Palm Sunday 2026, Rev. Jonathan Warren, Looking Ahead, with Choir singing, Blessed Messiah

Transcript

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Today we celebrate Palm Sunday.

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To prepare our hearts for scripture, let us pray for illumination together. Eternal God, whose words silence the shouts of the mighty. Quiet within us, every voice but your own. Speak to us to the suffering and death of Jesus Christ that by the power of your Holy Spirit we may receive grace to show Christ's love and lives given to your service. Amen. We have a slight change this morning. The scripture reading will be from Philippians 2 verses 3 through 11. It is on page 954 in the pew hymnals. Let us listen to the Word of God. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness, and being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God also highly exalted him and gave him a name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. This is the word of the Lord.

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It comes from Matthew chapter twenty one, beginning with the first verse. Let us listen to the word of God. When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethpage at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied and a colt with her, untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, just say this the Lord needs them, and he will send them immediately. This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying, Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you, humble and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt the foal of a donkey. The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them, and they brought the donkey and the cold and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road, and the crowds that went ahead of him that followed were shouting, Hosanna to the Son of David, Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest heaven. And when he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, Who is this? And the crowds were saying, This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. The other week, when our car battery light went on, I discovered that it was a problem with the alternator. And I remembered when we were in Tennessee 15 years ago, a church member, Howard Shouty, helped me pull out our car's alternator. And then we took it to this machine shop where they fixed the internals for $80. This time I didn't have Howard Shouty with me. The alternator was easier to get to. I watched a few videos. I found out that Rex Battery fixes alternator inerds, and I got it all back together all on the same day. Now, the true test came when I drove it to see if it what I did actually worked. When I first started it, it started sputtering a little bit and then it stalled. And then the next time I started it, I gave it some gas. And it's going. But every time I slow down, if I stopped or yielded, the car started shaking. And I'm a bit nervous when I get the car back to my house. Why would the car just start shaking so much? And I'm thinking, and I'm thinking, what's going on? I decided to check if I really tightened all the nuts and bolts down. A few were loose. So I was hoping that did the trick. If only Howard Chowdy were alive, I'd call him and tell him, and he'd tell me what I did wrong. I finally decided to sleep on it. Try it again in the morning. Next morning, I tried it. And it didn't get any better. Still shaking when I stopped at the stop signs. Why did I try something like this? It's so tricky fixing a car. Just trying to save a few bucks. And now I've got to take it in. While we know the Palm Sunday story very well, I'm convinced the disciples don't know what's going on. I don't think the crowds know what's going on. I don't think the city or the world knows what's going on. There's a lot of history, uh, prophecy, mystery all wrapped up in this big event. When Jesus tells his disciples to go find a donkey, they go. And if the owner questions, they're to tell him the Lord needs it. Now, this might remind the disciples of the prophecy Zechariah 9 9, which says, Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion, shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem, lo, your king comes to you triumphant, and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the full of a donkey. But by the time Jesus asks his disciples to go do these things, they're done asking questions. And they've learned by now they're just not always gonna know. They don't know what's going on. As Jesus mounts the donkey, a crowd starts gathering, and they might be reminded of the old Maccabean festival. About 170 years before Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, Simon Maccabees, the leader of Israel at that time, had finally won independence from Syria. And after Simon led his army and ousted the last of the Syrian stronghold, he entered the city as its sole leader along with his peoples, as they sang praises and waved palm branches. A great enemy had been crushed that day, and the Jews had won their freedom, and Simon decreed that every year on that day there was to be a celebration marking the event in 1 Maccabees 1352. So the fact that the people run to cut palm branches tells us that they are hoping in the Messianic claim. He comes in after this great defeat on a donkey. They want Jesus to be the Messiah. The crowd wants him to take control, to crush the Romans, to liberate the city, to regain independence. Certainly the crowd wants a mighty king to enter like the kings of old, like