"Crash!"
We have our own expectations, but God has other plans
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, April 9, 2006
Text: Luke 19:29-48
There is a very moving parable that may have been written as early as the Middle Ages. It is the parable of three trees discussing their future for they knew that their time together is limited, so they discussed what was going to happen to them, and what their vision of the future was. The first tree said, “I hope that when I am finally cut down, I will be turned into a cradle, so I might be able to hold a little child and give it rest and peace.”
The second tree said, “I hope that I will be used to build a big ship that will carry many passengers across the seas, and many people will have enjoyment and refreshment on the oceans because of me.”
The third tree said, “I just want to stay exactly where I am. I want to raise my branches to the heavens and glorify the God that is my creator.”
The three of them agreed with one another.
Finally, it was time for the harvest. The farmer came along and cut down the first tree, saying, “I am going to turn you into a manger.”
The tree objected and said, “I want to be a cradle and hold little children. I don't want to be used as a trough from which animals will eat and drink.”
The farmer built the manger and sold it eventually to an innkeeper in Bethlehem, and the innkeeper put that manger in a barn. Eventually in it lay the child who is the Lord of Life and the Lord of the Universe. A cradle was made out of the manger, and the tree had its wish.
When the second tree was cut down, the farmer decided that he was going to use the wood for a boat. So, he made a little boat and sold it to a fisherman called Simon Peter. Simon Peter settled on the Sea of Galilee with it. The tree objected and said, “I wanted to be part of a big ship, and to take people long distances, and to as on glorious voyages to other continents and islands.”
As Simon Peter used it, it was only a boat. But another man sat in it and taught the people about the word of life and the word of truth, and when this little boat was tossed in the storm, the very man who was aboard it was the man who calmed the storm and reassured the fishermen with him that they would be all right.
When the third tree was cut down, it also objected saying, “I just wanted to stand here and praise my creator.”
The farmer realized that the Romans were short of wood for crosses, so he sold this piece of wood to the Romans. They used it to make a cross and they took this man, and they nailed him to it. The tree cried out and said, “I wanted to glorify God in heaven!” Yet, through the nailing of that man to that tree, everyone in the whole world would know that God loved them.
The child who was in the manger became the man who was on the boat, who became the one crucified on the tree to reveal the wonder of God's love. You see, the lesson is that for those trees, having to be cut down meant that they could be built up to a greater standard. The Lord of life, the King of the universe would touch them. More than that, their expectation of what God was going to do through them was radically changed, for God had other, greater plans than the trees could ever have imagined.
My friends, on Palm Sunday when we have exactly that same clash of expectations. The trees wanted to be one thing, but God had something else in mind for them. The people of Jerusalem had in mind one thing, but God had something else planned for them. What it led to was a CRASH! A collision of two expectations! You see, the people of Jerusalem had very clear expectations of what they wanted. They were excited about the day of Passover, but they had also been waiting for a long time for the wonderful day when they would receive their Messiah. They expected the Messiah to ride into Jerusalem and conquer. The Messiah would come along and remove the Roman oppressors and re-establish the throne of David.
More than that, they believed that the temple, which was at the centre of Jerusalem, would be the point from which the Messiah would rule. This would be the new parliament, the new sect of authority. As in the Maccabean revolt 200 years earlier, Israel would rise up against its oppressors, and would once again be the great and the glorious nation of God, and the Messiah would reign. So, their expectations were running high. But they were wrong!
There was a time back in my high school days when a friend and I decided to go winter driving through the woods in New Brunswick. If any of you know what those wooded roads are like in central New Brunswick in the middle of January, you will know how treacherous and icy they can be. This was a particularly bright and sunny morning. My friend's car was all “souped-up,” and we knew that we could go quickly: into the bends; drift slightly on the ice; really make a noise; go through the woods; the police wouldn't be there. It would be ecstasy! Our adrenaline was pumping! It was around noon, and as the sun was coming through the trees it alighted on a sign picturing a moose.
