Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Who knows who this is?

Anyone?

This is someone who I was really impressed with in my youth.

I guess you could say he was an idol or a hero of mine.

Any ideas?

No?

How about now?

Any more clues?

Come on?

Isn’t is obvious?

Look, it’s even got his name written there!

So does anyone know what Dennis Ritchie did, that made him such an idol for so many?

Well, he created the C programming language, and co-wrote this text here.

He also created the UNIX operating system, which is the precursor to Linux, which many modern devices run on, and is also the precursor to iOS and MacOS, actually.

He did a bunch of other impressive stuff, too.

Anyway, back in the nineties, when I was working in Japan, I worked for UNIX System Labs Pacific, a subsidiary of AT&T that sold UNIX to the big Japanese and Korean computer companies of the time, like NEC, Toshiba, Samsung, LG, and so on.

Ritchie worked for AT&T, but in a different subsidiary, a research centre in New Jersey called Bell Labs.

But one year USLP invited Ritchie to a tradeshow in Tokyo.

What a draw he was!

I still remember all these geeky Japanese programmers lining up to get his autograph, and telling him, “Ritchie-san, you are a god!”

I didn’t think he was a god, but I was pretty thrilled to meet him and even have a chance to have a chat about IT stuff.

I wrote about that in my newsletter that I sent to friends and family back in Australia (normal people didn’t have access to the internet back then).

It was very exciting.

Now, who would you be thrilled to meet?

Who might you get really excited about?

Who would you stand in line to cheer or wave to or, perhaps even get a chance to spend time with?

Now do you think that person will really make a big difference to your life?

Almost 2000 years ago Jesus rode the colt of a donkey up to Jerusalem, with a crowd shouting his praises and welcoming him as the answer to their prayers.

The funny thing was, for some of them Jesus would make a huge different to their lives, but to others he would make not much difference at all.

Do you know what was different between those two sorts of people?

Yes, it’s how the people listened to Jesus.

In my case, if I wanted to be a good C programmer, or UNIX programmer, I needed to follow Dennis Ritchie’s advice.

In Jesus’s case, if he’s really our hero and we pay attention to everything he says, then he’ll make us good at life, not just programming, or sports, or whatever.

As you go out to Kid’s Church, think about how you can learn more about what Jesus tells us about how to live.

Plan

Now, for the rest of us, we’re first going to tackle how we understand this chapter, and then we’ll look at what it says to us.

The approach to Jerusalem

The first part of the story tells us about Jesus’s approach to Jerusalem.

Jesus has somehow prepared a colt for this.

The significance of him riding on a colt is probably not lost on a Messiah-mad crowd of pilgrims.

Though Mark doesn’t refer to Zechariah, the crowds were undoubtedly aware of it.

The point is, Jesus has deliberately prepared for this messianic display, and the crowds join the party.

But who is this crowd?

After all, through the rest of Mark’s story, crowds play a big part.

This crowd is the crowd of pilgrims.

Perhaps many of them were from Galilee, but what we can be quite sure of is that none of them were from Jerusalem.

We know because, in Mt. 21:10-11, we see “the whole city” of Jerusalem contrasted with “the crowds” who said “This is the prophet Jesus.”

There are two crowds!

A crowd that praises Jesus as king and messiah, and a crowd that refuses to recognise his authority.

The focus shifts now towards that second crowd.

Overturning the temple

In verse 11 we read that Jesus entered Jerusalem, went to the temple, took a look around, and then headed back to Bethany with the gang for the night .

The meaning of the fig tree

The next morning, on the way to the temple, he saw a fig tree, covered in leaves, and found it complete empty of fruit.

Mark points out that it wasn’t the season for figs.

So why was Jesus so upset?

Well, fig trees bloom before their leaves grow, so a tree covered in leaves should have had some small, green fruit, but it had nothing at all.

And so Jesus curses the tree, and the disciples witness this strange interaction.

What did Jesus mean by this strange act

In Jeremiah and Hosea, the fig tree is used, along with the grape vine, as a symbol of Israel.

Jesus’s curse set the scene for his actions in the temple.

Just as the fig tree looked healthy and full of fruit, so too did the temple, with its great Court of the Gentiles bustling and full of people.

But despite appearing so fruitful, the fig tree was barren.

The abundant greenery of the tree had raised Jesus’s expectations.

The temple seems flourishing, too.

It buildings are lavish, it is such an important part of peoples’ lives, it consumes so many resources, and it is so busy.

But you know what?

That prosperity and busyness is just greenery—it’s not fruit.

The temple, like the fig tree, is barren.

Cleansing the temple

Which brings us to the cleansing of the temple.

There is much discussion about how Jesus did this—the Court of the Gentiles is huge, and Mark’s language makes it sound like Jesus kicked off a protest, rather than strictly policing the entire area.

But notice Jesus’s statement about the purpose of the temple: “a house of prayer for all nations.”

In any case, this protest was enough to draw the attention of the people and their leaders.

The people seemed to like this radical, but the leaders could see the threat to their position, and they started actively plotting.

The temple replacement (a praying church)

On the way back to Bethany that night, the disciples encountered the dead fig.

They seem astonished that Jesus’s casual curse has taken effect.

And Jesus takes the opportunity to point to what will replace the dead fig, or, in reality, the destroyed temple.

(Jesus doesn’t explicitly predict the destruction of the temple until the beginning of chapter 13, but the destruction of the fig here prefigures that.

No pun intended.)

The replacement for the temple, with it’s elaborate courts and rituals, will be the simple reality of a praying church.

A new house of prayer for all nations.

In fact, so powerful will be the faithful, Jesus says, that they can even instruct mountains to leap into the sea, and watch it happen.

But a praying church is not like the temple, where the ritual seems independent of both God’s purposes and the worshiper’s heart.

Rather, the power of prayer in the church depends upon the purity of the prayer’s heart:

The old covenant of rituals and symbols is giving way to the new covenant of transformed hearts, in tune with God’s will and thus his power.

The two crowds

When Jesus returns to the temple the next day, the religious leaders confront him with a question:

But Jesus is still not ready to allow the crowds to define him or his mission, so he challenges the leaders to discern where John’s authority came from: heaven or man.

For fear of the crowds, the leaders avoid answering Jesus’s question, and therefore receive no answer to their own question.

And so Jesus is setting up the two crowds: the crowd who recognize that he speaks and works with God’s authority, just like John, and the crowd that doesn’t want to bow to God’s authority in John and Jesus.

For the moment, the Jerusalem crowd is unsure who they side with, but we know that eventually they side with those who reject Jesus’s authority:

Our two crowds

So now the question is: where do we fit into this?

What is our equivalent to the Galilean pilgrims and the religious leaders of Jerusalem?

I think to discern that we need to look at the way that these crowds approached God.

The religious crowd

The religious leaders didn’t need Jesus to tell them how to relate to God.