Jesus Skywalker | Mark 11:1-19

March 29, 2026 - The Gospel of Mark - 

Chris Watkins shows how Jesus preaches and enacts peace for all nations during the politically and religiously charged environment of Holy Week. As we pay attention to Jesus' actions, teachings, and Old Testament references during the week before his death, we discover a Jesus who does not overthrow power with violence but one who offers peace to all nations, especially the meek, poor, and outsider. Jesus does not, in fact, wield a light saber. 

Transcript

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I want to start by setting a scene for you. So I want everybody to close your eyes and dream, vision along with me. So what we have is a small outpost of oppressed people far flung from the seat of power, of an empire that has conquered much of civilization and uses force to keep order and break the backs of local rebellions. There are soldiers in the streets of the city and tension is in the air. A festival gathering has become a flashpoint that will change the course of history. And if that sounds familiar to you, that uh that's part of the plot of the recent series Andor, which is my which is an awesome new addition to the Star Wars canon, which is awesome. We might have a clip of it, we might not. Okay, well, we're gonna roll with it. So maybe it worked. Yes. So this is just, there's no sound, don't worry. This is just a scene from Andor where you see stormtroopers invading a town called uh a city on a planet called Ferrex. And this is a small outpost, kind of a mining planet uh that is coming under the tighter and tighter grip of the Federation. Until a spark during a funeral gathering, as we're watching right here, um leads to the birth of the rebellion and the rest of the Star Wars franchise. Uh, I bring this up because after watching Andor, I can't help but see the parallels between Ferrex uh in this clip and in the series, and Jerusalem in Holy Week. And this guy right here is Pontius Pilate. We'll see a picture of him in a sec. Uh and so whenever I read the Holy Week text now, I picture stormtroopers walking through Ferrex. I picture a whole city on edge and random brass instruments. So and while stormtroopers may be a little bit far-fetched, I think we when we read quickly through the Holy Week texts and we kind of read through to get to the cross, we miss out on a lot of the context that gives color to why the people and the leaders responded to Jesus in the way that they did and why he acts the way that he does over those first few days. So I want to walk through the first four days of Holy Week. So Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and um in hopes that we can learn a little bit more from his last days and not just kind of sim ahead to the resurrection. So from the beginning of his ministry, thus captured in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus focused on contrasting the upside-down kingdom of God with the human kingdoms of the times. Over the events of Palm Sunday through Wednesday, he puts into very stark relief the difference between what his followers and his enemies expected the Messiah to be and challenges the underpinnings of his contemporary society. And through this, Jesus reinforces three things that I want to talk through today. First is that the kingdom of God will be for all nations, even the oppressors. Second, is that the kingdom is for the marginalized, the poor, the immigrants, and not just for people who can afford it. Third is that the kingdom of God is for those who do not have power in the current age, for the disenfranchised and the poor in spirit. And in each of the confrontations that we'll describe, Jesus explicitly circles back to the true foundation of the kingdom, being one of peace, and seeks to tear down the barriers that the leaders, systems, and institutions have put in the way of the poor, foreigner, and the oppressed. And then finally, on Wednesday, we see the two opposite reactions to Jesus' radical message of peace and inclusion. On the one hand, we have a woman who anoints Jesus with oil. On the other hand, we have Judas who joins with the religious leaders to have him killed. And so the reason that I want to draw parallels between Pharaohs and Andor, uh, Pharaohs of Andor and Jerusalem is to highlight some of the tension that would have been felt by the Israelites during this Passover feast. Violent events around Passover were not uncommon in that day, and there was a recent one that happened to create kind of a charged atmosphere here. So when Herod died, the king Herod died in 4 BC, the Israelites took the opportunity to petition his heir Archelaus for tax relief and the release of some prisoners, and that request was delayed and delayed until the city actually boiled over in revolt. And the Romans responded in force, crushing the crowds, even setting fire to parts of the temple, and over 3,000 Jews were killed. Passover was canceled, there were uprisings all over Judea, and so the provincial Roman government was very wary about uprisings and gatherings and feasts and festivals from there on. So in the year described in the Gospels, Pontius Pilate, uh that guy you saw on the Cape there, uh left his coastal home and marched a company of Roman soldiers into Jerusalem while riding on a horse. And it was a terrifying show of force, meaning to intimidate anybody who might be a potential instigator. And so the stormtroopers were out in the streets all the time. But the Jews and the Gentiles had been gathering in Jerusalem for the Passover feast, and word had gotten out about this radical preacher who had been teaching to crowds of thousands and performing miracles and claiming to be the Messiah. And word was that he was going to be returning to from Jericho into