Sermon manuscript:
Our Gospel reading today has two parts. The first part deals
with the events that we are familiar with concerning Palm Sunday. Jesus was
entering into Jerusalem to celebrate the upcoming festival of Passover that was
happening that week. There were more people than usual in Jerusalem because
they were doing the same thing that Jesus and his disciples were doing.
Interest in Jesus was quite keen because of what he had done just days before.
He had raised Mary and Martha’s brother, Lazarus, from the dead, even though he
had been dead for four days. This is why the crowd is large, and why they are
praying to Jesus: “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the Name of the Lord,
even the King of Israel!”
The second part of our reading tells us some other things
that happened that day. These are lesser known happenings connected with Palm
Sunday. It is this second part of the Gospel reading that I’d like to focus on
today.
The second part is different from the first part. In the
first part of the reading there is a joyous, spontaneous parade (which are
always the best kind of parades). In this second part the topic is quite
different. Jesus speaks about his soul being troubled, about hating one’s life,
about death, about being lifted up on the cross. Here on Palm Sunday, even
while the crowd was singing and smiling, Jesus came to understand that his hour
had come. How did that happen?
John says that there were some Greeks there who came to
Jesus’s disciples. They said, “We want to see Jesus.” So the disciples
went to Jesus and told him about it. Immediately Jesus said, “The time has
come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” This is what made Jesus
understand that his death was quickly approaching: Some Greeks came to see him.
So why should this make such an impact? For us Christians it
is easy to forget that salvation is really a Jewish, an Israelite prerogative.
The people whom God chose out of all the nations of the earth were the
descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Greek people are from an entirely
different branch of the human race. They aren’t even distantly related to
Abraham, like some of the other people in the Middle East were.
When Jesus came he did not disrupt or overturn this basic
structure. He was sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. When he sent
his disciples out, they visited their fellow Jews. Jesus said to the Samaritan
woman at the well that salvation comes from the Jews.
Now, as it turns out, there were non-Jews who came to
believe in Jesus. The Samaritan woman believes in him. Then her whole village
came to believe in him. There is one outstanding male example of faith and one
outstanding female example of faith. Both of them are non-Jewish. The man who
is said to have great faith is a Roman Centurion. The woman who is said to have
great faith is the Canaanite woman, whom we heard about four weeks ago.
On the other hand, while there certainly were Jews who
believed in Jesus, most did not. After his first sermon in his hometown of
Nazareth the men of the synagogue want to throw him off a cliff. The Jewish
leaders in Jerusalem are especially hostile to him. They believe that he is a
dangerous heretic who is leading the people astray.
So already before Palm Sunday you see that the Jews, the
people who should have received Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, were
resisting him. These are the nobles of the human race, who, if anybody has a
claim to the King’s Son’s wedding banquet, they do. But they are unwilling to
come. On the other hand, people who don’t belong at the wedding banquet—the non-Jews—are
being compelled to come in.
This is not by accident. It is all there in the Old
Testament. God threatens to punish all who break his commandments, and the
worst punishment that God can inflict upon a person is hardness of heart. When
his people, who have had his promises and commandments, who have been visited
by him and know his will, do not repent, then God will harden their hearts and
move on. Thus in many geographical areas where in the Word of God was richly
and powerfully proclaimed previously in history, there is now no Word of God.
Instead people go after other gods, which actually are demons. So God warned
his people in the Old Testament that he would not put up with their
disobedience forever.
The Old Testament also has many prophesies about how the
non-Jews, the Gentiles, will come streaming into Zion, the city of God, the
city of salvation, in the end times. This is what is especially relevant to
what we heard today. This seems to trigger Jesus’s understanding of the end
coming. The Gentiles are starting to trickle in with this group of Greeks who
are seeking him. Soon that will turn into a flood. And so it is that even today
the number of Gentiles who believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Savior of the
world, is vastly larger than the number of Jews who believe that Jesus is the
Christ.
But this is not a popularity contest. Neither is it a matter
of people’s picking and choosing—as though it were up to the Jews or the
Gentiles to choose wisely, and one failed while the other succeeded. Rather it
is a matter of God’s grace. At the end of our reading Jesus says, “When I am
lifted up on the cross, I will draw all people to myself.” It was Jesus’s
own death that drew in and continues to draw in the Gentiles, as the Old
Testament prophets foresaw. The Gentiles were once far off, alienated from God,
stupidly worshipping demons because they had no other choice. Now they have
been brought near by the blood of Christ that cleanses them from sin. So when a
group of Greeks came, Jesus knew that they would have to be cleansed. Jesus
knew that the time had come for him to die, so that we might live.
Notice how Jesus speaks about his death. He speaks of it as
being glorious. He says, “Now the time has come for the Son of Man to be
glorified.” Later he says, “Father, glorify your name!” And the
Father says, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.”
