The King who Wept

The King who Wept John 12:12–19 (NIV) “The next day the great crowd that had come for the festival heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. 13 They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting, ‘Hosanna!’ ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’ ‘Blessed is the king of Israel!’ 14 Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, as it is written: 15 ‘Do not be afraid, Daughter Zion; see, your king is coming, seated on a donkey’s colt.’ 16 At first his disciples did not understand all this. Only after Jesus was glorified did they realize that these things had been written about him and that these things had been done to him. 17 Now the crowd that was with him when he called Lazarus from the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to spread the word. 18 Many people, because they had heard that he had performed this sign, went out to meet him. 19 So the Pharisees said to one another, ‘See, this is getting us nowhere. Look how the whole world has gone after him!’” Luke 19:39–44 (NIV) “Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, rebuke your disciples!’ 40 ‘I tell you,’ he replied, ‘if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.’ 41 As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it 42 and said, ‘If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. 43 The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. 44 They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.’” This morning we have listened to two Gospels accounts regarding Jesus’ so-called ‘triumphant entrance’ to Jerusalem. In a certain sense we come to the heart of what they want to communicate to us – the Passion of Christ. All four Gospels move toward this climax. All four of them give much more attention to the suffering and crucifixion of Jesus than they do to any other part of his life. This is not an accident. From the earliest days of the church, it was understood that Jesus’ life gained its significance from his death. The apostles and evangelists wanted their readers to understand the meaning of this death more than they wanted anything else in the world. I dropped Janika off at a friend’s house in Devonport yesterday. On my way back I passed through the mall. And in a shop window these words caught my eye: “Easter made easy!” I chuckled as I wondered what they meant by that. I assume they are suggesting a one-stop shopping experience for all we might need this Easter – the eggs, flowers, cards, and bunnies. However, as I drove further it struck me as a brilliant illustration of our human tendency to run as far away from the ugly events surrounding Easter as we possibly can. We want to make Easter easy. So, what do we do? Conveniently, we cut out events like Judas’ betrayal, the false and rigged court cases, Peter’s denial, Pontius Pilate’s ceremonial dumping of Jesus in the hands of the Jewish mob to Crucify Him, because we feel it doesn’t appeal to many 21st Century people. Yes, even Christian people often try to soften the harsh reality that Easter represent. That shops promote Easter trying to sell more goods are not surprising. But the Easter they promote is a commercial event. It has nothing to do with Christ, His Crucifixion or Resurrection. But that Churches often follow suit in making Easter easier on the palate, is. What about us? Friends, we have to ask ourselves whether we too are trying to make Easter easy for people. And if we are, what are our reasons? Are we still conveying the message that God wants us to convey? In her book The Undoing of Death, Fleming Rutledge compares Palm Sunday to the Trojan horse. She reminds us that Palm Sunday is not a day unto itself, but an introduction to Holy Week. And she’s right of course. Because Palm Sunday introduces the beginning of the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry. Christians get lured in by the pomp and glory of Palm Sunday, but before we know it, we are being confronted with the stark reality of Jesus’ Passion that culminates in the realization that the Crucified Christ has Risen. On that first Palm Sunday, the crowd honoured Jesus: “The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David!’ ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’ ‘Hosanna in the highest heaven!’” (Matthew 21:9). I will say something more about this in a moment. But if I can interrupt myself for a moment, I’d like to ask you: “Have you ever wondered why this celebration didn’t last for more than 4 days?” t is a tragic thing to see the Saviour but not recognize Him for who He is. The crowds who were crying out “Hosanna!” on Palm Sunday were crying out “Crucify Him!” later that week (Matthew 27:22–23). I think I know the reason why. I’ll share it with you a bit later. In his book The Day the Revolution Began, N.T. Wright agues passionately that Easter Friday is the day that it all began for us. I’ve enjoyed reading this book. You should read it too. However, I think we can always find an earlier incident that could be a starting point. I think that the apostle John reminds us in no uncertain terms that for the Jewish people and their leaders alike the day that the revolution began was when Jesus brought Lazarus back to life. It was this event that signified to many Israelites that Jesus was indeed the Messiah. And it was this event and its consequences, that caused the religious leaders to plot even more frenetically to kill Jesus. Jesus left Bethany behind Him and advanced on Jerusalem. When Jesus came into Jerusalem riding on that donkey, He was treated like a king processing to his coronation. The Passover crowds were enormous by any standards. Pilgrims gathered from all over Palestine and every corner of the Mediterranean world. Some travelled up with Jesus from Bethany and the surrounding villages (John 12:17). Others went out from the city to meet him (verse 13). Yes, He was received like a conquering king marching in a victory parade! Their welcome was expressed both in deed and word. Their action testified of a deep nationalistic fervour. Their words, or shouts of welcome, incorporated Scripture (John 12:13). Hosanna literally means ‘Give salvation now!’ This is a quotation from Psalm 118:25, that was part of the Hallel, the section of Psalms (113–118) sung daily during the Feast of Tabernacles. When ‘Hosanna’ was reached during the singing of the Hallel, every male worshipper waved his ‘lulah’ (a bunch of willow and myrtle tied with palm). The words “Blessed is He who comes …” (John 12:13) is a reference to the Coming One, the Messiah. This messianic meaning is explicit in the following words, “Blessed is the King of Israel!”. When you read Psalm 118 you’ll see it is not part of Psalm 118. However, it was clearly how the crowd were interpreting Psalm 118. And with these added words they revealed their nationalistic and messianic zeal. John tells us that it was driven by Jesus’ raising of Lazarus. So, Jesus is hailed as the ‘King who is the conqueror of death’. He was received with something like the sort of praise that celebrities receive today. Jesus was mobbed. And the Pharisees looked on with dismay. The allusion to a Messianic psalm drew resentment from the religious leaders present. Their attempt to contain Jesus’ influence appeared to be completely ineffective. ‘See, this is getting us nowhere. Look how the whole world has gone after him!’ (John 12:19) So, “Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, rebuke your disciples!’” (Luke 19:39). But Jesus saw no need to rebuke those who told the truth. So, He replied, “I tell you . . . if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out” (Luke 19:40). So their plot to kill Him became more zealous. Both John and Luke deliberately de-militarizes their vision and declares the true nature of Jesus’ messianic rule; a rule of peace, gentleness and universal tolerance. Jesus’ view is very far from the Zealotic view of the Messiah that the crowd and even the Jewish rulers imagined. John goes so far as to remind us that even the disciples did not understand Jesus’ purpose until later (John 12:16). It took His ‘glorification’, through death and resurrection and the gift of the Spirit which flowed from it, to open their eyes. Nevertheless, Jesus’ head was not turned by the exaltation poured out on Him. He seems to have known exactly what was happening. In Luke’s version of the Palm Sunday story, we are reminded with what heaviness of heart Jesus made that final journey up to the city. As He was crossing over the ridge of the Mount of Olives and seeing the city lying below him Jesus experienced emotion overload. Luke recounts it as follows: “As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it 42 and said, ‘If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. ” (Luke 19:41–44). Here is the purpose of our Palm Sunday worship revealed: Jesus is indeed King. But we have to fully comprehend that His kingship is of a unique order. We need to comprehend that to express the true meaning of His kingship Jesus must disappoint the nationalistic aspirations of his fellow Jews. He is not a nationalist Jewish King. He is the King of compassion. He is the weeping King. But King He is. And no partnership of the powers of evil, whether Sanhedrin, Caiaphas, Annas, Pilate, Rome, Judas or Satan, can snatch that authority from Him. He moves majestically forward in procession to His throne, a throne constructed by His enemies, the throne of the cross! And strangely enough, it is in precisely this agony of this Cross-Throne that the church finds its peace. Friends, I would like to pause for a moment at Luke 19:41. This is one of only two times in the four Gospels that we are told Jesus wept. John 11:35 tells us Jesus was so deeply moved when He saw Mary’s inconsolable weeping that He too wept. The other time is accounted for in Luke 19:41 “As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, He wept over it.” Surely, the mere fact that Scripture mention this kind of emotion highlights this as an extraordinary happening. Have you ever thought about its meaning? Luke says He was weeping for the city. Think for a moment: “What does this mean? What does the city represent?” Yes, it is in the first place about God’s holy city, Jerusalem. But what a long, long history of disobedience and disappointment did they display! How had Jerusalem not abandoned her holy calling! For a thousand years God had been preparing her through the prophets to meet her Messiah, her Saviour, her Redeemer; and now, as the Messiah at last appears, she is going to arrest Him on a trumped-up charge, try Him in the middle of the night, flog Him nearly to death, and execute Him the way we would’ve executed serial killers and terrorist bombers [if we still believed in the death penalty], though in an infinitely worse manner. Note: Luke wants us to understand that as Jesus prepared to enter His deepest and darkest hours He wept. But does not weep for Himself. He weeps for the city. Yes, He weeps for those who soon would shout “Crucify him!” Come to think of it, dear friends, He weeps for us… Some years ago, I was at the church door at the end of an Easter service, shaking people’s hands, when a parishioner a whispered confidentially: “I will never say, ‘Crucify him!’ I just love Jesus too much.” I appreciated his response. However, I’m sad to say this person’s response revealed that he actually was missing the whole point. His response reflects a view of moral uprightness, a view where he placed himself cut above the run-of-the-mill people. He meant well, but clearly displayed a lack of understanding Jesus’ response in Luke 5:32 where He told the Pharisees who questioned His motives: “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” Jesus wept for all sinners. When we see it like this, Palm Sunday gets a different meaning doesn’t it? It highlights the compassion of the Saviour for those who desperately needs saving. From beginning to end, the key to victory over evil and the forces of despair is modesty, not arrogance. Fleming Rutledge prompted these thoughts: Has anyone ever wept for you? Did your mother shed tears because you did something that disappointed her? Did your father weep for you because you got into trouble? Or did your daughter weep because she felt ill-treated? Did your son weep because you blamed him for something he never did? Did you weep for a friend lost on the battlefield or in an accident? Did you weep for a child lost to the selfish ‘I-am-all-that-really-matters’ culture of our day or for a grandchild kicked out of school? Did you weep for someone committing a hideous injustice? Everyone has grieved for the victims in Christchurch, but what about the killer in jail? What about his family? Do we weep for them too? All these tears and every tear that has ever been shed by anyone anywhere are rolled up into the tears of Jesus. Jesus weeps for us. The Son of God weeps for you. In Jesus’ silent tears there was a whole world of inconsolable sorrow. God’s sorrow for a sinful world. Friends, tears are powerful. Tears communicate. Judges look for tears of real remorse when they are looking for a reason to give a lighter sentence. Jesus’ tears encompass the entire human tragedy; He weeps for all of us. He weeps for all who lost their lives in senseless violence. Yes, He wept for the Syrian Orthodox Christians who were massacred in Saddat and He wept for their families. But He also wept for their killers the jihadi rebels and their families. He wept for the over 120 Christians massacred in Nigeria and He wept for their families. But He also wept for the killer Fulani jihadists and their families. Yes, He wept for the 51 Muslims massacred in Christchurch and He wept for their families. But He also wept for the right-wing-white-supremacist-killer and His family… Yes, friends … here in the tears Jesus shed for Jerusalem we find God’s complete declaration of God’s solidarity with human pain, yes, also with the pain that human sin causes. Jesus entered Jerusalem for His final visit so that He could die as their Saviour. But these people were praising God for giving them a king to fulfil their nationalistic dreams. Jesus wept because they had such a wrong idea about who He really was. He wept because they could lose it all. They were sure He would be a national leader who would restore their nation to its former glory and this dream caused them to become deaf to the words of their prophets and blind to Jesus’ real mission. John reminds us that it was only after Jesus’ resurrection, that the disciples understood for the first time many of the prophecies that they had missed along the way. Jesus’ words and actions took on new meaning and made more sense. In retrospect, the disciples saw how Jesus had led them into a deeper and better understanding of his truth. Stop and think about the events in your life that God has used to lead you to this point. As you grow older, you will look back and see God’s involvement more clearly than you do now. We do not know the time when we will see God face to face. But when we do, we will see the crucified Messiah who wept for all of humanity that is lost in their sin. God chooses to release His power through vessels of humility, not vessels of pride. Friends, the Christian faith often seems like a long, long process. God’s Word had been delivered to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for many centuries. Jesus wept because the people of Jerusalem had failed to see God’s truth. Those who delay their commitment to Christ make the same mistake. As believers Palm Sunday encourage us to inspire those around us who like the religious leaders of Jesus’ day not to treat Jesus as if He is a theat. Palm Sunday reminds us that we should keep our eyes focused on Jesus’ priority – to enable people to meet their Saviour and put their faith in Him. Our mission – their acceptance of the Saviour – is of utmost importance. Jesus shed His tears for them too. He wants their salvation too. He wants them to become part of His kingdom too. He is the Saviour of the world. The whole passage from Luke 18:15 to 19:44 describes the King’s royal progress to his capital, but Luke is concerned