Sunday... Palm Sunday Sermon on Mark 11:1-11

Palm Sunday – Mark 11:1-11

Mark 11:1-11 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

11 When they were approaching Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples 2 and said to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately as you enter it, you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden; untie it and bring it. 3 If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.’” 4 They went away and found a colt tied near a door, outside in the street. As they were untying it, 5 some of the bystanders said to them, “What are you doing, untying the colt?” 6 They told them what Jesus had said; and they allowed them to take it. 7 Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it; and he sat on it. 8 Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields. 9 Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting,

“Hosanna!
    Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
10     Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

11 Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.

When my kids were small, and wouldn’t go to sleep when any lights were on, I started making up stories at bedtime so I could tell them in the dark instead of needing light to read.  I told them stories about Riddle the Rainbow Cat, Coyote Sister, and Star Quilts – I told them stories about girls and boys that were just about their ages and just about their sizes on incredible adventures.  But their very, very favorite stories were the ones I made up about superheroes.  Stories with clear villains and clear purveyors of good.  Superior strength, intellect, creativity, and moral fortitude won the day – sometimes in the final seconds, sometimes with disappointing haste, if I was tired – but always with flourish and decisiveness. 

We love a good superhero, don’t we?  Someone to storm the gates, brandish a sword, mount a prancing steed with arched neck and rippling muscles beneath a glowing coat, and come into the city to greet an adoring crowd, cheering and blessing the king, the savior. 

We are told by historians that this is exactly what happened in

Jerusalem on the day we’re considering today.  A huge parade, shining swords and armor, a display of power and might that was almost magical for crowds that cheered the incoming king.  It sounds amazing, doesn’t it?  Exciting.  Proof that there is someone we can count on, believe in, that will lead us to a better day. 

The problem here is that this isn’t our king.  This is Pilate, entering the west gate with the military with the intent of maintaining order in Jerusalem.  Our king is entering the east gate, on an immature, gangly, unimpressive colt, with a few cloaks and branches and a group of people – many people, perhaps, but not a “crowd,” or a “multitude” -- that isn’t really addressing him specifically, but is chanting about the upcoming kingdom of David.   Our king is kind of a mess in comparison to the glory that is coming in the west gate.  Where will he lead us?

 

Grace and peace to you from God our Creator and Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior – Amen

It is true that there are echoes of messianic prophecy in this account –  educated Jews hearing the story would certainly hear the words of the prophet Zechariah in their memories:  “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, your king coming unto you; he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon a donkey, even upon a colt, the foal of a donkey” (9:9)– but in many ways this moment seems to be more Jesus making a point against people’s expectations.  Is he calling our attention to the difference?  He knows that he is leading no one to a military victory – he is on his way to the cross, and that’s where he is leading. 

Even the people in the crowd following Jesus toward Jerusalem don’t seem to be cheering for the person actually there.  They are cheering for the re-establishment of the Kingdom of David – a military victory.  They are not seeing that this man in front of them is not that kind of a warrior. 

I think that this moment has a lot to show us about humanity and the situation we find ourselves in.  We want someone to follow, someone who gives us hope for the future.  This is a real human need, even for the most independent people.  But we have a weakness there, too:  sometimes we don’t clearly see the one who we are following.  That can mean we are following the wrong person and don’t realize it – it can also mean we are following the right person but don’t clearly know what that person stands for. 

Maybe this crowd outside Jerusalem wanted what a lot of us want – just look at the box office numbers of superhero movies! 

They wanted a leader that was dynamic and powerful.  They wanted to hold him up and live vicariously through him.  “Look how great we are because this is our leader!” 

But did you notice that by the time Jesus gets to the temple everyone is gone but the twelve?  This crowd only follows him to the gate  -- after that, things might not be so fun.  They might be making a commitment that has consequences.  They’re out.

This crowd wants a shiny and powerful superhero to cheer for, but not necessarily one that encroaches upon their lives.  When it might not be palm branches and cloaks any more, it’s time to drift away.   What do you suppose people in that crowd were thinking?  Did they just get scared?  Or did it become apparent that Jesus wasn’t what they expected him to be?  What do we do when Jesus fails to meet our expectations?  When we find that he expects us not to follow him into battle but into service and sacrifice?  When we find that he doesn’t just love us and the people we are comfortable with?  Maybe people we don’t think are worthy of him?  Maybe people who we’d rather just stayed invisible?