We looked at the sign with the moose and thought it was a nice sign. My friend decided that he was going to lay some rubber if he could, so he accelerated and we hit the next bend faster than we had hit the bend before. We were shouting, “Wow! Whoopee! This is fantastic!” We hit the next bend just right, and the sun was shining, it was a beautiful day, and we were going very quickly. We turned a corner and then, mooses - two mooses! Now, I know I should say moose, but I thought they were mooses. They were big mooses! We hit the brakes! I prayed to the Almighty in heaven. We ended up in the ditch, and the two of us got out and looked at each other in amazement. Had neither of us seen the sign that said “MOOSE?” Oh yes, we had seen it. We just wanted to go fast!
The people of Jerusalem had seen the sign. They had seen the warning of a collision and they hadn't read it. They were so caught up in their own momentum, so driven by their own expectations, so passionate about what they believed to be true, that when Jesus came into Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday, they could not see him for who he really was. Even the disciples were caught up in it all. They were ecstatic. They, too, felt the Messiah was coming. The Messiah was their Jesus, the Kingdom would reign, the Temple would be glorified, and the Romans would be out of there.
Then, ! Like a head-on collision, the expectations of the people ran into the expectations of Jesus. The expectations of Jesus and his Kingdom were not those of the people of Jerusalem on that day. He had sent a warning sign. He had sent them signals, but they hadn't seen them, they hadn't heard them and they hadn't heeded them. The people thought that Jesus was a “poseur” - someone who was simply pretending to be the King - and they rejected him. Jesus, in an almost defiant, deliberate mood, tried to show the crowd that they had it wrong. When he rode into Jerusalem, he did so on a donkey, which became a source of controversy with the people, so much so that some of the leaders told the disciples to be quiet about Jesus for fear of igniting passion in the crowds or upsetting the Romans.
Then, Jesus talked about the Temple, this centre of learning, this place where God was going to do great things. He said, “Look at this Temple. It is going to be knocked down. It is going to be isolated, and its ramparts are going to be pushed to one side. The walls will come crumbling down.” Then, to cap it all off, he goes into the Temple and he sees the money changers. He sees people abusing the House of the Lord, and he says, “You have made the house of the Lord into a den of thieves!” ! A head-on collision! They expected a military leader, they expected a royal commander, they expected a great political counterpart?
Harlan Cleveland, who was an assistant secretary in John F. Kennedy's cabinet, once paraphrased on the theory of The Revolution of Rising Expectations. In political science, they call it the J-curve: If expectations are not met, then the people rise up in revolution. Jesus, by not meeting the expectations of the people was starting another revolution. Jesus was showing that the way to the Kingdom of God was not through the increase of the power of the Temple, it was not through the military overthrow of the Romans and it was not to come in triumph and glory. He had come in and met their expectations head-on, and they rejected him, so much so that they said, “We want to kill this man.” They plotted and they schemed to destroy him.
The confrontation between Jesus and the crowd, between Jerusalem and its Saviour, was heading for a CRASH. Only two things could happen: destruction or salvation. The irony is that both occurred. Destruction, because Jesus was crucified. Salvation, because he rose from the dead. This collision, this confrontation, this clash was a powerful symbol of what happens when our expectations get skewed. Jesus had made it abundantly clear. He had set up the signs. He had let them know. Out of love, he had wept over Jerusalem. This is not a Jesus who wanted a head-on collision. This is a Jesus who knew there would be a head-on collision because the expectations simply would not change.
So, what does this say to us? What do we say, if Jesus of Nazareth was walking down our aisle this morning? Would there be a head-on collision between our expectations of the kingdom and his? Possibly. There have always been cultural collisions with our Lord. Just look at all the different documents and books that have been written about Jesus. Have you noticed how all of them seem to come out right before either Christmas or Easter? Very good marketing and timing! That underlines the reasons to re-think Jesus and to question the authenticity and the integrity of the Christian story.
Here is my position on this, and it is very clear: If someone comes to me with a document that was written in the first or the beginning of the second century AD, and if they show me that it is authentic and historical and if it can be traced and rooted, for example, through one of the traditions of the disciples and the apostolic teaching, then I will look at it. I will have an open mind. I will look at it in a scholarly, historical, thoughtful and theological way. However, if you give me a document that was written 325 years after the birth of Jesus and hold it up somehow as an example of what constitutes the truth, then I am more suspicious. There are many people who wrote many documents over those 300 years to promote their own particular theosophy, or outlook on God. They imposed their ideas on the historic person of Jesus for the sake of promoting their own causes. That is why it is fair to say there were many different views very early on in the church. The church was struggling to come to terms with who Jesus was. Most definitely it was!
