Palm Sunday 2023

This morning is called Palm Sunday in the church calendar.

We celebrate the beginning of Holy Week,

This is the place where Jesus enters Jerusalem. He does so at the height of His popularity and that same popularity fizzles quickly

There is a sense of celebration in this passage.

That Jesus was finally going to do what everyone wanted Him to do

They were yelling Scriptures

They were calling Him Hosannah.

this scene, for this moment, was at the intersection between Jesus Mission and the people’s expectation.

People will line up for most anything. There have been experiments done to see if people will just line up for no reason. And guess what, people will line up for no reason. We will wait in line for shoes, for phones, for a concert, for tickets to something. We will wait in line for anything and are ok doing so if the payoff at the end is better than the boredom of waiting in line.

What were these crowds waiting for? What did they want? What were they hoping for? They were celebrating in a way that they hoped that the Messiah could deliver them a better life than they were facing. That He would come in strength and purpose to overthrow an oppressive regime.

But Jesus wasn’t entering in that frame. His entrance was holy and solemn. He was proclaiming salvation but not through the way the crowds did. We see for a moment that the groups were lined up but then realize quickly they were not.

This morning we are going to look at the idea of

Look beyond the crowds to follow Jesus because He offers more than the crowds are waiting for

Look at what Jesus is saying at the end of the Triumphal entry

Matthew 23:37–39 ESV

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again, until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’ ”

This is His heart. He is wanting to save. He is wanting to gather His people.

Jesus was not interested in the desire of the people He was interested in the will of God. And we will see that through donkeys and stones.

Christ enters our lives in His terms and in His way.

So we are going to look at a couple of things that went against the expectations of the crowd.

The Unlikely Donkey:

Luke 19:29–32 ESV

When he drew near to Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount that is called Olivet, he sent two of the disciples, saying, “Go into the village in front of you, where on entering you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever yet sat. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ you shall say this: ‘The Lord has need of it.’ ” So those who were sent went away and found it just as he had told them.

The donkey represents everything that the crowds were not expecting.

Look at how much time is spent on the directions of this animal.

Go into the next village

an unridden animal who does not represent power.

Untie it and bring it to Christ

Here’s what happens if anyone asks.

Jesus subverts the will of the crowd by not using what they would have thought.

The donkey is good news for us.

Because normally a king would have come in on a warhorse to show power. JEsus uses the same image but comes in on a donkey, which symbolizes peace.

HE is showing us what he is bringing by what He is riding.

Because Jesus is showing us what He is about. He is not bending to the will and the power and influence of the crowds.

Imagine that you entered the street that you lived on and there were hundreds of people waiting for you with banners with your name on it.

How would you respond?

There is not one person who would be able to resist the draw of the crowds. Everyone would bend to the desire to be noticed and celebrated.

Jesus isn’t waiting for the crowd to determine how He enters into the world, He enters into space, into the world on His terms, according to the will of God.

We often look to the world to see how in the world could God enter into this space? What in the world could God even do?

It may even seem like God is distant and not doing anything about the situation.

That He is away getting fitted for a donkey while we are here putting all the pieces of the party together.

We grow in anxiety and rack our brains in order to figure out what God will do.

In that way we are not unlike the crowds at Palm Sunday.

But while we are waiting with baited breath, Jesus is gathering a donkey in the next town.

He is following the direction of the God of the Universe in order to do what’s best for Humanity

And if we are not paying attention we will miss it.

We live in the tension of a world that is active with the presence of God. But it is not complete with the presence of God. We live in a world where a crowd will cheer the Savior one day and then betray HIm the next.

We live in a world that is constantly changing and shifting because it can never get it’s footing. It can never find the right balance.

But we don’t have to follow the means of that world.

We can follow the God who rides a donkey into the crowd.

The crowd is louder

and it will shout demands

and ask you to follow it to places it doesn’t even know it was going.

But the God who rides a donkey knows exactly where He is going. In fact, He is the only one who knows what to do and where to go.