This whole Palm Sunday event – it encapsulates the upside-down, failing to meet our expectations nature of the kingdom of God.  It takes what we learn from the world and how it works and shows us instead a vision of a kingdom where all that power, wealth, spectacle; the superhero stunts and the great costumes are just not important.

What’s important is the young colt, the itinerant preacher without any wealth, and the shunned

people he shows us how to care for. 

This Jesus – he is constantly challenging our perceptions and our expectations.  The question is whether we will follow him into the uncertainty and re-evaluations of our values and our priorities or if we won’t.  I keep thinking about the silent character in this story that still figures so centrally – the unbroken colt. 

Has anyone worked with horses?  If you have you know that horses have an instinctual need to keep their footing.  I’ve had fully trained, steady animals get their whole brains twisted up because they stepped on a branch on a trail wrong and felt precarious.  New footing of any kind can just freak them out.  But here is this colt who has never been ridden, asked to step across cloaks and palm branches – and, presumably, he does it, because I think if Jesus had been bucked off and the colt had gone running back to where it can from, that might have made the story!

You could make the argument that this colt knows his creator and has perfect trust, and I would agree with you.  But, maybe, just maybe, this colt is also a symbol – a symbol of the precarious footing inherent in a life in Jesus’ kingdom, and the right way to handle it.    

Do we react like the colt?  With trust and forward motion, even when the ground seems unstable and what we thought was secure is shaken?  Or do we react with disappointment, despair, or even rejection?  Maybe.  Maybe all of these things in no particular order. 

But the good news is, Jesus knows all of these thoughts, all these reactions, and chooses you for his kingdom regardless.  This upside-down kingdom is for you in all your realness, messiness, enthusiasm or doubt.  This kingdom is not convenient, and our king is not a figurehead.  Jesus is present.  Jesus will stir us, Jesus will not leave us alone to just live our lives. 

Why?  Because what Jesus Christ brings to humanity in this upside-down kingdom is not superhero power but weakness.  Not the type of weakness that is the opposite of strength, but the weak-at-the-knees feeling when you encounter someone you love absolutely desperately.  When you would do anything – really, anything -- to live out your love for them and bring them new life.  This is what Christ brings to us.  This is what Christ brings to the cross. 

Pontius Pilate, the soldiers with him, the cheering crowds, and the glamorous horse he rode in on are long dead.  That’s the bitter truth of the kings of this world.  If we set our hearts and souls on them, we will be stuck in a perpetual Good Friday of death.

The crowd outside Jerusalem was stuck in that thinking, perhaps – but what they missed is that God’s vision is so much bigger than that.  God’s kingdom may be upside-down but it is about the future, not a re-enactment of the glory of the past.  That’s still just Friday.  But with our king – Sunday is coming.  Friday may be a day filled with sin and despair, but Sunday is coming with forgiveness and salvation.  Friday may be a day of darkness where we cannot see our way forward, but Sunday is coming, with light and healing of our blindness.  Friday may be a day of grief, but Sunday is coming with hope.  Friday may be a day of death – but Sunday is coming, with resurrection and the life. 

Our upside-down king is a Sunday king.  May we be Sunday people. People of incredible hope, people of unbelievable mercy and forgiveness, people living out their resurrection every single day. 

Amen

Awake -- Sermon on Mark 4:26-34

Awake
Preached at St. James Lutheran
Hanford, California
June 17, 2018

Mark 4:26-34 (NRSV)

26 He also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, 27 and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. 28 The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. 29 But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”

30 He also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? 31 It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; 32 yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”

33 With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; 34 he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.

This time last Sunday I was on a plane, finally returning from Luther Seminary – via one plane delayed by thunderstorms in Minneapolis, new flights that could have puddle-jumped me home then delayed by a mechanical issue, an overnight in Dallas and then finally a last smooth flight to Fresno.  We wouldn’t want life to be boring and predictable, right?

