“Waiting for God”

For the past several weeks, we’ve been tracking Jesus’ final week as he taught in the temple. Today we step back in time several days in order to remember his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Just to refresh your memory, Jesus, the Twelve, and the other followers were making their way up from Jericho, up toward Jerusalem, where all were expecting him to establish his earthly kingdom. Remember how James and John had sidled up to him and asked to sit at his right and his left in the kingdom? The earthly kingdom and triumph were on their minds.

Our story picks up with them approaching the suburbs just over the of the Mount of Olives, in the neighborhoods known as Bethany and Bethphage.

Mark 11: 1-11 English Standard Version

1 Now when they drew near to Jerusalem, to Bethphage and Bethany, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples 2 and said to them, "Go into the village in front of you, and immediately as you enter it you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it. 3 If anyone says to you, 'Why are you doing this?' say, 'The Lord has need of it and will send it back here immediately.'" 4 And they went away and found a colt tied at a door outside in the street, and they untied it. 5 And some of those standing there said to them, "What are you doing, untying the colt?" 6 And they told them what Jesus had said, and they let them go. 7 And they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it, and he sat on it. 8 And many spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut from the fields. 9 And those who went before and those who followed were shouting, "Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! 10 Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest!" 11 And he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple. And when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve. †

Reading The Text

Bethany and Bethphage were not so much towns as neighborhoods. Bethany literally means “House of Figs” and Bethphage means “House of Unripe Figs.” As this story comes right before Jesus’ cursing of the fig tree—which bore no fruit at all—it strikes us as ironic. It seems “House of No Figs Whatsoever” would have been a more fitting name for the area.

Jesus sends two disciples ahead to get the pony with very specific instructions in case anyone objects to them borrowing it. “The Lord has need of it,” they are told to say. Now while there were plenty of 20th-century televangelists who became very comfortable with this kind of language, this is the only time this phrase is used in scripture.

The Lord God is totally self-sufficient. He is without need. He doesn’t need us, nor does he need Jerusalem, nor a planet, nor time, nor the cosmos. He doesn’t need our praise, our good works, our money, or our churches—the Lord God is beyond all need, period—yet here, here alone, we hear the one thing The Lord needed: to borrow a colt for a few hours; specifically, a colt that had never been ridden.

Has it ever occurred to you to think of Jesus as a cowboy? Question: I know absolutely nothing about horses and horsing, but wouldn’t an unridden colt or foal have been difficult to sit upon for the first time? The text says the Disciples put their cloaks on the pony—a makeshift saddle, perhaps, but the text says nothing about magic blankets that can break an unridden horse. Other gospels say it was a donkey or a mule, but not Mark. For Mark, it was a colt, a horse. Whatever the case, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on an unbroken colt, perhaps a minor miracle in itself. The fact that it was unridden suggests a dedicated animal with a sacred or sacramental purpose.

Now the people—the great crowd of followers that traveled with Jesus from the beginning of his ministry—lay their cloaks on the road from the Mount of Olives down into the Kidron Valley and up to the city gates, less than a mile in total. This is the red carpet treatment from the humble crowds.

This is a commoner’s parade. Jerusalem and the surrounding areas are packed with tourists for Passover—which was their Christmas, Easter, and Spring Break rolled up into one. Lots of folks see something going on and get into the action. The crowds are doubled and tripled as the public floods the streets to play along.

I imagine it was the zealots among the crowds—the radicals who hated Rome and called for an end to its occupation of their homeland—to be the first to cry out “Hosanna!” which literally means “Save!” but after centuries of use likely carried the overtones of a battle cry. It’s beautiful that the people cry “Save!” to their true Savior, though they really don’t yet know who he is. Furthermore, his name is Yeshua—Joshua—which in the Hebrew means “he saves.”

They cry “Hosanna! Save!” and their cries come from deep within, because they really do need to be saved. True Israel—the people of God who had been delivered from slavery in Egypt and given the Promised Land, who had fallen again and again into idolatry and been forgiven over and over by a loving Lord—this Israel was now again in a kind of slavery, for their homeland belonged to Rome and—like it or not—they served Rome.

