"The Road to No More Sorrow" W/Pastor Andrea

Palm Sunday begins that Via Delarosa, "the sorrowful way" that Jesus walked to the cross. At the beginning of the week, the people ran alongside Jesus on the road shouting, "Hosanna! Save us now!" In Lent we recognize hat is still the ongoing cry of believers today. But in Revelation 21, we see the answer to that plea. A day is coming when we will walk a road of no more sorrow, because Jesus walked the sorrowful road of Holy Week on our behalf. And according to John's vision, those worshippers from every tongue and tribe and nation will also be holding palm branches in their hands as symbols of victory and triumph and praise... and their cry will not be, "Save us!" but rather they will declare, "Salvation belongs to our God."

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Thank you to our young people involved in worship and in dance and in waving a palm and in scripture reading. And maybe you're still looking for a way to be involved today. And if you haven't grabbed a blank piece of paper, I hope that if you're a young person, or I guess if you're an adult too, and you grab a piece of blank paper, I have a couple of drawing prompts that maybe you could be thinking about as you listen to my message this morning. And here is the prompt that I would encourage any of our young people that are in service today to draw on as I'm talking. What will it look like when everything sad comes untrue? Maybe that's a prompt that you could grab a blank piece of paper and do some drawing around. What will it look like when everything sad comes untrue? And there is no more crying and no more pain and no more mourning and no more tears. So that's the prompt for our young people that are in here with us. But it is Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week. We heard that that text from John 12. Jerusalem has swelled up to three times its normal population as people are making their way into the city for the Passover. Some of these people have traveled for days to get there, moms and dads, kids and grandparents, singles, the elderly, caravans of family clans, all drawn to this feast to remember how God had rescued them out of the hand of their enemy. And Jesus too makes his way toward the city. He had just raised Lazarus from the dead, and his reputation reaches Jerusalem before he does. So when he crests that hill that overlooks the city, a pretty hyped-up crowd surges toward him. And they cut palm branches and they they run to meet him along the road as he arrives. From a new kind of enemy? They've been longing for salvation. Is this now the fulfillment of that promise? The promised Messiah? I mean, he's riding on a donkey, and that tracks via the prophets, right? According to Zechariah, rejoice and shout, Jerusalem, for your your king comes to you lowly in riding on the colt of a donkey. Maybe Jesus is the one who will finally break the thumb of Rome under which their lives have been pressed flat. Hosanna, they yell. Blessed is the King of Israel. And they they they wave their palms in hope. Is he the one? Hosanna. Because they knew that things were not the way they were supposed to be. Hosanna, save us. You don't call that out unless there's something to be saved from. And their cry, of course, their palm sundae cry is our cry. We might not use that word all the time. But Lord save us? I feel like that's kind of a general cry. It might be the ongoing chorus of believers across time. We join in this Palm Sunday ache, this Palm Sunday song, because we also know, along with those people, that things are not the way they're supposed to be. Things are not the way they are supposed to be. The curse of sin and death touches everything. From systems and institutions to our families and our relationships to our bodies and our experiences in our bodies, to the world and its geopolitics. You don't have to pay very close attention to see that thorns infect the ground everywhere in creation. Since Genesis three, the road has been marked with sorrow. The road has been marked with sorrow. It is. Among other beautiful saints, I put my friend Laura in the ground. In the hope of the resurrection, sure. In the hope of the resurrection. But that future consolation can feel awfully far off in the ache of the present. The ache of the meantime. Hosanna! Lord, save us! This is our cry. This is my cry. This was their cry. This is this is our cry. Hosanna, save us. And and so it feels good to me today, and not at all premature, to pull that Easter hope ahead just a little bit by reading Revelation 21. I'm glad we could sing songs of vibrant praise today and wave our flags and say Hosanna and say hallelujah and say you are holy. I'm so grateful to pull some of that Easter hope into the lentiest Lent I have ever lented today. Yesterday at Marion Vince Bronson's funeral, I was chatting with the caterer down at Madison Place, and she said she's Catholic, and she was telling me a little bit about how her Catholic Church practices Lent. And she says they do not sing at all during Lent. Or say the word hallelujah. And on pretty much every other year, normally, I would really dig this sort of uh deep religious symbolism, you know, this commitment to the restraint of Lent. And yet this year, I just I need a few hallelujahs I think. I need a little bit of that Easter hope, that that Easter song to come into this Lenten season. I actually need to sing my hope and I need to look forward to Revelation 21 that was read today to accompany me on this road of sorrow that we're walking. This road of sorrow. I need a few hallelujahs to break into the darkness of this season. This cry, Hosanna, Lord, save us. I need to call that out and then hear the answer in Revelation 21. Because in many ways, Revelation 21 is the answer to that