The Harshness Of God- Ian Graham: The Things That Make For Peace

Pastor Ian Graham explores layers of Palm Sunday as we enter Holy Week.

Transcript

Palms And Practicing Imagination

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Amen. Morning friends. How are we doing? You know, I did not grow up in a uh liturgically oriented church in any way. Um, so this was a new thing for me. Uh how many of you grew up with palms on Sunday that you would turn into crosses? I have found profound joy. One of the sort of pastoral practices is taking the palms that are left over from Palm Sunday, and then we burn them to make the ashes for Ash Wednesday. And I found that to be a particularly strange joy in my life as a pastor. But for those of you who are new to this idea, the reason we have a bunch of uh agriculture in the room here is because it is Palm Sunday, and you can take one, and my boys have already turned them into all sorts of weapons of different levels of destruction. But I want to invite you because one of the ways that we as a people allow God to form not just us but our imaginations is the yearly immersion in the story, specifically the story of Holy Week. Palm Sunday marks the beginning of the last week of Jesus' earthly life. And so we will be wading through these events slowly. And today what I want to do is start by practicing this collectively. And so, in just a moment, I'm gonna invite you to close your eyes and take a deep breath. Many of you don't need any invitation to close your eyes. And I if you need a nap, that's what church is for. Welcome. So glad that you are taking advantage of that. But I really want to invite you just to use your imagination when you hear the story and to put yourself in the middle of it. It's fascinating that God, in all of his brilliance, when he gave us a book and words, didn't give us a manual. He didn't give us a how-to book, he gave us a story. And we do our part by using our imaginations and allowing the Lord to use the confines of our emotions, the pictures that we conjure of God, to actually tell us something about who he is. So I'm gonna read from Luke chapter 19. And while I do that, close your eyes, allow the Spirit to form a picture in your mind. Let's hear the word of the Lord together. After he had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. When he'd come near Bethaj and Bethany at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, saying, Go into the village ahead of you. And as you enter it, you will find there tied a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, Why are you untying it? Just say this, the Lord needs it. So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, Why are you untying the colt? They said, The Lord needs it. Then they brought it to Jesus, and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. Now, as he was approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power they had seen, saying, Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord, peace in heaven and glory in the highest heaven. Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, Teacher, order your disciples to stop. He answered them. I tell you, if these stone if these were silent, the stones would shout out the word of the Lord. Now, if you were in a smaller communal setting, you were by yourself, what I would commend to you is reading it again, even slower, and saying, Lord, speak to me, and doing it again. What you find is that as the Spirit uses the contours of a story to actually form our imaginations and actually to form hearts that are ready to listen to him. So that's a practice you can take up later. But here we have Jesus riding into Jerusalem. We get a sense of the expectations and hopes that have been heaped upon Jesus. And how Jesus will both meet them in their expectations and will very subtly upend them. We start at the Mount of Olives. The Mount of Olives is a place of eschatological significance. Now, eschatology is just a fancy way of saying what happens in the end. Eschatology literally means the study of last things or words about last things. And what we have to do when we're reading stories, especially from the Gospels, is to allow ourselves to be transported from our 21st century, for many of us, Western mindset, not all of us, some of us are from cultures that are directionally global south or eastern, this is great. But for a lot of us to transpose our expectations about what a story might be saying and to put ourselves firmly in the world of the first century. And the people that Jesus rides in and among and to at that first Palm Sunday would have had their own expectations about who Jesus might be and what he was up to. And the gospel writers are subtly playing off those expectations and drawing out their implications. So first Luke tells us that Jesus starts at the Mount of Olives. The Mount of Olives is a place associated with the end. Zechariah 14 says this. Because I know sometimes reading large sections of scripture can cause you to, your mind, your eyes to glaze over. So you can read them there. That's also an excuse if this gets boring