with splendour and majesty.
proclaim the work of your hands.
Psalm 27 (click here for audio link)
Holy Lord (click here for audio link)
Holy, holy, holy Lord
God of power and might
Heaven and earth of Your glory are full
Hosanna, hosanna, hosanna in the highest
Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord
Today is the beginning of what has been called Holy Week. It is a time in which we are invited to journey with Jesus through the last week of his life. Of course this framing of things is from the perspective of looking backwards in time. Those around Jesus, even his disciples, wouldn’t have known the way the events of the week would unfold. On several occasions, the Gospel writers point out that they didn’t fully understand what was happening right in front of them until much later. I point this out because sometimes it’s easy to frame the week in a concrete fashion, scripting it in a way that misses the dynamic choices that shaped the trajectory of events. If we open ourselves to the humanity found in these stories, we may gain a new appreciation for the man people called Jesus, while at the same time, being pulled deeper into the mystery of the Saviour called Jesus. So with that, let’s join in with Jesus and his disciples and make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover.
Just a quick side note: In rudimentary form, Passover commemorates the people of Israel being led from Egypt, out of slavery, to become a free people in their own land. In the Exodus account, Moses asks the Egyptian Pharaoh to free God’s people from their slavery. The Pharaoh refused over and over again to grant Moses’s request, which in turn, resulted in a series of plagues. The final plague was described as the coming of the Angel of Death, whose visitation would result in the loss of life of every first-born son in the land. Moses warned the people of Israel that they needed to be ready to leave on short notice. To save time, they were to bake bread without using yeast. In addition, Moses instructed the people to kill a lamb and use the blood to paint their doorframes so that the Angel of Death would ‘pass by’ them. Hence the name ‘Passover.’ In the time of Jesus, the main focus of the Passover festival revolved around sacrificing a lamb at the Temple and eating a meal mirroring the last meal before leaving Egypt. In these two actions there was a retelling of God’s faithfulness to God’s people and a reminder of God’s sovereign plan for them.
Ok, back to Palm Sunday…
As Beverly read, Jesus’s arrival into Jerusalem caused quite a stir. The story strikes me as being a little bit funny – Jesus seems to have a bit of dramatic flair. It’s on his instructions that the disciples find a donkey for him to ride into the city. As is often the case with Jesus, he is understated in his words, while at the same time making a grand declaration with an action. I think this is going on here. In this story there is very little spoken by Jesus but how he enters the city makes a huge statement about who he is.
If you look in the Gospels, the headings above the accounts describing Jesus’s arrival in Jerusalem say things like, ‘The Triumphal Entry’ or ‘Jesus Comes to Jerusalem as a King.’ It’s easy to understand how it can be categorized that way. In the stories, people were waving palm branches and shouting hosanna. In the culture of the time, the palm branches were symbols of victory, triumph, and eternal peace. The word ‘hosanna’ literally means ‘Please, save us!’ but through time, its transliteration came to mean ‘Salvation has come!’ In many ways the people around Jesus were declaring him to be their King, their Messiah. It was good news for the people.
While all this is true, we should take a minute to consider that there may have been some disconnect between what the people were expecting Jesus to be and the true nature of Jesus. I suspect at times there is disconnect even for us between what we want Jesus to be and who he reveals himself to be.
Human history is littered with Kings of all kinds. I looked some of them up. You have names of kings that one may traditionally expect to find. Kings such as: William the Conqueror, Alexander the Great, Valdemar the Victorious, Pedro the Liberator, and Richard the Lionheart. Some kings are in a category, shall we say, of unfortunate monikers. Kings like: Charles the Bald (a little close to home), James the Vain, Enrique the Impotent, and Arnulf the Unlucky. There are records of kings who seem to be remembered for doing good. Kings like: Alfonso the Good, Demetrius the Saviour, Leopold the Saint, and Eric the Kindhearted. However, the majority of kings seem to be associated with, in some fashion or another, the need to hold power at all cost. Kings such as: Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Cruel, Yazdegerd the Wicked, and Geoffrey the Hammer.
All of this seems to point to a need in all of us that wants to make kings – maybe not always in the traditional sense, but certainly metaphorically. We look for Kings who will inspire us, will think for us, will take up our cause, who will make our lives better and more fulfilling. Who will get us what we want.
The people of Israel struggled with this. They begged Samuel to let them have a king. You can read about it in 1 Samuel 8 & 9. The people of Israel said, ‘We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles.’ Samuel warned them that to have a king would cost them their freedom, and it did. You can read the history of Israel and their kings in 2 Kings 15:32 – 2 Kings 20:21 & 2 Chronicles 27 – 2 Chronicles 32:33.
And that is the truth about kings. No matter what we hope for, instead of giving life, kings take life away. They cost us our freedom, in small and big ways. Kingship in this world has showed itself to be an order where the powerful rule the weak and where freedom is replaced with slavery.
So how is it that Jesus demonstrates kingship? Is it that he is the most powerful, the smartest, or the biggest source of power? As crazy as it is, Jesus is nothing like this.
Let’s go back to the account in the Gospel of Luke. Subtle as it is, Jesus riding in on a donkey says everything about what his kingship is rooted in. In the Ancient Middle Eastern world, kings rode horses when they were riding to war. They rode donkeys if they were coming in peace. Jesus asked his disciples to find a donkey for him to ride in order to fulfill the words of the prophet Zechariah. The prophet wrote, ‘Rejoice greatly, daughter of Zion! Shout, daughter of Jerusalem! Look! Your king is coming to you: he is righteous and endowed with salvation, humble and riding on a donkey.’
The people were looking for Jesus to overthrow the oppression of the Roman rule and lead them into complete religious, social, and political autonomy. They looked to Jesus to begin a revolution. But it was a revolution of a different kind. Jesus did come to bring the people freedom from oppression and to restore what had been broken, it’s just his way of liberating was not what the people who watched him ride in were asking for.
And at times it’s maybe not what we ask for. His kingship seems to be upside down.
Jesus gave up power and chose vulnerability because what he really wanted is relationship and love, not power. Jesus doesn’t take power, he gives it away. We’re not in his hands, Jesus is in our hands. He’s not over anything, he’s subjected himself to be under everyone. He doesn’t lord over, he comes to serve. The whole way of traditionally defining kingship is shattered by his actions.
We talked about the nicknames of kings. How about this: Jesus – the King who gave up being king – for the sake of serving, for the sake of forgiving, for the sake of freedom, and for the sake of empowering.
Reading #4:
His love endures forever.
“His faithful love endures forever.”
in the name of the Lord.
Holy Holy (click here for audio link)