I. Watch Closely 00:14
It’s good to have a pause after that reading, where people are moving to their spaces. And hopefully during that pause you were able to sense the gravity of what we’re talking about. What’s going on in this narration is evil beyond belief. We think sometimes, because we’ve heard the stories, because we’ve seen the beautiful cross jewelry, that the cross was this holy religious symbol from the beginning. And no, it was not. One way I’ve heard it described is: instead of watching somebody march to the cross, imagine somebody being marched to an electric chair, and the horror that that contains.
Now, the promise embedded within that, if you pay attention, is that there’s still beauty in what God did with the cross. He actually transformed the cross into the most reproduced image, the most beautiful image in the history of the world. People have been making crosses, and crucifixes with Jesus hanging on the cross. Could you imagine if somebody came up to you and they were wearing an electric chair around their neck? It’s hard for us to imagine. But that’s what happened, through the power of what God was able to do through the story of Jesus.
There’s this image that I love. It’s by a 15th-century painter, and he paints what’s called Scenes of the Passion of Christ. What’s awesome about this painting is the fact that everything that happens in the story is in the painting. In the top right-hand corner you see Jesus entering in triumphantly, riding the donkey. And then in the bottom left-hand corner you see that he’s being mocked and scourged. And you see in the middle he’s being tried by Pilate, and on the right you see him walking the way of the cross, bearing the cross. And then you see him crucified on the hill of Golgotha, and then you see his resurrection. It’s hard to see from this far out, but when you zoom in, you actually see scenes of his resurrection.
And the reason I love this painting so much is because we can’t just focus on one part of the story. The passion of Christ, the cross of Christ, only makes sense in the context of the whole story. And so during Holy Week I want to give you this injunction that I heard recently. We watched two different movies recently that start in almost the same way, where the narrator says, “Watch closely. Pay attention. If you’re not looking, you might miss it.” And that’s the injunction that I want to give to you. We literally just watched these movies in the past week, and it struck me. I was like, “That’s what Holy Week is about.” It’s about pausing in the midst of our busy life and watching closely, paying attention. There’s something being communicated in this chaotic image that I just showed you that we get to walk out in our liturgical elements today and throughout the rest of this week. You don’t want to miss what God is doing in this story. In fact, I think what God will give us is the key to walking in victory and not in defeat.
II. Let This Mind Be in You 03:50
In our New Testament lesson today, in Philippians chapter 2, beginning in verse 5, it says:
5 Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, 7 but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Phil 2.5–8
In layman’s terms: God existed before the foundation of the world. He created all that was. He made man in his image, and he sought throughout all time to bring man into relationship with himself, that he might love them, and that they might glorify him and love him too, that they might be in this relationship. But you know what? Again and again we see in the story of history, man instead turned to their own ways. They killed the prophets, the messengers that God sent to bring man into relationship with him. And in the fullness of time, Jesus (we don’t really understand metaphysically what’s going on) is reigning as God, and yet he came and became enfleshed in the baby Jesus that we celebrate at Christmas, in the incarnation.
I can’t think of a more humbling experience than being God himself and then becoming a man who walks on earth and ends up dying, crucified. It’s about humility. It’s about Jesus thinking differently than we do. Because if I was God, I wouldn’t have come to earth. And he knew he was going to die. It says he was crucified before the foundations of the world (Rev 13.8). He knew that he was coming and would be rejected and tortured and killed, and yet he chose to do so. And I’ll tell you, the secret is this, right at the beginning: “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.” We’re actually called to think like Jesus. We’re called to think in such a way that we would actually choose humility, that we would actually choose the way of obedience that leads to our own death. That’s what we’re being challenged to do today: to think about how Jesus was able to embrace his cross. Because, as we’ve been teaching this whole Lent, what we’re reminding you is that Christianity is about embracing your own cross, your own death.
