Who Is This?

Scripture Lessons: Psalm 118: 1-2 and 19-29, Matthew 21: 1-11 Sermon Title: Who is this? Preached on April 5, 2020 The Gospel Lesson for today, and the general spirit of this today, Palm Sunday, reminds me of so many movies or books where something happens: a magic lamp is rubbed, a map is discovered, or a spaceship is boarded and it lifts the characters from their normal lives into adventure, hardship, and eventually triumph. For Jesus it was a donkey and not a spaceship. He gets on the donkey and first there’s adventure: a cheering crowd, then hardship, eventually triumph, but it all starts with this donkey. According to the Gospel of Matthew it was both a donkey and a colt. Once he’s on them everything changes. That’s what’s on your bulletin cover. On the cover of your bulletin is painted Jesus’ view as he begins his journey into the city of Jerusalem. He’s standing on the cliff. His next step sets him on a course where everything will change, for him and for the world. Now, because we have heard the story before we all know what awaits him, and considering his fate, knowing he rides toward the Cross, there’s a part of me that wishes he could right now turn around. When I was a kid, I had that same feeling watching this cartoon movie called An American Tail. Do you know that movie? The word “tail,” in the title is a homophone. Someone listening to this sermon just said, “I can’t believe he knows such a big word,” but I do, and I had to do something to redeem myself for using a children’s cartoon as a sermon illustration so I’m using this big word: homophone. In the title it’s spelled “t-a-i-l,” because this movie is about a little mouse who immigrates from Eastern Europe to America in the hopes of escaping the oppressive cats of his homeland. He goes with his family, but on the way across the sea he chases his hat out on the deck during a storm and he’s swept off the boat. He slips through his desperate father mouse’s fingers, and ends up lost at sea. I remember watching this movie as a kid over and over, and each time I watched it I asked: why did he have to chase that stupid hat? But that’s because I knew. Had he known where chasing his hat out onto the ships deck would lead him, maybe he wouldn’t have gone after it in the first place. Movies have to have adventure, so against my advice, the mouse chased the hat and fell overboard, and every Palm Sunday Jesus keeps riding his donkey into Jerusalem even though it is in this city that he will meet his death. What’s different between the mouse in An American Tail and Jesus is that, while the mouse couldn’t have known that chasing his hat out onto the deck would lead to him being swept overboard, atop his donkey Jesus knows. Jesus knows what’s going to happen to him as he rides into Jerusalem, and he goes anyway. He hears the cheers and sees the waving palms, knowing that they’ll soon be shouting, “Crucify him” and yet he goes anyway. He waves to the crowd, knowing that a nail will pierce both his hands, and still he rides on. He felt the gentle breeze on his skin knowing that soon his back would be whipped, his head would be crowned with thorns, and still, onward he goes. He knew you see, and had it been any of us, in knowing we would have turned around. That’s how we are. If we only would have known how challenging the journey we would have turned around. If only we had stopped travel out of China earlier. If only we had started the quarantine sooner. If only we had listened to the experts. If only we heeded the warnings. I wish we had. I wish we had done all those things, but now it’s too late, and as we journey into the unknown moving forward into the future which we cannot avoid, we only face one choice: will we face the future with fear or with faith? Will we accept our new reality or live in denial? Will we adapt or hide? Will we search for someone to blame or will we develop solutions? Will we blame God or will we see God at work? Many in Jerusalem were fearful: let’s just send him back home. Let’s put the genie back in the bottle. Forget about the adventure, they said, though there was no going back. So, When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?” That’s what everyone asks when the unplanned happens. That’s what everyone wants to know when their world turns upside down. Who is this that causes such turmoil when all we want is peace and normalcy? Who is this that gets the crowds so up in arms? Who is this that topples the tables of money changers, gives the blind their sight, raises dead men from the grave, and tells us that a new Kingdom is coming if we only have the eyes to see it? You know who he is already. He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and what he demands of us today is that we see him at work in the midst of one of the great moments of chaos that we’ve seen in a generation. He is the embodiment of Grace, and in the midst of this virus he invites us to recognize that when we are shaped and changed, purified and refined, challenged and broken down it is an invitation to be stronger than we were before. Because it is through adventures that heroes are born. Maybe you remember that the Wizard Gandalf said to Frodo: “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us,” or how Mikey yelled to the Goonies from the tunnel under their hometown: “This is our time.” And sure, I wish we had not been given this time. I wish you High School Seniors were not missing your graduation and prom. That you parents were not facing lay-offs and uncertainty. I wish that we all were not at risk. But my friends, the hero and the villain swim through the same water. Only one can emerge. Only one will rule this day, and I charge you to follow the One whom death cannot conquer like you’ve never followed him before. One way or the other he is going to lead us out of this, and if we walk beside him, he will shape and change us in his image. We will be made better for this, if we chose to see with the eyes of faith rather than fear. We will be closer as families. We will be stronger as a church. We will be more faithful Christians, as truly we are tested. You see, the school tests have been canceled to make room for a real one that our children might learn that they don’t have to go through life being afraid that something bad is going to happen, because all things are work together for good. Know it now. We are enough. We have enough. Because He is enough. “Who is this” Jerusalem asked, urging him to turn around lest everything change. My friends: we know who he is, and he knows who we are. So, let us follow him and be changed forever. Amen.