I. The Man Who Gave Up Power 00:00
There’s a lot to absorb in this service, and so I’m [giving] a commentary on all that’s going on. I’m not going to preach some long-winded teaching on the nature of crucifixion, or even the nature of God’s kingdom. I’m just going to talk about what Jesus did for us in Holy Week, and that’s really what we’re focused on in this service.
Some people say that George Washington is the greatest man who has ever lived. Do you know why they say that? Because out of all of the conquering generals in history, he’s the only one who peacefully gave up the power he wielded. He had, at the time, overthrown an empire the likes of which the world had never known: a little island that had conquered the world. Britain was a powerhouse, and people were absolutely shocked that this American revolutionary force could overthrow their leaders. And yet at that time George Washington laid down that power and gave it back to the early formers of our government. It’s an impressive story, but it really is an echo of George Washington’s faith in this Jesus. He was just doing what his Savior did.
II. A King on a Donkey 01:16
Because you see Jesus on Palm Sunday, and it’s the same imagery. He’s coming in as a conquering King, but from the beginning he subverts our expectations. He doesn’t come in astride a great white stallion, as you might even get from Revelation. It’s not an inappropriate image for Jesus, because in Revelation we see him riding a white horse, conquering (Rev 19.11). It’s actually true, in some symbolic way, that Jesus is the conquering King. But in order to subvert the desire and striving for power that we struggle with in this world, he came instead on a young donkey.
I mean, the absurdity of it is clear. In fact, do you know who else rides a donkey in this ancient time? The god of wine, Silenus. This guy, who’s a drunk, is riding his donkey around in mythological times and falling off. It’s absurd. We accept it; we’re like, “Oh, look at Jesus, majestic, coming in on the donkey.” That’s not what people would have thought. The Roman conquerors would have laughed at the idea of a conquering King coming in on a donkey.
III. Hosanna and Crucify Him 02:34
And so the image we see of what’s happening on Palm Sunday is that even as he’s accepting their words of praise and acclamation, he is subverting the idea that he’s going to come in and grab all the power for himself.
And so when we look at this: on Palm Sunday you’re not allowed to hang out in the acclamations, the hosannas, the “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” When they wrote the liturgy, they could have left it that way, because we have a Good Friday service, we have a Maundy Thursday service. We could have just said, “Today is a day to honor Christ as King.” But the people who wrote this liturgy that we get to participate in knew that you cannot have the Palm Sunday celebration without the Good Friday crucifixion. Otherwise you’ll get the wrong message. The message would be, “Ride in like a king: that’s what it means to follow Jesus.” Instead we’re forced to reckon with the reality that we, the crowd who welcome our King with “Hosanna,” are the same crowd who say, “Crucify him”; that we don’t get to revel in the triumph of power, but actually we have to embrace the weakness of the cross.
And so when we look at this, it’s truly the center of everything we believe. Holy Week is such a special time, and I love the fact that we celebrate it every year, because every year we forget to focus on the crucified God. What I mean by that is, looking at my own life, I don’t live like my model is a man who rejected power and submitted himself to humiliation and death. In fact, I live a lot more like all those other conquering generals, looking for ways to establish my kingdom on earth.
And so when we get to this, we always have to remember this beautiful paradox that shows Jesus’ coronation. His crowning as king is by insolent soldiers who are mocking him and shoving a crown of thorns on his head. Do you want success in the Christian life? It looks a heck of a lot like that. I want that success, but man, do I not want that success. It sounds good: “I’ll die with you, Jesus,” like the disciples. And then he gets arrested, and where are his disciples? Denying him, running from him, hiding from him. I mean, Peter gets a bad rap because he’s there and denies him. At least he was there.
IV. Take Up Your Cross 04:54
So all of this brings us to the center of our faith: a crucified Jesus. Now, I do want to say one thing: we only talk about the cross in light of the resurrection. The cross is stupid if Jesus didn’t rise from the dead. It’s the dumbest thing anybody’s ever done if we don’t have the resurrection. Because just dying to make a statement is dumb. But dying for a resurrecting God is life everlasting.
