09 April 2017 is Palm Sunday and Rev. Geoff McKee analyses the version of Jesus’ triumphant entrance into Jerusalem from Mark’s Gospel (Mark 11:1-11). Jesus had arrived to liberate the people, but not in the way they imagined. The Scripture is immediately below and the sermon follows after that. You can download the Palm Sunday sermon as a pdf if you wish.

Mark 11:1-11 (New International Version)

Jesus Comes to Jerusalem as King
11 As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples, 2 saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and just as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 3 If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ say, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here shortly.’”

4 They went and found a colt outside in the street, tied at a doorway. As they untied it, 5 some people standing there asked, “What are you doing, untying that colt?” 6 They answered as Jesus had told them to, and the people let them go. 7 When they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks over it, he sat on it. 8 Many people spread their cloaks on the road, while others spread branches they had cut in the fields. 9 Those who went ahead and those who followed shouted,

“Hosanna”
“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”
10 “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!”
“Hosanna in the highest heaven!”
11 Jesus entered Jerusalem and went into the temple courts. He looked around at everything, but since it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the Twelve.

The motor home has allowed us to put all the conveniences of home on wheels.

A camper no longer needs to contend with sleeping in a sleeping bag, cooking over a fire, or hauling water from a stream. Now the camper can park a fully equipped home on a cement slab in the midst of a few pine trees and hook up to a water line, and electricity.

One motor home I saw recently had a satellite dish attached on top. No more bother with dirt, no more smoke from the fire, no more drudgery of walking to the stream. Now it is possible to go camping and never have to go outside. We buy a motor home with the hope of seeing new places, of getting out into the world. Yet we deck it out with the same furnishings as in our living room. Thus, nothing really changes. We may drive to a new place, set ourselves in new surroundings, but the newness goes unnoticed, for we’ve only carried along our old setting.

The adventure of new life in Christ begins when the comfortable patterns of the old life are left behind.

To truly see Jesus and his truth means more than observing what he did or said, it means a change of identity.

We don’t always see the potential in the things and the people around us. We can be blind to what really matters.

When Jesus was living on earth, travelling around teaching and healing, people did not understand who he really was. Some thought he was special, perhaps even a great prophet. But to others he was just a carpenter from Nazareth. For most of the time, it was as if he was in disguise.

And Jesus did nothing to discourage that.

For most of his public ministry, our Lord veiled his full identity. He played down the miracles and the extraordinary happenings. How often do we read of Jesus ministering in an extraordinary way and then disappearing into the crowd or retreating to a lonely place?

Jesus shunned popularity in the interest of a greater purpose.

• He wanted people to hear the good news that the creator God really cares for humankind.
• He desired everyone to know God’s love and the offer of forgiveness and cleansing that is at its heart.
• He passionately proclaimed a new experience of spiritual life that would transform people and their understanding of the world and their neighbour.
• He wished everyone to realise that the best part of life was still to come, so that people would be filled with hope.

And, to emphasise all these important things, Jesus got himself involved with people’s lives at an ordinary level. He became one of us and in his early ministry he did not disclose his full nature so as not to distance himself from those who knew they were spiritually dirty.

In Philippians 2, Paul comments:

Jesus made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death–even death on a cross!

Only after Easter did those with eyes to see and hearts to believe come to have a right view of Jesus.

The veil of obscurity was only really cast off at that stage.

Today, we remember the celebrations as Jesus entered the Holy City. That was the point when the veil of obscurity began to lift; people could now see their king and worship.

Each of the four Gospels tell the story of Jesus’ entry into Jersusalem but they all tell it in slightly different ways:

• Matthew draws attention to the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy as the principal theme.
• Luke suggests that the scene was self-evident. If the disciples were too dim to understand then the stones would declare the truth.
• John emphasises the mystery of it all; the full truth would only be discovered later.
• And then we have Mark, in the passage we’ve looked at this morning. Mark is more direct than the others. He tells us about the donkey, the colt.

The donkey was an honoured beast in Palestine.

Kings rode to war on a horse but returned victorious on a donkey. The donkey was not a lowly beast, second-best to a stallion, it was the best.

Here came a returning king, arriving with authority and power. The disciples’ obedience, the friends’ loaning of the animal, the clothes and branches on the path, the shouting crowd, all indicate respect and honour due to a kingly person.

People’s anticipation of something special was rewarded.

They were not let down. And the people gathered in Jerusalem were not let down as their Messiah rode in on the donkey.

He was fulfilling the Old Testament prophecy of Zechariah:

Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

Their liberator was coming; the one who would bring material prosperity, the one who would exercise political clout as the powerful Messiah King to break the Roman power. That’s why they shouted ‘Hosanna!’ Hosanna means “save now”.

The crowds were full of expectation that the end of tyranny and oppression was at hand and that the Messiah would be able to topple the Roman aggressor now. We can sing ‘Hosanna’ this morning and really mean it, but in a different way from the crowds that day.

Jesus was about liberation but not in the way that the crowds imagined it.

He was setting up a kingdom, but not an earthly kingdom. Courageously, he turned their idea of political power and military might on its head.

Jesus did not reach out for political leadership because he knew that the root of the problem was not political; instead, it was the human heart. He came to challenge and reverse the human idea that right structures will produce good people. That’s a fallacy of government that never works.

The truth is that people are sinfully selfish and it’s only when sin is faced up to and dealt with that there is hope.

Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey to signify that he wished to establish a rule of love, respect and honesty in people’s lives and the people missed the point.

We too can miss the point this morning.

We can believe in the Jesus that best fits our expectations and forget about the rest. For example, our Jesus can be meek and mild but not strong and opinionated. He can be inoffensive and gentle, but not decisive and suffering, and before we know where we are, we are following a Jesus made in our own image.

The crowds allowed themselves to be deceived that great day when Jesus came into Jerusalem.

Yes, it was right that they cheered and waved their palm branches and made a great fuss about him. That was appropriate, but their motives weren’t. They wanted the wrong things from their Messiah king and they would be very disappointed.

If we want worldly riches and success in our lives we can look to Jesus too. We can say how much he has blessed us materially and we can believe that that shows he loves us. But I think we’re deceiving ourselves if we believe that.

Jesus came to Jerusalem to die. He came to lose his life, not to gain power. Palm Sunday challenges us about our motives. It forces us to look at our attitudes and our assumptions and it makes us think again. What is it that we see in Jesus arriving on a donkey? The Easter events give us the answer to that kind of question. And we’ll be looking closely at that towards the end of this week.