Radio personality and author Steve Brown tells the following:
Someone sent me a story about the five-year-old boy who was sick on Palm Sunday and had to stay home with a neighbor. When the family returned home carrying palm branches, the boy asked about them. His mother tried to explain Palm Sunday to him, ‘People held them over Jesus’ head as he walked by.’
‘Wouldn’t you know it,’ the boy said, ‘the one Sunday I don’t go, Jesus shows up!’
Amidst the kids lining the aisles waving palm branches and parents scurrying up and down pews with cameras in hand—I guess you could ask yourself, did Jesus show up at my church today? For all of the hoopla, topped off with a 5 point seeker-friendly talk that more or less outlined the moral of the story, “We don’t want to be like the people who cried ‘Hosanna’ but days later shouted ‘Crucify him!’”—can we say that the grace and mercy found in Christ was extended and his righteousness extolled, or was it just another hour of guilt mixed the usual feel better platitudes?
Let’s face it, other than the donkey Jesus rode in on, the message and moment is often times about us.
Kevin DeYoung points out that the moralizing message scores of preachers almost have a built-in tendency to resort to on Palm Sunday, isn’t even based on the facts. DeYoung writes, “This is a popular point preachers like to make, and I’ve probably made it myself: ‘Look at the fickle crowd. They sing songs to him on Sunday and five days later on Friday they want to kill him. How quickly we all turn away.’ But read all four gospel accounts carefully (and check some good commentaries). The excited throng on Palm Sunday was filled with Galilean pilgrims and the larger group of disciples, not the Jerusalem crowd in general (see Luke 19:37; Mark 15:40-41).”
We do real well at beating ourselves up so it’s no wonder the “Don’t be one of those guys” train of thought is so popular (let me say I don’t have problems with acknowledging we’re sinners, that’s a gospel must, but to harp on it is almost as bad). Either way, whether it was the same crowd looking to string up Jesus who were singing his praises not even a week earlier, or not—we shouldn’t turn on Jesus, and we surely shouldn’t be among those looking for his head. Amen. But this isn’t what Palm Sunday is about.
Turn on Jesus or not, he’s going to the cross on behalf of traitors, and that includes you and I.
On the other hand, if DeYoung is correct (and I agree with his point), we could go the polar opposite direction and pat the loyal in the crowd on the back, and it wouldn’t surprise me to hear a preacher do it. (How much of our idolizing ourselves and one another doesn’t come in subtle forms?) Still, Palm Sunday isn’t about making heroes out of sinners saved by grace. We don’t follow Jesus for the applause of others, brass tacks is Jesus alone deserves our applause (it’s always made my skin crawl when we hand out popsicles to each other for following Jesus).
The problem is that either way, the brand of preaching I’m referring to eventually and without fail boils down to moralizing (be it getting stuck on knocking ourselves down or lifting ourselves up)—tirelessly and endlessly harping on all the things we could do better and those things we ought to avoid. And tragically, so many pulpits today are about nothing more.
The Good News concerning Jesus in both instances becomes the quintessential tag along, the hurried invitation to “make a decision for Jesus” at the end of the 5 point seeker-friendly talk—of course, after the weightier and more urgent matters have been tackled (i.e., will-power religion, the pastor’s new haircut, the coffee shop makeover in the lobby, unicorns, etc). If the gospel isn’t of utmost importance it’s inevitably shoved to the side (even such issues as justice and feeding the poor must find their place in the passenger’s seat).
Preachers who reduce Jesus to less than the hero of any story or focus of any message commit gospel treason.
When we merely incriminate or mistakenly exonerate ourselves we’ve landed in a ditch, and a ditch is a ditch. We have missed the opportunity to preach the gospel, the point every story we tell should revolve around—that is if we’re gospel preachers and not entertainers. In both of the scenarios laid out above Palm Sunday becomes about us (and Easter, etc…). But it’s never about us, is it? It’s always about Jesus. Palm Sunday is the glorious and fateful procession of the rightful King, the King come to redeem lost sinners, the King so many missed 2000 years ago and still miss 2000 years later. How do we miss that?
The gospel reality is this, Palm Sunday, just like any other Sunday, is an occasion to lift up Christ Jesus—not another opportunity to pound over and over on the virtues you and I need to work harder to demonstrate, how we must double our efforts to kill the lusts of the flesh, settle it once and for all and re-dedicate our lives (for the 456th time, but for real this time) and so on and so forth. Haven’t we tired of singing our own praises yet (e.g., “I have decided to follow Jesus… no turning back, no turning back”)?
Did we decide? Jesus has quite another opinion (see John 15:16).
It’s another exercise in religious futility every time the church meets and Jesus is nowhere to be found. Admonishing believers to live as believers is one thing but at the expense of leaving Jesus out of the equation is an entirely different thing. How quickly we turn from what Jesus has done, is doing, or is going to do One Day—to what we must do (as if a faith that isn’t grounded in Jesus is of any value).
Although Jesus is certainly making reference to his crucifixion when he says, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”—I’ll go out on a limb and say that now that Jesus has left the preaching to us, it’s only when we lift him up that he shows up, at a church or the local soup kitchen for that matter. The proclamation of who Jesus is and what he has accomplished cannot be replaced, unless that is, you’d rather have a Hollywood production or a “Live for Jesus” pep rally complete with all the bells and whistles.
And you’d just assume not have Jesus himself show up.
Only a fraction of the present body of professing Christians are solidly appropriating the justifying work of Christ in their lives…. In their day-to-day existence they rely on their sanctification for justification…. Few know enough to start each day with a thoroughgoing stand upon Luther’s platform: You are accepted, looking outward in faith and claiming the wholly alien righteousness of Christ as the only ground for acceptance, relaxing in that quality of trust which will produce increasing sanctification as faith is active in love and gratitude.
