March 28, 2010 Palm Sunday Sermon

Predictions
Matthew 21:1-17

Bob Thompson claims yesterday's weather does a better job predicting today's weather than television meteorologists.  But why should we care?  My brother who lives in England says Europeans find our American fascination with the weather odd.   English small talk about weather takes the form of complaining, not speculating about tomorrow's forecast.  But we North Americans have good reason to watch the weather.  Not only does it change often, but on this continent the weather can become violent, even deadly.  It makes sense to keep a weather eye on what's coming. 

When Jesus entered Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday a long list of predictions came true.  Those who watched carefully began to suspect that very soon he would make more important predictions come true.  As we read Matthew's account of this it makes sense for us to expect that God will continue to make good on His predictions.  Bank on Jesus. 

First we deal with the weird episode of the borrowed donkey.  Jesus and his disciples stand on a mountainside and look across a ravine at a village on the opposite slope.  Jesus tells them to enter it and take a donkey they will find tied up in front of a house.  A donkey, a working beast, represented much of the wealth of even the richest villager.  No man would allow strangers to take his donkey.  But more than five hundred years earlier God's prophet Zechariah had predicted this moment: “Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey.”  Zechariah had prefaced these words with a call for Zion to shout out loud when the moment came.  The village to which Jesus now directs his disciples lies on the shoulder of Mount Zion.  We do not know whether the disciples understood this fulfillment of prophecy as they enacted it.  But Matthew got it.  He tells us: “This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet.”

The disciples retrieve the donkey.  Jesus climbs on and rides into Jerusalem.  People line his route and shout out loud.  They carpet the dirt road with their cloaks and wave branches cut from the trees lining the road.  The crowds sing, “Hosanna to the Son of David!  Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!”  These words come from Psalm 118.  An ancient Hebrew poet wrote them, along with Psalms 113-117, as songs of praise for God's deliverance of the Chosen People from Egypt.  This Exodus happened some sixteen hundred years before Christ.  Every year since the Hebrews had sung them in worship during Passover.  Jesus rode into Jerusalem four days before Passover began.

Jesus strides into the temple and breaks up the money changing and dove selling operations.  The holy Old Testament law books Exodus and Leviticus stated that people had every right to conduct these businesses on temple grounds.  But human nature being what it is, these businessmen abused the system.  They got rich at the expense of the poor, ignorant pilgrims.  They gouged people trying to meet a religious obligation.  As Jesus overturns the cheaters' tables he quotes two Hebrew prophets, Isaiah and Jeremiah, who long before had predicted this abusive system would develop at the temple.

Then the blind and the lame come to Jesus in the temple and he cures them.  Children cry out, “Hosanna to the son of David!”  You might think that the religious leaders headquartered there would share in the joy.  They do not.  With anger dripping from their voices they say to Jesus, “Do you hear this?”  I once served a church that had not had a baby in its nursery for years.  It had no youth group and the elders had considered eliminating Sunday school.  They kept it mostly because one elder had taught a popular adult Bible class for over twenty years and he wanted to keep doing so.  When we arrived we did various things that churches do for children, youth and their families.  A year or so later we started a well-attended Wednesday evening program.  A couple of weeks after the kick-off I received an angry delegation of two older adults who claimed to represent “many” others.  Their complaints: they had heard rumors of children running in the hallways and yelling, and in order to accommodate all the young people who were coming we had started using the library.  The library.  The Holy of Holies.  The sacred space where that elder taught his adult class on Sunday mornings.  The room with the signs posted at each door saying, “Please keep silence in this room.  No coffee or food.” 

That church wanted children, but it wanted them silent and in tightly restricted places.  That church wanted youth, but it wanted them in the dank basement with the ratty sofas and broken lighting.  How many times must we relearn the lesson that we do not control God or the movements of God's Spirit?  But hearts can change.  The longer we stayed at that church the less anger we encountered over the noise of children and the presence of youth in the library.  And one of the older people who came to me in anger that long ago day sent me a card this week expressing sorrow over the death of my father.  When the religious leaders demanded that Jesus quiet the children and the lame and the blind he had healed he replied with a quotation from a psalm written a thousand years earlier: “Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise for yourself.”  Yet another prediction come true.  That former church of mine began to learn its lesson.  Can we do the same?

Bank on Jesus.  Prediction after prediction about him came true on the first Palm Sunday.  Today marks the two-thousand-somethingth Christian commemoration of Palm Sunday.  But before we look forward, let us look back one more time at the central prediction made repeatedly about Jesus.  When those crowds shouted, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!” they understood they were really shouting, “Blessed is the Lord's Messiah, who has finally come and now rides into Jerusalem right before our very eyes!”  They believed that Jesus was and is the Christ, the Messiah, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.  They saw that after thousands of years of waiting God's promised deliverance was taking place right before their very eyes. 

Next Sunday we will celebrate Easter.  Next Sunday we will rejoice because Jesus, the Lamb of God, rose from the grave to lead those who believe in Him into his eternal presence.  This Sunday, Palm Sunday, we celebrate that he entered Jerusalem willingly, that he rode to his own death knowingly, that he kept the promises of God completely.  There could be no better way to celebrate Palm Sunday than to allow Jesus to enter our hearts. 

If you have never truly given your heart to Jesus, do so today.  I have recently learned with fresh power that we do not control time.  We have no power over how long we will live on this earth.  Do not delay.  Receive Jesus into your heart.  Bank on Jesus.  Bank on him not as a sure thing, the perfect investment that will guarantee your happiness and security.  Bank on him instead as the Lamb of God who takes away your sins and who calls you to help others come to know the peace this brings.  Bank on Jesus as the One who reached out to outcasts.  Bank on Jesus as the One who forgives even you.  Bank on Jesus.  He will keep every promise God ever made to us, including the promise to allow those who know Him to enter his presence eternally.  If you do not know how to receive Jesus, please speak with me today.  I can help you make that commitment; so can several of our elders who have training and experience in helping this to take place. 

Again and again Jesus went out of his way to touch, to heal, to engage people the rest of society had labeled unclean or unworthy.  Do you ever feel unclean or unworthy?  I know a woman who has raised children, sustained more than her half of a marriage, worked her tail to the bone at church and at her place of employment, kept a nice face on to the world for decades—and who feels utterly unworthy of God's love.  Have you ever felt that way?  Understand that nobody falls beneath Jesus.  After entering Jerusalem he accepted death at the hands of sinners.  He went down so far nobody could go lower.  And when he came back up he meant to carry all who love him to the highest heights.  I know a man whose parents and employers have told him these many years that he is stupid.  He believes them.  After all, why should people who do not know each other reach the same conclusion about him if it were not true?  Have you ever felt stupid, foolish, like the last one to catch on to a joke the rest of the world is playing on you?  Understand that Jesus loves you.  God created you as you are.  Jesus entered Jerusalem to extend redemption even to you.

Bank on Jesus.  He fulfills every promise of God.  Even if you have already given your heart to Jesus you can experience his healing love again and again.  God never promised that once we follow Jesus we would know no pain.  God never promised that once we follow Jesus we would get rich—rich spiritually, monetarily or any other way.  What God has promised is that if we follow Jesus we will receive peace, healing, hope, and eternal joy in his presence.  I believe that God will keep this promise.  I believe God has kept every other promise.  Every prediction about Jesus has come true.  Bank on this one, too.