This is a linking up of two things that we wouldn’t
otherwise bring together: glory and death—at least not a death like Jesus’s
death. Sometimes it can be glorious to die: The soldier dying for his comrades,
the police officer dying in the line of duty. But Jesus’s death was not like
that. He died alone—all his disciples forsook him. He died as a heretic and a criminal,
having been found guilty by both the Sanhedrin and by Pontius Pilate. He died
as a fool. His enemies beat him and spit on him. The soldiers mocked him. All
of this is what Jesus is referring to when he says, “Now the time has come
for the Son of Man to be glorified.” Jesus was glorified when he was poor,
weak, alone, a fool, a criminal, a curse. What is so glorious about that, you
might ask?
Jesus tells us in our reading when he says, “Now is the
judgment of this world. Now the ruler of this world will be thrown out. And I,
when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”
This world is judged. Fathers who abandon their children are
judged. Mothers who smother their children are judged. Children who curse their
parents are judged. Adulterers who break up marriages are judged. Fornicators
who blaspheme the act of procreation are judged. Corrupt politicians are
judged. Swindlers, also known as businessmen, as judged. Kidnappers who defile
and murder children are judged. People who sell sex and violence are judged.
Scientists who experiment on the disabled and poor are judged. Those who live
for just one more drink are judged. Those who masturbate to pornography are
judged.
We live an incredibly disordered existence. And it comes
right down into our homes and families. It haunts our daily life. The wounds
and after-effects and pollution linger on and on and only serve to create more
filth and dread and sadness. And we all have done our own part in contributing
to it. Praise God that this world is judged! It is in sore need of judgment.
And the ruler of this world is judged. The devil is judged.
The one who holds the purse strings. The one who opens the doors to advancement
and shuts the doors to advancement. The one who keeps people blind to the true
God and his love by filling them with lies about what life is really about. The
one who teaches children that fame and fortune is the real name of the game.
The one who tempts and irritates and saddens and lies and murders and brings
into despair. Praise God that this one is judged, and, furthermore, thrown out!
Good riddance you great bewitcher of souls!
There has never been glory like Jesus’s. There has never
been glory like this, where the evil poison is drawn out of our wounds and out
of our existence. It is judged, condemned, and done away with. And the way that
it is done is by Jesus being lifted up on the cross. The way that he does away
with all the evil is by absorbing it all into himself and bearing God’s
righteous wrath against it, fulfilling the immutable Law of God.
But there is yet one more dimension to how the Son of God is
glorious. The world is judged. The ruler of this world is judged and thrown
out. Finally Jesus says, “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw
all people to myself.”
What does this mean, “I will draw all people to myself?”
Well, what does Jesus do? In contrast to all the evil things that we spoke
about, Jesus is the opposite. He is good. He is kind. He is patient. He
forgives. He makes people righteous, setting them on the right path, making
them wholesome and loving. He takes away the power of past sins to infiltrate
and continue to pervert our lives. He introduces us to a new childhood—better
and more healthy than the one we had—where he is our brother, and God is our
Father, and Mary is our mother. Perhaps we could sum up all these things that
happen when Jesus draws us to himself by the word “peace.”
Jesus says to his disciples on the night when he was
betrayed: “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. Not as the world
gives do I give to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them
be afraid.”
The world’s peace, in contrast to Jesus’s peace, is where
everything is going your way. You’re on your way to being rich and famous. You
have good health. Everybody thinks you’re a jolly good fellow. You’re on the
top of the heap, or at least on your way to the top.
Jesus’s peace is his complete self, his entire divine life,
everything he is and everything he has he shares in common with us. Mercy and
truth and met together. Righteousness and peace have kissed each other. The
divine life that Jesus shares is more than enough for anyone, and if you find
that it is not enough, you can ask him for some more and he will give it to
you.
Together with this peace, Jesus also wishes to glorify you.
He would have you be glorious, just as he is glorious. That is to say, he
wishes to bless us by making us fall into the ground like a grain of wheat and
die, thereby producing much fruit of love. We suffer because we testify to the
world that its works are evil. We suffer as we absorb the insults, the pain,
the sin. Though we are reviled, we do not revile in return. Thus we appear
poor, weak, alone, a fool, a criminal, a curse. These things are not shameful.
They are the most beautiful things there are, because they are a reflection and
reverberation of the most beautiful one there ever was.
These glorious ones are easy to miss. They don’t promote
themselves. They do not lift up their voice in the street. But quietly the Holy
Spirit is at work in their lives. They take up their station in life and love
those whom God has put in their life. They follow Jesus.
This is a good life. It is the life of divine love. It is
open to all who want it, regardless of past sins—regardless of the sins you are
ashamed of, the sins of last week, or the sins of last night. Jesus draws all
people to himself. The sin that has polluted your life is cleaned up with
Jesus’s holy, precious blood. Jesus says, “Come unto me all you who are
weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.”
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