The Romans had set up a puppet council of aristocrats called the Sanhedrin, because they knew that the Jewish populace would not tolerate life under a purely Roman rule. The Romans ruled not because they were dumb, but because they were smart. The wealthiest Jews, who stood to lose the most, were put on the Sanhedrin in order to manage Israel. They were willing to obey Rome as long as they could still pretend at local self-rule. Rome knew that the wealthier Jews would not want to risk the loss of life, limb or land because grassroots uprisings could cause the Romans to come in and wipe them out completely; so the temple establishment sold out. They compromised to keep Rome at arms’ length, but the people knew better.

The people knew they were not free. Roman taxation at 30-plus percent was a constant reminder. They were ruled not by puppet-king Herod, nor by the sell-out Sanhedrin council, but by the Gentile dogs of Rome. When they gather in the streets, lay down their cloaks and cry “Hosanna! Save us!” they cry out for literal deliverance, freedom, and the spiritual integrity of Israel.

We Americans should understand this very well. We are a people whose identity is grounded in the principles of liberty, freedom, and self-rule. We too despise tyrants, overlords, and colonizers. The cry for freedom is the heart of American DNA. Even today, we have people who march the streets of our cities crying out for justice. Black Lives Matter, the Women’s March, Pro-Life marches—all are mobilized by the dream that this land, this country, can be ruled in fairness for all. The cry is for equality—not sameness—but equal opportunity and a fair balance of privilege. The people gather, march, and lift up their voices crying, “O Save!” “Hosanna in the highest!” “Peace! Justice!” and this is Palm Sunday—the collective hopes of an oppressed people crying out for a champion to vindicate their thirst for justice and liberty. Thereby, the legitimate hopes, dreams, and expectations of the people were foisted upon Jesus and his humble pony as he approaches the city gates.

But what exactly did the people expect to happen? From what we know of the coming events, we know that their expectations were in vain. They wanted a true champion, a conquering hero who would give them salvation, but on their own terms. They wanted and expected a political savior, an economic savior, one who could depose Rome and re-establish the glorious reign of King David and Solomon. They had no clue of any other kind of plan, any other kind of success or salvation. Even the Twelve, those closest to Jesus, expected this.

All wanted a worldly victory. They believed that Jesus was a prophet from God—even the Messiah—and that at any moment, the skies might open up and armies of angels would come pouring down out of the clouds to wipe out the Romans, rout out the hypocritical sellouts; purify the temple, the city, and all of Israel, and then stand guard at Israel’s borders forever. They expected this to happen. All wanted a worldly victory—a this-worldly victory—and it is no stretch to say that absolutely no one other than Jesus himself had any concept of salvation on any other terms.

But the day ends in anticlimax. No parting clouds, no angelic armies, and no people’s revolution. The text simply says they go in, look around and then decide that it’s getting kinda late, so they go back to Bethany for the night. I suspect the number of supporters among the crowds was diminished on the next day.

What Kingdom?

It’s easy to sympathize with the people of Israel. They believed in Jesus—at least, that he might be the true messiah. They knew that it was God’s will to deliver Jerusalem because the prophets had proclaimed it. They knew Romans did not belong above them, for they were God’s chosen people—but when nothing happens, what are they supposed to think? “Tomorrow, then?” they ask each other as Jesus leaves the city, “Yes, definitely tomorrow, with the angels and all that.”

Our own zeal can be frustrated as easily as that of the Jerusalem crowds. Sometimes we, too, think we see how God is working or think we know what God wants or will do. We get a good idea of what God’s will is from scripture, so we can say things like, “It is clearly God’s will that people live in peace and justice.” We, too, may cry out, “Savior! Complete your business!” “Hosanna in the highest!” expecting the Lord to deliver earthly, political, and economic justice here and now in a very measurable, this-worldly way.

“Dear Lord, please make So-and-so win (or lose) the next election!”

“Father God, give us success with our efforts!”

“Dear Jesus, let this issue be resolved today, here and now!”