just to be on your phone. Like I'm checking the outline. For I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem, Zechariah 14, for to battle. Then the Lord will go forth and fight against those nations, as when he fights on a day of battle. On that day his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives. And the Lord will become king over all the earth. On that day the Lord will be one and his name one. Zechariah 14 is a vision of eschatology of what will come in the end. It is at one and the same time a glorious vision of the kingdom coming. If you read Zechariah 14, a lot of the hopes and dreams of the people, specifically of the Jewish people of Jesus' day, would have been wrapped up in Zechariah 14. That the Lord will be king of all the nations, that all the nations will finally see the one true God for who he is, and thus will see his people, his one true people, Israel, for who they are. But if you read Zechariah 14, it's also a very disturbing vision of what the future might look like: battle and warfare and pestilence. It's this very cloudy picture. And Jesus begins at the Mount of Olives, riding down towards Jerusalem. But immediately we're kind of placed within this kind of cosmic significance. Jesus rides on a colt that has never been ridden. He rides on a donkey or a mule. Now, I am a preacher. That is probably my fundamental orientation in life. And one of the things about preachers, I'm going to tell you a little secret, is anything that sounds good or looks good, we we latch on to very quickly. Alright? So the juxtaposition between Jesus, humble and gentle, riding on a donkey, and a general riding on a war horse for battle is just too easy for us. We're like, boom, there it is. Jesus, lowly, gentle donkey, not a war horse, not a general. He could have ridden on a stallion in our world. He could fly in on an F-18. He didn't do any of that. But the only problem with that is there is an actual context to the biblical story. And in the context of the biblical story, there is quite the precedent for the king of Israel riding on a donkey. And it doesn't necessarily mean that they're humble and lowly. Zechariah tells us that this is what it's signifying, but there's also other implications that are at play. Let's look at a few of them. In 1 Kings chapter 1, the throne of David is being contested. David is in the last days of his life. It is unclear which of his male heirs will ascend to the throne. Solomon, one of David's heirs, mounts King David's donkey, his mule, his colt, at the behest of King David, and rides, signifying that he is the rightful heir to the throne against all other people who would claim the throne. The king's mule signifies his proper authority. And it's interesting that when the mule features in the story of the kings of Israel, it's often at times where the throne is contested. Zechariah 9 tells us, Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion, shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem. See your king comes to you, triumphant and victorious is he. He is humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim, and the war horse from Jerusalem, and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall command peace to the nations. His dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth. On that day the Lord their God will save them, for they are the flock of his people, for like the jewels of a crown they shall shine on his land, for what goodness and beauty are his. Now, if you read other accounts of what we call Palm Sunday, you see that when Jesus is riding on this royal mule, that people are laying palms on the path before him. What's the difference in Luke's account? What are they putting on the ground? Garments, right? Cloaks. Right? So it's a slightly different account. Same sort of implications, but slightly different. In 2 Kings chapter 9, King Jehu is anointed rightful king over the northern kingdom of Israel. He takes over for King Ahab, who is a particularly bad king. And when you're talking about the kings of Israel, you're talking about a particularly bad one, you're saying a lot. And Ahab was also in league with a woman named Jezebel, and he and Jezebel conspired to lead the people of Israel astray. Now Elisha anoints a new king, Jehu. And those that are around Jehu, hearing that he has been anointed king, spread cloaks before him to acknowledge that he is the rightful king, that he is going to put the nation, the northern kingdom of Israel, back onto its proper trajectory of worship and honoring God. Now, when Jehu takes his throne, this is a very like prestige drama response. Because what would happen when the rightful king would ascend to his throne is that they would immediately begin to consolidate their throne. And what this means simply is violence. Because there were other people who were claiming the throne. In the case of Solomon and David, Solomon goes about and kills all the other people who would claim David's throne. Same thing happens with Jehu. And so implicit within this idea of the rightful king ascending to their throne is also the implicit