The week before that, though – was just incredible.  The Greek professor at Luther, David Fredrickson, is a highly resepcted New Testament scholar – now that I’ve had a couple of classes with him I’ve started noticing his name all over things like the Fortress Commentary and any anthologies of essays on the gospels or on Paul’s letters – he has been amazing in my online courses and I got to spend eight hours a day with him going through the Gospel of Mark last week – Lots of incredible new insights, lots of Greek geek happiness – all that.

But knowing that I got to preach on this text here this week, I was really looking forward to going through the parables with him – and what happens?  “Okay, it’s been great that we’re going into depth, but I’m afraid we’re not going to get to the end, so for now we’re skipping chapter four and going straight to the Gerasnes demons…

I stayed during the break to talk to him – “Dr. Fredrickson, I’m preaching on chapter 4 next week, any new insights?” “Yeah, that section’s really weird.  Let me know what you come up with.”

Welcome, my friends, to the glory of a seminary education…!

Grace and peace to you from God our creator and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen 

Many of us are familiar with the parables in the Gospel of Mark – and we also might be aware that each time Jesus speaks to the crowd in parables he says that he does so “in order that they might see and not perceive and hearing, not understand…”

And though he explains the meaning to his disciples privately on each occasion, sometimes Mark lets us in on that and sometimes he doesn’t.  This is one of the “doesn’t” times, so I get to add a snarky “thanks, Mark!” to the original “gee, thanks, Dr. Fredrickson!”

But what we do have as a reader and not a member of the crowd are these tantalizing little clues embedded in the parables that come up again and again in other parts of the gospel.  And the one that most strikes me here is Jesus’ references to the farmer sleeping, getting up, and sleeping again – all while the “kingdom of God” is arriving right under his drowsy nose, without any help from him.

 

So how is “sleep” important in the Gospel of Mark, and how does sleeping – or wakefulness – relate to how we live as citizens of the kingdom of God? 

It seems to me that in this Gospel, staying spiritually awake means seeing the invisible around us

.

Now when I say “invisible around us” – that could sound like some kind of magical or other-worldly thing, right?  But I don’t mean that, and I don’t think Mark does, either.  When Jesus says to stay awake, he is asking us to notice things that we would rather not see.  People, situations, problems – as humans, we are SO good at not seeing what we don’t want to, aren’t we?

The great 20^th Century theologian Douglas Adams – not really, he was actually a geeky British comic science fiction novel writer – his claim to fame was the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” series – but even if he wasn’t a theologian, he had some great insights into human nature.  In his science fiction novels, there are products that help people cope and keep things invisible – one is called the Somebody else’s problem field.  Discussing the cost of making something invisible, they discover that…

“The Somebody Else's Problem field is much simpler and more effective, and what's more can be run for over a hundred years on a single flashlight battery. This is because it relies on people's natural disposition not to see anything they don't want to, weren't expecting, or can't explain.”

Gotta love novels like that… you’re going along, things are good, you’re laughing – and then a zinger, straight to the heart.

I’m not exempt from this.  I don’t want to see things that make me uncomfortable and unhappy.  I don’t want to think that I could be one emergency surgery or car accident or whatever away from BEING what makes me uncomfortable and unhappy.  And I’m a pretty decent human – I mean, if one of you were to ask me for a ride to the airport or help moving today I would probably say yes!  I expect most of you would do the same! 

But this Jesus… he asks us for something different.  He asks us to stay awake and see the invisible.  He asks us to see what we don’t want to see.  He asks us to see WHO we don’t want to see. 

And he’s blunt about it.  Do you remember what happens when the disciples try to stop people from bringing children to him? 

It’s in Mark 10, starting with verse 13. 

“And they brought children to him, in the hopes that he would touch them, but the disciples rebuked them – and, having seen this, Jesus became angry and said to them – “let the children come to me, don’t prevent them for they are the kingdom of God.”

THEN he turns it on them, also – and he says, “I speak the truth:  whoever will not receive the kingdom of God as a child, may not enter it.”

What are the first images that enter your mind when you hear this verse?

