The Coming Kingdom

 

Text: Mark 11:1-11

Focus: The kingdom of God

Function: to help people see the Kingdom of God instead of the Kingdoms of Mankind

11:¹When they were approaching Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples ²and 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. ³If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ just say this: ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.’ ” ⁴They went away and found a colt tied near a door, outside in the street. As they were untying it, ⁵some of the bystanders said to them, “What are you doing, untying the colt?” ⁶They told them what Jesus had said, and they allowed them to take it. ⁷Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it, and he sat on it. ⁸Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields. ⁹Then 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!”

¹¹Then 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.

Good morning and welcome again to our time spent together celebrating Palm Sunday.

I have always found it sort of ironic to celebrate this at the beginning of Holy Week considering all the tragedy that is about to befall the Lord.

We are reading today from the book of Mark, it is the shortest of the gospels. We have fragments of a document that is older than Mark and Luke and many believe that Mark and Luke used this earlier account of the gospel as an outline.

I find it interesting that the different authors were given to and designed to reach different audiences. John for example, was written to influence the Eastern Culture in India, and Christianity had an huge influence on the roots of Buddhism.

Matthew was written for the Jewish people, it was not written in Greek, but in Arabic and we don’t have any source fragments left. Matthew, in this account focuses on Jesus cleansing the temple after his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Mark simple states that the temple was indeed his final destination, but that he went there and looked around.

It is sort of surprising because Mark was written to the Roman Culture/audience. It is what I call “The action gospel” because it has the word immediately in there 43 times. The Romans are much like us and they identified with power and strength and Jesus is portrayed as Christ the Victor in the gospel. For the Jews it was the OT law. And John identifies with the philosopher and the mystic.

In 2 Corinthians Brother Paul said that he changed his tactics of preaching to meet the needs of the crowd.

In the gospels, God changes the tactic between them to meet the needs of as many people as possible, It shows me the magnificent nature of God’s great love.

I wonder if that is why Kairos works so well. It is just as diverse as the gospels and the different team members from different backgrounds and theologies are used by God’s creative power to reach the men individually where they are at.

God wants to restore the world God’s own self.

And in this story this morning, I see the power of community. I have always remarked on the tragedy of Holy Week and have wondered if the same crowd that was crying out to Jesus to heal and restore their land to prosperity came back disappointed a week later and turned on him.

I wonder if the mob is that fickle that they could be praising him on day and 5 days later calling for his murder. I tend to believe that it was for the most part, two different crowds. Two different groups of people. One group of people, the ones who cried out for his death had not yet gotten the message.

Friday at Aaron Tigner’s funeral, I spoke of Jesus at two funerals. One at Lazarus’ funeral where he reacted uncontrollably with emotional pain and then his own funeral when he forgave the men from the cross.

I was very nervous to bring up the forgiveness part because I was aware that the family was looking for serious revenge and were hoping to find the killer before the police. I needed to address that so I said this: Jesus prayed to God for the restoration of the men that had just judiciously murdered.

I preached about the day when the lion shall lay down with the lamb and we will not learn the ways of war anymore.

Restoration. That is what God is about through Jesus and the Holy Spirit in this world. That is what God was doing with Jesus back then and that is what God is doing with us today. Christ is still on the earth in us. We are trying to bring the world back to the love of God.

And there is great power in community. We see during Holy Week the power of community for good and for evil. We see the power of community today in political rallies and we see people who were and are generally sane believing whatever lie their side feeds them. And they get passionate about it. I get passionate about it.

But God is calling us to bring the world back to Him. Sometimes we have to call out the evil and the injustice in this world. And for some reason, Mark does not mention the cleaning of the temple; Jesus again calling out exploitation of the poor. Nope, I believe Mark wants to focus on the Charismatic, Spirit filled power of Jesus during the event.

He is showing us the power of Jesus to change the story and give people hope. It is important that we focus on that hope.

I mentioned politics because our passion for God and our patriotism can get conflated or mixed together. I believe the root of Christian nationalism, which I believe to be a cult, comes from that mixing of Patriotic fever and our love for God.

I would not be true to scripture if I said that this was not a political event on Palm Sunday. Jesus on the colt of a Donkey instead of a conquering war horse was definitely a political message. It was a message to fight the fight with love instead of military might.

We are taught not to think of Jesus as a political figure, but the events of that week caused the Romans and the Jews to kill him to shut up his message because he was upsetting the political powers and the status quo of their society and our as well. Jesus spoke out because God wants to change the culture to a disposition of caring for the least of these and that can mean a political upheaval. It is a delicate balance.

So I called that number on the Dayton Billboards about Christians and politics. I was afraid they were going to endorse a political party. But they gave a great answer, the text is posted on the billboard where Jesus told Pilate that his kingdom is not of this world.

I realize that I have a duty as a minister and speaker for the Lord to speak out against injustice like Jesus did. Jesus told us to take up our cross and follow him. That means that our message against the powers that exploit others is going to be unpopular as well.

I believe that God is calling us to boldness. But also compassion. Compassionate boldness. Sometimes I find myself lowered to the level of the bickering that our politics have become. Jesus, I believe, rose above that bickering with a message to everyone to rest in Him because God wants to restore the world. His mindset wasn’t the dualism of our side verses their side, but e pluribus unim, out of many one, all side count.

It causes pain to hear rejection for the message of caring for the least of these. I fear God will judge us for the way we are using the refugees at the border as political fodder and not dealing with their suffering since God has blessed us so well here in the USA.

A colleague of mine posted that he while preaching through the sermon on the Mount he was instructed by his pastoral relations board to quit preaching the social Justice message that I believe got Jesus killed. The problem for us preachers who are trying to be faithful to Christ’s teachings and go against the spirit of the culture is that when we preach Jesus we get accused of being political.

When we preach and lift up Jesus. And Jesus’ teachings, which I try to focus on during my sermons it is going to affect our politics. And the culture lets politics determine Jesus teachings. They got it backwards. It shouldn’t be the other way around.

The focus has to be first on Jesus. Remembering that Jesus’ kingdom is not an human government. But it is the kingdom of God reigning in the hearts of those who follow Jesus’ teachings.

Maybe it was the same crowd that turned on Jesus a week later. Maybe the crowd actually was fickle and rejected him because he refused to overthrow their Roman oppressors.

But then here was see a wonderful thing in the kingdom!

If Jesus’ kingdom had stopped at the borders of Israel, it would not have spread to the earth. At the time, it was a coming kingdom. And it is here now.

Just as there are 4 accounts in the gospels reaching different ethnic/cultural groups, God’s plan was not just for one race of people, in one specific time in history, but a transformation of human culture where we learn to love one another as much as we care for ourselves.

Let the Spirit of God fill your hearts with the power of God’s love for us and our fellow humans.