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April 16, 2000 This message was given by Pastor Gene Preston on Palm Sunday, April 16, at the APEX, Floor 75, Central Plaza Tower in Hong Kong. The text: When they were approaching Jereusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he (Jesus) sent two of his disciples and said to them, "Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately as you enter it, you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden; untie it and bring it. If anyone says to you, "Why are you doing this?" just say this, 'The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately." They went away and found a colt tied near a door, outside in the street. As they were untying it, some of the bystanders said to them, "What are you doing, untying the colt?" They told them what Jesus had said; and they allowed them to take it. Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it; and he sat on it. Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields. Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting, "Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!" Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.
(or Do you see the devil in the leafy branches?) (Mark 11:1-11)
Eyewitnesses to dramatic events often can't agree on what they witnessed. Some may agree on an overall view but disagree on details; others may agree on some details but arrive at differing overall pictures.
The assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas in l963 is a much cited example. Although there were hundreds of immediate eyewitnesses, there has never been agreement among them on how many shots rang out that fateful day; some heard one shot, others two, others three or more, and some none at all.
What the public sees and hears at public events varies on where one is standing, the angle of view, what one had for breakfast, and, perhaps most of all, why one was at the event. The Kennedy shooting was in the context of a fairly slow moving parade of official vehicles through a festive crowd who only wanted to see the President. They did not expect what happened and ever since no consensus has emerged as to what really did happen that fateful November 21, l963.
The parade of Jesus into Jerusalem was a similarly festive public event and like most street celebrations we might hesitate to read too much into it: weren't most of the people just out in the streets to see and cheer the much talked about rabbi of the moment? Surely that but expectations did vary about who Jesus was, why he was entering the holy city, and what the effect of it all would be.
A very similar outline of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday which is found in all four gospels. They all agree that Jesus enters Jerusalem a few days before his death; he rides in on a donkey, symbolic of a prophecy that the Messiah would arrive in humble fashion; he is greeted with enthusiasm by the crowds.
However, on some details of the happening these four gospel narrators do not agree. Of course, probably none of the four were eyewitnesses but each draws upon eyewitnesses and we discover that different people saw different things.
Mark and Matthew mention leafy branches and cloaks as the means of welcome while Luke mentions only that cloaks were thrown before Jesus; only the writer John sees palm branches being waved. These, of course, are minor details; all four writers agree later on that the "triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem" wasn't triumphant at all. It was a tragedy. They all rain on Jesus' parade, that is dampen down the natural enthusiasm regarding it, and today's writer, Mark rains the most, clearly considering the triumph not a big deal at all.
While Matthew speaks of "great crowds" following Jesus and concludes that "the whole city" was in turmoil at his entrance; and Luke and John also emphasize the big size of the welcome; Mark downsizes the crowd count mentioning one time only "many people" observed the parade into the city.
Matthew and John see Jesus deriving momentum and energy from his entrance into the city because he goes immediately to cleanse the temple. John observes how irritated the Pharisees were by the boisterous welcome of the upstart rabbi. But Mark ends his Palm Sunday episode on a more offhand note: after the entrance he has Jesus go to the temple, just look around, and then because it was late Jesus does the sensible thing and goes off to sleep in the nearby village of Bethany.
Why does Mark rain on Jesus' parade? Well, if we read on we find that all four writers shift abruptly from happy clapping welcome to the tragic events of the days of Jesus life: the betrayal by Judas, the arrest of Jesus, the trial at which the same multitudes who had welcomed Jesus with open arms, end up the ext day cursing and spitting on him in derision and rejection; the disappearance of his friends. In all four gospels later actions completely undermine the enthusiasm and happiness of Palm Sunday and reveal it for having been superficial, a public sham.
But among them Mark is the more willing to dampen our interpretation of its importance because Mark sees the devil lurking in the leafy branches.
This is because Mark, somewhat earlier than the other eyewitnesses, is onto the insight that the people are not welcoming Jesus at all; they are welcoming their idea of a Messiah. We began our worship with some verses from Psalm ll8 which by the time of Jesus, centuries after it had been composed, had come to be sung and interpreted as referring to one who is coming triumphantly, as a second King David, to liberate the people of Israel. This psalm written some 500 years before Jesus speaks of the "day that the Lord has made" and of welcoming with a festive procession of branches "one who comes in the name of the Lord.' By the time of Jesus the context for this psalm was that of a repressed and beaten down Jewish colony of the Roman Empire hoping above all for military rescue; this psalm sung in Jerusalem in the year 3lAD would have been a violent cry for liberation from the imperial yoke.
It is in the spirit of this messianic psalm or song and with cries of "Hosanna" to greet the conquering hero of Yahweh that the people greeted Jesus, and, as such, they misperceived his ministry in two ways. Expectation does influence what we see.
First, Jesus did not enter Jerusalem merely to revive King David's dominion in the city. He came to show the reign of God which meant the universal restoration of all things to God's purpose, to God's peace or shalom.
The building blocks in God's universal kingdom are divine love and justice. In place of food pantry poverty, abundance for all. The yellow face of sickness becomes the radiant face of health. Where the family member glares at others with alienation, there is to be mutuality and patience. The reign of God is much, much bigger than the reign of David. It conveys peace to all.
