Who is Jesus Kidding?

Beth Newman
Palm Sunday, April 9, 2006
Mark 11:1-11
Who Is He Kidding?

            God, source of all light, by your Word you give light to the soul.  Pour out upon us the spirit of wisdom and understanding that, being taught by your in Holy Scripture, our hearts and minds may be opened to know the things that pertain to life and holiness; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

            Who is Jesus kidding?  (1) From the beginning of his story in the gospel of Mark, Jesus is announced as the son of God.  But where is the glory?  The gospel begins in obscurity, out it the wilderness, with John the Baptist eating locust and wild honey, clothed in camel’s hair, proclaiming a baptism of repentance. 
Who is Jesus kidding, with this bungling, rag-tag group of disciples?  The more clear Jesus becomes about his mission, his purpose, the more inept the disciples seem.  The more Jesus teaches with authority, the more they miss the point.  Who is Jesus kidding?  What kind of messiah makes do with disciples like this?
            Who is Jesus kidding?  Was he kidding his followers, for their shouts of hosanna’s clearly indicated that they believed him to be the messiah.  They say “Hosanna” which literally means “save us.”  But for his followers this word seems to become, not merely a prayer for salvation, but praise for the one who makes a triumphal entry into the city.  They quote a processional psalm, Psalm 118 when they say, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!  Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!  Hosanna in the highest heaven!”  Their messiah has come to reclaim the throne of David.  He will overturn the powers that oppress and reclaim the Jewish state.
            Who is Jesus kidding, with this processional into Jerusalem?  Jesus approaches this city, the heart of Jewish worship and the seat of Roman authority, coming down from the Mount of Olives, the place from which, according to Zachariah 14, God will fight the nations and restore Jerusalem.  Here is Jesus Christ, not merely a warrior for God, but rather the one who is God.  But who is he kidding?  He seems not to know how to do it.  When he arrives, all he does is look around and the momentum is lost.  What kind of royal announcement is this?  As one writer puts it “Where is the horse, the steed that bears the triumphal general, the untamable champion loyal only to the skilled commander.  . . . It’s not here.  In its place is a young colt—hardlly a symbol of leadership.  Jesus seems to have no understanding of rank, after all the fuss about procuring  . . . the right animal, just the kind of action worthy of a king, he gets the wrong animal.  He chooses an agricultural too, not a weapon of war; a tractor, not a tank.” (2)
Mark gives us a close up picture of this parade.  We hear the cries of the crowd, we see the garments thrown before the colt, we catch glimpses of the palms waving the in the air.  But let’s use our wide angle lenses and pan out to look at the entire city.  It is the time of the Passover.  Historians estimate that over three million pilgrims would be coming to Jerusalem for the feast.  The crowds were huge, and the pilgrims intent on preparing the elements for the Passover meal and celebration, making their way to the temple to sacrifice a lamb for the feast.  Jerusalem was literally teaming with people, coming and going, busily making preparations.  And here, off in the corner, Mark doesn’t even place them in the city, but on the road between the Mount of Olives and the Temple, is this little processional of pilgrims, this little parade, this motley band of believers.  They aren’t creating a ruckus, they are hardly getting noticed.  Who is Jesus kidding?
            What is going on here?  Is it a royal procession, or is it some farce, half-witted disciples and a misguided leader, a tempest in teapot, a joke of ministry?  For it seems that the people in this story fall into one category or the other.  They either are praising Jesus for who they want him to be.  They have false expectations and far-fetched ideas about who this messiah is and what he is going to do for them.  They hope that he has come to Jerusalem to overthrow their earthly domination, that the powers of Rome will be driven out and that the kingdom of David will be restored.  That is what Jesus’ tiny band of believers believe.  They fall into the first category.  The second is for the people who have no expectations whatsoever.  This Passover is going to be just like the one last year, and the one before that, and the one before that.  Nothing new ever happens, nothing ever changes.
            I hear the words of the Christmas carol echo in the air as we approach this holiest of weeks.  “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”  Jesus isn’t kidding anyone.  Did you notice how he is in this story?  After he gives the command to go retrieve the colt, he doesn’t say a word.  Here the people are making such a big deal about his arrival, and he is silent.  He arrives at the temple, and all he does is look around.  No turning the tables of the money changers, no big announcement.  He’s just there. Jesus is kidding no one.  Despite all the intended regalness of this moment of triumphal entry, we know that Jesus is not going to behave in the expected manner.  His ministry will ultimately fulfill the hopes and allay the fears of all the years, but not the superficial hopes of liberation from the oppressive powers of Rome or even of the temple authorities.  His liberation will be that of the genuine freedom from the powers of sin and death, and this freedom will nullify any threat that worldly powers can wield. 

