4.1.07 Palm Sunday And An Easy Christianity
WESTMINSTER PULPIT
The Rev. Dr. David Thompson
April 1, 2007 “Palm Sunday And An Easy Christianity” Mark 11: 1-11
The Rev. Dennis Meredith took over as senior pastor at Tabernacle Baptist Church thirteen years ago. The congregation had dwindled to about 110 members in 1994. Dennis Meredith’s compelling oratory and showmanship quickly began to draw new members. He preached against homosexuality and the church grew. Soon the attendance was over 1,100 at worship. Then five years ago his middle son Micah told his father that he was gay. Pastor Meredith began to read the theologians he had written off and reopen his Bible to the mighty passages they suggested he read. After a period of study Pastor Meredith declared that what matters most in the Bible was Jesus’ injunction to love God and your neighbor as yourself and that included Gays and Lesbians.
As he preached greater acceptance for everyone, many older members who had always driven from the suburbs began to leave, taking their tithes with them. After he performed a Commitment Ceremony for two Lesbian couples more people left. As attendance dropped, they cut back from two services to one. When Meredith preaches he says, “God knew you before you were born in your mother’s womb. If God loves everybody who am I not to love everybody?” The head deacon recently left saying that Pastor Meredith had turned Tabernacle Baptist into a “sissy” church. The attendance continues to fall.
However, under the banners that read “Peace” “Love” and “Kindness” there are young families with babies, and there are transgender people like Stacy Jackson and Nikki Brown. There are Lesbian couples like Angela Hutchins and Stephanie Champion sitting together in the front rows. Pastor Meredith preaches about Moses, about the vision that God gave him to do the right thing. He tells the congregation about holding on to that vision, regardless of who they are.
Today is Palm Sunday, when this world’s true King actually came and revealed what real majesty is. Can you see him in your mind’s eye, riding as Solomon once did, through the Golden East Gate of old Jerusalem, riding in a quiet resolute way, knowing what lay ahead of him. The Moslems under their domination of Jerusalem walled this gate up. There is an interesting verse in Ezekiel, which reads, “This gate will be kept shut. No one will open it or go through it, since Yahweh the God of Israel has been through it.”…It was open in Christ’s day.
On his way into Jerusalem a mother had come to Jesus, asking for the top spots in Christ’s Kingdom for her boys’ when it came to be. Christ’s reply was very interesting and rather strange. He said to the two young men: “Can you be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”
The question put to Christ “can you give the top spots to my sons?” Came just before his suffering and immanent death, so his strange answer/question reflects his own death. Put another way, Christ was saying: “Can you too offer up your life for this Kingdom?” Will you risk everything for me?
There is another kind of faith that calls itself Christian. It’s the risk free painless option. It is necessarily divorced from the real world. It takes no stands on moral issues, political issues or social issues. This kind of so called Christianity asks, “what’s in it for me? What can I get out of it? It turns Christianity into a self-help kind of religion. It speaks only from the nurturing texts of the Bible like “Take no anxious thought for tomorrow…consider the lilies of the field. They toil not; neither do they spin…not a sparrow falls without your Heavenly Father knowing. You are worth more than the birds. How much more will Your Heavenly Father look after you?”
When Jesus was around preaching like this the crowds of risk freers glowed under this kind of teaching. But when he preached prophetically people said, “this is a hard saying”, and they left in droves. And Jesus said to his disciples “Will you too go away?” And Peter said, “To whom else will we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
It is similar today in many a church of the comfortable pew. Nurturing sermons week in and week out with no rough edges when combined with a personal trainer and a stress management seminar and a great game of golf set a person right up for the challenges of the week!
The ‘risk freers’ turned off when Jesus went into the Temple with a whip made of small cords and drove the moneychangers out saying, “You have turned my father’s house into a den of thieves. It was supposed to be a house of prayer for all the nations. You have lost the purpose! Out!”
Now these folks, these comfortable pew types, would panic inside when Christ got too radical. It happened in his first ever sermon in the Synagogue when they liked what he said at first and then when he became prophetic they rose up in a body and tried to push him over a cliff. You see, faith in God was supposed to be containable, support the status quo, be conservative in nature and definitely would take no risks.
So just before Palm Sunday when Christ was talking about his baptism, what was he actually talking about? High risk. Total risk. He sums it up under four categories: mocking/whipping/spitting/killing. Listen to what he says: “Behold we go up to Jerusalem and the Son of Man shall be delivered unto the Chief Priests and unto the Scribes and they shall condemn him to death and shall deliver him to the Gentiles. And they shall mock him and shall whip him and shall spit upon him and shall kill him. This is the Baptism Jesus was describing--total risk, total commitment to God’s cause in the world.
If we are to take, Christ’s words into today’s world what might his baptism look like for us?
1) Real pain! If we are real Christians after Christ’s model it is not possible to avoid the pain of others. When Lazarus dies, Jesus weeps. When he healed someone scripture often says “And he took compassion upon him.” Christ internalized the pain of crowds. He was, above all things, sensitive to people’s pain. All of us know about people’s pain—that broken up wife whose husband left her with the children and disappeared, that wonderful guy who lost his job, that couple who are shut in due to ill health, that young teenager who has been lost ever since her father died.
Halford Luccock writes: “To expose our nerves to the hurt of others, to load their burdens onto our already laden shoulders, to let our hearts be torn…over suffering that we can legally claim is none of our business—that is not easy.” That is what Jesus did.
2) Karl Marx once wrote that religion was “the opiate of the people.” There are people who Marx rightly described as drugged by religion. Jesus was not one of them. When Christ, on Palm Sunday, rode into Jerusalem, he directly attacked the religious/political establishment of his day. That is why he was crucified.
