The Scripture Readings this week are:
- Psalm 118:19-29
- Matthew 21:1-11
- Isaiah 49:5-16
The Sermon title is A Different King
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Early Thoughts: Is this a coronation procession? Is the king about to take the throne? Perhaps.
Or maybe not.
Jesus is, after all, a very different kind of king. In fact that may have been part of the problem. The people who were suffering under the heavy thumb of the Roman Empire wanted relief, freedom, liberation. Some of them saw in Jesus the possibility that this was about to be made reality. I wonder if some of those people in the crowd along the road to Jerusalem thought finally the day had come.
If so they were going to be disappointed.
Jesus, in the end, is a king and slave. Jesus is the one who the Apostle Paul will later talk about saying:
"who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross" (Philippians 2:6-8)
The relief, freedom, and liberation that is promised in the Jesus moment is not shown by driving the Empire away with swords and clubs. It does not result in a new all-powerful monarch sitting on the throne of David. A revolution begins with Jesus, but not a rebellion.
The Psalm this week talks about the rejected stone that has become the cornerstone. For centuries Christians have looked the the story of Jesus and applied this image to him. If Palm Sunday is a possible coronation procession the throne seems to have been blocked and the claimant rejected. But for thousands of million of faithful over 2000 years that rejected claimant has now become the cornerstone of their understanding of God and how God interacts with the world. A different type of kingship, a different understanding of power.
The Matthew passage tells the story of the Palm Processional, a story many of us have heard many many times over the years. Interesting thing about how Matthew tells the story... Matthew uses a passage from Zechariah to show that this event was foretold (Matthew likes to link the Jesus story to the Hebrew Scriptures). However the Zechariah passage uses poetic parallelism and Matthew seems to miss that literary device, writing the story as if Jesus is riding two animals at once (take a look at verses 5-7). As the story is told it certainly looks like a grand procession, though we have no idea what "large crowd" means in relation to the number of people in and around Jerusalem that day. But then it ends with people asking "who is that?". An underground coronation at best.
Traditionally Palm Sunday is a transitional day. It marks the joyous parade and it starts the final road that will lead to arrest, trail, torture and death. The Isaiah passage is chosen to help us into that transition. I find hope in these verses, but it is not the wild exuberant hope of the entry into the city. It is a more muted hope in the midst of darkness and struggle. Yet in the end it promises that God will never leave God's people, that God could no more do that than a mother could leave her child. That, to me, is the ope of the coming of this different king. Some of the expected trappings may be missing. Some of the pomp and power and majesty are hard to see. But there is promise, there is relief, there is freedom and liberation. To those who are the most vulnerable, the most beat down the king comes. And that is a cause for hope and joy.
Is Isaiah talking about Jesus? When the words were first written or for Jewish believers today? Almost certainly no. For Christians reading the story with eyes and hearts that have experienced the life death and resurrection of Christ? Almost certainly yes. Texts have a life in their original context and a life beyond that original context.
What do we commemorate on Palm Sunday? Is it the coming of a King to take the throne? Is it, as John Crossan and Marcus Borg suggest in their book The Last Week, a carefully choreographed piece of street theater? Is it the first (and last) hurrah of a doomed rebellion? Maybe it is all those things and more. Because Jesus is a different type of revolutionary. Jesus calls us to determine where our loyalties are (or where they should/could be). Jesus challenges us to see the possibilities of the world differently. And since we are still talking about it 2000 years later, it seems to have worked.
--Gord
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