Palm Thursday

Text: Luke 19:28-44

Focus: Palm Sunday

Function: The terrible price He paid.

Form: Story telling.

Adapted from Alex Stevenson because it was exactly what I wanted to say.

Growing up in church, I knew of three religious holidays. These were Christmas, Easter, and believe it or not: Palm Sunday.

Palm Sunday was the time that we sang the song which went: "Hosanna, loud hosanna the little children sang, Through pillared court and temple the lovely anthem rang." That song also says that "the children sang their praises the simplest and the best."

My Sunday School teachers took their cue from that song's description of children singing.

The service is fun. In Sunday School we would make palm branches from green construction paper and march all around the church singing and shouting "Hosanna, hosanna" as if we were in that crowd on that first Palm Sunday.

But Brethren kids are special. Here the kids get real Palm Branches. It was fun. I think, in a day before the video screen, it was a great way to visualize Jesus.

And Jesus was pleased that the Children got to sing. Just as in our church, when we waved our branches, and were so important to the Church in worship, in that story, the Children also take a central role.

(SHOW) The Children celebrated while worshipping Jesus.

I remember wondering about that, since at times, it seemed boring to me. But worship there was alive and exciting. There were no rules, no proscribed mantras, and no formalities to be preformed. They just let their love for Jesus flow.

I guess you can call it a Sunday School success story. Think about, of the three Christian holidays, we know about Christmas because of the presents we get. At Easter, we know about it because of the Easter bunny and all the candy. But on Palm Sunday, we knew about it because of Jesus and that He was excited that we were singing to Him.

(SHOW) We know about Palm Sunday because of Jesus.

All in all, Palm Sunday is a very important holiday for the church. It is a time when Jesus' disciples hailed him as King. It is a chance for us as disciples of Christ today to acclaim Christ as King.

(SHOW don’t say) There is a danger that we forget what Palm Sunday means.

But there is a danger in the way we worship on Palm Sunday. It is the danger that we will forget why Jesus came to Jerusalem to begin with, and as a result we will forget why we sing hosannas.

Often times we sing hosannas on Palm Sunday and then we sing "Christ the Lord has Risen Today" the very next Sunday. WHAT JOY!

My twin brother has a weird sense of humor also. One year, right before Holy Week, he announced to his employees that the company had decided that if Good Friday fell on Saturday, no one would get a paid holiday.

People got really upset until they figured it out.

Most Good Fridays, I remember helping my dad out with a Good Friday service at an inner city nursing home. It was a special time, those people were so happy to see us.

But one year, I remember him taking me with him to go car shopping since he knew no salesmen would be on the lot on Good Friday afternoon.

Even the name, “Good Friday” is an oxymoron. It was a day of infamy. It was a day we should remember with sorrow, like 9/11, or December 7, 1941.

The events of Good Friday are not on our personal religious calendars. Oh Jesus death is mentioned. It is not that we completely ignore it. We just move past that fact as quickly as we can to get to the resurrection.

Last week, we looked at “In Remembrance of Me” and the way Jesus remembered the thief, the way He remembers us.

It is easy to jump from the fun of Palm Sunday to the joy of Easter and forget Friday.

The problem is; we don't like to dwell on unpleasant things. Sometimes we don't even admit to ourselves that unpleasant things exist.

We don't want to admit the pain and the unpleasantness of life.

This isn’t a funny story, but it seems to start out that way. One day, my son was in class on the third story of his High School. Tell first and second police chaplain story. (about making death notifications while serving on the police force).

It is easier to turn away than to behold tragedy.

There is something to be said for accentuating the positive and eliminating the negative. But when it causes us to overlook those in need, the ones God is calling us to help, the lost, the hungry, the sick it runs contrary to God's purpose.

(SHOW) Because of this tendency to overlook the negative we sometimes overlook Jesus' suffering and death.

It is good to get all caught up in the joy of singing praises to Jesus as he triumphantly enters Jerusalem. And we forget that Jesus came to Jerusalem to die.

It’s almost like: When we get to holy week we put our hands over our eyes. And say to the person next to us, "Tell me when it is over."

It may be unpleasant to think about, but Jesus did die. People drove nails through his wrists and feet. They nailed him to a cross. Jesus experienced terror and pain. What's most important is that he experienced that terror, pain and death to pay the price for our sins and for the sins of the world. (SHOW) Jesus' death is a fact of our salvation that we must never overlook.

So, how can we joyfully sing hosannas in the face of Christ's suffering? The people in our story seem to have been grossly ignorant of the facts. If they had known, as we do, why Jesus came to Jerusalem, they would not be singing a song of triumph.

You see, they thought Jesus would come in and take over the state. Right before this Jesus had to correct his disciples for thinking that his kingdom would appear immediately (Luke 19:11). The prophets had said the Messiah would come riding on a donkey. So when the people saw Jesus on that donkey, they though he was coming to lead an uprising. They thought he would ride right up to Herod's palace and sit on his throne. Then he would order the Romans out of His newly established kingdom. The crowd was partially right. Jesus was and is the Messiah. But they expected a Messiah who would rule and earthly kingdom.

