Luke 19:28-42

After Jesus had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. As he approached Bethphage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying to them,

“Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ tell him, ‘The Lord needs it.’”

Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?”

They replied, “The Lord needs it.” They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and put Jesus on it.

As he went along, people spread their cloaks on the road. When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”

Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!”

“I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”

As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace — but now it is hidden from your eyes.

The irony of Palm Sunday

Think of the irony of what happened Easter Week…

• At the beginning of the week, the crowds around Jesus were shouting “Hosanna”. At the end of the week, they were screaming, “Crucify him!”

• At the beginning of the week, people were waving palm branches in the air. At the end of the week, they were lashing Jesus with a cat-o-nine tails.

• At the beginning of the week, they were throwing their cloaks down in the street under Jesus. At the end of the week, they came for Jesus with swords and clubs under their cloaks.

• At the beginning of the week, it looked for all the world like a coronation was about to happen. At the end of the week, they jammed a crown of thorns on Jesus’ bloody head.

• At the beginning of the week, we find Jesus riding into Jerusalem in triumph. At the end of the week, we see him being driven out of the city with a cross on his shoulders. Driven out to be executed.

I want you to think about that Palm Sunday crowd for a moment. Why did the crowd cheer Jesus? Why did they wave palm branches? Why did they throw their cloaks on the ground under his feet? Why did they welcome Jesus into Jerusalem as a conquering hero?

It was because they expected that Jesus was going to come and solve all their problems; he was going to do what every Jew yearned for: he was going to overthrow the Romans. On Palm Sunday, Jesus embodied all of the Messianic hopes of the Jewish people – that the Messiah would bring Israel back to glory and usher in a golden age of peace and prosperity.

And this Jesus of Nazareth apparently had the power to do it. Many people in the crowd had seen his miracles. They had heard his teaching. They knew that he could heal the sick and feed the hungry. There was great excitement over the fact that he had even raised a man named Lazarus from the dead. What a great Messiah he would make!

So their personal hopes and aspirations made the crowd cry out “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” The word hosanna means roughly, “Save us, now!” The time had come for their deliverance.

And yet, just five days later, many of these same people were yelling, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” Five days later, his disciples, who on Palm Sunday were flushed with excitement at the center of attention, were cowering in fear. Five days later, one of them had betrayed him. One of them had denied him. All the rest but one had abandoned him.

This is why I find it hard to get excited about the Palm Sunday spectacle. I can’t regard this as a good model for praising God. There’s something awfully hollow about praise that has a shelf life of only five days.

Now if a marketing analyst looked at what Jesus did in the days following Palm Sunday, he would probably say that from a marketing perspective, Jesus made two basic mistakes.

1. He failed to capitalize on this Palm Sunday public relations bonanza

2. He failed to build his message around the prime motivator of human behavior; namely, people’s self-interest.

On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, while he was still in the public limelight, Jesus did not do the kind of things that a p.r. consultant would have recommended he do to enhance his popularity ratings in the eyes of the crowd. Indeed, the things he did and the things he said tended to fritter away whatever good feelings the people had for him on Sunday.

Jesus didn’t show any signs of giving the people what they wanted. He didn’t do any spectacular miracles; he didn’t feed them, he didn’t heal anybody, and he certainly didn’t make any move to kick out the Romans.

A successful politician believes that if you give people what they want, they’ll keep voting for you. Well, Jesus didn’t give them what they wanted. So they quit voting for him.

Jesus, as we have seen in earlier weeks, had come to die. That was his mission. That was his purpose. That was the reason for which he had come from heaven to earth. Because he knew that the road to right all wrongs goes straight through the human heart. It leads to a place called Calvary. It leads to the cross.

But that is not what people want to hear. People do not want to hear that their spiritual standing is so bad before God and their lives are so messed up as a result that it is going to take God dying on a cross to fix it.

People want to hear a more positive message. If we could just change our circumstances, if we could just start over, if we could somehow just bootstrap ourselves up, then everything would be all right.

The idolatry of our age – ME mania

When you go into a bookstore like Chapters or Indigo, one of the largest and most prominent sections is the “Self-Help” Section. It is full of books that promise to help you get what you want out of life; whether it be a better body, better relationships, a better career, a better marriage.

Just this week I visited Indigo’s website and took a look at some of the latest books available. These books are currently some of their best sellers…

• Hot Point Fitness: The Revolutionary New Program For Fast And Total Body Transformation

• What’s Holding You Back?: 8 Critical Choices For Women’s Success

• How To Say No Without Feeling Guilty And Say Yes To More Time, More Joy, And What Matters Most To You

• Turning Off The Fat Genes: The Revolutionary Guide To Taking Charge Of The Genes That Control Your Weight

• I’d Rather Laugh: How To Be Happy Even When Life Has Other Plans For You

• Reinventing Yourself With The Duchess Of York: Inspiring Stories And Strategies For Changing Your Weight And Your Life.