cry. It finds its answer there. We all need to know how the story ends while we're in it. And I know how some believers use Revelation, right? Like a like a prediction map or a countdown clock or some kind of puzzle that has secret compartments that you have to, you know, get all the clues out of it. But that is not why God gave John this vision of the book of Revelation. The book was given to him to encourage believers who were suffering so that they did not lose heart in the midst of their circumstances. That they did not lose heart in the midst of the persecution that they were facing, that they would not lose heart when people they loved were dying naturally and through violence, that they would not lose heart in the midst of their sorrow and in the midst of their suffering and their hardship. Eugene Peterson in his book Reversed Thunder says that revelation is given to us not so much to tell us exactly how and when things will happen, but to give us the imagination we will need to form hope within us. To form hope within us. It gives us the imagination we're gonna need to shape our endurance during difficult times. It gives us the imagination we need to sustain our worship. To sustain our worship. Even when things feel terrible or when things feel terribly sad. That's the vision of revelation, what it's meant to do for believers. John says, I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. Now, this doesn't mean there's not going to be any lakes or streams or oceans or rivers or any bodies of water, but as you know, the sea in Scripture represents chaos. The sea represents disorder. The sea represents terror, anything that is destructive or deforming to God's creation. So the absence of the sea means that all of the earthly disorder will have been set right and the sea will be no more. And a voice says, See, the dwelling place of God is with the people, and he will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. That's the end of the story. That's how I can keep walking this road of sorrow because I know that a day is coming when we will live with God and God will live with us and we will be together. God will make good on his long-standing promise to live with and among his people. It's how he started it in the garden until sin and death came in. And then he kept trying through the tabernacle and through the temple to dwell with his people, but it did not work. And then he dwelled with us in the flesh through Jesus, but it always was this already and not yet, even with the Holy Spirit. But a day is coming when we will dwell with God, and he will dwell with us. And I want you to imagine this for just a moment because then it doesn't say, and then here's what's gonna happen: God is gonna explain your suffering to you. Does not say that. Instead, it says, and He will wipe every tear from their eyes. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. Pull it up in your mind. The last thing you've cried about, those tears are liquid evidence that the world is not the way it's supposed to be. They're evidence that the world is not the way it's supposed to be. Those tears remind us that this world is sad beyond belief. But the promise of Revelation 21 is all the tears that run down your face, because the world is not the way it's supposed to be, are gonna be wiped away by God. Every heartache will be soothed. Every heartbreak will be mended, every sorrow and every grief will be given its consolation. The Bible doesn't just say, well, things will probably get better. The Bible promises something so much more substantial than that, the undoing of that sorrow, the reversal of that sorrow, where even what is lost will be returned. It's like that scene in The Lord of the Rings when Sam asks Gandalf, is everything sad going to come untrue? Which Sally Lloyd Jones picks up in her Jesus Storybook Bible. Is everything sad going to come untrue? Everything is different now, he says to Gandalf. What has happened to the world? And if you remember Gandalf's answer, it's this a great shadow has departed. A great shadow has departed. And I think the people on Palm Sunday who lived in that shadow might have been asking the same question, hopefully, is everything sad gonna come untrue? Because it is really sad. There's a lot of sadness in our lives. Is everything sad going to come untrue? And the answer to that question in Revelation 21 is yes. Everything sad is going to come untrue. For he who is seated on the throne says, Behold, I am making everything new. Everything. And there will be no more death and no more mourning and no more crying and no more pain. And no more funeral homes. Mart and Mary are gonna have to find something new to do in new creation. And they're probably the happiest two people in this room about that fact. No more caskets, praise God, no more urns, no more obituaries, no more cemeteries. All the cemeteries are gonna be gardens in new creation. Because our last enemy, death itself, will have been swallowed up. But we have to be careful because we cannot jump from Palm Sunday, Hosanna, Lord save us, to no more death in Revelation 21 without going through Good Friday. You cannot skip, even though I'm making these two texts sort of fit together today, we cannot skip the in-between. That's why it's so important that we gather here on Good Friday to remember that the road to no more sorrow travels through Holy Week. And Jesus had to walk it. And it has a checkpoint. That road has a checkpoint at Golgotha. There's no bypass highway that goes around suffering and gets us to Revelation 21. No, Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem, knowing that the road to no more sorrow passes through death itself. And it's a toll road. An expensive, expensive toll road, and only one person could pay it. And to do that, Isaiah 