Are You Running
Are You Running?
Theme: Truth isn't found in running with crowds. Truth is only found in daring to follow Christ.
Exegesis: John 12:12-16
In John 11:55-56 the gospel writer foreshadows the enthusiasm and expectation of the crowd that will join Jesus on his entrance into Jerusalem. It's not surprising, therefore, that because of this heightened anticipation, John specifies that the crowds, gathered in Jerusalem for the Passover festival, go out to meet Jesus as he approaches the city (verse 13). The welcoming cries and extravagant demeanor of all these eager celebrants was fueled by the buzz in the temple courtyards, where the number one topic of conversation was Jesus' raising of Lazarus from the dead (John 12:9).
All four gospels tell of Jesus' triumphant entrance into the city. Each writer records remarkably similar details about the crowds. First, in each gospel the crowd's behavior includes waving palm fronds or branches as a sign of respect and royalty before the approaching Jesus. Although palm fronds have no liturgical connection to the Passover festival, they had long been used as a national symbol of Judea, both in textiles and in minted coinage. For example, at the time of 1 Maccabees 13:51 (c.141), the victorious Simon Maccabee was greeted by the exhilarated crowds with waving palm fronds. For those in that Passover crowd the day Jesus approached Jerusalem, the waving palm fronds signaled the hope that a political/military/national Messiah had arrived in their midst. The palm branches offered the same kind of nationalistic show of support that we do today when patriotic citizens wave little flags at a presidential motorcade or parade.
Second, the cry of Hosanna is mentioned. Hosanna is a transliteration of the Hebrew hosi-a-na. Literally "give salvation now," Hosanna is simply a general exclamation of praise, and was a familiar cheer. Taken from Psalm 118:25, Hosanna was ritually sung each morning during the Feast of Tabernacles (Booths), while the men waved the traditional willow and myrtle branches or lulah. In fact, these lulah became known colloquially as hosannas.
The crowds' words as Jesus continues towards Jerusalem also continue in the praises of Psalm 118, moving on to "Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord" (verse 26). Despite the fact that the disciples are still confused and unsure of Jesus' identity (and even more so about his mission), this crowd of Passover celebrants have no qualms about designating Jesus with a clearly messianic title. Throughout Old Testament Scripture the one who comes in the name of the Lord is understood to be the expected Messiah. But John's text quotes the crowd to make sure we understand their perception of Jesus. This welcoming parade adds its own insight, "the King of Israel." This crowd is thinking of a political, even a military Messiah (a hope Jesus' own disciples might themselves still be nurturing), and they're boldly confident in their announcement.
It's only after this nationalistic chant is offered up by the masses around Jesus that John slips in another element of the story common to all four gospels. While in the Synoptics there's a considerable amount of detail provided about the young colt or donkey that's retrieved for Jesus to ride into the city, here in John there's only a minimal mention of this detail.
Since John usually delights in recalling any supernatural events that occurred around Jesus it may at first seem odd that he would choose to omit Jesus' clairvoyant knowledge of the young animal and what his owners would say to the disciples who came to get him. But brought in at this moment in John's version—immediately following the crowd's exuberant but inaccurate recognition of Jesus—the ordinariness and unimposing nature of Jesus' chosen steed contrast dramatically with the crowd's chants and cheers. The image Jesus cut was hardly that of a powerful, conquering hero, riding into Jerusalem on the back of a spindly young donkey.
The masterful insertion of this detail about Jesus' mount enables John to draw a clear distinction between any militaristic messianic expectations and the other messianic images present in Old Testament Scripture. He now cites the portion of Zechariah 9:9 that mentions this very type of unexpected steed and the actions of a different kind of Messiah. Perhaps because John recognizes that his image is startling, he replaces the original opening lines of Zechariah 9:9 ("Rejoice") with the comforting, reassurance of "Fear not" (whose roots may be from Isaiah 40:9). The Zechariah text emphasizes a gentle king, contrary to the crowds nationalistic hopes for a zealous warrior king. In Zechariah this new, gentle ruler will usher in a period where there's no war, where peace is proclaimed (see Zechariah 9:10), and where prisoners are released—at the price of his own blood.
Like Mark, John's gospel reveals that Jesus' disciples didn't understand what their master was saying or doing during the time he was among them. Only after the resurrection, after the reminders and insights provided by the Holy Spirit (see John 14:25-26), do the disciples finally get it. Today's verse 16 is in keeping with that theme. It's remarkably similar to his comments about the disciples being unable to understand Jesus when he spoke about the temple being destroyed and then raised in three days (John 2:22). In both cases it's only after Jesus' death and resurrection, after "Jesus was glorified" (verse 16), that the disciples can at last see the coherent plan that shaped all Jesus said and did while he was in their midst. Not until Jesus' resurrection and glorification did Jesus' ministry and mission finally make "sense" to the disciples.