idea of a reckoning, of violence, of heads rolling. And this is all wrapped up in the storied imagination of the people that are welcoming Jesus on that first Palm Sunday. In Luke's account, we have the people singing from Psalm 118 Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord. And then they say something that unmistakably brings us back to the beginning of Luke's gospel. We have to remember the gospel writers were good writers, some of the best who have ever lived. And so often we underestimate how they were able to set a theme in the beginning and then draw out its implications as the story progresses. They say, Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord. Then they say, peace in heaven and glory in the highest heaven. If that sounds like a Christmas card, there's a good reason for that. In Luke chapter 2, at the birth of Jesus, the heavens opened and the shepherds heard the word of heaven to earth, saying this, Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth, peace among those whom He favors. The word that heaven has to say to earth is peace. And in many ways, Luke's gospel is the gospel of peace, of expressing and spelling out what is the actual shape of this peace. What does it look like to receive the peace of God? Luke calls us back to this term and this moment because he is drawing us into the drama of what is going on when King Jesus is riding into Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday. What the people welcoming Jesus are after is peace. Peace, finally. Peace from their oppressive overlords, the Romans. Peace from their own compromised leadership, the aristocratic priests who run the temple. Peace, perhaps even cosmic peace, where the covenant promises are fulfilled, the people of Israel, the true people of the one true God, vindicated for their faithfulness to Yahweh. The question that lingers in hopeful expectation for the people is how will this peace finally come about? Now again, they have a story to impart into that question. When other rightful kings had ascended to their rightful throne, it was accompanied by consolidating violence. And so perhaps, as this Jesus of Nazareth, a man who we know has done mighty things in the name of the Lord, mighty things that sound like the things that the prophets of old had done. Perhaps finally this is the one who will bring peace, who will rid us of this Roman regime who are so cruel and so pagan. The Romans, just as a sign of power, a sign of how mighty they were and how puny all their enemies were, would often crucify large groups of people and line the crosses up on the roads that led into a town just to remind people hey, if you mess with Rome, this is what becomes of you and your sons. This is what becomes of your revolutions. So go ahead. This is the regime under which Jesus was born into and he was a part of. And these people anxiously are saying, Lord, is it time for you to do it again? Please do it again. Laden with this within this honorific welcome of Jesus, blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord, is a revolutionary zeal, a call to arms. And friends, I always want to say this because it can sound like we are distancing ourselves from this idea or judging it, or that we are labeling a whole people group. That's not at all what's happening. I understand why they feel this way. Given some of the things that the Romans would do to people, it makes a lot of sense to me. All this is being spread on the dusty path down the Mount of Olives from Bethany to Jerusalem. And Jesus doesn't spend time correcting the people or explaining to them the difference between what they're hoping for and what he's actually up to. He simply rides into the midst of their expectations, however misplaced they may be. And for a moment, don't miss this, however fleeting, the people actually acknowledge Jesus for the king that he is, the son of David that he is. But the distance between what they expect of this king and what this king is actually here to do will turn out to be a chasm that is only fully revealed in the cursing taunts of this same crowd on Calvary, on the cross of Jesus. Luke actually, and I love when this happens, gives us insight into the mindset of Jesus on Palm Sunday. You see, we have this welcome of Jesus into Jerusalem, but then we have Jesus after the fanfare has dwindled, after the crowds have gone, and we see him looking at the city that he loves. Let's look in verse 41. In that same posture, just close your eyes and allow the words. As Jesus came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, If you, even you had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace. But now they are hidden from your eyes. Indeed, the days will come upon you when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another, because you did not recognize the time of visitation from God, the word of the Lord. We're only told explicitly of Jesus weeping on two occasions in the Gospels. One at the tomb of his friend Lazarus, as he confronts death as the author of life. The shortest verse in the Bible, John 11, 35, which really evokes the