Question: Could it be that the main message of Palm Sunday, above all else, is simply patience? If you and I today could speak to those crowds in the Kidron Valley, what would be our advice to them? What would we like to tell them?

“Cry louder! And get your friends and family to join you.”

“Arm up! Prepare yourselves for the grand revolution to overturn Rome!”

No, of course not. I suspect that you, like me, might want to tell them:

“People—you don’t get it—he’s not that kind of Savior!”

“Listen folks: it’s not about what you want; it’s about God’s plan.”

“Be patient. Keep trusting” and so on.

Our warnings to them are warnings to our own ears as well. When we are distraught, eager for positive changes, or otherwise looking for God to be our personal champion in all things this-worldly, we need to remember that God’s plan is sufficient. Our personal judgment of things is neither sufficient nor even very competent. We criticize the world from within the world, but God judges from Heaven—all-knowing, all-seeing, and all-loving. What we would say to those Palm Sunday crowds we need to say to ourselves: God is in charge, don’t be anxious.

We Cry Out

The Palm Sunday crowds were not really saying, “Hooray for God!” so much as “Hooray for solutions to our personal issues!”

So what are our personal issues—yours and mine? How are you wanting to cry out to God this Palm Sunday? Let’s put ourselves in that Jerusalem crowd of 2000 years ago. Can you see the throngs of people—all happy and hopeful—struggling to catch a glimpse of the man on the colt between taller heads and waving branches? What are your hopes for what he will accomplish? What is it you want him to do? What is it about your life that hungers for a true savior?

We’ve got to believe that plenty of those people had no interest whatsoever in politics, economics, or Rome—but they were there because they had heard that Jesus was a healer and healed people with the power of God. Some people shouted “Save!” because they needed God’s healing power, either for themselves or for loved ones. We get that. We get what it means to feel helpless when the doctors’ deliver a negative diagnosis. We cry out for a savior because, despite all the amazing advancements in science and technology, our mother still suffers Alzheimer’s, or our brother has stage-four cancer or our daughter an inoperable affliction that has yet to even be named. We cry out “Hosanna!” because we want a power that heals.

Others in the crowd are just having a hard time getting by in the world. No matter how hard they try, they can’t seem to get ahead or even break even. They are at their wit’s end because their very best is still not good enough. They’ve tried blaming others—parents, society, and the powers that be—but it doesn’t matter; they’re still caught in a world of treading water with all their might only to gasp for every breath. They cry out “Save!” because they need a break—just a little bit of empowerment—and a moment of rest. And yes, this is also about sin—about those who have tried to walk the righteous path but have tripped and fallen so many times they wonder if they’ll be able to get up again. They think to themselves that maybe it’s not worth bothering to walk that path at all—maybe it’s just time to give up and give in. We need a savior who can clear the hurdles that are too high, too numerous, and apparently beyond our power to clear.

What kind of savior are you needing? What weakness or emptiness in your heart cries out for a savior? Are you ready for the Messiah? Of course, we all feel ready for his power but are we ready for God to act on God’s own terms? Are you wanting God to save you but on your own terms? Or, are you willing to accept God’s plan, God’s timing, and salvation on his terms?

Waiting for God

The people had waited a long time for the messiah. Many pretenders had come and gone—some of them, too, were crucified—but the people thought they were ready for Christ. Palm Sunday is their collective announcement that they were ready.

The parade, unfortunately, isn’t for Jesus; it is for themselves.The irony is that they are cheering for a man making way toward a throne that is like an electric chair.

But the news of Palm Sunday is nonetheless good news. Jesus rides into Jerusalem for real. He is the Son of David, the blessed one who comes in the name of the Lord, the lamb headed for slaughter.

He is the Savior, the Messiah.

He has the power to heal—all the power in the world and more.

He clears every hurdle and high bar.

He is the right path—the only right path.

If you are ready for his coming, take heart; he arrives soon—even today.

He is near, he is here and he has a plan.

Trust. Be patient.

He’s still working on us.

Trust. Be patient.

Easter comes soon. †