TEXTALIVE : The Word Made Flesh Dwells . . .
One of the most striking things about Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday are the big crowds.
We love big crowds and we welcome big crowds. Dressed in new spring clothing (and probably freezing in it!), those who aren't quite regular attenders will swell our numbers next week as the church celebrates the spring miracle of Easter. It's exhilarating to be part of a big crowd, a great gathering of happy, expectant worshipers reaffirming our faith and refilling our spirits with the hopes and promises of the resurrection.
No wonder everybody shows up.
Palm Sunday reminds us that Jesus and his disciples were journeying to Jerusalem during the same kind of anticipatory days, amongst the same kind of growing crowds and excitement. In the writings of the first century Jewish historian Josephus (Bel. vi 422-425), he notes that in the years immediately preceding the Jewish war (c.66) the crowds of Passover pilgrims number over two million! While Josephus' headcount might be creatively augmented, his report nevertheless confirms that it was typical for huge crowds to migrate into Jerusalem for the Passover festival.
It's a portion of those massive crowds that go out to meet Jesus. His reputation as a teacher—and more recently as the one who had miraculously raised Lazarus from the dead (see John 12:9)—had preceded him. This crowd greets Jesus joyously, with all the spur-of-the-moment pomp and circumstance they can muster. Palm fronds are brandished to wave the wonder-worker into the city. The psalmist's cheer of praise Hosanna (Psalm 118:25) was chanted by some, while those who knew their Scripture continued with Psalm 118:26, proclaiming "Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord."
What the crowd really anticipated, however, was demonstrated by the part of their welcoming chant that was not from Psalm 118. In its exuberance the hopeful crowd added on a gloss to Scripture—"the King of Israel"—a title which, while theologically correct, was obviously understood by this throng as a nationalistic, political, even militant title.
As is common with crowd assessments, crowd judgments, crowd conclusions . . . they were wrong.
There's an old saying: "Put it to a vote, and they'll always vote to go back to Egypt." There's something about the anonymity of crowd decisions, the headlong, headstrong energy of the pack, that makes wrong decisions seem so right, bad choices seem so flawless, cruel actions seem so sensible.
Time and again in Scripture, in story after story, when the crowd spoke and its majority vote was taken, it was a big mistake:
1. Adam and Eve's fateful decision in the Garden (They were a majority);
2. The building of the tower of Babel;
3. Noah, one man standing against the whole world;
4. The 9 to 1 vote of Joseph's older brothers that resulted in his enslavement in Egypt (although Gen. 50:20 puts an interesting slant on that);
5. The golden calf thing with Aaron and the Israelites at the bottom of Mt. Sinai while Moses was up top, Aaron being put in the position as leader.;
6. Joshua and Caleb's minority report (they were outvoted 10-2);
7. Gideon stood in the minority in Judges 6 against his whole town
8. Electing Saul as a King (even though Samuel and God thought it a bad idea)
9. Absalom "stole the hearts of the people."
10. Elijah versus the prophets of Baal in the contest on Carmel
11. All the disciples fled and left the one man, Jesus
And possibly the most inexplicable and worst crowd decision ever made . . .the crowd's response to the choice Pilate offered them: "We want Barabbas!"
Jesus was crucified by majority vote, by a crowd mentality. In fact, I can't find a single majority vote in Scripture in which the majority voted right. Can you?
We live north of Seattle, and in the last few weeks the voices and emotions of two very different crowds have vied for public attention in the downtown streets.
On one hand Seattle is known for being a very liberal, freethinking, and very antiwar community. (Remember the "Battle of Seattle" street demonstrations against globalization a few years ago?) Huge crowds of concerned, outraged, impassioned people have marched through the city deploring US military deployment in Iraq. Some of them are carrying banners denouncing "US Genocide."
On the other hand the Seattle area is also home to two large military bases, a submarine port, and several squadrons of military aircraft. Huge crowds of concerned, outraged, impassioned people have marched through the city calling for support for the US military involvement in Iraq and the service men and women who have found themselves in the midst of that war. Some of them are carrying banners denouncing "Traitors in our Midst."
The din of both crowds is considerable. But the truth that each crowd proclaims isn't always discernible.
It seems that in a crowd the discernment of any single mind become stretched into distortions of the truth. The flaws and imperfections that cloud any one individual's rational abilities become magnified by the mass of a crowd mind, causing an exponential explosion of error, misconception, and just plain falsehood.
When NASA technicians calculate the timing and trajectory for launching one of their deep space probes, they admit that the slightest flaw will be magnified by the millions as that piece of equipment hurls through space. What may have started out as the most minute of misperception may cause the project to miss its destination by hundreds of thousands of miles.
