Conspicuously Meek

This sermon was heard at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas on the Sixth Sunday of Lent--Palm Sunday.

Isaiah 50:4-9a
Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29
Philippians 2:5-11
Matthew 21:1-11

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen

What a wild scene we read here. Many of us know this as the “Triumphant Entry.” My bible also calls this the “Spectacular Entry.” It is triumphant; Jesus enters the city of Jerusalem to people laying their cloaks and palms before him crying “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven! This is the prophet Jesus!”

Hosanna—what a wonderfully glorious call, a sort of a “holy hurrah.” But let us not forget what Hosanna truly means: “Lord, we beseech you. Lord we beg of you.”[1]

It is spectacular in the way the crowd is assembled, people who know and people who are curious surround the Messiah. They come from all around to be a part of the scene. People are climbing the trees and cutting down palm branches. Others are taking off their cloaks and spreading them on the road. The city was in turmoil, the simple entry of this one man stirred the pot of Jerusalem. Everything was being shaken up by Jesus’ entry into the city of David.

The history of the Jews is steeped with parades of Kings. In Ancient Israel before the reign of King David, the Philistines had captured the presence of God, the Ark of the Covenant. After the Ark was retaken by the Israelites, dancing, David led its return to Jerusalem with a procession. A parade of 30,000 men accompanied the Ark on its return to Jerusalem.

After a false start, the parade started and once it did, it stopped after six steps so that David could make an offering of an ox and fatted calf. David led the procession of men and Ark wearing a linen ephod dancing with all his might.[2]

In its way, this entry into Jerusalem wasn’t so different from this procession. It wasn’t just spectacular, it was a spectacle; people hanging from the trees, people throwing their clothes everywhere. With two differences, it reminds me of the Kansas City St. Patrick’s Day Parade[3]. The first, and this is just my suspicion, there wasn’t as much beer in Jerusalem as there was on the parade route in KC; and the second, this parade had only one float, a humble man meekly riding a colt.

And that’s the difference here. In the midst of this chaos, in the middle of this spectacle, in the words of the gospel, Jerusalem is shaken by the entry of Jesus coming to fulfill the word of the prophet Zechariah;[4] “he comes humbly mounted on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

Jesus does not come dancing in a tiny little tunic like David with the Ark. Jesus doesn’t lead a procession of 30,000 men. Jesus doesn’t bring the Ark of the Covenant back to Jerusalem; he is the New Covenant coming to Jerusalem.

The people of Jerusalem had long expected the coming of the Messiah, the Christ, the anointed. They expected the coming of the one who would save Israel from its oppression. Egyptian, Babylonian, and now Roman, the people anxiously waited for the one who would save them from their enemies.

They waited for the new David, the one who would ride triumphantly, a warrior king who would come on a great war steed to save the people from their oppressors. They were waiting for someone like Moses who took them from Egypt to the Promised Land. They were waiting for a political leader to restore the nation to its proper place in the land.

But this is not the Messiah who comes to town.

Our reading is different, instead of the box that was the place of the presence of God; Jesus, the true presence of God, comes to Jerusalem. Fully human and fully divine, God comes to town in the person of Jesus Christ. In David’s time, God is returning to Jerusalem as the glorious center of the pageant. In our reading from Matthew, Jesus, the Son of God, the Son of Man, God in flesh on earth, comes to Jerusalem humbly in the middle of a celebration.

Paul tells us about Jesus, and how he walked the earth. Paul tells us that though Jesus was in the form of God he did not regard his equality with God as something to be exploited. He did not take the power at his disposal and use it to subdue the earth and all that inhabits it. Jesus emptied himself, taking the form not of a king but of a slave. He humbled himself to the point of death, even death in the most degrading and humiliating way imaginable, death on a cross.

Yes, Jesus could have come to town in all of his glory and all of his power. On this the last Sunday of Lent he could have exercised all of the power Satan tempted him with in Matthew 4:1-11, our Gospel reading from the First Sunday in Lent. He could have come to town like David, dancing for joy in a linen ephod. He could have ruled forever from the temple in Jerusalem and the people would have rejoiced. His kingdom is not of this world.
This is not how he was called to come into his glory.

Jesus knows his glory is not to be found in the courts of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. He is not one with the scribes and the lawyers. Neither is his place with the Zealots who would conquer Roman rule in war and violence. His kingship is in neither of these places, neither prestige nor force. His place is found in the beatitude, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”

So Jesus comes not in the way the people want or expect. He comes in the way of the prophet, meek and humble, not on a war horse but on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

The bit of this that is upside-down is that the people are hailing the coming of the one who has healed and fed and brought new life to the people of the land in a parade that would have rivaled David’s. Yet, here comes Jesus, not dancing like David, not riding high as a foreign ruler, he comes humbly. He is the one who created the earth coming as one who will inherit it.

He rides humbly into Jerusalem while all around him has all of the revelry of a Kansas City St. Pat’s Day Parade. His meekness is conspicuous in the midst of the carousing that surrounds him.

The Lord our God is doing the same thing the Lord our God has always done. God is in relationship with the people and the creation. But now, God is doing this in a new way, a way the people did not expect. God comes to earth and lives among the creation. Oh, that was expected, how he comes is the new work.

He comes with full power and authority, but he comes emptying himself of these things. He comes as a king, but not as a king of an earthly kingdom. He comes not in glory and ostentation, but humbly and meekly.

In a world that is wrapped in the turmoil of life, we are called to celebrate the coming of the Lord who comes in his way, not the way we impose. We are called not to proclaim the coming of the warrior king; we are called to shout “Hosanna, loud hosanna.” But we are to shout it as the cry of “Lord, we beseech you. Lord, we beg of you.” and not as some sort of “holy hurrah.”

We point to Jesus who comes humbly on the back of a colt, the foal of a donkey. And Jesus points back at us, beckoning us to join him not in the conspicuousness of the festivities, but in the meekness of the beatitudes. Let us join him as the meek who will inherit the earth.

[1] New Interpreters Bible, vol VIII, Keck, Leander, Editor. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995, page 403.
[2] 2Samuel 6
[3] At one time in the 80’s it was said that the Kansas City St. Patrick’s Day Parade was the second largest in the nation. I don’t know whether it was behind the New York or Chicago parade, but to beat either of these cities to be the #2 parade was an accomplishment.
[4] Zechariah 9::9