Palm Sunday - Tewantin

ANGLICAN CHURCH NOOSA Palm Sunday 2024 Zechariah 9:9-13 Mark 11:1-11 Rev’d Chris Johnson Life is very tenuous, nobody knows what tomorrow will bring. In a single day, • your car could break down, • you could receive news you're going to become a parent or grandparent and • you could walk out of the doctor’s surgery with a good report or a very sombre prognosis. Life is very unpredictable and none of us know what the future will bring. Today we celebrate Palm Sunday and Jesus triumphant entry into Jerusalem. For the crowd who gather around Jesus this is a good news day. They hail Jesus as their King, the one who in some way will liberate the naEon. LiFle do they know there is very sad news not too far way. The next week will bring, the horrors of Christ's unjust trial, the scourging, ridicule and the ulEmate degradaEon of the cross. Life is very tenuous, unpredictable. For Jesus there is nothing unpredictable about this day or the events of this next week. He knows exactly what the week will bring. This is a day of foreboding, yes, but a day to trust. It is a day of prophecy being fulfilled and it is a day of eternal significance. There are hints here of the eternal significance, hints of Jesus being the Messiah, the promised King; but Mark seems to deliberately underplay the full spiritual significance of the occasion. It's only if you have eyes to see and ears to hear and of course are reading this aNer the resurrecEon that you can see all that is going on. It is just like Mark to not spell it all out in black and white. He is teasing his readers to look deeper. Firstly, why does Mark spend 6 verses talking about finding the colt that has never been ridden and untying it. This is an allusion to Genesis 49:11, “He will tether his donkey to a vine, his colt to the choicest branch; he will wash his garments in wine, his robes in the blood of grapes.” The context for this passage is of a kingly figure who will come out of Jacob. And noEce he will rule the naEons. This king will own a colt who is Eed to a branch. The fact that he will wash his garments in wine is surely a reference the king shedding his blood. And who is the King we know who is about to willingly do that? For our purposes though one week before the cross the focus is on the colt and the fact that it now has to be unEed because the King has come, and it is Eme for him to ride it to his victory. Jesus is fulfilling Genesis 49:11. The spreading of cloaks on the road is a further hint that we are here looking at a King. In those days you didn't spread cloaks on the road for a friend or for family. You only did it for royalty. It was the sign of homage to your King as was the ‘spreading of branches cut in the fields’, as Mark puts it. It's interesEng that Mark doesn't say they were palms it is only John who idenEfies the branches as palms. 1 The next hint that who we are looking at here is a King, is in the exclamaEon of the crowd. The word ‘Hosanna’ is an exuberant shout of praise to God. It is a prayer asking that God might come and save his people and do it quickly. We then have a quote from Psalm 118:25 and 26. This is a messianic Psalm, one of the Hallel Psalms (Praise Yahweh) which the people used as they made pilgrimage to Jerusalem over many centuries. On this day the people were travelling to Jerusalem for Passover. Passover pointed people back to the Exodus the great saving event of the Jewish covenant. This was when they were saved from slavery in Egypt. This was a Eme when God's salvaEon was very obvious and his victory complete. The Exodus was a story of freedom and hope. So there was parEcular reason to be exuberant and full of praise because it was Passover. In v10 the people’s praise is especially directed towards King David. Blessed is the coming Kingdom of our father David. The Messiah was always seen as one who would come from the line of David and establish a Kingdom aNer the paFen of David. King David’s reign was the glory Eme in the naEon’s history. This was when everything seemed to just fall into place under the charismaEc leadership of David. But as we know life is unpredictable and tenuous. There are good years and bad years. Prosperous seasons and disastrous periods in a naEon's history. The people longed for another era like the Eme of King David and in Jesus they sense that he is going to bring in the Kingdom of their father David. So well might they shout “Hosanna in the highest heaven”. They are praying, Lord of highest heaven, save us. Lord come and save us NOW! But of course the crowd's understanding of Jesus as King and how he would save them; and Jesus understanding of his kingship and the way he would establish it, were very, very different. For the crowd a King aNer the paFern of David would be a warrior King who drove out the naEon's enemies with the sword. Who would establish strong borders that would protect the life of the naEon against further invasion. SalvaEon was seen in strong earthly and naEonalisEc terms. For Jesus being King simply meant the