Disciples Began to Praise
The text of my Palm Sunday sermon at First Christian Church, Eden, NC. Join us for Holy Week Services:
April 1: Maundy Thursday worship at North Spray Christian Church in Eden (Rev. Lem Hardison host pastor) beginning at 7:00 pm.
April 4: Easter SunRise Service at 7:00 am at FCC, Eden at our picnic shelter with lite breakfast to follow.
Easter Sunday worship begins at 11:00 am in the sanctuary.
Luke 19:28-40
This is how I heard the story. A person, a woman, decided that her life needed direction, and she decided to go to the monastery to seek that direction and listen for the voice of God. The journey was long, 40 days. Along the way she had time to listen. The monastery was nestled in a cliff in a mountain range. As the traveler made her way through the pass leading up to the monastery she could hear a voice echo, “Who will lead me into the heart of God?” As the traveler got closer to the gates of the monastery the echo grew stronger, louder. “Who will lead me into the heart of God?” There, in the distance she could see the top of gate to the monastery, and beyond the gate the path switch backing and forth up the side of the mountain to the monastery. Nearer now the traveler could see a person sitting near the gate and knew the echo must be his. She approached. He reached for a cane, “Who will lead me into the heart of God?” The traveler could not walk past him. She reached down, took the blind man by the hands and helped him up. “Who will lead me into the heart of God?” “Together,” she said, “Together we will go into the heart of God.”(1)
That is what we do each week when we worship, journey into the heart of God. That is what we do each time we serve our community, help a neighbor, listen to someone when we need to be doing something else, or do the things that others label, Christian. Here, outside the gates of Jerusalem, we recall all the places we have been with Jesus and how many times we have heard the story told. Think about your life for a moment. How many times in your life you have heard or read the Palm Sunday story? Have you ever thought about what character in the story represents you? I’m sure you’ve been told by a family member that you remind them of aunt or uncle . . . someone in the past. My dad’s father, Andrew, died when I was an infant, but my mother and my dad’s siblings tell me that as my father has aged he looks more and more like papaw; and his life, his personality, is a mirror of papaw. My aunt Lola looks like grandma, my maternal grandmother. Grandma returned to God many years ago. The last time I saw aunt Lola I wasn’t sure if it would be ok to tell her that I saw grandma in her, but in a quiet moment I did. Aunt Lola smiled. “Michael Jr., that’s the best thing you could tell me today. I see her little Cherokee eyes looking back at me every morning and I wondered if someone else saw it too.” Have you ever thought about what character in the biblical story mirrors you or that you mirror?
We like to think that, if Jesus told us to go and do something, we would, without hesitation, just like the two disciples who go and fetch the donkey. This a place to dig into the story by asking, “What kind of disciple am I?” What kind of disciple are you?” Is there a disciple of Jesus that has character traits similar to you? I have to tell you that, when I think of the disciples, I have more in common with the twin called Thomas than I do with Simon Peter. There are times when I exhibit the curiosity of Martha’s sister, Mary, and like Mary Magdalene, in moments of community anxiety and chaos, I can do what needs to be done. When I think about the First Testament, the Hebrew Bible, Ezekiel, Job, and the author of Psalm 40 immediately resonate with me. Which one or two or three mirror you? I don’t think modern Christians ask these kinds of questions about the text, the story, or our selves enough. Why? It is a byproduct of centuries of tradition emphasizing belief over practice, consumption over production, because we know what God may ask if we listen on our way into the heart of God.
The journey to this parade day, Palm Sunday, began weeks ago, in a time far, far away, in a land many, many miles from here. We Christians transport our selves back in time during the liturgical seasons of Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, and Pentecost. It is during these seasons, non-ordinary time, that we get out the family photo albums and tell the stories. These are inherited stories about people we never met that shape our belief and help us go into the heart of God. Mostly, the stories comfort us. They help shape and define our identity. The stories remind us about God’s many covenants with ancient people and with us. Sometimes the stories change us. It depends on how we read them and what we bring to the text.
