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Palm Sunday The ReadingMatthew 21:1-11
When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at
the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples,
saying to them, ‘Go into the village ahead of you, and
immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and
bring them to me.
If anyone says anything to you, just say this, “The Lord needs them.” And he
will send them immediately.’
This took place to fulfil what had been spoken through the
prophet, saying,
When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking,
‘Who is this?’
The crowds were saying, ‘This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.’
Jesus Cleanses the Temple
Then Jesus entered the temple
and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned
the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold doves.
He said to them, ‘It is written,
The blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he cured
them.
But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the amazing things
that he did, and heard
the children crying out in the temple, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David’, they
became angry
and said to him, ‘Do you hear what these are saying?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Yes;
have you never read, The Sermon
When I was a kid
watching snowy black and white cowboy movies on my neighbour’s TV, we knew that
when a rider appears over the hill, something is about to happen. It is a
portent of things to come.
In today’s reading,
the reading for Palm Sunday, Jesus rides over the hill, and down into town.
Jesus rides into town over the Mount of Olives, which is the place where the prophet
Zechariah (Chapter 14) says, in the Hebrew scriptures, the Messiah will make a
mighty act of judgement and rescue.
It’s like if the
new Sheriff, the good sheriff, is riding into town, and the movie shows him
slowly riding down on in past the town cemetery, with the camera slowly panning
over the tombstones. We know this is
a sign of things to come.
Jesus riding into town over the Mount of Olives is a sign.
It was clearly a
triumphal entry, the story of the crowds, and the branches, and the palms show
us that, but it was a different entry.
Jesus was not riding in on a war horse. Jesus came riding on a donkey. This was
how a King came in peace.
There is a mixed
message here. People laid their garments on the ground for a king; we can see
that in the story of Jehu in 2 Kings 9.
And branches were waved in celebration as the conqueror, the
warring conqueror, who had brought
freedom, rode into a city. And there
is more…. temple cleansing was involved!
Hear the words of
the second book of the Maccabees:
Now Maccabeus and his followers, the Lord leading them on, recovered the temple
and the city; they tore down the altars that had been built in the public square
by the foreigners, and also destroyed the sacred precincts. They purified the
sanctuary, and made another altar of sacrifice; then, striking fire out of
flint, they offered sacrifices, after a lapse of two years, and they offered
incense and lighted lamps and set out the bread of the Presence. It
happened that on the same day on which the sanctuary had been profaned by the
foreigners, the purification of the sanctuary took place, ….They celebrated it
for eight days with rejoicing, in the manner of the festival of booths, ….
carrying ivy-wreathed wands and beautiful branches and also fronds of palm, they
offered hymns of thanksgiving to him who had given success to the purifying of
his own holy place.
We
get a hint of what is to come here, by the way Jesus has entered the city. And
that’s what we see… he cleanses the temple.
That’s the contradiction, the odd bit in the picture. Jesus is different. He
comes, not on a warhorse, like the Maccabees who rescued Jerusalem. But as
a king of peace on a donkey.
Matthew is telling us things. It’s like the new sheriff coming to Tombstone City
isn’t wearing a gun! The camera
lingers on the rider as he passes by- his waist is bare. No gun, no rifle
scabbard on the horse. Matthew shapes his story of the entry into Jerusalem on
Palm Sunday around the book of Zechariah in chapter 9:
Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!
Matthew is the gospel writer who loves
to fulfil the Hebrew scriptures. But notice how he
leaves out some of Zechariah. He drops
the line “triumphant and victorious is he”. This is a different kind of King.
Matthew down plays the triumphalism.
We
see, too, that the people don’t understand what the reader of the gospel knows
with hindsight, because
When
he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, ‘Who is this?’ The
crowds were saying, ‘This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.’
He’s
not the Messiah, he’s just a prophet.
----------------------------------------
Now
I want to make a couple of comments.
Don’t just read Palm Sunday’s reading on its own.
Look at what comes…
Jesus cleanses the temple. He does
just what the Maccabees did. He cleans out the corruption on behalf of God. He
purifies the sanctuary.
This
is where he is different. He is not attacking the Roman overlords. He is like
Pogo, who said, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” He is laying down a
challenge. The Jewish people were
waiting for a Messiah, for another Judas Maccabeus, who would be destroy and
cast out the Romans. When Jesus came in the role of Maccabees, he said by his
actions, YOU are the ones who are corrupt! Essentially, he ignored the Romans!
If
he were here today, who would he target?
Would he kick the Americans out of Iraq, or the Taliban out of
Afghanistan? If he were here in Australia, in the northern suburbs, he would
come to us! What would he say and do
in our church here? We are the
enemy! We are the ones who need to
change! We are the ones who say we
are waiting for Jesus…that we are Jesus’ people. Would we
“get it”, if he arrived here?
And how would we respond if he cleansed our temples?
If
Jesus had been content to be a prophet, William Barclay said, no one would
really have minded. But because he made greater claims, because he took the
established religio-political system of the land head on, he had to be stopped.
We see him crucified. Jesus seemed deliberately to
choose a course that resulted in him
being killed.
When
we say “What would Jesus do here, in our shoes?” maybe we should remember Palm
Sunday. Jesus took a different
course. It was not a safe course. It
was a course he knew would get him into trouble. It was a course people would
not understand. Will we take that
course? It’s the only course he could take to be who he was.
The
word Messiah literally means “anointed one,” one chosen and blessed by God, a
special person.
What
anoints us and takes us through
We
sang the hymn this morning…
Ride
on, ride on in majesty,
in
lowly pomp ride on to die;
bow
your meek head to mortal pain,
then
take, O God, your power and reign.
Amen Direct Biblical quotations in this page are taken from The New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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