Great Expectations

Text: Matthew 21:1-11

Other texts: Passion according to Matthew

The sermon traditionally follows a reading from one of the four Gospels. That is because the preacher is supposed to take that his or her starting place. Even when the sermon talks about another of the readings, it is supposed to be influenced by the themes of the Gospel reading. But what are we to make of a day, like today, when there are two Gospel readings?

Grace to you and peace from God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Today is a strange day. It is like two Sundays folded into one. In fact, this Sunday has two names. One Sunday is Palm Sunday. We are in that Sunday now. In that Sunday, we re-enact a joyful march into Jerusalem. The people sing hosannas. They cry out that Jesus is a king and prophet and the fulfillment of prophecy and one who comes in God’s name. The disciples serve him.

The other Sunday is Passion Sunday. We will step into that Sunday in a moment. In fact, we are on the cusp between the two Sundays right this minute. In that Sunday, we hear the drama of the Passion of Christ. The people cry out for his execution by means of crucifixion and mock and torture him, and they call him a blasphemer. His disciples betray him and abandon him.

Why are these two Sundays mashed together like this? One reason is that the church at large decided a few decades ago that since people didn’t pay much attention to Holy Week anymore, they were missing the Passion story, which is what Holy Week is all about. They would hear about the triumph of the palm parade on Sunday. Then the next Sunday, being Easter, they would hear about the resurrection of Christ. But, they would miss everything in between, including the crucifixion, without which Easter does not make much sense. So the church affixed the crucifixion story to the palm story.

Another reason is that it seems like the two stories are actually related. The march into Jerusalem is, in Matthew’s Gospel, the beginning of the march of Jesus to his death. This, especially in Matthew but in all the Gospels, is Jesus’ destiny. By butting the two stories up against one another, we at least see that destiny unfold. What we don’t see is what goes on in the unfolding. I’ll talk more about that in a minute.

But the reason I like best is that by placing the two stories side by side, we are forced to see how desperately people wanted to know, as the story we just heard asked: “Who is this?” Is this the king who will drive out the Romans from Israel? Or is this a criminal, seditious, blasphemous? Is this the world’s savior and liberator? Or is this a man who cannot save himself? Is this the man who speaks for God? Or is this a man who will not even speak for himself?

Matthew’s is a gospel of high expectations. Matthew’s agenda is not to prove Jesus was divine or a healer or a prophet to all peoples, some goals of the other Gospels. Matthew wants to show that Jesus has come to fulfill the promises God made to Israel in scripture. All the Gospels do the same, but Matthew does it more.

So today he quotes Isaiah, and the Psalms, and the prophets. When Jesus comes riding into the city, Matthew says he rides on both a donkey and a colt, which is a literal reading of Zechariah, who wrote: “See, your king comes to you, … gentle and riding on a donkey, a colt, the foal of a donkey.” Yet the prophet was almost certainly writing Hebrew poetry, which uses repetition, not rhyme, for structure. Zechariah probably did not intend the king to straddle two animals at once. That is silly, something Luke and Mark seem to understand better than Matthew.

The people who line the road to Jerusalem expect that Jesus is the king who is to come to free Israel—that is, redeem it—from the occupying Romans and their toadies. The people sing that he is a descendant—son of—David, the greatest of Israel’s kings. He is the one who will restore peace, freedom, and justice—by restoring the nation to its rightful people and power. When we march down the aisles waving branches, we are acting as liberated rebels, welcoming our rebel leader. Singing hosanna! The word means literally “save, please.”

Yet, as we are soon to learn, it comes to nothing. Jesus is captured, tried, executed. The rebellion fizzles out. Jesus does not free Israel, and Rome remains powerful. With the same conviction as we re-enact the joy of Palm Sunday, we have to imagine the disappointment, the despair, of the people on Passion Sunday. This despair, though, does not have its roots in Jesus, but in us. Jesus did not promise to free Israel. We, standing by the roadside with our palms, just expected he would.

Expectation is cruel. It is bound to lead to disappointment. That is because expectations are fantasies of the future that are either met or they are not. If you expect the Red Sox to win the World Series—they either will or they won’t. You take no comfort in a near miss. If does no good to say “They didn’t win the World Series but they did well.” Not if you expected them to win. While I admit the Red Sox are important, if you find unmet expectation in, say, your job or in your relationship, it is much worse.

Since the first Palm Sunday, people have expected things of Jesus. For some, Jesus is not much more than a bundle of things expected. For many, Jesus bears all our longings: for comfort, or safety, or companionship, or liberation, or even victory in battle. For healing, and for justice. Since the time of the original Passion Sunday, people’s expectations have been unmet. I’m not saying that Jesus does not provide and effect much; I’m saying that our expectations of him often say more about us than about Jesus.

Apostle Paul writes that the death of Jesus on the cross was a scandal. Not only horrible, as it was for the many others of his time who were crucified, but inconceivable. Against all expectations and therefore a barrier—a stumbling block, he says—to those who might otherwise follow him. We put attributes and expectations on God, and then reject God when God does not conform to or meet them. Secularists sometimes do this when they argue against religion, but Christians do it too.

Holy Week is an intense time for Christians. A lot of story is crammed into a little space—like two Sundays into one. But it also can be a time to take a closer look at Jesus. Jesus did not go straight from Palm Sunday to Easter, but he did not go straight from Palm Sunday to Good Friday, either. While in Jerusalem, he said a lot of things and did a lot of things that made many people curious, apprehensive, or angry. The powers of the nation did not crucify Jesus because he was a nice guy. They feared and distrusted him and the transformation of the world that he preached about.

For this reason, I encourage you to read the parts of Matthew that we skip over today. That would be from chapter 21 verse 12 through chapter 26 verse 14. At the same time, I’ll be posting a short reflection about some of these stories each day this week, starting tomorrow, on Faith’s site. You can find out more in the bulletin.

The Palm and Passion stories together constitute a story of unmet expectation, but they say nothing about hope. Expectation and hope are two different things altogether. Expectations of others can mislead us, but our hopes are true because they are ours. We can hope for a World Series win in 2011 in spite of all the current evidence. Hope is not wishful thinking, it is deep longing. Expectations are tested, hopes are lived out.

The story of Jesus did not end with the Crucifixion. It did not end with the Resurrection. Or even with the Ascension a few weeks later. Whenever you expect the story of Jesus to be over, it turns out differently. It lived on in the apostles, in the early followers of Christ, and 2000 years later, lives in us. Sustained, as always, by hope for renewed life and a world transformed.