And secondly, in the first phase of breaking forth with the kingdom of God Jesus was no guerilla warrior, like the Maccabees had been a century before him. Jesus saw himself as the Suffering Servant of God. Jesus is not going to be a David-like conqueror. To the contrary, Jesus must "undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days, rise again." (Mark 8:3l).
Mark is skeptical of the crowd's ability in anyway to discern rightly who is Jesus and what his entry into Jerusalem means for them. In fact, Jesus' own group of friends are unable to discern correctly who he is and why he has come to the city. Suffering is the farthest idea from their minds and loyalties.
Let us be clear about this point, however. Neither Mark nor any of the writers have Jesus replacing a crude Jewish nationalistic hope with a superior, universal Christian one. That became a later Christian spin. The notion of the universal reign of God which would bring peace to all nations and all peoples is thoroughly Jewish (e.g. Isaiah 40:3-5, 60:5-7). The Christian discernment that God works in the world through divine suffering and in contrast to the brassy, violent ways of the nations is quite Jewish at its source.(e.g. Isaiah 52:l3-53:l3, 4 Maccabees l7:7-22).
It's just that there are two very Jewish and very opposite views of what happened on that first Palm Sunday. There is the view of the crowds and the disciples which is nationalistic and militant; there is the view of Jesus, and Jesus alone, which is pacific and universal.
The development of a theology of divine suffering comes, of course, with Christ. The Christian church at the outset had to face the debate: why couldn't God just overpower his enemies; why couldn't Jesus put on the armor or righteous goodness and judgement and crush all his enemies &endash; the scribes and elders and priests and Romans. Why couldn't Jesus live up to the expectations of the crowd, giving them what they wanted?
The Christian answer, derived from Jesus' own teaching but anticipated in Hebrew scriptures especially the prophecies of Isaiah, is that God chooses not to overpower power with power because that would continue the cycle of interaction of violence and force. God breaks the endless spiral with divine suffering. Sometimes in the Hebrew scriptures, God's power is played out on the same plane as the power of the lesser gods. The idols have fire, God has more fire.
But also in the Hebrew scriptures the God Yahweh appears to be less in His power, less than His power really is, so that humans can begin to discern the contrast between God's ways and purposes, and the powers and purposes of the lesser gods and human idols.
When God decided to call the human race back to his guidance, he did not act in glossy and rich Mesopotamia, calling some suburban couple; instead he went to the outlying desert and called an aged couple already well into their golden years.
When God called some of the prophets he did so not through earthquakes, winds and fire but through the still, small voice of divine truth.
Ultimately, when God decided to give his greatest gift to the human race he acted, not through a prince of religion or of the world, but through a baby who grew up to be a humble carpenter. With God less is more.
God does not cause suffering., But God works through what appears to be defeat in order to confirm divine promises of revival and redemption. Through an old couple, as good as dead, God shows the way for blessing for all human families through the Jewish people. God brings Israel home from exile. God then raises Jesus from the dead.
The Palm Sunday crowd could not comprehend this divine route which winds through suffering. The crowd just wanted a parade whose meaning would be obviously triumphalistic. So the crowds cry out for David-like power to once more be demonstrated in a David-like way. They've had enough of suffering under the Romans. They want muscle. They want the security of being on the same side of the street with the person with a bigger stick than anyone else's.
This way of thinking assumes that God works the same way as everyone else, only more so, because God is bigger.
By letting us follow the crowd through the rest of the week, Mark shows us what happens to people who think this way. The crowd cheered on Palm Sunday; by three days later they were a near demonic rabble crying out for his blood. The crowd is not just fickle; the crowd deteriorates into a wholly irrational mob easily manipulated by the powers which purposefully choose to resist the reign of God and use the multitudes, so easily bent to evil, for their ploy against God.
By the next, Easter Sunday, the crowds, having served the devil's purpose, are dispersed. People are sleeping; making breakfast; carrying out the trash. Follow the crowd and miss the Resurrection!
Every Christian and every Christian congregation faces the temptation to follow the crowd and miss the Resurrection. We want to bask in the glory and power of Jesus; we are less eager to identify with his suffering and weakness. We want to begin Easter Week singing some happy, clappy songs on Palm Sunday and wrap it up the next Sunday with nice Easter allelulias.
I hope many of you this Good Friday will attend our service here so as to identify with Jesus' suffering which fills up Easter week; or if unable to be here, will you take some time, for Friday is a legal holiday, to read further in any of the four Gospels which go into detail about how wrong things go after this Palm Sunday.
That this text of Mark is not the triumphal entry of traditional Palm Sunday theology is confirmed in vs. ll. The end of the story is an anti-climax. Jesus simply walks through the temple, looks at everything, and returns to Bethany to spend the night.
Mark rains on Jesus' parade because he sees, rightly, that it wasn't really Jesus' parade; it was really the devil's parade with the crowd seeing what they wanted to see and not what God wanted them to see. As for Jesus has had quite enough for one day. He had more important things to attend to on the morrow. He had to tell his disciples to return that borrowed colt. And so he went to bed.
Pastor Gene Preston
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The Rev. Gene R.Preston14th Floor, Blk 36, Lower Baguio Villa Tel : 25516161 Fax: 25512114E-mail : gpreston@netvigator.com |
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