Jerusalem, and this could be a showdown of powers. So the people who were yearning for a leader to remove the yoke of the Roman oppression, was Jesus the one that they were looking for? So before we jump into Palm Sunday, we need to understand that the desire for this Messiah to release them from Roman rule was not without merit. In 160 BC, the Israelites had been uh had been ruled by the Greeks at the time, uh, and they were uh they were able to win back some of their Jewish lands uh through what is called the Maccabean Revolution. At this time, there was a group of rebels who were able to, again, take back large swaths of Jewish land. They were led by a man named Judas, who was nicknamed the Hammer, which is one of the sicker nicknames in the Bible, I must say. Uh, and when he entered into Jerusalem, he, as a victor, the crowds were waving something to honor them. Can you guess what that might be? Palm branches. Did anybody wave palm branches in church growing up as a little kid? I grew up in California, so we had actual palm branches. So it was a little bit better. Yeah, we didn't have plastic ones. Um, this palm branch was actually a symbol of resistance against the outside rulers, and the symbolism of the palm branch carried into Jesus' day. So it wasn't just, hey, we found something on a tree here, we're gonna wave it. It actually had a meaning behind it. So when the Israelites of Jesus' day hear about another rabbi using messianic imagery and rhetoric, they rush to gather this symbol of resistance and support him as he rode triumphantly into the city. So on Palm Sunday that morning, Jesus Skywalker rides into Jerusalem on a stallion using his lightsaber and like a band of rowdy androids to uh subdue the stormtroopers and establish an interstellar kingdom, right? Yeah. Now we all know the story of how Jesus rides into town on a donkey and the crowds waving their palm branches, which should automatically bring a certain scripture to everybody's mind, right? This is Zechariah 9:9 for those who don't know, which is probably most of you. Um, and that is rejoice greatly, daughter of Zion, shout, daughter of Jerusalem, behold, your king comes to you. He is righteous and having salvation, lowly and riding on a donkey, even on a colt, the foal of a donkey. Now that's something that would have been clear to his Jewish uh followers, but if those who did actually catch the reference might have been a little bit concerned because the next verse, God makes his intentions a little bit more clear. So in verse 10, he says, I will cut off the chariots from Ephraim and the horse from Jerusalem, and the battle bow will be cut off, and he will speak peace to the nations, and his dominion will be from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth. So here God is saying that his path to conquer his path is not to conquer the oppressors, but instead to speak peace as the method to establish his dominion from sea to sea. Here in Zechariah, even the Jews' were tools of war were going to be removed. And that brings me to point one, which that is the kingdom of God will not be established through force or conquest, and it will include all nations. So on Palm Sunday, Jesus sends his some of his disciples out to get a donkey for him. And it's not like he like reserved a Mustang, but when they got to the rental car lot, like they were all out, so they gave him like the subcompact instead. He was actually doing this on purpose to fulfill the prophecy of Zechariah 9:9 and sending a clear message to those who expected a triumphant political figure to see to free them from that Roman rule. So the Jewish people who were watching Jesus come into the city, they were crying out Hosanna, which means save us, but it has kind of a connotation of desperation. It's less about celebratory and more about urgency. They're not mildly cheering for Jesus. They're surrounded by the enemy and crying out to him, save us now. Does the God of Moses want to free his people from oppression? Yes, of course. But Jesus knew that the deliverance that they were yearning for wasn't enough. They were not hoping for the true peace, the true justice that he came to bring. In fact, Luke's gospel records exactly what was going through his mind as he looked up, looked on the city. In chapter 19, verse 41, it says, When he came near, he saw the city and wept over it, saying, If you, even you, had known today the things which belong to your peace, but now they are hidden from your eyes, for the days will come upon you when your enemies will throw a barricade against you, surround you, hem you in on every side, and dash you and your children with you to the ground. They will not leave they will not leave in you one stone on another. So Jesus can see ahead to what what the end of the Roman rule actually looks like. And he's weeping for this for the Jews who think they want a revolution, they want a political revolution, but he knows that that is just going to bring sorrow upon sorrow on the people. They can only think in terms of using power to throw off power. And Jesus doesn't want power, he wants shalom, even for the oppressors. So Jesus was riding smack into the middle of a conflict, not just between the Jew and the Roman, but between the oppressor and the oppressed. But the Romans were not the only oppressors present in Jerusalem, and Jesus had other fish to fry. So on Monday, he sets his sight on the temple. Actually, he does some recon work on Sunday after he comes into the city and he cases the joint a little bit beforehand. Mark 11, 11 gives us a little, seems like a throwaway detail, but it actually gives some insight into Jesus' mindset when he comes back to the temple on Monday. So again, did Jesus Skywalker come into the temple court, swinging a lightsaber, slicing bad