Sermon Cloud

PROVE IT

          Since 1886 the City of New York has held more than 200 ticker tape parades down what is known as the “Canyon of Heroes” in the Financial District.  The first parade honored the dedication of the Statue of Liberty, and others have honored explorers and adventurers like Charles Lindbergh, Olympic athletes like Jesse Owens, astronauts, Popes, the American hostages released from Iran, and any number of presidents, kings and other heads of state. 

The New York Sanitation Department cleaned up 750,000 lbs. of ticker tape after the parade for Charles Lindbergh in 1927, and in 1962 3,400 tons of ticker tape and confetti were dumped on astronaut John Glenn.

American heroes, though, seem to have gotten fewer and farther between since about 1969 – since then there have been such parades for only one Pope, one President and one astronaut, but 12 championship ball teams.  It seems we have lowered our expectations, become more easily impressed, and shifted our admiration from leadership and adventure to safety and entertainment.

On a smaller scale, but with a powerful local impact, last week the congregation of First Presbyterian Church of Dallas led a procession of palms through the streets of downtown Dallas, led by a brass ensemble, hand bells, and banners, while they sang the hymns of Palm Sunday with shouts of "Hosanna!"  Maybe we should try that next year, getting our hand bells and some tambourines and drums and banners together and singing our way through the streets of downtown Guymon, waking up whole neighborhoods on Sunday morning before making our way back to church for worship on Palm Sunday.  Maybe the whole Christian community – the Methodists and Baptists, the Catholics, the Lutherans, the Nazarenes and the Pentecostals should join us – what a witness that would be, eh?  I’ll get back to you on that.

Well what we call Palm Sunday amounted to a first-century ticker-tape parade.  It was five days before the Passover, and pilgrims had begun to stream into Jerusalem from the countryside for the celebration.  They wanted to get there early so they could purchase a lamb to give to the priests to sacrifice for their sins of the previous year.   Jerusalem would have been bursting at the seams:  we are used to seeing our little children – ten or twelve of them, however many there are – process with their palm branches, but when Jesus came through the gates of Jerusalem, the Jewish historian, Josephus, wrote that he estimated the crowd to be 3 million people!

Some of the people who went out to greet Jesus are the “Lazarus crowd,” the people who were present when Lazarus was raised from his tomb, and who have carried the reports of his resuscitation back to Jerusalem.  This crowd from Bethany had already stirred up the residents and visitors in Jerusalem and the whole bunch ran out to the Eastern gate in the wall of the city to welcome him. 

Not everyone would have known what they were doing there – some would have been curiosity-seekers, just swept along by the crowd.  Most still didn’t know who Jesus was.  Besides the Lazarus crowd, who saw him as a miracle-worker, and the disciples, who believed that he was a political deliverer who would overthrow the Roman occupiers and be installed as their new king, there were also those who saw him in a superficial way and were greeting him in the same way some folks today would greet a rock star. 

Jesus began his parade on the Mount of Olives, which is east of Jerusalem, across the Kidron Valley, by just a mile or two.   You might remember that there is a big poster on my office wall of the City of Jerusalem: the photo is taken from the top of the Mount of Olives and much of what you can see in that picture is similar to what Jesus would have seen as he looked out over the valley.  The biggest difference would be that the golden Dome of the Rock that is in the center of my poster would not have been there, and instead that place would  have been occupied by Herod’s temple.  If you are interested, you are welcome to stop in my office and look at it to get a sense of what I mean.

The Mount of Olives is important to the Christian narrative.  Besides today’s event, it is from there that Jesus ascended to his Father after the resurrection,[1] and it is to the Mount of Olives that the Bible says Jesus will return to establish his kingdom.[2] 

The road from the Mount of Olives to Jerusalem is called the “Hosanna Road,” and was already at least 1,000 years old when Jesus used it to travel into Jerusalem.   Luke tells us that before he descended to Jerusalem on the Hosanna Road, Jesus stopped and wept as he looked out over the city.  This was the same road that King David used to flee weeping from Jerusalem after being overthrown by his son, Absalom and rejected as king by his people.[3]   Now, as Jesus wept, he knew that in a few days, like David, he, too, would be rejected as king by Israel. 

