Summary 

Palm Sunday reveals the tension between what we want from Jesus and what we actually need. When crowds waved palm branches and shouted 'Hosanna,' they were using symbols of political victory, hoping Jesus would establish their earthly kingdom. However, Jesus came not to give them the kingdom they wanted, but the kingdom they needed through His death and resurrection. We often approach Jesus similarly, wanting Him to endorse our plans rather than transform them. The beauty of Palm Sunday lies in Jesus accepting our imperfect, mixed worship while still going to the cross to provide what we truly need - redemption and eternal life in God's kingdom.

Transcript

Let me pray again for us. Lord, we're thankful for your word. And most of all, we're thankful that your word directs us to the Word made flesh, the true God, a true God.
The mystery of our holy religion. God, man, Christ took on flesh for us. He might redeem us.
God, as we just cried out with the crowd, crucify him. And we have cried out with the crowd, Hosanna. Lord, would you help us to see ourselves as not detached from the great story of redemption, but a part of it. That our sin is what drives Jesus to the cross and our redemption is what we have through the empty tomb. God, I pray that we would not be detached this morning.
But just as we heard from many of us the words of your holy scriptures, that our stories would be placed into yours, God, speak to us now. We pray. Draw us evermore into the life of Christ our King. In his name we pray. Amen.
Okay, so I have something to share with you.
This is one of my favorite beer glasses. And some of you years ago saw another one of my favorite beer glasses. I'm going to tell you about that other one and then eventually I'll tell you about this one.
That other one I got was from a trip that I took with my youngest brother, who's now 29, but this was 17 years ago. I was graduating from seminary in St. Louis. He flew out as a 12 year old. My parents put him on a plane from Seattle to St. Louis and. And he went and he spent the last week with me there when I lived in St. Louis, where I lived for four and a half years.
We went to some Cardinals games, we went to City Museum. Tannis, has y' all been there. If you ever. If anyone. This is just some pastoral advice.
If anyone's in St. Louis, go to the city Museum. Back to my sermon.
And then when we left, we drove straight from St. Louis over to the mountains in Colorado. And then we camped at each of the national parks. My brother and I in Utah, and I got one souvenir. And then we made our way up through Crater Lake. We camped at Crater Lake and then up to Seattle.
Crater Lake is the national park in Oregon. I got one souvenir from that trip and it was a beer glass from the Moab Brewery. And what happened, maybe some of you will remember, because I know I've told this story years ago, was that Melissa and I got married. A few years later. We were living in Richmond and we had our first place where we were renting.
And three months into our young, first fragile marriage we only dated three and a half months and were engaged for five, so we barely knew each other a year. That glass fell to the floor of our kitchen and crashed the one glass that I had from my trip with my youngest brother. And I had moved all the way from Seattle to Virginia, away from my family. And I just start bawling and my young bride is looking at me, What's going on? What do I do?
What do I do? But it was my one souvenir from this sweet trip that I had with my brother. It was so much more than a glass.
And y' all know that, right? I mean, so much more. It had so much that it carried with it, so much that it meant beyond just being a glass. We know this. This is not just a random thing of metal that was made into a ring.
This carries with it so much more than just being a metal band. We know that the sounds hate spoken in certain contexts to certain people, with certain tones are so much more than sound, that the sounds of love spoken at the right time can be utterly transformative. So when a crowd gathers outside of Jerusalem and shouts things like Hosanna. Thank you. Thank you, Jay.
You got it. And shouts things like hosanna, it means a lot more than just sounds, right? When a crowd gathers and takes palm branches and waves them and throws them at the feet of somebody entering into the great city, they are not just thinking, man, you know what? This will be a good time. This will be fun.
Why don't we all just grab branches and wave them?
It's got so much more. When they take their cloaks and they throw them down in front of somebody riding in on a donkey, they are not thinking, you know what? Let's play the floor is lava with the donkey. That's not what they're thinking. This means so much more.
Saying something about their hopes and their desires and their thoughts maybe about what Jesus might do for them in the Gospels, in Mark, in Luke and Matthew and John, we often have texts that are inviting the people that are engaging with Jesus and also us, the readers, to ask, what do we think of this Jesus? What do we make of him? Who is he for us? And I think the events of Palm Sunday are sort of doing the same thing. What do we do with.
What do we do with Jesus? What do we make of him?