cross. Establishing the Kingdom was through the path of suffering. SalvaEon was about a Kingdom with a completely different value system to the kingdoms of this world. Jesus value system could be summed up in the BeaEtudes and the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is now living out those values in the way he establishes his Kingdom. The way Mark tells the story of Jesus entry into Jerusalem is enErely consistent with this understanding of the Kingdom. The account is underplayed. Yes, the exuberance of the crowd is there but the messianic clues are especially hidden and especially compared to the other Gospel accounts. -Mark doesn't point us to Zechariah 9:9 as the basis for Jesus securing a colt, the way that MaFhew does. Zechariah 9:9 was known as a Messianic prophecy. So MaFhew makes it clear that Jesus is fulfilling prophecy, whereas Mark takes the line, ‘let the hearer understand’. 2 -None of the Gospels make reference to Genesis 49:11 as a prophecy about the untying of the colt. This includes Mark. The other Evangelists along with Mark at this point are keeping the messianic secret. -Mark simply tells us that ‘many people’ were present on the day; where as MaFhew describes it as ‘a very large crowd’ and Luke talks about ‘the whole crowd’, and that even if the people were to keep quiet, the stones would cry out. Mark is much more subdued. -ANer the triumphant entry, Mark in verse 11 simply has Jesus going to the temple courts and he records, ‘He looked around at everything’, but since it was already late he went out to Bethany with the 12. Luke's account has Jesus cleansing the temple immediately aNer the triumphant entry account. Once again Mark is very subdued. So what does Mark mean when he says Jesus went into the temple and ‘looked around at everything’? He doesn't tell us. He leaves it to our imaginaEon. But one can't help feel he is inspecEng the temple as Lord of the temple. He is assessing whether God's purpose for the temple is being fulfilled; and as we know he found it sadly lacking. This is a precursor to the cleansing of the temple which will happen the next day. So aNer a very hecEc Eme working his way through the crowds from the Mount of Olives down to the Temple, and doing that in all his messianic hiddenness; we now come to a quiet ending of the day, which only goes to again point to the hiddenness. Of course to the crowd it is hidden but we know it is the quiet before the storm. So what is the pracEcal implicaEon of this familiar story? Simply, do you hail Jesus as your King? You might like to think of this in terms of the cloaks which the crowd spread on the ground in front of Jesus. As I've already said these were gestures of homage to a King, and not something you would do for anyone other than the King. What in your life is the equivalent of a cloak to spread on the road before him? This is about obeying him as a disciple. That's how we acknowledge his rule in our lives. Let me share with you some examples of this sort of acknowledging of Jesus as King that I have seen in this church recently. • the large number of people who turned out for our Annual MeeEng and then again at the Vision Morning. • Someone making a generous giN that allowed us to employ Dave Smith. • Someone taking a homeless person in and providing them shelter. • Someone looking aNer two children for a neighbour. • Someone organising their holidays around Alpha so that they can invite a friend to come with them to Alpha. • Every act of reaching out to someone in need is an act of laying your cloak before Jesus as he makes his way to the cross. A person's need may be obvious, physical deprivaEon of some kind. Or it may be not so obvious, spiritual deprivaEon, but you speak a word of Christ into that situaEon and it is bread for a hungry soul. These are the ways we lay our cloaks before Jesus and then from our hearts cry, “Hosanna; blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! 3 Blessed is the coming Kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest heaven! Worship on a Sunday will be wholehearted when worship during the week has been driven by obedience. My friends, life is very tenuous. James wrote this in his Epistle, “What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a liFle while and then vanishes.” Life can easily become simply chasing aNer the next experienEal high before ‘I vanish’. Grit your teeth for the bad stuff and live for the good Emes. Discipleship can easily become, ‘I need Jesus to help me get through the bad stuff’ and nothing more. Or is it someEmes just asking him to bless the things you were going to do anyway? The tenuous nature of life shouldn't push us into an hedonisEc lifestyle. That’s the pagan response. The tenuous nature of life should push us all the more to trust Jesus as our King. To lay our cloaks before him in love and service and find joy in knowing him in both good seasons and bad. How will you lay down your life in the coming week and follow Jesus all the way to the cross, and declare him as your King? 4