Leaning Into Lent | Week 5 | Gospel Lesson (3-27-26)

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Hey everybody! Uh welcome back. It is our uh last week before Holy Week. It is the last uh gospel lesson for us before Holy Week. We do our Old Testament lesson on Mondays, we do our New Testament lesson on Wednesdays, gospel lesson on Fridays, as we've been journeying all throughout Lent, leaning into Lent together with our lectionary passages guiding our conversations. We've had different pastors with us throughout each of the weeks, and I'm so grateful uh for one last time for uh the Reverend Jennifer Preck being with us today as we conclude our conversation this week using Matthew's text from verses chapter 21, verses 1 through 11. Um, these should sound familiar because these are the passages that lead us um into holy week. This is Palm Sunday. This is the day where I said Matthew, does it say 21? It's 21. Chapter 21, verses 1 through 11. All right, you ready? As they approached Jerusalem and came to Beth Bage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, Go to the village ahead of you, and once you're there, find a donkey tied there with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, say that the Lord needs them and he will send them right away. Um, this took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet. Uh they go on, and the disciples went and they did what Jesus asked them to do, and then as they're coming in, they place their cloaks on there for Jesus to sit on, and a very large crowd spreads their cloaks on the ground, while others are putting palm branches, or it says branches from the trees and spread them on the road. Um, and then people are shouting and waving these branches, saying, Hosanna to the Son of David. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest. Um, it's hard not to say that and go straight to the next uh part of the liturgy even read it.

SPEAKER_03 1:43

Just stop that.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

And then when he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was like, Who is this? And the crowd said, This is Jesus the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee. I summarized it a bit there, but you should go and read all of it. Um, this is one of those texts where there is so much to talk about. There's so much context you can set up, there's so much theology of work, there's so much so I could talk for days about this passage. Um, but let's just start kind of your first pass. What was the first thing you heard or a thing that stood out to you? You heard it before, or you hadn't heard it before, or something new, just what where what do you got?

SPEAKER_02 2:12

There were two things that I thought of. Um one is I I just wondered if if G I noticed that Jesus, at least it doesn't say that he said anything after sending for the donkey. So I wonder if he's having some kind of oh, this is it kind of moment. Like I wonder what he's feeling, because you know he might have before the bider walks out of the tunnel and it's right. Like I wonder if he's having this kind of like, okay, we're going in, this is the this is the start of the end. And I just I was like, I wonder what's what he's feeling or what's going through his mind. Um but another thing that I thought of in the in the crowds of the people who are um shouting Hosanna and who are praising him and welcome in, I just wonder how many of those people are the same people who later were screaming crucified him. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 3:02

Yeah, he was there on Friday.

SPEAKER_02 3:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

Yeah. I think that's been a a good and common question for us to consider just in the fact of like how crowd nature works, how ma mentality happens, how we can all move around with it with a crowd if we're not careful.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

Absolutely. Listen, I always bump in this passage because uh against uh the poor disciples that get set to go grab something like to go steal someone's donkey.

SPEAKER_00 3:27

I was gonna mar this. I I thought you'll bring it back.

SPEAKER_01 3:31

Who needs this? Like no, that is not a thing that I want to be charged with doing. Um, but they do. In the same way that uh those uh the servants who are the ones who are asked to to take the water uh that has not yet been turned into wine, as far as they can tell. Uh so the master, right? Like just that moment of being asked to do something, you don't know what it is.

SPEAKER_00 3:55

Um this is that time, um, as far as a little bit of context, is it's between um it's between Jesus' teaching and works and before all of his last week there in Jerusalem. This is right before he goes in and he flips over the tables and he's about to um uh tell Money with Changer, you tell him to turn my house and the dinner robber, stuff like that. And so at this point, uh he's developed this following. There's all these people that are with him, he's done these healings, he's done these teachings, he's he's fed all these people, and it there's this small contingent that think that this is the Messiah, the one we've been waiting for. And so they're like, This is the guy, and his ministry is kind of swelled to this point. And this, as you were saying, it's an inflection point, it's a it's a crucial moment in the life of Jesus and the gospel story as he's approaching um Jerusalem at a time whenever it is swelled. I mean, Norman has like 40,000 people living there, all right. Now they're 200,000 people there because of the Passover, and so like there's just this fervor in the town. And so everything's about to reach a fever pitch. And as we move into kind of the tension here and the things that you can feel rub up against the text or how you read it, um, there's a a book called Uh The Last Week. It's by Marcus Borg and by John Down at Crossan. And they have this really great ill uh image they invite us to consider when they tell this story. And I talk about the story, they say, Imagine one procession came from the east, largely composed of peasants, following a certain Jesus from Galilee, riding on a donkey from the Mount of Olives. On the opposite side of the city, from the west, approaches the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, entering the city on a war horse at the head of a column of imperial cavalry and soldiers. He has come from Caesarea Maritine from the purpose of maintaining law and order during this potentially tumultuous days of the Jesus of the Jewish festival of Passover. Imagine having these two processions that represent two different powers, two different authorities, two different rulers that look so different. You got instead of a white horse, you got a donkey. Instead of pomp and circumstance and flower petals, you've got coats and palms. And the juxtaposition of what earthly power looks like, but what it actually is versus what heavenly authority looks like and what it actually is, is so stark and so powerful in this story.

SPEAKER_01 6:06

And then um uh behind the curtains, everyone, we are filming this during uh Epiphany. So it's so striking uh to read this scripture with um him coming into Jerusalem. And in verse 10 it says, the whole city is in turmoil. And to have be reading that so quickly on the heels of having just read together in the story of Epiphany, um, the Magi coming from the east into Jerusalem, looking for who is this king of the Jews. Um, and it says again, the whole city is thrown into turmoil. Um, and the way that um yet again, all throughout, we have this tension between what earthly power looks like. It's Herod or it is Pilate coming in on this war horse, and what the power of God, which is the ultimate power, but looks like you know, this power and humility.