a King David or Simon Maccabe. They want a king that's full of strength and power, success, greatness. And we discover that the whole city doesn't really know what's going on either. In Matthew 21, 10, it says, when Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in tur turmoil. And the Greek word for turmoil here is as they means to shake, to agitate, to stir up, to rock, to throw in a tremor. This word is used a few other times in Scripture, and every time it's used, it's not talking about turmoil. It literally means the earth and the heaven is shaken, it's agitated, thrown into a tremor. In Matthew 27, 51, it says, at the moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. This is when Jesus dies. And the earth shook. And the rocks were split. And then right after the opening of the sixth seal in Revelation 6, 13, it says, And the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree drops its winter fruit when shaken, assays they by a gale. So if that's what assays they means, then what's really going on Palm Sunday in Matthew 21, 10, when Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was not just in turmoil, the whole city was shaking. It reminds me of that rock and roll song, a whole lot of shaking going on. When Jesus enters Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, it literally shakes things to the core. And the disciples and the crowd and the city and the whole world is forever changed, and nobody knows what's going on. There's a whole lot of shaking going on. I don't know about you, but it feels like lots of times, right now, we don't know what's going on in our world in our world, in our lives. Maybe in our faith. And when things are in flux, it's easy for anxiety and dread to just start spiraling. Seems like every day we turn on the news and everything is in disarray. We discover we're a lot like the crowd in many ways. We're desperate to put someone in charge to fix things. We yearn for change and strength and power, success, wealth. And we think that these things, strength and power, success, wealth, will make things better. Not just in our world, but in our families and in our work, in our own selves. Somehow the world's power and wealth and strength have led to the very same path with more angst and challenges and problems ahead. We're desperately left praying for God to fix our broken lives, our broken world. On Palm Sunday, while everyone doesn't know what's going on, Jesus knows exactly what's happening. And Jesus is literally and figuratively shaking things up. In fact, Matthew gives us a clue by excluding one little part in Zechariah 9.9. That little line about the king being triumphant and victorious is he. It's missing in Matthew. Everyone always thought it had to be a worldly king that would save them, coming into Jerusalem triumphantly and victoriously after a battle, or right before one. But God does not operate the way the world does. And instead, God uses the smallest, the least, the despised, the weakest, and today shakes things, essays they to the core by using humility. One scholar says the image of Jesus riding a donkey encourages us to rethink our assumptions about greatness, leadership, and success. In the gospel story, humility is not weakness. It is the sign of God's presence among his people. Humility turns sacrifice into power, weakness into strength, failure into success. And as we enter Holy Week, we discover humility even turns death into life. Essentially, there's a whole lot of shaking going on. And in the verse we read today, Paul urged the Philippian church and us to imitate Christ's humility. Philippians 2. But in humility regard others as better than yourselves. We're called to let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who emptied himself, taking the form of a slave. He humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Nobody knows what's going on on Palm Sunday. Just as Jesus, the King of heaven and earth, enters the city in humility, God shakes the very foundations of the world, turning weakness and sacrifice and death into power and strength and life. Now, right before I decided to take my car into the shop, I did a quick Google search about how to fix the shaking that was happening in my car. I didn't know what was going on. I decided it was worth a few minute search, and I couldn't believe the fix. Just turn it on and let it idle for 10 minutes. That's it. Could it really be this simple? It needed to relearn how to idle. And I did it. And poof. It stopped shaking. And it got me thinking about this story. This car was shaking. It was it says they, and the solution was to stop doing all the things. And it certainly humbled me. On Palm Sunday, when nobody really gets it or no knows what's going on, God shakes everything up, not with worldly strength and power and might. The only thing that can fix our broken, challenging, and aching world is the humility of Christ. And when our life gets shaken up, when the world around us is in turmoil, allow God's humility to shake things up. Maybe we just need to sit and run the engine. Maybe we need to learn how to be idle. Maybe we need to approach things with Christ-like humility. For our task is to imitate Christ's humility in all that we do. And as we approach Holy Week, allow Jesus' entrance into Jerusalem to shake the very foundations of the way we do things. Imitate Jesus' humility. For God will turn weakness and sacrifice and even death into everlasting strength and love and life. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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