guys in half? There's a picture of popular in popular imagination of Jesus coming in and cracking a whip and driving everybody out. But that is not really how it played out. So the court of the Gentiles in the temple was where the money changers and animal sellers were setting up shop. And Passover was like Black Friday for them. Like they were making money hand over fist. With thousands of pilgrims in town for the festival, they could charge usurious rates for exchange from other currencies into the temple coin, which was the only money that was allowed. And then once you got the temple coin, the animal seller would charge an exorbitant rate for whatever animal you would use for sacrifice for your family. And so those who traveled from far away or those who didn't have their own animal to bring, i.e. the foreigner and the poor, were the ones who felt that tax the most. And as we saw in Jesus' words and actions on Sunday, he's concerned not just with settling a score for his pops, but subverting a system that disenfranchised those who were on the margins. His quote here reveals that radical vision again. In Mark 11, 17, he quotes from Isaiah 56, saying, He taught, saying to them, Isn't it written, My house will be called a house of prayer for all the nations? And that seems pretty straightforward enough, but the passage of Isaiah 56, the context there goes even further. It's not that God is establishing the temple for the nations, but a specific subset. It's going back to verse 2 in Isaiah 56, Yahweh says, Maintain justice, do what is right, for my salvation is near, and my righteousness will soon be revealed. Blessed is the man who does this, and the Son of Man who holds it fast, who keeps the Sabbath without profaning it, and keeps his hand from doing any evil. Let no foreigner who has joined himself to Yahweh speak, saying, Yahweh will surely separate me from his people. Do not let the eunuch say, Behold, I am a dry tree. For Yahweh says, To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbath, choose the things that please me and hold fast to my covenant, I will give them in my house, within my walls, a memorable a memorial and a name better than that of sons and daughters. I will give them an everlasting name that will not be cut off. Also the foreigner who joins themselves to Yahweh to serve him, and to love Yahweh's name, to be his servants. Every one who keeps the Sabbath from profaning it and holds fast my covenant, I will bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar, for my house will no longer be called a well, my house will be called a house of prayer for all peoples. The Lord Yahweh, who gathers the outcast of Israel, says, I will yet gather others to him, in addition to his own that are gathered. So here the kingdom of God is laid out, including the foreigner, the eunuch, and the outcast. But the established temple system that I just described allowed for profiteering and gatekeeping of those same people. And that's the system that Jesus wants to overturn, both literally and figuratively. So point two is that the kingdom of God is for all, not just those who can afford it. Um a little side note on the scene in the temple courts, the popular image of Jesus Skywalker cracking the whip on everybody, uh is a little bit more violent than I think the actual scene played out to be. Um, and it also can be used by some as justification for righteous violence in Jesus' name. Uh, but three things would counter that. First is that he came in on Sunday night and did a little bit of recon work, means that he planned this ahead of time. This wasn't an emotional outburst reaction to what he was seeing. This was first-degree vandalism. This was premeditated. Um secondly, the whip that Jesus was using wasn't something he brought in as something he made on the spot, likely out of grass reeds that he found that were food for the animals. So he wasn't attacking people with some crazy whip. He was batting the backside of camp of uh cows with grass. So uh not super violent there. Thirdly, as we've mentioned a couple of times, there were stormtroopers everywhere. If the person who was the most visible person in the city, Jesus, started actually causing violence and whipping people, it's pretty unlikely that the stormtroopers would have sat by and let him do that. So while he wasn't violent, his pacifism wasn't passivism. He was taking action against the injustices, not just in his speech. He was clearing out the cancer that metastatized in his holy place. But he didn't just create a blank slate. After all of these theatrics, Matthew's gospel gives a great coda to the story. In verse 2114, it says the lame and the blind came to him in the temple and he healed them, which is just that's a great detail. Jesus clears away the barriers between him and the down and the downcast, and they flock to him, and he heals them. And that is what is supposed to be happening in the temple. So when we get to Tuesday, the gloves really come all the way off. And Jesus is throwing verbal haymakers with the Pharisees. He comes back to the scene of yesterday's crime and he's looking to pick a fight. So this is Jesus' last public teaching block, and it covers way too much ground to go into today. But I want to zoom in on a small chunk, commonly referred to as the woes. Um, and it's going to quote Matthew because it he actually bookends the woes with the beatitudes in Jesus' first teaching block in the Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew 5 3, the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus begins his public ministry using a description of the kind of people that the kingdom of God is for. Blessed are the powerless, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who grieve, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the