(SHOW with a crown of thorns background) Jesus didn't come to Jerusalem to sit on a throne. Jesus came to Jerusalem to hang on a cross.

The only Kingly Crown He wore was a Crown of Thorns.

He said so to his disciples several times. He told them plainly. He said the son of man must suffer and die. How can we see ourselves shouting with those people? How can we joyfully sing their song? After all it was Jesus' suffering that saved us.

It makes me want to say, "How dare we sing hosannas in the face of Christ's suffering!"

But I realize that I am saying the same kind of thing the Pharisees in our lesson said. The Pharisees tried to keep Jesus' disciples from singing hosannas back then. Can we try to stop Jesus' disciples from singing hosannas today? The Pharisees said, "Jesus how can you let them do this? They will blaspheme! Stop this crowd, silence them! Teacher rebuke your disciples." (–in dark voice.)

What did Jesus say? He said "If these were silent, the stones themselves would shout." If the voices of humans will not shout: "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord," then God will give the stones voices and they will shout. By the will of Almighty God who made both voices and stones, hosannas will be sung and Christ will be proclaimed as King! Mere human that I am who am I to stand in the way of the providence of God!

So what are we to do? Should we revert to our old ways of overlooking Christ's death? Should we forget Good Friday and wipe it off our religious calendars? Can we forget why Jesus came to Jerusalem and just blend in with the crowd of misled pilgrims? Can we blindly yell "Blessed is the King who comes to sit on Herod's throne?"

How can we? How is it possible for us to sing hosannas on Palm Sunday when we know that Christ's passion is just down the road?

Maybe we should celebrate the fact that Jesus came to Jerusalem to die. That is precisely what the Bible tells us to do. Paul wrote, (SHOW) "(Christ) humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."(Philippians 2:8-11)

In other words Jesus is worthy of praise precisely because he went to Jerusalem to die.

This is not just an approach to Palm Sunday; it is an approach to all of life. Jesus' suffering was necessary to win our salvation. Once we open our eyes to the suffering of Christ we see him as Lord more clearly than before.

Every knee shall bow and all shall shout "Hosanna!" because he died. In Christ we can look at suffering and see something beautiful. So look at the suffering around you. Open your eyes to it, as unpleasant as that may be. Then hand it over to God. And God in Christ will turn that sorrow into shouts of joy.

But, as I mentioned before, Brethren are special.

This worship, our traditional one (or the contemporary one), is filled with celebration. The style of it is very modern in both places, but Thursday night’s Love Feast is much different. It isn’t boring. Its design is to remind us of the solemn and terrible experience of the reality of that night as it unfolded to those disciples.

It isn’t really a Palm Thursday, it is sort of a Black Thursday because it and Good Friday are day’s of sorrow.

I saw a news blurb that traced pictures based on Michelangelo’s (SHOW) last Supper. And, they noticed that the more and more modern the painting, the larger and larger the amount of food, the size of the loaves of bread, etc. Some thought it was a message that leads to obesity. I don’t know about that. But I do think about this. “More and more,” the idea that it is about us, the way we think of ourselves and what we can get out of it is certainly implied in the growing amount of food.

But even that meal wasn’t something they were comfortable with. It starts out with Jesus washing their feet. They felt strange. It is easy for us to consider how we can help others, but to let Jesus wash our feet? That seemed to be an upside down sort of King, in an upside-down Kingdom. We are a proud people, a people who pride ourselves on being able to take care of ourselves. “No handouts, Please, I am a man myself!” That is what made our Nation Strong. But Jesus’ kingdom, in order to be a part of that Kingdom, one must lay down their pride and let Jesus wash their feet.

But these were men with the same pride and strength we have, and Jesus said: “If you can’t learn to be served, you can have no part of me.”

Remember, the only crown he wore was the crown of thorns. He tells them He will die and they cannot figure it out. He institutes bread and cup communion, they think it is strange. Everything is new. Everything is solemn. Everything has changed.

So, today we celebrate without shame because we are told to. Even though we know better than the disciples because they didn’t understand that Jesus death was coming. But I urge you to also come Thursday night, to experience the solemn, to participate in a sober worship service that puts into our mind the terror of Good Friday.

It is an uncomfortable worship service because it isn’t the fun they were having on Palm Sunday. It is uncomfortable, because someone will be washing your feet. But the experience is also wonderfully mystical as we join together to re-create the Upper Room experience.

It joins us into this upside-down Kingdom, this Kingdom that would rather turn the other, this Kingdom that would rather open arms for an embrace than fists for a fight, this kingdom of humility that permits us not only to serve, but to humble ourselves and be served.

I urge you to come Thursday night. It is a time for us to remember exactly what we know, that the disciples had no clue of. Come with us and remember the passion of Christ.