• If Success Is A Game, These Are The Rules: Ten Rules For A Fulfilling Career And Life

• The Lazy Person’s Guide To Happiness: Shortcuts To A Happy And Fulfilling Life.

• A Short Guide To A Happy Life

• Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff In Love: Simple Ways To Nurture And Strengthen Your Relationships While Avoiding The Habits That Break Down Your Loving Connections

• Suzanne Somers’ 365 Ways To Change Your Life

• All About Me: Millennium Edition

• Secrets About Life Every Woman Should Know: Ten Principles For Total Spiritual And Emotional Fulfillment

• In The Meantime: Finding Yourself And The Love That You Want.

If this is any indication, then it seems evident that modern Canadians believe that if things are going to get better, I’m going to have to make it happen myself. And so we become self-absorbed, self-centered, self-oriented in the way we approach life and spirituality. It’s “All about Me: Millennium Edition”. And that is the idolatry of our time.

There once was a nymph named Narcissus

Who thought himself very delicious;

So he stared like a fool

At his face in a pool

And his folly today is still with us

People talk about the devastating AIDS epidemic in Africa. We read about the frightening Mad Cow disease and Foot and Mouth disease that are sweeping Europe. But there’s an even more devastating spiritual epidemic that has swept over the world and infected all of us. It’s called ME-mania. It’s a spiritual virus that has only one cure: the Cross. And yet, the virus makes us shrink from the cross; avoid the cross; scorn the cross.

Because it is on the cross that ME has to die.

The Impression of the cross

The image of the Son of God hanging on a cross, dying in agony in order to pay for my sins, is not particularly comforting to my self-esteem. If I understand the Bible correctly, it was my sin and my selfishness that put him there.

And the impression of the cross—the message of self-sacrifice that is so much a part of it, is a total indictment of me.

The cross is an instrument of torture and death. Jesus volunteered to die on that cross, the just for the unjust, to bring me to God.

But if I’m going to avail myself of that tremendous way of grace that Jesus opens up for me, then what needs to die on the cross is not only Jesus, but also me.

In Mark 8, Jesus began to teach his disciples about his impending death. In verse 31 …

He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again.

Notice the language he uses: this must happen; he says it twice:

• the Son of Man must suffer…

• he must be killed

But the interesting thing is that, just three verses later, in verse 34, he says something else must happen…

Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and **take up his cross and follow me.”

If I want to follow Jesus, if I want to truly benefit from what he did for me on the cross, the message is clear: I must deny myself, and just as he did, take up my cross and follow him. The message of the cross is that the problem with ME is ME. And it is only when I am willing to turn my back on ME; when I am willing to crucify ME, that God can heal ME.

This Gospel of the cross is not very ME-tolerant, is it? That’s why it isn’t very popular. It isn’t very “Palm Sunday”.

Did you notice in the passage that we read earlier, that Jesus ended up weeping on Palm Sunday? He wept as he looked at the city and the people of Jerusalem, and he said “If you only knew what would bring you peace, but it is hidden from your eyes.” As religious as they were, as devout as they were, they were blinded by the ME virus.

There are two characters associated with the crucifixion on Good Friday that we don’t often think about. They are Barabbas and Simon of Cyrene. And yet, even though these men were just bit players in the drama of Good Friday, we can see ourselves in both of them.

Barabbas was the criminal who was let off because Jesus was substituted in his place. Barabbas was scheduled for execution, but he ended up going scot-free because Jesus died in his place. In spiritual terms, that’s you and me – we are Barabbas. Jesus took our penalty in our place.

But then there’s Simon of Cyrene. He’s the man who was just standing in the crowd when Jesus went by on his way to be executed. But then the next thing you know, Simon finds himself carrying Jesus’ cross for him. And that’s you and me, if we want to be followers of Jesus. We become cross-bearers.

Jesus said on a number of occasions, “You want to follow me? Take up your cross and follow me. Being a Christian is about the cross. You can’t take the cross out of Christianity.”

But we don’t preach that a lot today in our churches, do we? We preach about happiness. We preach about fulfillment. We preach about getting your needs met. We preach practical “how-to” sermons; how to have a better ________ (fill in the blank). That’s popular preaching; that’s what fills the pews.

But didn’t Jesus say, “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it”? That resonates with the message of the cross, and there are echoes of the cross all through Jesus’ teaching.

• Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

• Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

• Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

• Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

In each case, there is the shadow of death and of suffering. And that’s not a popular gospel. There’s bad news in that Good news—bad news for the almighty ME. Being a follower of Jesus means that ME has to die. The power of ME-mania has to be broken.

For all the “life” imagery in the NT, there is a lot of “death” imagery as well.

• Gal. 2:20 Paul said, “I have been crucified with Christ…”

• Col. 3:3 For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.

• Rom. 6:8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.

And this death imagery has to do with the crucifixion of ME - the ME that has kept me from God all these years. Jesus offers us a choice: we can either live for ME, or we can renounce ME and live for HIM.