to bring out the real meaning of this kingdom. He turns our eyes away from its ultimate glory to the suffering without which that glory will never be attained. Friends, today we are reminded the kingdom of God centres on the cross. God turns our attention away from the political transformation of society to the spiritual transformation of the soul, which must precede it. The kingdom must first find a dwelling place in human hearts. This happens when we accept Jesus for the King He really is. And when we do, we stop to think in terms not of immediate success and quick returns, and accept the long delays and protracted struggles that Jesus’ followers will encounter as they travel through life to meet their Saviour face-to-face. People highly desire this peace that only Christ can give. Share with others the good news of God’s gift to them. Urge them to accept the gift before the opportunity passes. Earlier I said I think I know why the joyful Palm Sunday “Hosannas” turned into angry chants of “Crucify Him!” like I said earlier, the crowds looked for a Messiah who would rescue them politically and free them nationally, but Jesus had come to save them spiritually. So they missed the true reason for Jesus’ presence. They didn’t understand that mankind’s primary need is spiritual, not political, cultural, or national salvation. Friends, the Pharisees were right when they said “This is getting us nowhere.” They were only succeeding as far as their plan corresponded with God’s plan. People can spend a lifetime resisting and rejecting Christ, only to discover that they have accomplished nothing but their own destruction. Friends, Easter was not “made easy” for Jesus. Easter cost the greatest price that has ever been paid in the history of the universe. And yet—miracle of miracles—for us, Easter is free. It cost us nothing; it cost God everything. We did not deserve God’s ultimate sacrifice, but God paid it out of his vast storehouse of unconditional love. Come and claim your share in God’s sacrificial love this coming Friday. God wants us to re-focuses our view this Palm Sunday so that we can see the true King that God has set on Zion, His holy hill, as the One who has in fact been given the nations as His heritage, and the ends of the earth for His possession. Remember, our tears, yours and mine, are merely sentimental most of the time. But the tears that Jesus shed are wrung out of God’s inmost heart. It reveals His yearning compassion for a lost world desperately in need of a Saviour. The Messiah wept for the sin that brought Him to Jerusalem on that Palm Sunday – the day when the King entered to die for the redemption of all sinners who repent. It is our complicity in sin that brings Him there; it is our sin that He bears away from us like the scapegoat going into the wilderness. He weeps for you and for me. The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53). This is what we must embrace. Friends, for us Palm Sunday is an opportunity to reflect upon the final week of King Jesus' life before His Crucifixion. Charles Sylvester Horne understood this and he penned this hymn: Sing we the King who is coming to reign, Glory to Jesus, the Lamb that was slain, Life and salvation his empire shall bring Joy to the nations when Jesus is King. Refrain: Come let us sing: Praise to our King, Jesus our King, Jesus our King; This is our song, who to Jesus belong: Glory to Jesus, to Jesus our King. All men shall dwell in his marvellous light, Races long severed his love shall unite, Justice and truth from his sceptre shall spring, Wrong shall be ended when Jesus is King. Refrain: All shall be well in his Kingdom of peace, Freedom shall flourish and wisdom increase, Foe shall be friend when his triumph we sing, Sword shall be plough-share when Jesus is King. Refrain: Kingdom of Christ, for your coming we pray, Hasten, O Father, the dawn of the day when this new song your creation shall sing, Satan is vanquished and Jesus is King. Refrain: Souls shall be saved from the burden of sin, Doubt shall not darken his witness within, Hell has no terrors, and death has no sting; Love is victorious when Jesus is King. Refrain: Jesus our King did not deny the image that the crowd expected – the fulfillment of Israel’s hope that He would be their earthly king, destroying the Roman government. Instead, He humbly entered Jerusalem to give His life on a cross, saving mankind, those for whom He had shed his tears, from sin and death. But we do have a vibrant hope. We know that one day, Jesus will return gloriously as a mighty King of kings and Lord of lords (Revelation 19:11–16). For us in whom that hope lives Palm Sunday serves as a preparation as we remember the agony of His Passion and the joy of His Resurrection and as we await His arrival on that glorious day. Yes, friends, rest assured that day is coming: a day when every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (Philippians 2:10–11). Worship will be real then. That day will be our Palm Sunday. Listen with me to a final verse from Scripture recorded by John that confirms this. It is a scene in heaven that features the eternal celebration of the risen Jesus: “There before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands” (Revelation 7:9). These palm-bearing saints will shout, “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb” (verse 10), and who can measure sum of their joy? AMEN