The telling of the triumphal entry actually is one of those stories that happens in all the Gospels. I've mentioned before that that's something that we should always be attentive to. Important event in some. Well, In John, there's only palm branches that are mentioned, but the others, like the Gospel of Mark that we've been in and the Gospel of Matthew that we just heard from, mention these branches and these cloaks. And so I'm going to talk about these, talk about these, which we've talked about in years past, here and there, in different kinds of ways.
But let's first consider these palm branches. Isn't it kind of fun, y', all, to, like, have something different and to wave them? I think it's fun. I think it's fun to, like, attach it to my guitar and just get a little action with that. I think it's kind of fun to shout Hosanna together.
But, of course, these things have a history, and they have import, they have meaning. They have, of course, a history in our church, but they have a history in our church because they have a history in the text and they have a history behind them because they have a history with the Jewish people. It wasn't just something random that they were doing.
When you join your voice with others shouting things like Hosanna, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, the King, waving branches. It has a certain kind of meaning behind it. Palms were the symbol of victory, and specifically Israel's victory, Israel's national hopes, nationalistic symbol, the bald eagle, the stars and stripes.
You all may know that there are some books that Roman Catholic Bible has that our Bible here does not, though they're very important books. A couple of those are first and Second Maccabees. And part of what's happening in those books is telling the story of the Maccabean revolt. What happened was, because the Seleucids were suppressing the Jewish customs and all that, there's this revolt. And in those books, palms are used in celebration of the restoration of Israel, the restoration of the Jewish temple.
Palms were a way of saying, we fought and we won and we got what we wanted.
Of course, beyond this, actually, I mentioned this in years past, I'm sure I have. The palms were actually stamped onto the Jewish coins that symbolize this time that we won. We won against the Romans. So to wave a palm branch was to say, here's the one that's going to do it again. Here's the one who's going to give us what we want, who's going to establish our desires to bring us our national freedom.
They shouted a part of Psalm 118, Hosanna. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. But actually, occasionally, some of the gospel text adds. Then they say, the King. They add on to it, they wanted Jesus.
And here's part of what I'm saying. They wanted him. As long as he'll give them what they want, he'll restore their kingdom.
And of course, in some ways, it's not like what they wanted was a bad thing.
What was bad about it was that they wanted him to give them what they wanted.
We wave our palm branches, or we did wave our palm branches, and it's fun and we cry our hosannas and all that is good. But part of what we are also saying is that we engage with Jesus in the same way. We are the fickle ones that say, hey, come establish my kingdom. Give us what we want, Jesus. Give us pretty hair or hair.
Give us friends, give us food that we can delight in and jobs that give us meaning, and the spouses of our dreams and kids that listen to us. Give us politicians that can enact the laws that we deem right for our world. Give us what we want, Jesus.
Be our king. Be our king.
A pastor friend once told me this. Everybody is ready to receive Jesus as long as it means a place in the sun, as long as coming to Jesus makes you go, ah.
Everybody wants a Jesus to support what they do and how they think and how they want to live. Everybody wants that Jesus. Everybody wants the cosmic yes man.
Everybody wants the God who says, I'm on your side.
And when we have palm branches and we're waving these brothers and sisters, we are saying we do the very same thing.
We are just like them. Just give us what we want, Jesus. But I said, you know, there's these two things that happen, right? The palm branches and the cloaks. We've talked, of course, about the donkey and all kinds of other things in years past, but the cloaks.
So there's this wild story in Second Kings, chapter nine. It tells about a really bad time in the history of Israel when kings forgot about God and sort of did whatever they wanted. You know, they established their kingdom.
God, I'll use you as long as I get to do my thing. That kind of thing. And they led Israel away from God. And God, through Elisha, one of his servants, anoints Jehu this new king. And when he does this, he tells him that he is going to be specifically a king who brings judgment on Israel.
And as Jehu is anointed for this task of bringing judgment on Israel, we hear this, okay, when? Then in haste, every man of them took his garment and put it under him and they blew the trumpet and proclaimed Jehu's king. Sound familiar? Throw the cloaks down. You're the king.
Cloaks have a history, too. They weren't playing floor is lava with the donkey. They were saying something.
There's a story of the king of Israel being anointed and declared king, and cloaks being put on him. Everybody saying, you're the king.
But for us, what you have to hear is that king was anointed for judgment, to bring judgment upon Israel. So what do we make of that? What do we make about this symbol that evokes the judgment of God? And rather unquestionably, the triumphal entry is the beginning, in a way, of the story of judgment in the gospel Mark that we've been in this spring. The very next story after the triumphal entry is Jesus cursing the fig tree, which is symbolizing Israel and their rejection of God.