The early Christians dealt with it in a very responsible manner. The apostle Paul, in writing as early as 63 AD, dealt with some of these groups and some of these cultural, ideological and philosophical traditions. He kept Jesus firmly within the Jewish tradition. Although Jesus had had a head-on collision with the people of Israel, it was nevertheless a collision of people who were serving the same God - Yahweh, the Creator, the maker of the heavens and the earth. This Jesus was the fulfillment of all that the Old Testament had promised, not a deviation from it. That was the teaching of the disciples. That was the teaching of the New Testament. While some of those documents were only finalized by the early part of the second century, they nevertheless sought to tie them to those who were eyewitnesses and willing to die for it. Now show me documents that have come from that source, and I will take you seriously. Otherwise, I am highly, highly, highly skeptical.
It's a CRASH. It is a head-on collision between the Jesus of history and the Jesus of those who crafted him into their own image and their own ideas at a later time. That is why, my friends, I think we always need to be careful to form our expectations of what God can do and what God is like from that which has been revealed and not the other way around. The great preacher Martin Lloyd Jones once said: “It is a fundamental principle in the life and walk of faith that we must always be prepared for the unexpected when we are dealing with God.” The unexpected, in the case of the first Palm Sunday, holds true today.
The unexpected is that the Lord of the universe comes not in a cradle, but in a manger. The Lord of the universe does not ride in a great big ship, but in a boat in Galilee with fishermen. The Lord of the universe does not simply point to heaven and say, “There is the Maker,” but is crucified for the sake of what has been made, in order that his people might come to know their Creator. Jesus came not to overcome the world with the spirit of the world, but to overcome the world with sacrificial love. That is the ! That is the head-on collision. That is what is makes Palm Sunday so powerful!
Jesse Jackson, who is always so quick to spin a yarn, tells the story of his first day in the sixth grade. His new teacher's name was Miss Shelton. She called all the students to order and began to write all these very long words on the blackboard. After a while, there was a bit of a grumbling amongst the students. They thought that she was probably in the wrong class: She should be teaching Grade Nine. What was she doing putting these hard words up? We don't know these words. We are in the wrong class, or she is. Finally, they got a delegation together and of course, Jesse Jackson was the one chosen to speak on behalf of the class. He went up to Miss Shelton and said, “I'm sorry, but I have a real problem here. You have put all these hard words up, Grade Nine words, and I am wondering why, because we are only in Grade Six.”
Miss Shelton replied, “By the time this year is over, you will know what those words mean.” Then, she said something that Jackson says he never forgot. She said, “You see, if you become a governor or if you become a president or if you become a senator or a lawyer or a doctor or a preacher, you will have to know these words, and that is why I am putting them up now, so that by the end of the year, you will have grasped them.”
Jesse Jackson went away from that encounter rather bemused and a little confused because, let's face it, when he was in Grade Six there were no black people running for the Senate or for the Presidency, there were no black members even of the school board in their community, and here he was, in a black school, being told, “If you become President or a lawyer or a preacher…..” This lady really didn't understand!
Years later, when he ran for the presidency of the United States in 1988, he said the one person who he remembered more than any other was Miss Shelton, and the words she had put up on the board. She had held out a vision for him to reach for. She had held out a vision for him to attain. She lifted his expectations. She didn't talk down to him; she talked up to him. She lifted him up. He said, “I have never forgotten that, and I never will!”
My friends, in Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday, Jesus is holding out that vision of lifting up the expectations of the people. Their eyes were focused on all the signs and all the traditions that they had built up around themselves, but he was showing them an alternate vision, an alternate kingdom, to give them new expectations of what God can do. In the end, God can do far more through the Messiah who would give his life than he could through a Messiah who worked with them to take the lives of others. They had to adjust their expectations. CRASH - head-on collision!
I ask you this day: Are your expectations in line with Jesus of Nazareth? Are your expectations of what God can do in keeping with his kingdom and his vision, or are you still just looking down and not seeing the signs and not being prepared, and missing the power of this great and this glorious day? Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.