53 said, he would have to be a man of sorrows. One who was acquainted with grief. When we are sad, when we have tears, when we remember the world's not the way it's supposed to be, Jesus did not stand far off from that. He became a man of sorrows and he would walk what? The Via Della Rosa. What does that mean? The sorrowful way. He would walk the sorrowful way so that he could face death up close for us to break off the power that it had over us, but from the inside of it to absorb death's worst on our behalf. The cross is that pivot point between Palm Sunday and the hope of Revelation 21, which says in that text that those who are thirsty will drink water at no cost. Water at no cost. It's free, but it's not free because it's cheap. It's free because it's paid for. That's what you have to remember. You're thirsty, you're gonna drink living water with no cost. It's not because it's cheap, it's because it's paid for that it's free. And it was at Christ's expense. Good Friday shows us what that cost was, how much it cost to answer the cry of the people on Palm Sunday, Lord, save us. That was gonna be costly to him, but for the joy set before him. Good Friday shows us that Jesus was willing to pay the cost. We call out, Lord, save us, and he did by going down into the grave himself, so that anyone who is in Christ will not have to go to the grave alone. Believers do not go down into that grave alone, they go there with Christ so that in his resurrection they join in that too, and the stone that was rolled away for him will be rolled away for you on that great getting up morning, as they say. And this hopeful vision in which everything sad will come true, this sustains us in the lentiest lent we've ever lented. It puts all of our dying into its appropriate context of rising so that we don't fall into despair. It keeps our eyes fixed on this road to no more sorrow that we walk now, but with hope. We walk a road of sorrow now, but we know that Christ has already walked it for us, and so we can walk this road with hope and with praise and with palm branches in our hands, even when things are difficult or sad. Last week, Friday, we gathered in our little communion group that we have at Raybrook. Um, a group of us gather somewhat regularly there, and we sing some songs and we share our joys and concerns and pray and we take communion together. And last week, as part of our sharing, as a sort of Lenten way of doing joys and concerns, I said, in this ongoing daily experience of the Christian life, in what ways have you been experiencing the dying concerns? And where have you seen a glimpse of the rising? The joys. So I was just trying to frame it in a lenty way, but I thought, okay, dying and rising. And uh Mary Kremer is in this group that meets with us at Ray Book, Ray Brooke. And if you don't know Mary Kramer, well, I just feel bad for you. Yeah, I feel bad for you. She is a beautiful and long-suffering saint who faithfully shines for Jesus even in the midst of deep suffering. Three years ago, Mary found out that she had cancer in her mouth, and they had to take all of her teeth out on one side, and also part of the jaw out. And I think they had to take some bone out of her shoulder to try to rebuild her jaw after that, and that did not work as well as they had hoped. And so for quite a while after surgery, she could not talk, and she couldn't eat, and she had to use a feeding tube because she couldn't swallow. And part of her mouth is paralyzed from this major surgery that she had. It has taken three years of recovery and physical therapy just to get some ability to talk and to eat. Communion is still not even easy for her to take in our group. And for a time, even earlier, she would keep a handkerchief in her hand, keep it nearby, because her face paralysis meant she couldn't always manage her own saliva. So think of what a what a vulnerable space you're in all the time. If you can't manage your own saliva, and she would come to our group. And she doesn't always say a whole lot because it takes so much concerted effort for her to say her words, what she wants to say to us. Even after these years of physical therapy, each word needs to be formed slowly, carefully, intentionally, her tongue directed with great concentration around some of the paralysis that she has, her saliva managed, her effort to swallow is given great attention. And I look at her and I think, wow, so much, so much dying is represented in this. So much of a low place, so much sorrow, so much suffering. But on Friday, Mary. Wanted to talk about the rising. And she used more words than I've heard her use in our times together. And she spoke of the hope that we have of this future of living with God. And she helped fix our group's eyes, not on what is seen, but as on what is unseen. And we all had to lean in a bit to hear her well and listen carefully to understand her words. But she concluded with this: she said, I just do not think that people understand or could possibly imagine or get close to grasping just how wonderful and just how beautiful everything will be when we live with God forever and everything is made new. And we we were silent for a moment because it Mary was preaching to our hearts in that moment, reminding us of the hope that we have in Christ, who's making everything new, including her. She showed us that she can walk this road of suffering because she is on the way, on the road to no more sorrow. Mary has the imagination to take her eyes off of her present weakness and to hold out to us. We who don't have those problems that she has, holding out to us this hope of a future glory. If I would have had this palm branch in my hand, I would have waved it at her as she was preaching. I we could have had an altar call. I should have passed a collection basket. It just