That's the power of crowd manipulation and misrepresentation.
In the US/Iraqi conflict one of the major goals of this military intervention (i.e. "war") is to topple the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. His single-handed, brutal-fisted rule of that country allows for virtually no personal freedoms among the population, and keeps all who would deal with him at the mercy of his whims and cruelties. His name will go down in history in the same category as Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, and a whole host of other 20th century dictators.
The truth is: dictators fascinate us.
The world's most interesting reigning dictator? Dictator Saparmurad Niyazov of Turkmenistan. He renamed the months of the year, April after his mother, the other months after his first and last names and self-given title "Father of all Turkmen." Also renamed the days of the week.
For conservative politicians and liberal reformers alike, the presence of a dictator seems to offer a straightforward, cause-and-effect reason for the problems that plague any one country. We gladly invest in the notion that if you depose the dictator, you solve the problem. Although our military leaders continue to caution us that stabilizing the Iraqi nation will take years, most of us can't help but think that if we can just "decapitate" the evil dictator we will win the war.
But it's not true. The ultimate evil is expressed not in individual dictators, but in anonymous crowds, like these:
- faceless military oligarchies (Myanmar);
- party bureaucracies (post Stalin Soviet Union);
- multinational corporations (who rule large parts of Nigeria, Indonesia, etc.);
- ethnic violence within a democracy (Muslim victims of Hindu fundamentalism);
- programmed crowd phenomenon (Third Reich).
Dictators make it easier for us to become one of the crowd and to abdicate our own mind in favor of these sinful, self-serving spokesmen. A dictatorship runs on the feet and backs of swarming, faceless crowds and rent-a-crowd democracy. It's the mind of the crowd that holds up the opinions and the huge self-portrait billboards of any dictator.
In today's gospel text the crowds once again got it wrong. Confronted with a man who would not just lead them, but transform them, all the crowd-mind could think to do was to celebrate Jesus as a nationalistic, military zealot, a warrior-king who could deliver Judea from Roman rule. When the truth of his messiahship became clear—that following King Jesus did not lead to a golden chair but to a wooden cross—the crowd evaporated.
Ever notice that the closer Jesus got to the cross, the smaller the crowds got? Until at Golgotha, on Good Friday, he stood there all alone. The Way, the Truth, the Life . . . abandoned and alone.
But Jesus didn't come for the crowd. Jesus came for each and every one of us. Truth isn't found in majorities or crowd mentalities. Truth is found in Jesus the Christ, who wants to inhabit each of us and appears in our midst where two-or-three are gathered together.
In a 1958 interview with Christianity Today, Billy Graham was asked what he would do if he were pastor of a large membership church in a major city of this country. Here is his response:
"I think one of the first things I would do would be to get a small group of eight or ten or twelve men around me that would meet a few hours a week and pay the price! It would cost them something in time and effort. I would share with them everything I have, over a period of a couple of years. Then I would actually have twelve ministers among the laymen who in turn could take eight or ten or twelve more and teach them . . . Christ, I think, set the pattern. He spent most of his time with twelve men. He didn't spend it with great crowds. In fact, it seems to me that every time he had a great crowd there were not too many results. The great results, it seems to me, came in his personal interviews and in the time he spent with his twelve." ("Billy Graham Speaks: The Evangelical World Prospect," Christianity Today, 13 October 1958, 5.)
What keeps our democracy working? No matter how many massive political rallies or conventions we may attend, each of us must confront our own conscience in that small, sequestered voting booth on election day. There's no hiding from the voice of our own conscience when we sit alone in front of a ballot.
We can only manage to keep the heart of our own faith pure and beyond the reach of crowd-controlled judgments and conclusions by returning to the only size crowd Jesus advocated—where two or three are gathered. Two or three is too many for a dictatorship, too few for a crowd. It is, however, just enough for worship and for the living presence of God.
Want to ruin your popularity in a hurry? Start telling the truth. Start living the truth. When Jesus told the truth, the people found it intolerable and ran.
Beware of crowd mentality. Beware when all speak well of you. When someone says to you, "Saying those things won't win you any popularity contests," what will you respond?
Jesus' response on Palm Sunday was, in effect: "So? I'm not running in an popularity contests. I'm following the will of my Father."
Are you following the will of God this evening? Or are you running in popularity contests? As we learned to sing in Sunday School, are you prepared to dare to be a Daniel? Dare to stand alone? Dare to have a purpose firm? Dare to make it known?
April 15 should be called TAXgiving Day.
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The IRS received through the mail an envelope filled with buttons and the following note: "You got the shirt last year!"