And it won’t be the first time that Israel had rejected God as their King.  In the early days of the nation, Israel acknowledged God as their only king, while Judges like Moses and Sampson decided their local disputes.[4]  But there came a time when the people went to Samuel the priest and demanded that he appoint an earthly king over them.   

            God told Samuel to tell the Jews what would happen if they subjected themselves to an earthly king:

·         Their sons would be conscripted for soldiers, and to work the king’s farms, vineyard and fields, and to make implements of war.

·         Their daughters would be taken for cooks and bakers and perfumers.

·         They would have to give over one-tenth of their harvests and flocks, and the best of their servants to the service of the king.

·         And they would be themselves enslaved.

But the people persisted, and told Samuel they wanted “to be like other nations,”[5]  so God said to give them what they wanted.  Saul was anointed as the first King over Israel, and as God had said, they spent the rest of their years at war.

            When those kings would enter the city gates after victory in battle, they would ride in with a grand procession, mounted on white horses, and the people would come to greet them, putting palm branches and their cloaks on the ground for the king’s horse to walk on.  But this Jesus is a new type of king – he has no trappings of royalty.  Jesus gets on a jackass and parades to town. 

            Now Jesus was close to town – it would have been an easy walk – he didn’t need a donkey to ride on.  What is happening here is a bit of street theater.  The donkey turns out to be a comedy prop for a political statement that Jesus is sending to the Jews, especially to the ruling religious parties, the Sadducees and the Pharisees.

            Jesus understood what political satirists have always understood:  Comedy unmasks the powers that be.  Anyone who watched Tina Fey impersonate Sarah Palin and Will Ferrell imitate George Bush this past fall understands this truth.  This parade contrived by Jesus is an in-your-face lampooning of the temple’s arrogant religious elites, as well as a carefully planned and comically subversive, carnival-esque “military procession,” for the benefit of the forces of the Roman Caesar who occupied the city, controlled the civil government and profited from the taxation of its people.

            By beginning the parade on the Mount of Olives, Jesus reinforced the understanding of both the crowd and the religious authorities that it was the battlefield where it had been prophesied that the final battle for Israel’s liberation would begin.  He entered the city as a victorious king would, but not on a white horse surrounded by an armed guard – instead he entered unarmed, riding on a half-grown donkey.  And the branches and cloaks that the people threw in front of him were the same kind of royal welcome that would be given to any visiting dignitary and would certainly be viewed as treason to the Roman Empire.[6] 

            This is a picture of the political nature of Jesus’ ministry as well as the political character of Christian praise.[7]  The people are shouting, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” [8] “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!”[9]  “Hosanna!” “Save us we pray!”  And likewise, when we praise God, we, too,  are saying many other things besides.  We are making a statement of where our allegiance lies and what our values are, and either of those statements may threaten the powers that be.

And to the people who shout “Blessed is he who comes,” and to us who say “Praise the Lord,” Jesus responds, “Prove it.”

To the religious leaders, the Sadducees and the Pharisees who were students of prophecy, he said, “You read the scriptures that talk of Messiah coming humbly on a donkey.  You say you believe those scriptures and that you wait for the day that the Messiah comes.  Well, here it is and here he is.  You are about to transfer your power over to me.  How do you like it now?” 

Too often the Bible loses all of its charm for us when it is “translated off the page” and seen in the flesh.  We say we believe many things that Jesus taught, and the many things that we read in the Bible, but when it comes to actually doing them, actually welcoming a stranger, actually going out and working among the oppressed, we find ourselves making excuses, and Jesus challenges us, “You say you follow me?  Prove it.”