III. Hosanna 06:08
So we start in Palm Sunday by singing out “Hosanna,” which, if you look up the definition, is a term of adoration, of joy, of praise. It’s a lot like “hallelujah.” Well, we’re not supposed to say that; it’s Lent. Whoopsies. But that’s basically what we say. We say “Hosanna.” We’re glorifying the King, Jesus. But he’s riding a donkey, or the foal of a donkey, not even a full-grown donkey. Why isn’t he riding a war horse? What’s the deal, man? That’s weird. When you’re walking into your victory, you want to be driving the Rolls-Royce, not the Ford Focus. There’s something different going on here. Jesus is doing it differently. Throughout all of history there have been people who’ve marched into the city riding on their beautiful war horse with their sword in their hand. And yet you have Jesus riding on the foal of a donkey, defenseless, being greeted by palm branches, symbols of peace.
Jesus is walking the steps that have been laid out before him in humility. It’s not about him looking good. It’s not about him taking control. It’s about him ceding all of his control, submitting his own will to what God wanted to do. And he knew the words of the prophet that said that the Messiah would come and enter Jerusalem riding on the foal of a donkey (Zech 9.9). He’s walking out the story that’s been written for him, a story of humility and peace.
Then these people, they’re praising him as the Son of David. They’re basically saying, “This is the Messiah. This is the King.” And in the moment, you have to think that Jesus’ disciples, who’ve been walking with him, are like, “Yes! They finally get it! They get it! He is the King. He is the Messiah. He’s going to come, he’s going to take over Jerusalem, he’s going to rule, he’s going to usher in this glorious reign of the kingdom of God.”
But we just walked through this service, and we have no ability to pretend that that’s where the story ends. What Palm Sunday forces you to confront is that the very cheers that called out, “Hosanna, Son of David, King of Israel,” are the same ones that cry out in the passion Gospel, “Crucify him!” Now, does that mean that those cries of “Hosanna” were false and don’t count, that they’re pointless because they just flip? Why do we even do the “Hosanna” thing? Obviously they didn’t mean it. But no. God is actually better than that. Because those cries of “Hosanna” still echoed through eternity, with the eventual second coming of Christ, where we will truly greet him: “Hosanna, Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”
What I’m saying there may be a little complicated, but what I’m saying is that, through participating and bringing Jesus in on the donkey, praising him as their King, they participated with a reality that they did not understand. They participated with something that maybe wasn’t totally real in their life. It was already but not yet. Yes, Jesus is the King. We get to participate in that too, every Palm Sunday, when we sing out “Hosanna.” But there’s still the way of the cross ahead. It’s like our own lives, where we declare often on Sunday, literally every Eucharist, that Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again. We declare the victory, but we still have to walk out the cross. So with the “Hosanna,” they declared the victory. They declared the kingship of Jesus. And you know what? That week he did get crowned King, just in a way that they didn’t think possible, that nobody thought.
IV. What Was Jesus Thinking? 09:43
So if we’re supposed to think the way that Jesus thought, how do we think… how do we think that Jesus thought? This is kind of a complicated sentence. Let me rewrite this. What was Jesus thinking when the crowd he loved called out, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”? What was he thinking when he was standing there listening to the people he came to save say, “Crucify him”? Well, we know part of what Jesus was thinking, because he warned his disciples that when he went to Jerusalem he would be rejected and killed. He knew the word of God. He knew the promise of God. And even when all looked bleak, when everyone turned against him, he held on to the word of God and trusted it. Jesus knew the plan of God, but he still had to walk it out.
V. Peter's Denial 10:54
So we see first Jesus’ rejection at the crowd level: “Crucify him.” Let’s look now a little deeper, at the personal level, when his best friend denied him. We see earlier in the week Jesus is talking to his disciples, and he’s trying to tell them the words that God has given him, the promise that God has given them. And he says, “You will all fall away” (all you disciples, all you followers), “for it says, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.’ But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee” (Mark 14.27–28). So he’s telling them, “I will die, you guys are going to abandon me, and then I’ll be raised again.” It seems really clear to us, but imagine the disciples who are walking this out. At another time Peter tries to tell him, “No, you’re not going to die. What are you talking about, Jesus?” They don’t get what he’s saying, but he’s trying to warn them.
