Our Guy Jesus

Text: Luke 19:28-40 Other texts: Luke 22:14—23:56

It says in the instructions for today for pastors that “a long sermon might not be desirable.” I do, though, want to say a few words about why this Sunday has two names. But I’ll keep it short. Actually, I’ve made the same promise over the past few years, and each sermon comes out about the normal length. But this time, I really mean it.

In the book of Luke, the Gospel we read this year, there are four major stories that unfold in the next seven days. We just heard two of them. The first is Jesus’ grand march into Jerusalem. A time of joy and high expectations. The second is Jesus’ trial and execution. A time of shock, injustice, violence, and death. It does seem crazy—it is a little crazy—that the church should try to force both of these huge events into one Sunday. It is disorienting.

The third of the four stories is what happens in Luke between the palms and the grave. We’ll talk about that in a second. And the fourth of the four stories is Jesus’ surprising rise from the dead and the discovery of his empty tomb. That one we hear on Easter, when we come into this place and say to one another: “He is risen! He is risen indeed.”

In the space of one week we cover material that takes up between a quarter to a half of the Gospels, and in that time we tell each other stories that are the central stories of Christianity.

If you come to church this Thursday and Friday, on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, you find the transition between Palm and Passion a little smoother than if you just hear it all today. But even so, it is hard to reconcile the triumph of the one story with the disappointment—to say the least—of the second story. When we hear these two stories back to back like this, it seems that they are unrelated except in chronology. How can the crucifixion of Jesus have anything at all to do with the earlier march into Jerusalem and the Hosannas? Jesus is great, our hero. Jesus is dead, hung as a criminal.

But the events are related. One does lead to the other. Between one and the other in the Gospel of Luke, in the interlude, so to speak, Jesus solidifies his reputation as an enemy of those in power. His march on Palm Sunday—we should really call it “cloak Sunday” since in Luke the people throw their cloaks, not branches—his march is a sign to the people of Jerusalem—the combination in its day of New York City and Washington, DC—a sign that is scary to those who govern and enforce standards of behavior. And after that, he drives the merchants out of the Temple, and he denounces the scribes (he says essentially: Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in tailor-made suits, and whose words move the financial markets, and get to have the best box seats at the Red Sox games, and eat at the fancy restaurants), and he predicts the destruction of the Temple, the seat of power.

Jesus made people angry. Some people. Jesus was not brought to trial because he was a lovable sort of person. He was brought to trial—and condemned—because he was a law-breaking rabble-rouser, and because he was good at rousing the rabble and therefore scary and threatening.

We are Christians. That means we follow Jesus Christ. Jesus is our guy. We consider what Jesus says and does when we think about the world, and our place in it, and what we should do from day to day and in the long run, and what kind of person we want to be, and what we hope will happen, and how the world could be better than it is. It is not easy having Jesus as our guy, because Jesus was a very brave person, not influenced by fear, and he almost always focused first on what would be good for people—people first—and hardly ever on systems and doctrines. Which got him into lots of trouble. And his disciples, too.

Because we are Christians, we think hard and often about how we stand with Jesus. That is, not what Jesus thinks about us (he thinks we are great; that’s not a problem), but about what Jesus means to us. How does he seem to us. At the moment, do we praise him, thank him, ignore him, deny him, what? (Disciples of Jesus have done all those things.) This question is especially prominent during today, this combined Palm and Passion Sunday, and during these seven days ahead. Where are we in the story? Are we the movers and shakers, or the law-makers, or the law-abiding citizens, or the indifferent crowd? Or are we the rabble, looking to Jesus? It’s the ancient, constant, present question of Holy Week: who is Jesus for us?