will see God and the peacemakers will be called children of God. 

In some ways, we have been trying to understand Jesus’ Kingdom values ever since he shared them.  Because we live in a world where it seems that the rich and powerful are in charge and that might makes right.  So, what do we do with the Prince of Peace? 

On Palm Sunday (and in the temple the next day), Jesus protested against the role of priestly mediators and the need for poor people to pay expensive sacrifices to be forgiven and get right with God.  As New Testament scholars Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan remind us in their book The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Final Days in Jerusalem, “His [Jesus’] protest was against a domination system legitimized in the name of God, a domination system radically different from what the already present and coming kingdom of God, the dream of God, would be like.  It was not Jesus against Judaism, or Judaism against Jesus.”[3]  Jesus just had a different idea about what loyalty to God looks like, what worshiping God looks like, what trusting God looks like, and what God intends for our lives to look like than many of his contemporaries.

Now why does this story still matter?  Maybe just like those crowds in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago, we need saved too.  We’re not an occupied nation and most of us have what we need—we can provide and care for ourselves and our families.  But sometimes things go wrong.  When you (hopefully) said your hosannas this morning, maybe your heart felt just a little lighter.  It’s a funny word—but what would it look like if we asked God to save us?  And I’m not talking about saving us for eternity, I’m talking about saving us for transformed lives here and now.  Because Jesus didn’t come into the world to judge the world, but to save the world for new life.  Jesus came to show us what a life fully devoted to God looks like.  And this way of being impacts our relationships with our neighbors and our relationship with ourselves. 

How do we need God to save us?

God save me from anger. 

God save me from loneliness. 

God save me from soul-shattering disappointments. 

God save me from that bully at school or at work. 

God save me from bitterness. 

God save me from one more family fight. 

God save me from fear. 

God save me from overwhelming stress and anxiety. 

God save me from addiction. 

God save me from my broken heart. 

God save me from cancer. 

God save my children from what they’re going through. 

God save me. 

Palm Sunday is a beautiful story because it’s such an honest story.  The crowds who gathered around Jesus needed saving and they weren’t afraid to ask for it.  “Hosanna!”  “Save us!”  They weren’t afraid to be honest.  They didn’t pretend that life was grand all the time.  Sometimes we get ourselves into trouble when we think that we can go it alone, and that we don’t need saving.  Professor Brene Brown once wrote, “Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as hard as spending our lives running from it.  Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable.”

What would it be like if we recognized those moments when we need saved and owned our story and our vulnerabilities and asked God for help?  Now I wish that every single time we ask God to save us, or will ask God to save us, that God will immediately answer our prayers.  Though God isn’t a vending machine—we don’t put a prayer request in, select the outcome, and out pops whatever it was our heart desired.  Just as Jesus was not the Messiah many people expected (or even wanted), God works in mysterious ways.

Though God works through people for sure.  There’s power in naming and even embracing our vulnerabilities—recognizing that we need saving.  Jesus saw people with God’s compassionate eyes, and that’s what made people realize that there was something special about him.  God could work through him so easily.  So that when Jesus looked back at the gathered crowd and looked around the temple, Jesus saw humanity with the eyes of God and those people felt it deep within their souls.  Jesus must have also had a sinking realization that this path he was walking wasn’t going to end with saving them how they wanted to be saved.  No, Jesus couldn’t save the people from the Romans or from poverty or many other hardships they faced.  Not immediately, not right when they asked for it on that roadside in Jerusalem as they shouted their “Hosannas” and spread their clothes and branches before him on the street.  The coming Kingdom was different than many folks imagined and Jesus is the Prince of Peace.

Instead, Jesus saved people for new life.  Jesus saved people for an alternate path—where the first will be last and the last will be first in God’s Kingdom.  Jesus saved people for this vision of God who will run down that road to meet God’s lost and wayward children.  Jesus saved people for this new Way that made life more merciful and meaningful and full of God’s grace.  And the best news is that Jesus saves us for new life too.  Holy Week has begun.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

[1] Mark 11:11, CEB.
[2] Mark 11:17.
[3] Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Final Days in Jerusalem, 30.

Photo by Sander Crombach on Unsplash