whole of the gospel. Jesus wept. That's one. The second time is right here in Luke chapter 19. Jesus weeps as a prophet pronouncing judgment, he weeps. Notice again the contested term is peace. You did not know the things that make for peace. The people have missed the things that will make for peace, and worse yet, they did not recognize this visitation from God. Now look at the contents of Jesus' prophetic judgment. These are hard words from Jesus. Why does Jesus declare so definitive a judgment and what does it mean? Well, we see glimpses of why in the Palm Sunday account we just read. The things that make for peace in the eyes of many of Jesus' companions and compatriots, those who welcomed Jesus, represented so many things and so many people from Jesus' first century world. Those things that made for peace could be violent revolution and overthrowing the Romans. Finally, a call to arms. This is why there was such fervor at welcoming Jesus. The people are hoping that this is the spark that lights the powder keg. Now, from a pure military strength standpoint, the various factions of Jewish freedom fighters in the first century stand absolutely no chance against the Roman legions. But remember, we're dealing with a storied imagination. What is the founding story of Jesus' people? It's God throwing the armies of Pharaoh into the Red Sea. They didn't stand a chance there either, yet God made a way through the water. And then they progressed to the promised land as God fights their battles on their behalf. Their story is laden with God overcoming insurmountable odds to declare who he is. And this is the story that's driving much of their imagination to say, finally, again, there's a king like David or a prophet like Elijah who's gonna deal with the pagans and get rid of our oppressors. We see Jesus pronouncing judgment on this way of making for peace. And we see that Jesus is up to something quite different. But do his judgments come to fruition? These things that Jesus says in Luke 19, do they come to pass? Now, biblical prophecy is not this binary telling of the future. That is an immature posture towards biblical prophecy. But we see that Jesus is imparting this declaration of judgment upon the city of Jerusalem. This is somewhere around 33 AD, depending on your calendar, maybe 30 A.D. In 70 AD, because of revolutionary zeal from within the city of Jerusalem, the Romans would finally say, Hey, you know what? We've had enough of this. We've had enough of you guys telling yourselves you're the one true people, the one true God. We've had enough of you guys being insubordinate and insolent, and we are coming and we are laying waste to your city. And they do exactly that. The Jewish historian Josephus records in Antiquities, in Book 6, that the destruction of Jerusalem, and it is a harrowing account. I'm going to read for you one of the tamer bits of it. Josephus writes Thus did the miseries of Jerusalem grow worse and worse every day. And the seditious were still more irritated by the calamities they were under. Even while the famine preyed upon themselves. themselves, after it had preyed upon the people. And indeed, the multitude of carcasses that lay in heaps upon one another was a horrible sight, and produced a pestilential stench, and truly the very view itself of the country was a melancholy thing. For those places which were adorned with trees and pleasant gardens were now become a desolate country in every way, and its trees were all cut down, nor could any foreigner that had formerly seen Judea and the most beautiful suburbs of the city now saw it as a desert, but lament and mourn sadly at so great a change, for the war had laid all the signs of beauty to waste. Now Josephus has his own aims in recording his history as he does. But he records the campaign of the general Titus and the Roman legions in response to broader Jewish attempts to revolt and overthrow their Roman rule. And we see that this is the final destruction of the Second Temple. This fundamentally changes the Jewish religion. And Jesus foretells this and foretells what is to come of his countrymen and countrywomen, and he weeps. From the vantage of this story, I want to draw our attention to two implications for our lives today, one collective and one individual. And then I want to point us to the beauty of Jesus in the place of our misplaced expectations, our own misdeeds, our own mischaracterizations of God. First, collectively, so this is a you all, this is an us, this is a we. Jesus weeps at the way of waging peace by warfare and nationalist zeal. Jesus will not become the mascot for our political ambitions, and we as Christians in America should reject any attempts at co-opting the Prince of Peace for agendas of warfare and destruction. A question that I've wrestled with frequently throughout my own life, and I know I'm not alone in this, not alone in church history for sure, is how do I read the scriptures with its unabashed accountings of Jesus not taking up arms, not defending himself, turning the other cheek, not storming earth with legions of angel armies, but giving himself