land. And this first three groups of people in the Beatitudes is all about Jesus turning upside down our understanding of who the kingdom of God is for. All the physics and psychology and genetics and game theory of our world seem to father the wealthy, those born of high standing, and those who are powerful. Being poor and being poor in spirit also go kind of hand in glove. The meek are the ones who had nothing, whose ancestral lands had been occupied for over a century. Rather than the strong, Jesus points to those powerless, those who are in mourning, those who are of no importance, and says, These are the ones who will be rewarded. These are the ones that God favors. Back in Holy Week in the temple, Jesus lays into the Pharisees, saying, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from people, for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in. Woe to you, because you devour widows' houses, therefore you will receive greater condemnation. And Jesus is confronting and contrasting with those who have what we might consider the good life, influence and wealth. And there are several mirrors between that verse and what Jesus had mentioned in the Beatitudes. The leaders are rich, they're rich in influence. The blessed are the poor and powerless. The leaders keep out the unimportant, but Jesus welcomes them. The wealth insulates those leaders from grief. The blessed are the ones who cannot escape it. The leaders inflict grief, Jesus comforts. The leaders devour the possessions of the powerless, Jesus restores. So point three, the kingdom of God is for those who do not have power in the current age. Those who gatekeep them will be expelled. But the meek shall inherit the earth is a phrase we hear all the time. It gets used a lot, and it gets taken a bit out of context. The phrase is actually a reference to Psalm 37, verses 7 through 11 here. Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him. Do not fret because of him who prospers in this way, because of the man who carries out wicked schemes, cease from anger and forsake wrath. Do not fret, it only leads to evildoing. For evildoers will be cut off, but those who wait for the Lord, they will inherit the land. Yet a little while, and the wicked man will be no more, and you will look carefully for his place, and he will not be there. But the humble will inherit the land, and will delight themselves in abundant prosperity. So the phrase is hearkening back to God's promise to restore the land to all peoples, not just the powerful. It's not referring to the earth, the globe that we think of today, but physical land. It's actually a charged political statement that those in Jesus' day would have caught, but it gets a little bit muddled with time. The leaders of the day, who were the ones who would have owned or managed those lands, may have felt uh a little bit challenged by this or directly threatened by Jesus' claims. Uh so what does it look like for the meek to inherit land? I have maybe an imperfect but an interesting contemporary example. So last week, the Watkins clan took a few days to travel up north to Vancouver, British Columbia. We just wanted to get away for a few days for spring break, and that was a cool city within driving distance. So we went up to Vancouver, and there's a picture of, yeah. So this is a picture I took on a run around kind of the harbor part of the central city. And you can see kind of those three buildings there. They look pretty large and new, even though we're very far away in this picture. Um, the next picture shows this is a rendering, not an actual picture, but an architectural rendering of what this development will look like when it's finished. And it has Really interesting history. So, this project, which has a name that I'm not even going to try to pronounce, is on land that was owned, is now owned by the Squamish First Nations people. The land itself was a city of cedar longhouses well before the city of Vancouver existed. As Vancouver was established and grew, the Squamish residents saw their land carved up for railways until they were loaded onto barges and shipped away in 1913 and their homes torched. For the last two decades, the leaders of the Squamish have been trying in court to reclaim that slice of land. When they finally won control of this portion, which you see here, which is some of the most valuable real estate in the city of Vancouver, when they finally won control of that, they used their status as a sovereign nation to bypass all zoning restrictions and build a series of towers, which you can see here, that will house thousands, including several hundreds units, several hundred units set aside for the poor. And this will be managed by the Squamish First Nation. The income from the rental units is estimated to be enough to support the nation for the next seven generations. Now, this type of reparation has rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, a lot of the wealthy in Vancouver, and there's a lot of debate around the project. Just as the Pharisees chafed against Jesus' radical message, any transfer of wealth, control, or power can be resisted by the people who profit from that system. Okay. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday down. Now we get to Wednesday. And Wednesday is a relatively quiet day compared to the goings-on of the last few days. What happens today is less about confrontation and more about a choice that Jesus' previous words and actions force us to make. There are two paths laid out by the people who I think are some of the first to realize what Jesus is actually in Jerusalem to do. The first path is that of Mary, sister of Martha and Lazarus, who approaches Jesus while he's with the disciples. She breaks open an alabaster jar full of nard and anoints him. She says nothing, makes no request of him. It's just a pure act of service. Mark 14 says, While he was at Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper, just as he sat at the table, a woman came having an alabaster jar of ointment of pure nard, very costly. She broke the jar, poured it over his head. But there were some who were indignant among themselves, saying, Why has this ointment been wasted? This might have been sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor. So they grumbled against her. Jesus says, Leave her alone. Why would you trouble her? She has done a good work for me. For you will always have the poor with you, and whatever you want to whenever you want, you can do them good, but you will not always have me. She has done what she could. She has anointed my body beforehand for the burying. Most certainly I tell you, wherever this good news may be preached throughout the whole world, that which this woman has done will also be spoken for of in memorial for her. So an alabaster jar full of nard was an exceedingly rare item, and its essential oil from the mountains of India. Some scholars have even speculated that it would have been an heirloom kept in order that it could be sold in case of an emergency to stave off financial ruin, in which case this would be like anointing Jesus with the entirety of her 401k. So why do that? And that's a question that the disciples ask, but neither the woman nor Jesus actually address. He only says that she has done what she could, and that seems to be enough for him to say that what she did will be spoken of in her memory wherever the good news is preached. Just days before this, on the way to Jerusalem for the Passover, the disciples had been arguing over who would sit at Jesus' right hand in heaven, and Jesus says, nah. Here this woman goes and earns his high honor with just a single act of sacrifice, and the disciples grumble against her. It's hard to imagine being that upset in a room that probably smells amazing. But this was a bridge too far for Judas specifically. This was the last straw that sends him crashing out to the chief priests to betray Jesus. There are a lot of reasons why Jesus turned coat here, but I don't think 30 pieces of silver was one of them. That was only about, I think,$300 in the U.S. today, give or take. That's hardly anything worth betraying your friend over. Hardly enough to lure him away because I think Judas was already away. He was likely ready to betray Jesus because he himself felt betrayed. Judas had bought into the hype, the same desire for a Jesus skywalker that the crowd showed on Sunday, only to be reminded by Jesus over and over again that it wasn't going to be like that. I think he's actually the first disciple who put the pieces together. The donkey on Sunday, driving out of his own countrymen out of the temple rather than the Roman occupiers. Tuesday, the taking down of the leaders and describing how the temple itself was going to be destroyed. And Wednesday, wasting what could have been a valuable donation and accepting a burial preparation. I think Judas finally sees the whole puzzle, sees who Jesus actually claims to be, and finally adds up the cost of what it will take to follow Jesus and decides no, if Jesus is going to go out like that, Judas wanted none of it. He chose the path away from Jesus. These two people, Mary and Judas, have seen Jesus up close. They believed in him, and I think they're the first to really internalize what is about to happen and what that cost will be to them. Mary has a nest egg, a safeguard against poverty. Judas has access to wealth and a position with a very popular teacher. Mary sees the kingdom as Jesus describes it and lives as if that were already true. Judas can't see a way to get ahead in the kingdom of heaven and chooses the world as it currently is. Mary breaks the jar and Judas breaks away. So rather than just kind of an appetizer for this upcoming weekend, Jesus has spent a few days really underlining what the kingdom of God was and who it was for. All the nations, including the oppressors, the marginalized, poor, immigrant, uh, those who don't have power, and those who are disenfranchised and poor in spirit. And we can intellectualize those. We can absorb that better than Mary or Judas could with our con with the time that we've had. We have all the context at our fingertips. What happens when we realize the true cost of following Jesus? Um, let's pray. Lord, you have set in front of us a vision of the kingdom that you are building, that you've created for us. A kingdom that welcomes all, a kingdom that turns no one away. Lord, and you put in front of us a choice, Lord. I pray that we would see that and decide that we want to be a part of that kingdom, that we want to choose you, that we can give up what we see as power or influence or wealth here in this age to help bring about justice and peace and inclusion for those who you call. And I pray that as we go through Holy Week this week, as we sing the songs, as we eat the meal, that we would remember the sacrifice that you made to bring that kingdom about, and that we would seek to bring that kingdom to all those around us. Amen. So this Thursday is actually Passover. When Jesus had his last supper with the disciples, Judas was there among them. Judas had already betrayed him, and Jesus knew that. But he still invited Judas to the table anyway, and handed him the bread and the wine. He broke his body and shed his blood as much for Judas as he did for everybody else in that room, and as much as he's done for us. We betray Jesus all the time in our own little ways, and yet still he invites us to the table. So come eat the bread, drink the juice, taste Jesus' body broken, and his blood shed for us.