Saying it Right, Getting it Wrong (Matthew 21:1-11)

Sermon as preached at Lambs UMC on 4/13/14

Image courtesy of Vanderbilt Library

God be with you. This is a simple yet powerful phrase that we as Christians often use as we depart from or as we leave worship. There is even a great hymn of dismissal that many of you probably know that is based around this phrase. “God be with you till we meet again;
By His counsels guide, uphold you, With His sheep securely fold you; God be with you till we meet again.”  The phrase just speaks to our hearts and to our souls, that God will be with us, watching us, guiding us, loving us until we meet again. Over time this phrase has lost much of its power, it has lost much of its meaning, so much so that most of us probably use this phrase on a daily basis without knowing it.  Not me, you may say, If I were to say God be with you I would surely know I was saying it, I wouldn’t just throw that phrase around for nothing.  But I ask you, when is that time you said goodbye to someone? It probably wasn’t that long ago was it? Well the last time you said goodbye,  you were in fact saying God be with you, and you probably didn’t even know it. This phrase God be with you used to be such a common phrase for departing that over time it morphed from saying God be with, into a brand new word, goodbye. Now that word is used so often that for most of us there is no religious connotation to it; it has simply become a meaningless word.  We even shorten the word to bye, which we all know what it means, but when we say bye we are in essence saying “be with you;”  which seems to make no sense at all.  Just as the phrase “God be with you” had become so commonplace that it morphed into a word that lost its meaning altogether; So too was the meaning of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem lost on most of the crowd gathered there. They said all the right things, they did all the right things, but we know the story, and we know that this triumphal entry into Jerusalem continues on to Christ’s death, we know that Palm Sunday leads us right into Good Friday.  How could a crowd that seemed to get it so right, get it so wrong?  What was it that the people of Jerusalem were missing?

            As we begin to look at our story for today it is obvious that the importance of this entry is not lost Jesus, and is not lost on Matthew as he records what happened.  Jesus is on the outskirts of Jerusalem, the holy city, about to enter in, but Jesus recognizes that this moment is special. For so long the people of Israel have been waiting for their Messiah, for so long they have been waiting for their new King;  one who would protect them from their enemies, one that would restore justice to the land, one that would bring peace to the land. In many of the prophets in the old testament prophesy about the day in which this Messiah would.  For example we find in Zechariah chapter 9, “Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. I will take away the chariots from Ephraim, and the warhorses from Jerusalem, and the battle bow will be broken. He will proclaim peace to the nations. His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth.”  And now here is the Messiah, God incarnate, about to enter into the holy city, just as was prophesied by the prophets of old, and so Jesus understanding the significance of this moment gives the people a sign of who he truly is.

            He sends two of his disciples before him and tells them that they will find a donkey and a colt tied up. He tells them to take it and bring it back, and that if anyone asks what they are doing, that they should tell them that the Lord needs it.  The disciples do just that,  they bring the donkey and colt back, and Jesus enters into Jerusalem riding on them.  Jesus fulfills the prophecy that we just heard from Zechariah, and in doing so Jesus is proclaiming to the world that he is the Messiah. He is proclaiming that he has come to bring peace to the world, that he comes on a  donkey and not a war horse because the Lord reigns with humility not with an iron fist. The Messiah has arrived.

            All signs point to the fact that the people of Jerusalem get it, that they understand the importance of this amazing event that is happening before their eyes. The crowd gives Jesus the royal treatment as he enters into the city. The gather in the road, they lay their coats down road as he comes by, and they wave palm branches and lay them down in the road as well. As all of this is going on they celebrate Jesus,  saying, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!" As the crowd grows others from the city come out and when asked who is this? They respond, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”  It seems as though if the people of Jerusalem ever got it right it was here on this triumphal entry. They are praising Jesus and shouting Hosanna, Hosanna, and yet not even a week later these shouts of Hosanna have turned into the cries, “Crucify him.” What happened, what went wrong, when everything seemed to be right?

            Do I have the absolute answer to how the people could go from singing Hosanna one day to yelling crucify him less than a week later?  No, none of us can really know what was happening in the minds of those inhabitants of Jerusalem, but I can imagine some of what may have been the cause. As we know, this moment comes at the end of Jesus’s ministry. That means that word of those miracles that he has performed, the teachings of love and justice, his confrontations with some of those in power has probably spread around the city.  Now here comes this man,  this legend, riding into the city for all to see.  As he approaches on a donkey I’m sure that there are some that realize the significance of this moment and so that start to praise him. Others see the commotion, and having heard the stories of Jesus, join in, maybe hoping to see some miracle performed in front of their own eyes. The crowd continues to grow and grow, people of the city start asking,  “ Who is this?”  And those present answer, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.” You know, the one we’ve all been hearing about. Suddenly you can imagine that this moment of praise has become much more like The Beatles invasion, with all of the screaming girls , and less like worship. What about their praises of Hosanna you may ask, doesn’t that show their worshipful manner?  But what does Hosanna really mean? Just like us, this word Hosanna is one that the Jewish people have heard over and over again. It comes from Psalm 118 and literally means, “Save us, we beseech thee O Lord.”  Save us, we beseech, or in other words we urgently ask O’ Lord that you save us. These are words of desperation, words of great turmoil and fear. These are words  that recognize our own sin, recognize our need for a savior, they are words appropriate for the Messiah, and yet as Jesus rides in the words are said with joy and jubilation, not with urgency and desperation. You see by the time of Jesus the word Hosanna had lost its meaning, much like our word goodbye, and Hosanna simply became nothing more than a “religious hurrah”[1] like an Amen or and Alleluia to something that we like.