was this little sermonette that filled up my heart in a season of sorrow. To not even be able to imagine how beautiful and how wonderful it will be when we live with God and all things are made new. And I would have waved my palm because maybe you know that palms are a symbol of praise and triumph and victory. That's why people waved them. To hear Mary speak in this way in the midst of her own deep suffering. I wanted to wave my palm not so much at Mary, I wanted to wave it in the enemy's face. That's what I wanted to do today with these palms. Look how much sorrow and how much pain and hardship and suffering that Mary has had to experience because of this. And she is the one holding out this future hope of this glorious dwelling with God. I wanted to wave this in the enemy's face. That's why I love Revelation 7, and that's why I included it here today. We added that the redeemed of the Lord are standing there from every tongue and tribe and nation. And remember, these aren't just people that showed up. Like, what's going on here? Oh, these people have come through a tribulation, they've come through a way that is marked by suffering, but they are now victorious. And it says they have palm branches in their hands. Palm branches. See, I'm bringing this thing full circle. Full circle. They have palm branches in their hands. Why? They're no longer just a hopeful symbol of victory. Like, Hosanna, Lord, save us now. Like, we hope you're the one who's gonna help us triumph over all of our enemies. We we hope you're the one that's gonna bring us up out of this suffering. No, in Revelation 7, now these palm branches represent reality, victory, triumph, and praise. It is done. The battle against death has been won. The people aren't asking, God, save us. Now they're just singing it, they're just declaring it. Salvation belongs to our God. Salvation belongs to our God. Death. Because our last enemy has been defeated, and we can live like that. It is true even now. We can live in the face of death, knowing that death's days are numbered even when we are sad. That gives us a confidence even when we are sorrowful. If you were at Laura's funeral at the very end of it, we sang the Revelation 19 song, Hallelujah, Salvation and Glory. And we busted that thing out in here at the end of a funeral. And if you remember, there is this brief moment where it seemed like the song was going to end. And the two funeral home directors walked up to and took their place at the front of that aisle right there. Um, they were ready, you know, to usher Laura's casket back out. But then if you remember the song didn't end, we went back into it because we couldn't get enough. If a little bit is good, more is better. So we went back into the Revelation 19 song. And so those guys, it's great, they got kind of stuck standing right there. And um they stood there solemnly, great guys, I'm sure, great guys, but you have to imagine, in some ways, they are standing there as representatives of death itself. Right? Like we're here to take this body away. Um, but people had started grabbing all the colorful flags, and we were worshiping in the hope of the resurrection, and so they are standing there in their dark suits with their solemn expressions, and we were literally waving bright flags in their faces, not like trying to wave it in their faces, but they got stuck there, and I don't think they wanted to leave again. And even Joanna DeMortaner was telling me that one of them was standing so close to her she almost felt cramped, but she was like, whatever. She just waved, waved her flag in his face. But that is what Revelation 21 allows us to do. That is what this future hope allows us to do in the present. We wave our flag of hope and we wave our palms of praise right in the face of death itself, because we know a day is coming when we will walk down that road of no more sorrow. A road of no more sorrow, and we're gonna fall in with all of the others, like this great human highway making its way to the throne of God, and we will get to join the chorus of every tongue and tribe and nation, and we will sing salvation belongs to our God, belongs to him and to the Lamb. Blessing and honor, glory and power be to our God forever and ever and ever. Amen. Hallelujah! All right, let's pray. God, we give you thanks that even as we walk a road of sorrow, Jesus went ahead of us on the true Via de la Rosa, that sorrowful way to defeat death once and for all. So even as we live in the midst of the already and the not yet, even if we are living in the ache of what is not yet made right in this world, we walk this road in hope of a future in which you will dwell with us and we will dwell with you and you will make all things new. All things new. And so we long for that day, God, and we want to live in that hope even now in the midst of the ache. So I pray that this Palm Sunday request, this Palm Sunday prayer, Hosanna, Lord, save us, that we would recognize that that cry has been answered definitively in Jesus. And so that even as tears stream down our faces, that we would know that there's a future day coming when you will wipe all of them from our eyes, so that we can sing our praises and wave our palms even in the face of our last enemy. We give you thanks and praise for the suffering saints who have held out hope to us. Mary Kremer and Laura, the ways that they faced that sorrowful road with hope and faith and strength. God, may it strengthen our faith. Would we not grow weary? Would we not lose heart even in the face of these sorrows? So I give you thanks and praise as we enter into this week of Jesus' great sacrifice for us. I pray that we would be attuned and attentive to all the ways that your kingdom is breaking in with new life among us. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.