And Peter jumps up and he says, “Even if all these other guys fall away, I won’t abandon you, Jesus.” It’s got to be funny. What are the other disciples thinking? Like, “Who is this fool? Peter’s trying to say he’s better than us.” He’s saying, “Even if those people fall away, I’m going to stick with you to the end.” But Jesus says to him, and to all of us who might have the same thought, to all of us who think, “If we were there, we would have stayed with Jesus; if we were there, we wouldn’t have denied him,” Jesus says, “Truly I tell you, this very night, before the rooster crows twice, you’ll deny me three times.” But Peter says, “No, no, no. If I must die with you, I won’t deny you.” And all the followers said the same (Mark 14.29–31).
But what do we see in the passion narrative? We see Peter deny him. And in certain translations it says he denied him with a curse (Mark 14.71). So imagine what you will, any four-letter expletive that you want to put in there. But he’s saying, “Heck no, I don’t know who Jesus is.” Jesus’ best friend, denying him at his moment of greatest trial.
So first, we’re forced to reconcile with the fact that we would have been one of the crowd calling out, “Crucify him.” And second, we’re not left the comfort of our pride that calls out with Peter, “Even though everyone else falls away, I won’t fall away.”
VI. For It Is Written 13:06
But in this story there’s also a hint of what Jesus is thinking as his best friend and the people he loves deny him, and eventually crucify him. What does he say in here? “You will all fall away, for it is written.” So what does that mean? We heard that same phrase when we were talking about the temptations at the beginning of Lent. It means that Jesus is actually standing on the word of God in the midst of his most difficult circumstance. How was Jesus able to withstand the betrayal of his friends and countrymen? He loved the word of God. He knew the promises of God, and he held on to them. Like we read in the liturgy of the palms out front, in Psalm 118:
21 I will praise You, for You have answered me, and have become my salvation. 22 The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. 23 This was the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes. Ps 118.21–23
That was one of the prayers that Jesus would have prayed his entire life, and he knew from the prophecies that he was the stone that was going to be rejected. But the promise was that it would be the chief cornerstone, and that the Lord would do it. So he’s holding on to these promises (and there are thousands of them like this that Jesus has prayed his whole life, that he has studied in the Scriptures), and he’s holding on to those promises that he will be saved, even though he’s going to be rejected.
VII. Living the Scriptures 14:18
Okay, all right, so he knows the Scripture. But how does that help me? Because I have a scripture on my mirror that tells me, you know, “This is the day the Lord has made; I will rejoice and be glad in it” (Ps 118.24). But I don’t rejoice just knowing the scripture promises of God. I don’t endure suffering gracefully knowing that God will save me. It’s not enough to just know what the Scriptures are. I think we all know that. But Jesus didn’t only know the Scriptures; he also lived the Scriptures.
Remember that we began our Lenten studies, our Lenten sermons, with the study of the temptations of Christ, where he passed the test again and again. And I argue that the temptations of Christ are a nice story, but that happened his entire ministry, where he was constantly tempted to do it his own way, where he was tempted to take his own destiny in his hands and to achieve the promises of God by his own strength. But instead he consistently submitted himself to God. And it may have been sometimes that it was really easy, where God said, “Hey, don’t go to Galilee, go to Nazareth,” or, “Don’t do this, do that,” and he’s like, “Okay, great, I’m with you, God.”
But we also know that he had difficult times. We talked about it as well last week, when Jesus was told that his friend Lazarus was dying, but God told him not to go, not to heal him. You can imagine what would happen. Jesus, who has healed everyone who’s come to him, and they say, “Okay, come heal your best friend,” and God says, “No, no, wait, don’t go.” But as he’s doing this again and again in his life, what happens? And maybe you’ve experienced this some in your life. As he faces these trials and he trusts God, he sees God come through for him. Lazarus died, but he was raised from the dead. And he builds a relationship of trust with God: that if I submit my will to him, he will come through.
That’s what we’re called to do, in the little things and in the big things. But you know what? When you start to follow God’s way, you start to see him coming through for you. You start to see him blessing you, saving you, raising things from the dead that you laid down, raising things up and giving you the promises. Even though there were moments where you thought he’d never show up, he still does. And as you build that history of relationship with God, you build a trust with him. And that’s what Jesus did his whole life. He built such a trust with God that even faced with rejection and death, he still trusted God.
