It Was Already Late, a sermon based on Isaiah 50: 4-9 and Mark 11: 1-11 preached on March 24, 2024

I’ve been listening to the most interesting podcast lately. It’s called The Rest Is History, and recently the two hosts, both English historians with great British accents, have been engaged in a six-part series focused on the sinking of the Titanic. It’s amazing how interested I’ve been, considering how I know the end of the story. I know that the ship is going to sink. Still, I held my breath as the two historians talked about the way the iceberg sounded as it scraped the great ship’s side. I felt the passengers’ panic as water spewed into cabins and stairwells. Knowing what was going to happen to those 1,500 people who drowned, as the great ship approached the iceberg, I so badly wanted the captain to steer around it. Likewise, here we are on Palm Sunday, and tragedy looms on the horizon. Today’s service may feel like a celebration. Today’s hymns have elements of joy and triumph. Hosanna, loud hosanna, the little children sang. But knowing the whole story, those hymns sound to me a little like the music the band played on the deck to keep Titanic’s passengers from panicking. Today, we wave our palm branches. We celebrate as He rides into the city. Only, we already know that the cheering of the crowd will change tune. Soon enough, He’ll be betrayed by Judas. Arrested by soldiers, He’ll be led to a cold cell in chains. Peter will deny Him. Pilate will lead a sham trial. Then, the crown of thorns will be pushed into His brow. His back will be whipped. Nails will pierce His wrists. Upon the Cross, soon enough He’ll die. We read this morning from Mark’s Gospel that it was already late as He rode into Jerusalem. It was too late. Too late to turn around. Too late to chart another course. The iceberg lies ahead and Jesus rides straight for it. As the Prophet said in our first Scripture lesson: He was not rebellious. He did not turn backward. Instead, he gave his back to those who struck him, He offered his cheeks to those who pulled out his beard. Rather than hide his face from insult and spitting, he set his face like flint determined to face what lies ahead. Consider with me on this Palm Sunday the character of our Savior, Jesus, knowing that any mortal ship captain would have tried to avoid it all. On the night the ship sank, the Titanic had two lookouts in the crow’s nest, Frederick Fleet and Reginald Lee. Their job was to help the ship’s captain avoid disaster, which is what I like to do. I like to avoid disaster, and I think about how I might have avoided it even after my ship has sunk, so I think about divorce and how, when I hear that a couple is getting a divorce, I speculate on who did what. I want there to be something that someone did to cause it. I’m looking for the iceberg that they should have steered around. Likewise, I think of terminal illness. When my grandmother suffered a stroke, I remember how my father walked through the weeks prior analyzing each moment for clues and thinking of ways he might have stopped it from happening. “How could I have missed the iceberg?” he asked himself. “Whose fault was it?” he wanted to know. “Was it mine?” This is a human reaction to tragedy. We double up our lookouts in the crow’s nest. We are always looking to the horizon for things that might happen. That’s what keeps me up at night: thinking about how I might I avoid disaster. Late at night, I’m looking out onto the next day, asking myself: Where are the icebergs and how can I steer around them? However, Jesus rides right into the city. He faces the cross, head-on. Why doesn’t He try to avoid it? Why doesn’t He steer around Jerusalem if He knows what’s ahead? It’s because His death is not a mistake. His death is not a disaster. The cross that He faces willingly will bring us our salvation. What that means for us is that He redefines all our tragedies and mistakes by His death on that cross. He saves us from those bad decisions, even the ones that we are afraid will stick to us forever. Back to the Titanic: Bruce Ismay, I learned from my history podcast, was the chairman of the White Star Line, who owned the Titanic. He didn’t die when the ship sank. Instead, he gained a place on a lifeboat and lived to became one of the most hated men in America and Europe. You can imagine why. People needed someone to blame, and so they blamed him. They blamed him for not building the ship strong enough to withstand the iceberg. The blamed him for claiming that the ship was unsinkable when it obviously was not. These accusations stuck to him. They never left his mind, and even in death, his tombstone bears this inscription: “Behold also the ships, which though they be so great, and are driven of fierce winds, yet are they turned about with a very small helm, whither so ever the governor listeth.” That’s a verse from the book of James in the King James Version. In those words, you hear the guilt that kept him up at night. Over and over again, sleep evaded him as he asked himself, “Why did my ship sink?” Consider the inscription on his tombstone and know that even in his death, he regretted that one bad decision. The worst day of his life seems to have defined him forever. This is my fear as well. Maybe it’s yours. I hold on to some of the most embarrassing memories of my life. I still think about the pop-fly that came to me in right field that I dropped. In 9th grade, I got in a fistfight and lost, and I still think about it all these years later. Likewise, I don’t know how many sermons I’ve preached, but the ones I remember most are my worst, and so sometimes I imagine that my tombstone will bear the inscription: Dropped that pop-fly. Never won a fight. At least his sermons were short because they sure weren’t any good. Yet, that won’t be the case. My friends, we will not be defined by the tragedies. We will not spend all eternity living down our mistakes. Whatever we did on our worst days will not be chiseled into our tombstones. Instead, the inscription will be the mark of the cross, for Jesus’ redeeming death washes over us until all our sins are forgiven. The death He died redefines us. The suffering He endured, the sacrifice He made, the tragedy that His road leads to provides us a grace greater than all our sin. My friends, it was already late when He rode into Jerusalem. It was already done. He had set His face like flint for He rode on to save us all, that we be defined not by our worst days, but by His redeeming. Don’t you go around carrying those heavy burdens. Lay them down before the Savior Who bore the cross. Don’t you go through life with regrets any longer. He died that you and I might live. I worry about us, for so often we remember what has already been washed away. We are still carrying that which He has taken from us. Why? Why carry the debt when He has paid the price? Why worry about the icebergs that we hit when His death changes everything? It was already late. It was already done. Halleluiah. Amen.