His arrival is understated, underplayed even.  Yet there he stands, in-between the false hopes of his followers and the ambivalence of the city, clear about one thing, his reason for coming to Jerusalem and what this journey will ultimately mean for him.  Is this where Jesus stands in our own lives, in-between our false hopes and our ambivalence?  Among the ups and downs of our expectations and disappointments, in the middle of our forgetfulness and our shortsightedness, there he is, checking out the lay of the land, preparing to bring forth the very last thing we expect and the very thing we need the most, his disarming love.  As one writer puts it, “But only Jesus confronted the powers with disarming love, only he rode to certain death with no attempt to intimidate, destroy or surprise his enemies.  In this moment Jesus does many things. . . .  He changes the notion of kingship by riding on a clot rather than a horse.  And he makes a short journey from the land where his authority is recognized and his priestly power to heal and forgive is formidable, to the city where the people will reject him and his disciples will betray him.” (3)   Only by coming into this city in this manner, empty handed, carrying with him only his disarming love, can Jesus disarm the power that has the people its hold and truly reveal who he is.
            Preacher and author Peter Gomes has this to say about Holy Week.  “The very point of the Passion is the conflicts of mood, the vacillation of the will, the confusion of the sentiments, the crowd that yells ‘Hosanna!’ at one minute and ‘Crucify’ the next, and it’s the same crowd.  The steadfast disciples who become within minutes deserters and deniers are the same disciples. . . .  Jesus did not die in order to spare us the indignities of a wounded creation.  He died that we might see those wounds as our own.  He died that we might live, live fully and hopefully, not in some fantastic never-never-land, but ambiguous reality of the here and now.” (4)
            As I said to the children earlier, part of the reason for the drama of this day is to plant ourselves in that place, in that moment of the parade, in the anticipation of the passion, and consider how this story shapes our lives. What are our own false hopes and expectations?  Where is our ambivalence?  Where and when is our own denial?  Where do we see Jesus in the midst of all of our own ups and downs, our faith and our doubt, our strength and weakness?  Where do we experience Jesus’ disarming love?  How do we let that disarming love change us?  For this reason we will gather again on Thursday night to commemorate Jesus’ last moment with his disciples, and the time of his betrayal.  For this reason we will get up really early on Easter morning, and bundle up, and show up in our sneakers, waiting for the sun to rise and proclaim the resurrection of our Lord.  Because, even though we weren’t there for those holy moments in history, we know that we are there, with the disciples and their flimsy faith and false expectations, in the ambivalence of the city and the betrayal of the crowds.  The story is for us, for today, for our here and now.  When we let ourselves live a bit of the drama, when we let the story claim our lives, we experience the profound truth of the moment.  Jesus enters into the city, intentionally, to live out the last days his life.  The shadow of the cross looms large, he will be betrayed by his friends, unjustly condemned, and executed in the most painful way imaginable.  We see his entrance and are taken aback by the vulnerability of it all, the heartbreak, the love offered and the suffering endured.  And we know that Jesus is not kidding.  No, far from it.  Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Morning.  God offering God’s self, God’s disarming love, for the sake of the world, for you and for me.