over to death, even death on a cross. This is what we see when we look at Jesus. And then there's other places in the Bible where it seems like God is the primary agent of warfare and destruction. How do you square those two things? And I'm not here to introduce a broad and bottomless theological well or philosophical treatise this morning. I simply want to say it's okay for you to ask the question. And often through the course of the questions is where you find that God is drawing you to Himself. But I also want to remind us that the scriptures tell us very plainly that when we look at the Bible, when we look at Jesus, we see the fullest glimpse of God that we are able to see. Hebrews 1. In the past God has spoken many times, in many places, in many ways, but now he has spoken fully and finally in his Son, who is the exact representation of his being. John 1. The word of God became flesh. We have seen his glory, as though the glory of one, of the Father's only Son. When we look at Jesus, we see the revelation of God. And that should color the way that we read the story and the scriptures. And to speak very plainly to our political context here in America, if we're convinced that God is on our side, and this means death to those we have deemed enemies, we should seriously consider both the tears of Jesus and the judgment of Jesus. Jesus weeps at the destruction and desolation from our misplaced expectations. And it's always the children who suffer. Jesus points that out. And he sets his face against us using the name of God in vain and to rubber stamp our own political agendas. God is not mocked. We reap what we sow, and if we sow seeds of bitterness, contempt, and hatred for others, we will reap thorns and thistles. Our collective call as a people is to be a people of peace. Blessed are the peacemakers. Now the implications of that are quite difficult. But that is our call to be like our Heavenly Father. Second, individually. Now, that kind of statement is okay, you could be like, whoa, okay, I don't really have much power or authority over these things. I don't want to be that way, that's fine. But these texts also meet us at an individual level. Transposing this from a collective social judgment of Israel's leaders to a confrontation with the way we try to make our own cisterns of peace. What are things that in your mind make for peace? And how might this be Jesus subtly saying to you, I am different than you expect, I am up to more than you expect, it is better than you would ever ask for, but it will be different. This Palm Sunday account tells us we don't even know what peace is, and yet we churn up all this energy trying to create it and protect it for ourselves. Peace is the presence of the king and the culture of the kingdom. It is a death to our visions of God, our ambitions, our hunting for pleasure and self-fulfillment, and a yielding to his way. Where we find, incidentally, things like peace and life to the full. Our palm branches of welcome, when we think that God is going to do everything we want him to do, turn out to be fair weather fronds, if God will simply show us how he is reorienting our expectations. Each of the gospel writers does something brilliant but subtle. They set up the crowd as a character in the story. We tend to think of characters as individuals, but they have this mass, this collective mob. And the character devolution that happens from the blessings of Palm Sunday to the cursing of Good Friday should never cease to jar us or confront us. And we read this story wrongly and poorly if we ever put ourselves in any position other than that of the crowd. Who on Palm Sunday, as Jesus seems to be up to everything we want him to be up to, blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. And then as soon as it becomes apparent that he's doing something quite different, he saved others. Why can't he save himself? If you're really the Son of God, come down from there. It's this crowd that forms a primary character in the story. Which leads us to Jesus. Ecclesia, the point is not about our place, even our rightful place amongst the crowd. The point is Jesus' place. Where is Jesus in the midst of all of this? In Luke chapter 9, it says that Jesus set his face towards Jerusalem. Luke is drawing out this long pilgriming account of Jesus making his way to the very center of the place where everything is going to confront him, and everything will be laid upon his shoulders. And Luke 9 tells us that Jesus resolutely, some translations say it, set his face like flint, that he is fixed on going to the place where he will be confronted by the darkness of the world. That is where he is going. The place where judgment resides, the place where darkness abides. Jesus is going there. And we see how Jesus rides into the midst of misplaced expectations, and what he knows will ultimately be misunderstanding of him that leads to disillusionment and denial amongst his closest friends, and outright destructive hatred and cursing amongst his opponents. Jesus doesn't stay in the glory of heaven. He doesn't isolate himself with comfort or