Peter Gomes, a Baptist minister serving at Harvard University’s Memorial Church, tells a story about a time when he was flying to London. After takeoff he opened his bible and notes to work on the sermon he would deliver the next day. Several hours into the flight, somewhere over the Atlantic, the turbulence picked up and began tossing the plane around, enough for the captain to ask the flight attendants to be seated and remain seated until further notice. The plane pitched and shook in the turbulence. The woman sitting next to Peter noticed he was reading the bible and asked, “Do you know something that I should know?” He writes of this story, “As with so many people, my seatmate had assumed that the answer to the present dilemma, whatever it was, would be found in the bible . . .”(2) Sometimes this is the only way we Christians read the biblical text. There are some expressions of Christian witness that treat the bible like a magic eight ball: ask a question, shake it up, and wait for the answer. In the book, The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus, Peter Gomes reminds us that it is important:
How one reads and interprets, either the Bible is a textbook for the status quo, a book of pieties and promises, or it is a recipe for social change and transformation. There are churches dedicated to each point of view, each claiming its share of the good news; but what is good news for some is often bad news for somebody else. We will see how this double-edge sword of the gospel makes Jesus’ own preaching and teaching so dangerous, not only way back then but right here and now, and we will see why it is a very dangerous thing to take seriously the question, “What would Jesus do?”(3)
The journey into the heart of God has led to this place. Were you here or in another sanctuary for worship on Ash Wednesday? Have you marked the Lenten season with extra prayer, a spiritual discipline, helping a stranger, visiting a neighbor, or reading about the life and times of Jesus? The disciples have followed Jesus since he came back from the desert, proclaiming the kingdom of God. When we look in the photo album, we remember all the big and little moments. Water to wine, feeding the multitude, healing a blind man and all the lepers that just appear in every place Jesus visits. We huddled in the boat during the storm and watched Peter get out and take a few soggy steps toward Jesus before he sank into the waves. We saw Peter proclaim Jesus to be “the son of God, the messiah,” when none of us could; and we saw and heard Jesus tell Peter, he told all of us, to tell no one of Peter’s confession. Think about all the things we have witnessed? And it is not just what we have seen with our eyes.
Along the journey Jesus has been teaching people, teaching us. His parables, those teaching stories, are still confusing and instructive as we walk through this life. We’ve heard parables about mustard seeds, fig trees, vineyard owners, and a child returning home after wasting his inheritance. Jesus confronted religion and the religious leaders of his time, and he confronts religion and the religious leaders in our time. He talked to the educated and the peasant alike in conversations about what it means to live in the kingdom of God, not in a far off heaven, but what the kingdom of God means right now. Some among us have argued about their place in heaven next to Jesus. Some see Jesus as a revolutionary leader. Some just want to be forgiven, are desperately seeking forgiveness.
Do you remember the time a guy asked, “Jesus what is the greatest commandment?” Jesus paused and thought for a minute before responding. “God is One. Love God with all that you are.” Just before the guy responded Jesus continued. “There is a second. Love your neighbor as yourself.” After parroting the answer back to Jesus, I can still see the dismay on that guy’s face when Jesus told him he was not far from the kingdom of God. Which parable, what teaching story, is in your heart, captures your imagination, or puzzles you most often? Does that parable tell you something about the kind of disciple you are? Dose that parable help you identify your character in the biblical story today as the “disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they (that you) have seen” (19:37b). Has your journey with Jesus, your journey with disciples like those sitting next to you in the pews, informed or shaped your praise? As we go with Jesus into Jerusalem with shouts of “Hosanna,” can you lift your voice with the multitude of disciples, “Blessed is the king, the one, who comes in the name of the Lord!” (19:38a).
The way Jesus entered Jerusalem is how the ancients welcomed people of nobility or kings into their village, town, or city. Riding into town on a donkey or a colt was a sign of humility by the king, the Lord (which is a title of nobility rather than divinity). As those welcoming shouted and waved, they waited for the good, the wealth, the justice, the order out of chaos that nobility, that a king or Lord, could bring. Like modern believers, those gathered along the road that day have heard stories about this person, Jesus of Nazareth, and some of the things he had done. Even in our current distress and anxiety about culture and values, it is hard for believers in our time to grasp the expectation, fears, and hopes layered on Jesus by the disciples. Even though we can relate to the feelings of “hosanna,” our hurdle is that we know how the story ends; and it is knowing the ending that keeps us from experiencing the “already but not yet” presence of the kingdom of God that led the multitude of disciples to praise.
The scandalous gospel that Jesus preached and taught is what led to Jerusalem, to this parade day of palms and cloaks. It is the content of that gospel about the kingdom of God already, but not yet, that leads through the city gates, to an upper room, and a cross. It is when we linger with this scandalous gospel: release to the captives, sight to the blind, good news to the poor, love your neighbor as yourself, that the spirit of God might descend on us, and with the multitude of disciples, we might begin to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that we have seen, saying, “Blessed is the king, the one, who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!”
Disciples, remember; if we are silent, even the stones will shout.
Notes
1. Adapted from, Theophane the Monk, Tales of a Magic Monastery, The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1981.
2. Peter Gomes, The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus, HarperOne, 2007. pp. 9-10.
3. Ibid. p. 12.