We believe and say we are truth-lovers, that we want progress, that we are ardent for God’s ways, but when Christ come to us with his truth-claims for our lives, or when Christ comes to us and tells us to change or to do something risky for the kingdom of God, mostly we don’t want anything to do with it.  Jesus says, “You say you love and trust me?  Prove it.”

            In theory we accept God’s teaching about forgiveness and unselfishness, but how often do we do it?  We know about the Holy Spirit and we say we rely on him, but in fact we usually rely on ourselves in an emergency.

            We say we want Jesus as Lord and King, but how many times, and in how many ways, do we reject him?

Every time we choose another way instead of Christ’s way.

Every time we distance ourselves from the poor and the oppressed.

Every time we refuse to forgive.

Every time we turn away from him rather than run out to the gate to meet him.

 Think, says Christ – prove yourselves – do you really believe what you take for granted that of course, you believe? 

            Those who believed Jesus was the Messiah – even the authorities like Nicodemus – did not confess it for fear they would be put out of the synagogue, for they loved human glory more than the glory that comes from God.  Following Jesus is not about looking good in the eyes of the world – it is about loving as God in Jesus Christ first loved us, and living out of this love.

Lazarus was a disciple who understood this.  Lazarus stands at the beginning and end of our text today.  Lazarus, who had only days before been raised from the dead, was as big an attraction for the crowd as was Jesus.  This wasn’t a blind man who could now see, or a cripple who could now walk again, or even a demon-possessed person who was now rational and calm.  Any of those things could have been faked by both the purported “victims” and any skilled miracle worker.  If you’ve ever watched any religious television you’ve seen it yourselves – people who throw away their crutches and dance, folks who fall to the floor, “slain in the Spirit” by the powerful hands of the faith healer.  God does heal, but most of those healings can’t be objectively verified without medical confirmation. 

            Death, though, is a horse of a different color.  Lazarus, who had been dead for four days, was really dead.  He was so dead that when Jesus told Mary and Martha’s friends to “roll away the stone,” Martha protested, “Lord, he stinketh!”[10]  A lot of people were witnesses to the real and indisputable death of Lazarus and the real and indisputable presence of Lazarus at Jesus’ side from that point on.  Our text says that the life of Lazarus was so convincing to the people that ^“the chief priests made plans to kill Lazarus as well, for on account of him many of the Jews were going over to Jesus and putting their faith in him.”

            Can you imagine your life being the kind of witness to others that the enemies of Christ would want to kill you?  Can you imagine your life being the kind of witness to others that people would come to you to find Jesus?  Christ should be able to point to you and say, “Show me anything like that apart from me.”  You and I, living a new life through Christ in a new way should be our Lord’s last and indisputable evidence.[11]

And we can say the same thing about our church.  Every week since I’ve arrived in Guymon, I’ve had a conversation where a person has commented on the extraordinary witness of this congregation to the community in the way you loved the Jacobson family while Jim was sick.  They say things about how loving you are and how self-sacrificing -  and those are amazing compliments from a community where there are a number of strong churches.  Now that those days and that experience are behind you, where shall we redirect that same love and self-sacrifice?  Who or what in our community has that kind of need? 

Some of you may remember that it was costly for this congregation to pour itself out that way.  People got tired, property got put at risk, and money was spent.  But here you are today - so I’m telling you that the better focus is that when you are tired out from serving others, remember that the Holy Spirit re-energizes you; and when your property is damaged and your money is spent in serving others, remember that God provides the tools for ministry. 

I said at the beginning of the message today that the infrequency and objects of our ticker tape parades indicate lowered expectations and a shift from leadership and adventure to safety and entertainment.  We do not want to let this church – a church set here by God to be a leader adventuring through his kingdom - to become satisfied with an annual palm parade for children inside its own walls.

Once I asked you to look up at the architecture of this sanctuary and consider how much it resembled a boat or an ark.  Now I want you to think about this church as a boat that has been in dry dock for a season, but is about to be launched again.  We know that the safest place for ships is in the harbor, but that’s not why ships were built, is it?[12]

©2009 Deborah Hollifield