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Scripture Reading:
NRS Luke 19:29 When he had come
near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent
two of the disciples, 30 saying, "Go into the village ahead of
you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been
ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 31 If anyone asks you, 'Why are
you untying it?' just say this, 'The Lord needs it.'" 32 So
those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. 33 As
they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, "Why are you untying
the colt?" 34 They said, "The Lord needs it." 35
Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they
set Jesus on it. 36 As he rode along, people kept spreading their
cloaks on the road. 37 As he was now approaching the path down from
the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God
joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, 38
saying, "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in
heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!" 39 Some of the
Pharisees in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, order your disciples to
stop." 40 He answered, "I tell you, if these were silent,
the stones would shout out."
A young couple
moves into a new neighborhood. The next morning while they are eating
breakfast, the young woman sees her neighbor hanging the wash outside. 'That
laundry is not very clean', she said. 'She doesn't know how to wash correctly.
Perhaps she needs better laundry soap' her husband looked on, but remained
silent. Every time her neighbor would hang her wash to dry, the young woman
would make the same comments. About one month later, the woman was
surprised to see nice clean wash on the line and said to her husband: 'Look,
she has learned how to wash correctly. I wonder who taught her how?' The
husband said, 'I got up early this morning and cleaned our windows.' And so it
is with life. What we see when watching others depends on the purity of the
window through which we look.
I wonder how
often we see without seeing. Have you ever been driving along the road and
remarked on that new sign or new storefront only to have your spouse say, it’s
been there for a while, where have you been? Obviously not in the kind of
awareness one needs to be in to notice new things. I have shared with you
before that experts are those people who we either love or hate. Expert in fact
is defined as X is a has been and xpert is a small drip under pressure. People
present themselves as experts all the time and yet we know that they can and
often are wrong. Thomas Edison once remarked that his moving picture invention
was all but useless and would never amount to anything of value.
The experts of
Jesus day were none other than the scribes and Pharisee’s that moved among the
people, regaling them with their knowledge and making people feel inferior.
That is what experts do. I remember some years back an environmental
engineering company spent the day with me. We walked around the plant and he
pointed out things that we would need to look at, each time saying to be with
sarcasm, but you already knew that didn’t you. If I already knew then I
wouldn’t need him. Anyway at the end of the day I thanked him for his time and
observations and then told him we would not be needing the services of one who
was too wrapped up in his own ego to work with the likes of us. His boss called
the next day and I assured him with experts like that on his staff he would
probably go broke.
The Pharisee’s
and Scribes came to check out Jesus. Now remember, they are the leading
authority on Biblical prophecy and such. So Jesus decision to ride into town on
a donkey should certainly have got the attention of the knowledgeable experts.
Why? Because one of the prophecies concerning the Messiah from Zechariah 9:9 is
that he would come into Jerusalem riding on a donkey. Never happened before and
yet they refused to believe that Jesus was who he said he was. I mean, really,
how could they miss the one thing they have been trained to observe for
hundreds of years, the signs of the prophecies being fulfilled.
Maybe the
reason that they missed it is because they are trained to see the predictable.
We spend our lives being taught to see the normal, the predictable, the
ordinary and so when the extraordinary happens we often miss it. I think it is
why modern day political parties cannot seem to understand the desire of the populace;
they are so enamored with their status quo. So the Pharisee’s were looking for
David to come on a white horse beating back the Romans. Hmmmm. Maybe they had
forgotten to read the story of young shepherd boy who comes and slays a giant
with a rock.
Jesus is a son
of a carpenter from a no count little town called Nazareth. And you know what
they say about Nazareth, nothing good ever came from Nazareth. I mean really,
this Jesus fellow doesn’t even have a high school diploma and most certainly is
not one of the favored students in the synagogue like that Saul fellow. In
fact, it is most clever that he has such an understanding of the Biblical text
since he was never trained with the best of the best like the rest of us.
Ellsworth Kalas says, “We have to concede that Jesus doesn’t fit their
profile.”[i]
If we dig
closely into the story we can see an important truth here. God does not choose
who we expect and God does not work in the ways we expected things to happen. I
mean look at the stories of who God chooses to change the world. God chose
Jacob over his older brother Esau, breaking the whole inheritance thing. Joseph
was chosen special over all of his older brothers. David was a lowly shepherd
boy who God thrust into the limelight. Moses had killed in anger. And the list
goes on. God chooses those who are willing to let go of their own ego’s, let
their guard down, submit themselves to a higher will and do the bidding of God,
not their own.
If we
acknowledge that the Scribes should have immediately picked up on the fact that
Jesus was fulfilling the prophecy it was their job to watch out for and yet
missed it, then what about us? Is it possible that the reason we don’t see God
or acknowledge the presence of Jesus is that it doesn’t fit our mold? I mean
really, if we cannot see it, touch it, feel it with our fingers, then it cannot
be true. Don’t believe me; ask Thomas who refused to believe that Jesus was
resurrected until he placed his fingers in the wounds. What if God is working
right here amongst us? Would we refuse to see because we too cannot put our
fingers in the wounds?
I imagine that
if we close our eyes we can see the hundreds of people who lined the streets to
get a glimpse of Jesus. Here He comes now! Riding in the city gates on the
donkey, the young foal, just as the prophetic message told us He would. Among
the people are those who have probably seen Him performing miracles, others who
heard the stories and yet others who have come to see what all the excitement
is about. Among them are the Pharisee’s who are angered by all this because it
upsets their sensibilities and they are concerned what Rome will do with all
this excitement. Meanwhile the city is filling up with people who have come for
the Passover celebration.
Who would we
be? Are we those who had come because we had heard about Jesus and wanted to
see them? Are we those who had come because Jesus upsets our sensibilities
about life? Maybe we too would rather He did not ask us to be different and
upset the delicate balance of blending in with our culture and our world. But
then I wonder what would happen if we were suddenly confronted with a living
Jesus? How would we feel if we suddenly had in front of us His outstretched
hands with the holes where the nails had been? What would we feel? How would we
respond?
It’s Saturday
night and we are in the midst of the Holiest part of the year. Thursday we shared
bread together in the celebration of Passover as we will today. Friday we came
to celebrate or mourn depending on your perspective the events of that Friday
at Golgotha. Tomorrow we will celebrate the gift of God through resurrection
and eternal promise. But how will we celebrate the remaining the days of the
year? Will we struggle with believing or will we lift up our voices in witness
and praise to the God who loves us so much that God will go to His death for
us? The choice is always ours. Passover is coming! Are you ready for the
wilderness? Are you ready for the cross? Are you ready to be a disciple?
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