SPEAKER_00 7:07

Well, any other tension there or conviction or something that you may note of that you want to reflect on? As we bridge this text to our lives, and we think about how do we read this if you were to preach it or for nuggets of wisdom, encouragement. Um I like that this is an explicit text about naming Jesus as King. Yeah. Um, this is this is a great if you you know talk about Christ as King. Um, his procession begins at the Mount of Olives, which is how it's and remember, Matthew is super big on connecting Jesus to Moses and to the Old Testament. He wants Jesus to be the new coming of all the things that were prophesied and all the things Moses was supposed to be. And so you have all these um messianic uh prophecies being fulfilled, even so much in this as it's spoken through the prophet, say through your daughter Zion, right? Matthew's making these connections, but it's to show us a kingship, a a ruler, a person who is coming in to say, I actually have the authority. That's why they're shouting Hosanna to the son of David. It's why um they're saying uh uh this uh royal lineage is coming back in this person of Jesus, the one we've been longing for, and thinking how they want the Davidic monarchy to be restored. And and most importantly, um when he says uh say to the daughter of Zion See, your king comes to you, um, he's trying to make sure that we see like that this is the fulfillment of the monarchical promise for everything to be as it's supposed to be. And I just I love all those connections there.

SPEAKER_01 8:34

Yeah, absolutely. You can really geek out and go back to the book of first Kings and see um David's gonna put Solomon on the back of a donkey and ride him into Jerusalem. Like this is that all over again. And Matthew so very much wants us to see that. And he's a he's a Jewish Jew, and he wants it to be absolutely explicit that this is the Messiah that was promised um for his people and for all people, uh, which is um yeah, I mean, he Matthews really doesn't want you to miss it here.

SPEAKER_03 9:06

Right.

SPEAKER_02 9:07

Um yeah, I think that this story of this triumphal entry is one that's full of contrasts, and I think it really speaks to how Jesus defies all expectations then and now. I mean, they probably would have expected that he would have come in. Um, as you were saying from that book, you know, Pontius Pilate came on on this steed and he had these armies behind him, and um, they probably would have expected that the the savior, the messiah would come in in this way. Um, but Jesus defied their expectations and came in humbly. And to me, that that's a message of like looking for God in the unexpected because because that's God is in the unexpected.

SPEAKER_01 9:49

Um, and so often I think we find ourselves up against uh the powers of this world, however that looks like in your life, right? Like um whether that is a medical diagnosis that you receive that is so much bigger than you and you don't have any hope in it, or it's uh a mountain of bills that you're not sure how you're gonna pay it, or it's an addiction that you're struggling with, and it's depression, it's any of these things that are that feel um so of this world, so of this time, and can take you um feel as if they are unconquerable. And they're so often we look to God for uh this this power that comes and it's just gonna knock it all down. It's just gonna and and God does do that. God does save us from these things, but it doesn't always look the way we think it does. Um, and so that again, that willingness to look um, like you were saying, Sarah, just a little deeper, just a little bit past, um, to not be so married to what it is that we think God's power looks like, but to be willing to accept it as it comes.

SPEAKER_00 10:58

Um As I was um thinking about how I might preach this or a a point for me that I would want somebody to take home. I think about how public Jesus' um claim is to who he is and what he believes about himself, and how uh I wouldn't say he's necessarily been hiding up to this point, but he does make a way of like sneaking off whenever you are pleasure against them, he goes away to the retreat. But this is like the as we've said, the the the line in the sand. This is who I am and and I'm making this claim. And and I wonder about in our own faith, are we willing to do that same thing? We talked about this like last year when we used the book Um Entering the Passion of Jesus by Amy Joe Levine, and how like this is his uh version of risking his reputation, of putting it out on the line, and and I think I I've been still thinking about that even since then of how do we let this story inform how much we are willing to put out there about our faith, about who we are, and and not just like the wear the Christian t-shirt that says like body piercing save my life. Right, um right? And uh it's not about having an ick through something back of your car, it's about how much of who Jesus is calling you to be are you willing to share with your family and your friends um and and to live it out boldly, not like uh oh well, you know, we actually do try to help people sometimes, you know. Well, I I I sometimes do get away the church, even though we might spend it on all the things that you know. But it's it's how much are we real are we are we kind of tepid about our faith, or are we willing to really be bold in our proclamations?

SPEAKER_01 12:25

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 12:28

Anything else from uh Matthew's version and gospel uh lesson to us about the triumphal entry? Palm Sunday. All right. Palm Sunday worship, one service this week at 10 o'clock. We're gonna be doing the um palm branches waving. Please join us for that. Thank you so much, Jennifer, for being with us. Uh we'd love to have you having me.

SPEAKER_01 12:45

This was so much fun to get to spend a couple hours talking about the Bible.

SPEAKER_00 12:48

Yeah, talking about real. It's I thought by the Bible. Um, and so we appreciate you doing that with us. So I'm gonna end us with a word of prayer. God, we thank you um as we move towards Holy Week for your reminder. For your reminder to us about who you are and who you're calling us to be. This Lenten journey has been an inward one where we are seeking to become more like you, to be to have to be in one mind with Christ Jesus. May we direct our whole selves to following you. May we journey to the cross and remember that we lay down our lives so that we can be raised to life in you. May we not be afraid to proclaim boldly who we are and what we believe. And may in all things we shine your light. I worship on Sunday and then on Thursday and on Friday, and then it's Easter. All right. Take care.