In fact, each one of us is called to make that same choice: to die to ourselves, to take up our cross and follow him. That’s why Jesus says, in Matthew 16, verse 24:
24 Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Matt 16.24–25
He warned them: this is how you live the life. In fact, I want you to know today that it is the only way. There actually isn’t another way for you to live your life with Jesus than the way of the cross. Now, you can absolutely reject Jesus. You have the freedom to do so. But it’s either reject Jesus or die. Granted, rejecting Jesus, as he says… What does he say? “Whoever would save his life” (you’re going to reject the way of the cross) “will lose it.” The math is pretty dismal on that side of the equation. But if you’re willing to die, you get your life.
All of this is the center of what Palm Sunday is all about, because here’s the point: you live your entire life and die either way. On one side, you can live your life pouring out your life for the God who saves. On the other side, you can live your life building your own kingdom and realize at the end that the entire time you were a living sacrifice to an insignificant altar and a false god. It’s really the same thing. Your whole life is a sacrifice. It’s just: are you sacrificing to one god, the god of evil, death, pain, destruction? Or are you sacrificing to the God who came that we might have life, and life abundantly (John 10.10)?
V. Equality with God 07:32
How can we live this way? How can we live like Jesus? Well, the New Testament explains what’s going on on Palm Sunday. It says, in Philippians 2, beginning in verse 5:
5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. Phil 2.5–6
This is the big fight we fight as we walk through our life. Like I said, throughout the rest of the year I tend to forget that I’m supposed to be serving the crucified God. I tend to try to build my own kingdom. The fight I’m having is that something in me thinks that equality with God is something to be grasped.
It’s this parallel. The mind of Christ is that “though he was in the form of God” (and what are we? We’re made in the image and form of God), he “did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.” So the only one who is actually worthy of making himself God (that’s not even the right words, because he was God), even he poured himself out, emptied himself, and came and humbled himself to walk among us.
And yet the classic struggle, the fall: what does the serpent say to Eve, at the beginning of sin? If you eat this fruit, what will happen? You will be like God (Gen 3.5). Every time we sin, that’s what we’re doing. We’re denying the crucified Christ, and we’re grasping to be like God.
I’ll explain with a couple of examples. The lie of temptation is that the thing you shouldn’t do will be worth it, or you can get away with it. Basically, the lie of temptation is “God’s wrong.” When you know you shouldn’t do something and you do it anyway, what you’re saying is, “God’s wrong.” Because God tells us temptation and sin lead to death. If we take him seriously, then we can’t convince ourselves that he is wrong. Unfortunately, we are pretty strong-willed individuals. We are great people, full of our own opinions and desires.
In fact, okay, the easiest example I can come up with, and I use it often, is food. Food’s easy, because we all understand it to some extent. Some sins are particular; food feels pretty universal. When you’re tempted to eat that fifth slice of pizza, something is happening in your brain. And you may wonder how you got to number five without having this problem. Well, okay, that’s the other problem, where we ignore what God says; there’s that whole “blissfully unaware of our sin.” This is when you know you should not eat that fifth slice of pizza, but something in you says, “You know what? It will be worth the experience, and I can get away with it.” And then you’re 250 pounds (being very vulnerable here), and you think, “I did not get away with that fifth slice of pizza,” or the other ones.
So think about it. I am not at all saying everybody should go on a diet. But I’m saying, when you’re convicted (“Look, this is gluttony, this is sin, don’t do it”), all you’re saying if you do it is, “I know better than God.” And our God, Jesus, emptied himself and didn’t grasp his own Godhood, to show us how to be human, how to be truly human, the way God made us.
VI. He Emptied Himself 11:14
How about the lie of anxiety? Anxiety is: “We need to be in control. God is not good enough. He is not in control enough. We’ve got to make it happen.” It’s the same thing: I want to be like God. I want to control the variables in my life. But what did Jesus do instead? We’re told, in Philippians 2:7:
7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Phil 2.7–8
It is absolute insanity, and you can’t write a better story than that: that God, Jesus, the only one worthy of all glory and honor and praise, instead came so that he could be spit upon and killed through a torturous death, where he’s rejected by everyone. And he goes, “Come with me. Take up your cross and follow me,” because of the resurrection.