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The Lord spoke to Noah and said, "In six months I am going to make it rain until the whole world is covered with water and all the evil things are destroyed. But, I want to save a few good people and two of every living thing on the planet. I am ordering you to build an ark." And, in a flash of lightning, God delivered the specifications for the ark. "OK," Noah said, trembling with fear and fumbling with the blueprints, "I'm your man."
Six months passed, the sky began to cloud up, and the rain began to fall in torrents. The Lord looked down and saw Noah sitting in his yard, weeping, and there was no ark. "Noah!" shouted the Lord, "Where is My ark?" A lightning bolt crashed into the ground right beside Noah. "Lord, please forgive me!" begged Noah. "I did my best, but there were some big problems. First, I had to get a building permit for the ark's construction, but Your plans did not meet their code. So, I had to hire an engineer to redo the plans, only to get into a long argument with him about whether to include a sprinkler system.
"My neighbors objected, claiming that I was violating zoning ordinances by building the ark in my front yard, so I had to get a variance from the city planning board. Then, I had a big problem getting enough wood for the ark, because there was a ban on cutting trees to save the spotted owl. I tried to convince the environmentalists and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that I needed the wood to save the owls, but they wouldn't let me catch them, so no owls. "Next, I started gathering up the animals but got sued by an animal rights group that objected to me taking along only two of each kind. "Just when the suit got dismissed, the EPA notified me that I couldn't complete the ark without filling out an environmental impact statement on Your proposed flood. They didn't take kindly to the idea that they had no jurisdiction over the Supreme Being.
Then, the Corps of Engineers wanted a map of the proposed flood plan. I sent them a globe! "Right now, I'm still trying to resolve a complaint with the Equal Opportunities Commission over how many minorities I'm supposed to hire.
The IRS has seized all my assets claiming that I am trying to leave the country, and I just got a notice from the state that I owe some kind of use tax. Really, I don't think I can finish the ark in less than five years."
With that, the sky cleared, the sun began to shine, and a rainbow arched across the sky. Noah looked up and smiled. "You mean you're not going to destroy the world?" he asked hopefully. "No," said the Lord. "The government already has."
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IRS auditor to nervous taxpayer: "Let's begin with where you claim depreciation on your wife."
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Attn: IRS
Enclosed is my 1998 tax return & payment.
Please take note of the attached article from USA Today newspaper. In the article, you will see that the Pentagon is paying $171.50 for hammers and NASA has paid $600.00 for a toilet seat.
Please find enclosed four toilet seats (value $2400) and six hammers (value $1029). This brings my total payment to $3429.00. Please note the overpayment of $22.00 and apply it to the "Presidential Election Fund," as noted on my return. Might I suggest you the send the above mentioned fund a 1.5 inch screw?"
It has been a pleasure to pay my tax bill this year, and I look forward to paying it again next year.
Sincerely,
A satisfied taxpayer
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The stockbroker received notice from the IRS that he was being audited. He showed up at the appointed time and place with all his financial records, then sat for what seemed like hours as the accountant pored over them.
Finally the IRS agent looked up and commented, "You must have been a tremendous fan of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle."
"Why would you say that?" wondered the broker.
"Because you've made more brilliant deductions on your last three returns than Sherlock Holmes made in his entire career."
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Conscience is that still small voice that tells you the Internal Revenue Service may check your return.
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INTERESTING TAX FACTS: The tax law has grown from 11,400 words in 1913 (10 times the length of the Declaration of Independence) to 7 million words today (the entire Bible is only 773,000 words long). There are at least 480 tax forms, each with many pages of instructions. Even the easiest form, the 1040E, has 33 pages of instructions, and all in fine print. The IRS sends out 8 billion pages of forms and instructions each year. Laid end-to-end, they would stretch 28 times around the earth (and probably be more comfortable??
Nearly 300,000 trees are cut down yearly to produce the paper for all the IRS forms and instructions. American taxpayers spend $200 billion and 5.4 billion hours working to comply with federal taxes each year. That's more money and time than it takes to produce every car, truck, and van in the United States. The IRS employs 114,000 people—that's twice as many as the CIA and five times more than the FBI. Sixty percent of taxpayers must hire a professional to get through their own returns. Taxes eat up 38.2% of the average family's income; that's more than for food, clothing, and shelter combined.
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There's always something new to learn about taxes, such as the inside lingo used among preparers:
Stephen Sprenger, who owns an H & R Block franchise in Seattle, once commented, "It's that time of year: the time for 'ceiling deductions.'"
"'Ceiling deductions?' What are they?"
"That's when you ask how many miles the client drove, and he looks at the ceiling and says, 'About 8,000.'"
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"I feel honored to pay taxes in America. The thing is, I could probably feel just as honored for about half the price." —Arthur Godfrey