There will always be crowds. The work of the church is to find out what Christ is doing in them.

- Often times I wonder if it will feel like getting a donkey when we should be preparing for a parade.

Like it doesn’t seem useful or relevant.

Or it doesn’t seem like it will be effective

or like what we are doing doesn’t compare.

But the goal isn’t comparison or usefulness, it is matching our expectations to Christ.

It is being able to follow Him in the world and gather what Christ finds useful rather than what the world finds useful.

The Unlikely Stone:

Let’s take a look at the crowds for a moment.

Luke 19:37–40 ESV

As he was drawing near—already on the way down the Mount of Olives—the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, saying, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”

There was the crowd as a whole.

This was a Fairweather crowd. The crowd that celebrated him also crucified Him

But then there were the pharisees.

They wanted to rebuke Jesus for whipping up the crowds. They just wanted Jesus to be in trouble.

Even the disciples didn’t really get what was going on. In the Gospel of John he writes that they didn’t understand it until Jesus was resurrected.

So no one really knew what was going on.

Except Jesus.

The size of the crowds don’t reflect salvation

The work of Christ moving toward Calvary reflects salvation.

- Jesus does not use the crowds to show salvation.

- In fact He seems to do what He can to deflect the crowds attention.

He doesn’t dismiss the crowds but He reveals the power of God and the intensity of His worship.

Listen, if these crowds weren’t here, the stones would begin to cry out.

Faith isn’t determined in the effectiveness of our approach or our strategies nor is faith determined by the size of the crowd.

It is determined by who we follow.

It’s determined what Christ did at the cross.

We aren’t called to look at what the crowd is looking at, we are called to follow Christ where He is going.

For those reasons we don’t need the stones to cry out.

We will do well on our own.

Our goal is to worship Christ when the crowds grow silent.

The stones rejoicing though is a helpful reminder for us in this postmodern culture.

The church is not beholden to strategies of crowds

We are beholden to the God who calls us to get donkeys and who makes rocks sing.

The church looks through the crowd.

We don’t have to be anxious

or angry

leave that to the crowds.

We have much bigger things to attend to.

But part of what we do, as we receive the peace of God through His work on the cross is then to be able to offer that same peace to the crowds who can’t find it on their own.

As our peace is found and ends in Christ so can theirs.

I went to the North Attleboro YMCA yesterday. I had never been there but knew the process of the YMCA, having gone to mine 5 days a week. But I was severely insecure being there. Even though I was comfortable with the idea of a Y, I had never spent time in the space of the North Attleboro one. So it was a new environment that caused me the insecurity.

I was uncomfortable in my own skin. I began to think about the church living within the city of the world. And that the goal is not to create comfort within a hostile (or perceived to be hostile) environment, but rather to learn how to be comfortable within a world that will not stop being hostile.

Look to being comfortable when the world offers discomfort. Christ did not look to the comforts of the world to maintain a sense of security for Himself. Follow the God who demanded a donkey and makes rocks sing

The Unlikely Savior:

Christ is not who the crowds expected and He didn’t do what the crowds expected.

HE re-defined what God was leading them to.

It wasn’t to large crowds and success.

It was to salvation and reconciliation with GOd.

In Christianity we have to define where our triumph ends. Our triumph ends in the person of Christ at the cross. Anything other or less than that is the demand that we ourselves have become triumphant in our actions, values or policies.

We seem to prefer the latter because it’s easier to take the credit than it is to surrender our lives to Christ.

The line in the sand we draw as Christians isn’t at the boundary of politics or borders of success but the cross of Christ. This week is a needed reminder of that.

Our boasting won’t be in anything less than Christ’s work in our lives and His transforming work in us.

The current church in America doesn’t need to boast in crowds and strategies. We need to boast in the work of God who redeems and restores HIs people.

We don’t need God to make bigger crowds, we need God to make better people. Christ does that. He changes and forms us.

But we have to follow HIm on His terms.

Follow Him to the cross.

So that we can share in His resurrection.

That’s what we will do this week.