VII. Inferior Altars and False Gods 12:24
All of this is the Lent message. The Lent message is: come to the cross. The enemy is constantly whispering in our ears, “You will be like God. Do this, do this.” But instead, like Father Jim preached last week, we have to remember: to obey God is to disobey ourselves. And that’s what Lent’s all about. And the writer of Hebrews helpfully reminds us:
4 In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. Heb 12.4
So you’re going through and you’re thinking about Palm Sunday, and we’re going through this part where the person Jesus, who is the only rightful King of the whole world, when people were going to crown him King (the Jews were ready; they’re like, “This is our Messiah, this is our King”), he said, “No, no, my kingdom is not of this world. But in fact I will embrace the coronation of death in obedience to my Father, that you might have life and life everlasting.”
In the midst of that, the one who shed blood to resist sinning invites us to look at our sins and to say, “What can I let go of?” That’s why we have Lent. We’ve got these things, our false gods. You might give up social media. I’m calling these the altars to the false gods in our life. Social media: it’s an altar to vanity, pride. Alcohol, food, gaming, television, Amazon: all of these are false altars to the gods of gluttony, lust, greed, envy, anger, sloth, pride. At some point, when you’re reading that list, you can’t just think of it as a category. You have to own it. That was the whole story of the brazen serpent that we did a few weeks ago: you actually have to look. “Where am I falling short?” Those are the deadly sins. In fact, those are our inferior altars, our false gods.
VIII. The Clearest Revelation of Who God Is 14:50
And in the midst of all of this, at the center of Lent, as we make our way on this journey to the cross, we look up and we see Jesus in the passion narrative rejecting everything that would serve himself. We’re told again and again: “If I were to call my soldiers, then they would come and fight and free me. But my kingdom is not of this world” (John 18.36). Or the times where Pilate, in another Gospel, says, “Don’t you know I have the power to crucify you or to let you go?” And Jesus goes, “You don’t even have that power, because I am obeying my Father” (John 19.10–11).
And so, in the midst of all of that, we learn the way to be human. In fact, the way to be human is to be like God. And that’s why I have this quote from Brian Zahnd, which says:
“Being disguised under the disfigurement of an ugly crucifixion and death, Christ upon the cross is paradoxically the clearest revelation of who God is.”
Just think about that. All of our journey through Lent to the cross is to figure out who God is, because if you knew, you’d change. The more you know, the more you change. In fact, we’re told that when we see Jesus we will be like him. Why? Because we will see him as he really is (1 John 3.2). At the center of all your struggles and striving is a revelation of the goodness of God: the God who sees you, everything, your worst qualities, your best qualities, embraces you while you’re in your sin, and takes it all on himself and says, “Come with me, through the cross, to resurrection.”
IX. Looking to Jesus 16:03
So as we’re going through the midst of this Holy Week, and as we head toward Good Friday, my big invitation to you is: look back on your Lent, good, bad, ugly, whatever it was. This is your moment to head to the cross and to encounter God, the God who is willing to suffer and die a shameful death, that he might know you and you might know him. Let the reality of that change you this week.
Maybe read the passion narrative a few times. Go to any of the Gospels, flip toward the end. If he’s raised from the dead already, you’ve gone too far; a couple of pages before, you’ll find it. And read the stories of how God himself laid his life down for you. What was Jesus thinking on that cross? He was thinking of you: the joy that was set before him, the idea that his sacrifice could reunite him with you and transform you into people who are like God. That’s the tragic, wonderful mystery at the heart of Holy Week. And then next Sunday we get to celebrate the reality that Jesus accomplished his task.
So, therefore: Hebrews 12:1–2 has been our theme verse for a little while. We’ve brought it up quite a few times. “Let us also lay aside every weight.” That’s what sin is. It’s a weight holding you back from God. It’s nothing good; it’s just a weight.
1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Heb 12.1–2
Amen.