In Matthew, the very next story is not the story of the fig tree. That's the one after the next one. In Matthew, the story is of Jesus going into the temple, and what does he do there? Hey, y', all, it sounds. It looks good in here.
Let's have a good time. No, he doesn't. He flips tables, right? What this triumphal entry does is it enters into this very great time of judgment. Judgment of God.
Palms and cloaks.
A do what we want crowd. A crowd that says, jesus, I will take you as long as you can be my king.
And then a symbol of the judgment of God upon the very people of God.
The crowd wanted a king. They wanted a king who would restore what they wanted. They wanted a king who would give them their heart's desires.
They wanted what he would give them. But here's the thing. When you take that with the cloaks, there's a sense in which what is happening is Jesus is saying, I see what you desire. And if you could just put the symbols together in a way, might see that I want to give you something far better.
A king that doesn't want to give them their kingdom, but his. And in order to do that, the king must come in judgment. And here's the thing. Unlike the story of Jehu, where he goes on and assassinates King Joram to help restore order in Israel, here with Jesus, we have this king who brings judgment and the king who bears judgment.
I mean, part of what Jesus is doing is he is bearing or bringing judgment, flipping tables, cursing the tree. But as we go to the story, he's not the one just who brings judgment, but the one who bears the Judgment.
Jesus is the King, not always that we want, but he is the King that we need. And he is specifically the King that we need, because he is the King who brings judgment, and then he bears it himself. And he does this again, not to bring about what we always want, but what we most need. Jesus himself rides into Jerusalem on a donkey, not just to enter in and say, look at this victorious entrance, but to make the journey to the cross. He goes to Calvary to bear the judgment properly of sin, properly of rebellion, properly of the rejection of God.
He bears the judgment that we deserve, that he might bring us not to our kingdoms, but to his kingdom.
Judgment we deserve. He takes upon himself that the kingdom we don't deserve can be given to us.
What I'm suggesting to you is these symbols in some ways are mixed.
Mixed symbols. They're rich and they're deep. But we see their import when we can kind of feel it all together.
I want to tell you a little bit about this glass.
This is also not just a glass.
And if for some reason one of you comes and breaks, I'm going to cry again, Because this glass I got half of my life ago when I went with one of my dearest friends, my oldest friend outside of my family. Known him since I was three, when he and I hitchhiked around Ireland. He's a stocky redhead guy. It was awesome. It was perfect.
And I got this at the Guinness Brewery. If you've gone to that tour, you end at the top where you get to look out over the city and you get a free glass of Guinness. And I bought this one there, you can't even see, but there's a Christmas tree on it.
But it's one of the fond memories of my life with one of my dearest friends. And this dear friend is going through one of, actually, I can say the worst time of his life right now. And so I was looking at this glass and thinking about this sermon, and I was thinking of how mixed this feels, where it brings such deep joy. And also my heart breaks.
And in some ways, I sort of want you to hear your own cries for hosanna and feel how mixed they are. Cry out to the Lord, save us, right? That's what we're saying when we say, hosanna, save us, Lord. And our shouts are mixed heavenly hopes, the kingdom of God, the establishment of our way, our sinful desires.
But here's the wonder, right? Is that zero question. Jesus knew how mixed they were as he entered into Jerusalem that day.
He knew what palm branches meant and what cloaks meant. He knew that their hosannas would soon become crucify him. He knew that. And in the wonder of God's grace, Jesus makes his way not to the throne, but to the cross.
And he does this because the kingdom that you want is not the kingdom that you need.
The kingdom you need is the kingdom of God. And he brings that through his death and the resurrection. And the judgment that he brings is also the judgment that he bears for you.
So go to him. Go to him in your mixed stuff.
Mixed hosannas Jesus goes to the cross for you. Brothers and sisters, let's say this again. Hosanna. Say this after me. Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna. We pray, Lord God, I pray that we would come to you in our mixed stuff, sometimes crying out half heartedly, lord, save us. And half heartedly also, the other half saying, establish my kingdom. And that you would work that through that half hearted, palm waving, hosanna, shouting, cloak throwing, that you would go to the place of the cross for us, that we would know that you went there for us to bear the judgment that we deserve, to give us the kingdom, not the one that we always think we want, but the one we most need.
God, do this, please.
This week, Lord, convict us that it is not just their shouts. Long ago that were mixed, that were tainted, that were distorted by sin, but it is even ours, our sin, that cries out, crucify him.
Show us our sin, Lord, this week. And may the cross loom large. Amen.

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