            What is so painful about this Palm Sunday story is that the people of Jerusalem are so close to getting it right, but still get it so wrong.  They celebrate the arrival of the Messiah into the holy city, the praise him with palm branches and by laying their coats on the road before him. They even cry Hosanna, Save us, O Lord we beseech thee.  Words as we have said that are so fitting for the Messiah, the one who is to come to restore Israel to its glory, the one who has come to bring peace and justice to the land,  the one who has come to bring good news to the poor, set the prisoners free, to restore sight to the blind, and to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the  year of the Lord’s favor. This is the very person we should be crying out to, save us, save us, and yet while the people Jerusalem say it all right, they get it all wrong. Their words are correct but hollow. Some praise the Lord out of habbit, some praise the Lord for the thrill of that exciting day, and so it is no wonder then how these same people later that week can once again get exciting about a commotion in town. That this man Jesus has been declared a heretic and a leader of an insurrection and so once again caught up in the moment those shouts of Hosanna turn to shouts of crucify him.

            Let us not be quick to judge the people of Jerusalem, thinking that we are so much better than them. We too often say the right things while getting it all wrong.  Each week we proclaim, “I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and Earth. And in Jesus Christ his only son our Lord” but how often have we stopped to think about what we mean when we call Jesus Lord?  I mean we say it all the time, Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, but do we really know what we are saying? Do we really live out what we are saying. A Lord is a master. It is the person in which we work for, who owns everything. That means we own nothing, everything we have is the Lord’s. It means we are not our own bosses, but live by the Lord’s commands. Do we really live this way?  If we do why do we view our money as my paycheck, my income, my money, my house, my land, when in fact it all belongs to God?  Why do we so often put what we want over the needs of others, if all of us are made in the image of God?  Just like the people of Jerusalem,  we often proclaim one thing and live another. We say it right, but it get it wrong.  Hosanna, Save us, we beseech thee O Lord.

            Even as this pivotal event of Easter approaches, the event that is at the very heart of our beliefs, how often do we say what it is all about, and yet not live it.  We say that Jesus died on the cross for our sins, and yet act as though we have no sins for Jesus to save us from. We act as though Jesus is saving all the other “bad” people in the world. We act as though we are not broken, as though we have already reached Christian perfection, as if our hearts are already attuned with the Lord’s. We act as though we don’t need saving.  Hosanna, Save us, we beseech thee O Lord.

On that Easter morning, when we hear of the boulder being rolled away and the body missing, we cry out in joy, “he is risen, He is risen indeed”  and yet so often we act as though Christ is still dead.  We act as though Jesus was something in the past, that he’s not here, not present with us today, we ignore the power of the Holy Spirit, but the phrase is Jesus is risen, not Jesus rose. Jesus still lives, still guides our every step, still loves us, and still hears our prayers.  Yet how often do we act as though we are honoring a fallen hero rather than serving a risen Lord? As though we are living in a world from which we are trying to escape, rather than a world in which Christ is Lord, and who is daily working to make all things new.  Hosanna, Save us O Lord we beseech thee.

            You see, we are not that different than those people of Jerusalem some two thousand years before us. We too recognize a glimpse of something special happening and yet so often offer up hollow words of praise.  Too often we ask for Christ to save us, and yet live as though we need no saving. We proclaim that Christ is Lord, and yet live as though we are our own masters, that all that we have belongs to us.  And yes we proclaim that Jesus is risen, and live as though he is not with us today.  You see this morning we too are in need of a Messiah. We too approach the Last Supper with shock and confusion. We too approach Good Friday and Jesus’s death on the cross with sadness and hopelessness. We too are in disbelief of the missing body on Easter morning. We too celebrate this Palm Sunday’s with shouts of Hosanna in highest,  but we too also cry crucify him.   As we enter into this Holy week, let it not be for us just another holiday. Let us not offer up our shallow praises, but rather prayers of true confession, true wrestling, true submission, and yes true thanksgiving. Let us gather as a people who truly acknowledge our faults, who truly realize our need for the Messiah, and who truly anticipate the good news of Easter morning.  Hosanna, Save us, we beseech thee O Lord.

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[1] New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary pg. 403