It reminds me of a line in Scripture where they talk about Abraham, one of the fathers of faith, in the Hall of Faith. He was promised a son his whole life, and he’s 100 years old or something when finally he has the son. And then when the son’s seven years old, God says, “Okay, I want you to kill him as a sacrifice to me.” Unbelievable! “How can you tell me to do that, God? That makes no sense.” And yet it says (we’re given a hint) that Abraham followed through with obedience. Of course, we know in the story God stopped his hand and did not let him kill his son, and he said those prophetic words, “I’ll provide the sacrifice,” which refer, of course, to Jesus. But the insight we’re given is that Abraham was willing to walk that out because he believed that even if his son were to die, God would raise him from the dead (Heb 11.19). It’s a depth of trust and faith that only comes when you choose to live your life in relationship with God, in his word.
VIII. My God, My God 18:32
So then, finally, in the midst of Jesus’ darkest hour, he had a foundation that had been formed within him that allowed him to trust God, even on the cross. We see it finally and most powerfully in the last words of Jesus in our passion narrative today: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15.34). What is Jesus saying there? Is he finally giving up hope in the face of the utter rejection and torturous death? Is Jesus saying, “My God, my God, you’ve forsaken me. Where are you?” Yeah, that is what he’s saying. He is feeling the depth of suffering, like when a parent loses their child, like when a perfectly healthy young man wastes away in cancerous death, like when a wife is betrayed by her husband in egregious infidelity. He’s feeling the depth of human suffering, like any of us may be able to imagine.
But in the deepest suffering and betrayal that we experience, we can know that Jesus is right there with us as we cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Where are you? Why are you far from the words of my groaning?” (Ps 22.1). Jesus is right there in our place of darkest pain. And we’re told, even better, that our suffering participates in the actual moment of the cross, when Jesus cries out, “My God, why have you forsaken me?”; that our suffering makes complete what Jesus did on the cross for us (Col 1.24).
But Jesus was crying out in that despair, and he was also affirming the hope of resurrection. Because he could have said anything on the cross to declare his suffering and despair, but he chose to quote Psalm 22. He called out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” But what else does Psalm 22 say? Psalm 22 says more than that. Psalm 22 continues, and he calls out all these reasons: “You can count all my bones,” “The bulls surround me” (Ps 22.12–17). On Maundy Thursday we’ll have a wonderful reading where they stripped the altar, and we entered the despair of the psalm. But there’s more to the words of the psalm than just despair, because then the psalmist cries:
19 But you, O Lord, do not be far off! O you my help, come quickly to my aid! 20 Deliver my soul from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dog! 21 Save me from the mouth of the lion! Ps 22.19–21
And this is where it all changes. It goes from, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Save me! Where are you?” and it switches, and he says, “You have rescued me from the horns of the wild oxen!” (Ps 22.21). The psalmist declares prophetically… He hasn’t been saved yet, but he declares prophetically, “You have saved me.” And from that point on the psalmist declares the goodness of God. He doesn’t stay in his despair, and he says:
24 For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, and he has not hidden his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him. Ps 22.24
So what is Jesus saying when he says, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He’s expressing the deepest pain of human suffering, but he’s never for a minute letting go of the hope of resurrection. It is 100 percent endorsed by Jesus himself for you to come to a place in your life where you look up at God and you say, “Why have you forsaken me? Where are you, God?” That is 100 percent in line with Jesus. But don’t forget the hope that is set before us, the hope of resurrection. He is with you in your suffering, but he’s not going to leave you there. He will not leave you there. Instead, thinking like Jesus is allowing yourself to experience those true human emotions while holding on to the hope of the promises of God.
IX. The Way of Life and Peace 21:56
I’ll say one more time: this doesn’t happen because you heard a great sermon, if the sermon is great. This doesn’t happen because of reading your Bible. This happens because you choose to be in relationship with God day by day, and then you build that trust in that relationship, so that when you get to that point, the lowest point in your life, the most difficult points in your life, you know that he is there with you, and you know that you still have a sure and certain hope.
This is the invitation for Holy Week: to enter the way of Jesus, laying our lives down and embracing our cross, while holding on to the hope of our salvation. As we read earlier: “Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace.” Let us walk in the way of life and peace this Holy Week, and look forward to our resurrection. Amen.