protect himself with power. No, he rides right into the middle of all of our brokenness. Jesus, like the prophets of old, is not a voice lobbying condemnation from outside. He is a prophet who suffers amongst and with and ultimately for his people. Jesus' tears over Jerusalem are not the tears of a far-flung despot or a god in a high-rise apartment on Mount Olympus. Jesus is God with us, God for us. And the tears that water the very soil that he cries upon will in forty something years be stained with the blood of his compatriots. Jesus weeps over this reality. The good news for us today, Ecclesia, is that God does not shout from the heavens. He doesn't hurl lightning bolts of condemnation. He comes to bear the judgment that is due to our world. And to carry it upon his very shoulders. They will set up ramparts around Jesus. They will hem him in on every side. They will crush him to the ground. They will not leave one stone upon another, and yet the stone that the builders rejected will become the cornerstone. Because Jesus loves us. His judgment is not just illumination of our brokenness and our waywardness and the way we are curved in upon ourselves. Jesus' love at one time illuminates the darkness that is within us and invites us to receive the grace and the mercy and the healing of his forgiveness. And this is the message of Palm Sunday. Jesus could have stayed outside of Jerusalem. He could have found a comfortable place outside the city. But where his people are held in bondage, where they are captive to lies, where they are broken and desolate and heavy laden, that's where Jesus goes. And whether we welcome him with shouts of adulation or we curse him as we will on the cross, Jesus is up to something far more than we could ever ask or imagine. We pray, come Holy Spirit. God, as we immerse ourselves in this story anew, Lord, would you meet us? God, collectively, Lord, would you help us to be a people of peace, Lord? The implications of that, it's a nice thing to say. Even your words used as slogans and stereotypes sound nice, but unless they mean something, unless they cost us something in our love for one another, Lord, they're ultimately empty. So God, we ask that you would make us a people of actual peace. And where that means for reckoning with the past, God, where that means for allowing our stereotyped assumptions to be put down, or for us who are used to talking to be the ones listening, God, make that possible among us by the power of your spirit. And God, on an individual level. Lord, for many of us, if we close our eyes and conjure up an image of a God who judges, it immediately scares us or even makes us judgmental of you, God. But God, could we somehow, in the wonder of this story, in the power of your spirit, behold that your judgments, even your judgments that illuminate the dark in us, God, are good. They're drawing us towards life, drawing us toward the light of who you are. Or do you say in John that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it? But you also say that when the light comes, that the humans show that we love darkness more than light. So, God, would you unfurl our grasps, Lord, the way we cling so tightly to lies? Whether lies that we think serve us or lies that we think define us. God, would you just, by your power, God, unclinch our fists on these lies that we have held on to, some of them we have loved, God? Show us a glimpse of your face. The God who weeps at the desolation of his people. The God who rides right into the middle of all the backwardness and upside downness, Lord, to right side up it by the power of your love, God. Would you do that here again in our midst? Because you are the king. Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in the highest heaven, Lord. You that is what you have in your hands, God. So would you disillusion our misplaced expectations, God, and meet us by the power of your presence and the power of your spirit, God? Tell us the truth about who we are. And help us to see you, Jesus. And help us to confess, God. The forgiveness of sins, the fullness of mercy, the beauty of your grace, God. We receive it here today. We pray these things, we ask these things, we declare these things in your name, in the name of the Father and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, we pray. Amen. Equosia, in that same posture of prayer and response, the worship team is going to lead us before we come to the table. And just as you're present, perhaps in a way that's unique throughout the week, to God's presence, his voice to you, just allow him to minister to you. We believe that he does this. He's confirming words in your heart, that he's confronting things in your life, and all of that is gentle, gentle. He wants to radically change you. He does. But he is a gifted, gifted gardener, a gifted surgeon. He will extract the things from your life that will not grow, that lead to death, is planting good things in you. Receive it here today. See him for who he is. Let's worship together. You can stand as we allow the Holy Spirit to minister, in just a moment we'll come to the table.