I’ll tell you mine:  It’s a painting.  A painting of that kind of ethereal Jesus in a white robe and blue sash – and he’s sitting under a tree with a bunch of just adorable kids, and there’s a blonde curly headed beautiful girl in his lap that is staring adoringly up at him.  It is a beautiful scene.  And I want to be that kid, don’t you?  I want to be that sweet, innocent little girl in the pretty dress with the scrubbed face, all fresh and ready to encounter Jesus. 

Of course, I never would have been that kid.  If I had been in that idyllic scene by the tree I would have been the one playing with a stick and finding interesting bugs in the mud puddle left just outside the painting.  But that’s another story. 

How many of you have that image when you hear “receive the kingdom as a little child,” or one like it?

The problem is, that’s not the child Jesus is talking about.  The author of the gospel of Mark alternates between two words when he is talking about receiving children -- “paedion” and “ptoki.” 

That second one – that’s an important word.  Do you hear the “spit” in it – the “pt?”  For 1^st century people, that was the sound of warding off a curse.  A first century “God bless you” that you did for yourself.  (demonstrate)  You’ve seen that, right?  Yiddish grandmothers. 

A “ptoki” is not that cute little blond girl in my memory painting.  21^st century Americans love and idealize children.  Not so in 1^st century Palestine.  A ptoki stinks.  A ptoki carries diseases that will kill an adult.  A ptoki probably has ringworm or some other unpleasant parasite.  A ptoki has the distended ugly belly and the scrawny arms we see in commercials designed to repulse us into guilt and giving money.  A ptoki has little ability to provide for themselves and no way to offer us anything if we take them in and care for them.  In fact, if we do, our friends are probably going to talk behind our backs.  “I wouldn’t mind if she had just given that homeless man money when we were downtown, but she actually sat down with him and talked to him.  It was embarrassing.”  “He’s gotten so political these days – sometimes you just have to chill out and let people enjoy life.”  “Can you believe they took in foster kids?  I mean, it’s nice, but what about their own real kids?  How is that going to affect them?” 

Yet Jesus says these nothings are the kingdom of God.  Jesus says that if we don’t receive the ptoki with hospitality, we will not enter into the kingdom of God.  I have to be honest, that language is harsh.  It makes me uncomfortable and unhappy.  Because I’m not good at it.  The same few people are always at the end of the freeway exit by my house.  Sometimes I give them money.  If I think about it and have stopped, very occasionally I will bring them a hot or cold drink, depending on the season.  But my confession before you and before God is that I have driven by and averted my eyes far more often than I have done either of those things.  And I haven’t parked my car and gone to talk to them.  Not once.  And I think in these passages about the kingdom of God that Jesus is telling me to.  Not to fix them.  Not to get them “off the streets” – just to talk to them and hear their story as if they are a human like me, and not a ptoki. 

Jesus says that the Kingdom of God is growing up around us as we sleep.  The ptoki are growing in numbers, they are edging in, they are branching out.  And then he says the harvest is ripe, go get the kingdom!  It’s so easy – and it’s so incredibly difficult. 

My professor at Luther last week says that the closer we draw to Jesus Christ, the more we will develop a sensitivity for those that He loves.  That the more I intentionally try to connect with Jesus, the harder it will be for me to drive by the people at the bottom of my freeway exit.  And I am finding this to be true.  I may not have acted on it yet, but my heart is getting more and more stirred.  I am beginning to wake up and see the invisible. 

But the good news is that this awakening doesn’t mean despair.  Jesus doesn’t say “SOLVE THE GIANT PROBLEMS AND GO SAVE THE WORLD.” That’s his job, right?  Not ours.  What he says is to be hospitable to the invisible.  Stay awake, be sensitive.  As individuals, we don’t need to solve the problem of homelessness in Visalia or Hanford or Tulare County or the world.  We don’t need to feel responsible that there is a foster system.  We don’t need to solve the whole huge problem of addiction in America.  What Jesus asks us to do is to treat the individual people he puts in our way as though they are the kingdom of God, especially if they are not valued by the world.  And then, if we trust what he says, we believe that when we receive them, we receive Jesus Christ, and the one who sent him.   Who knows the ripples that could go out from that?  Jesus says that something important could come out of something small and inconsequential. 

It’s almost like tiny mustard seeds that branch into huge trees. 

Amen