I believe that to be baptized with Christ’s baptism is to put ourselves into conflict with the dark side of human beings and to open ourselves up to danger. It is the exact opposite then of an opiate of the people. It speaks out for goodness in hard situations. Is it possible for us to believe that something is right and yet do nothing about what we know?
If you decide to speak out, and I hope that you will in order to make a difference, here are some simple rules that we can follow.
1) Is what I am going to say loving? Is it finally kind? Am I defending the right and the good or just my own prejudices?
2) Is what I am going to say just?
3) Have I really done my homework on the issue before I pick up my pen or open my mouth?
When Christ attacked the establishment of his day, He did so from the basis of knowledge. He knew what the lawyers were up to, what the Scribes and Pharisees had rationalized what the moneychangers were deceiving people with. If we are going to sound off on any topic, we need to try very hard to get all the facts. We also need to walk in the other person’s shoes for a mile or two. Then we can better speak out fairly, firmly, lovingly and if we are right, we need to stick to our principles under fire.
Oh it is so easy isn’t it to say as the disciples did that “we can be baptized with the baptism that Christ was baptized with”; But when Christ was arrested the disciples all fled. Words, words are cheap.
There is a huge difference between optimism and real faith. False optimism undervalues the opposition and minimizes the problems. Therefore, when trouble comes looking for us we are not prepared. But real faith takes on the full resources of God for tough situations and ventures forward. Frequently it’s the details that kill us. We get worn down by the complexity of the situations we face. It is the small drip of continually tiresome demands that burn us out and we get weary and discouraged. A woman I once knew came in for counseling. I said to her, “Can you be patient? It is going to take time and at the end, we might not be successful in saving your marriage. Are you in for the long haul?” She said with tears in her eyes, “I’ve got too great an investment in him to give up before I absolutely know there is no hope.” You see there was the risk free option as far as love was concerned. The divorce court could end her pain and she could get on with her life. But this woman was the sort of person who couldn’t live with herself until she had given her marriage her best shot. I admired her for that.
At the time of the end of Apartheid in South Africa there was a television report of a neo Nazi pleading for his life, moments before being shot dead by a soldier. It was recorded on film and played before millions of people. Personally, I found it hard to watch. How do you turn a deaf ear to a man’s plea for life and then pull a trigger at close range killing the man? What must it be like to take someone’s life away? It is so final.
When facing his Palm Sunday baptism Jesus talked of four things that would test his resolve to the uttermost: mockery, spitting, whipping and death. Mockery, can we be baptized with this? The equivalent today is psychological and emotional abuse, ridicule, being made fun of. It is the sort of thing we do to our political leaders and societal leaders, in fact to any leader. According to Jesus, we can expect this if we are to follow him. To the Godless intellectual we may be “soft in the head”, irrational, deceived, lacking in objectivity or ill versed in science. To the person working on the factory line beside you, when you refuse to cheat the company, you will be called a “fool”. How often have we read only fools pay taxes. Christians pay their taxes. We render unto Caesar and unto God. Have we been mocked lately? If not, why not?
Whipping—physical torture is used throughout the world to get people to give in, to give information, to give up their principles or political or religious beliefs. Remember Terry Anderson and Terry Wait, both Christians both tortured and both forgiving of their captors? A prophetic word here. We cannot call ourselves a Christian nation and use torture at Guantanimo Bay or Abu Graib. Christians may be tortured but we cannot use torture ourselves or our faith means nothing.
Spitting—Spittingis the lowest form of contempt. It is utter scorn—being absolutely despised. Spitting is the end of the journey of negative criticism. When the Rev. Jane Spahr preached here, she said that she had been spat upon by people who called themselves Christians because she was a Lesbian. Can we see Jesus at the front of that spitting line or do we see Jesus in Jane Spahr? Christians might be spat upon. Christians don’t spit on other people. If you get negatively criticized by an angry person remember Christ with his hands and feet pinned he could not even wipe the spit away. As a Christian, we can endure as long as we have Jesus standing beside us.
Killing—Christians have often been killed for their faith. What does it mean to take another person’s life? All they have? Why die for what you believe? Why believe that no matter what that love is, it is better than hate? Why refuse the easy Christianity and take the hard road?
Let’s read the whole verse: “They shall mock him and shall whip him, and spit upon him and kill him.
Note how the ferocity increases:
Mock!
Whip!
Spit!
Kill!
Then comes this amazing prophecy from Jesus: “And on the third day he shall rise again.” Enter God! God does not ultimately put up with the ever-increasing ferocity of evil to His Christ. Power is the ability to fulfill purpose. The purpose was to humiliate, torture, and end the life of Christ. Purpose fulfilled right? They had the power right? But that purpose was not fulfilled for unaccountably this One who was mocked, whipped, spat upon and killed was raised back to life by true Power that fulfills purpose.
I was sitting in St Paul’s, Bloor Street, Toronto, in a huge Anglican Cathedral Church with one of the largest pipe organs in Canada. It was a Palm Sunday service and we were singing the hymn Ride On Ride On in Majesty. The organist for the day was one of Canada’s finest Freddy Goeghan. I was standing to sing the hymn not expecting him to paint the words with the organ. However, Freddy had done his homework on this hymn. He had noticed the last line of the hymn. The words were ride on ride on in majesty in lowly pomp ride on to die. He began this verse quite quietly, then this line followed bow thy meek head to mortal pain—here the organ, the very large organ, faded away completely, then came the next line, full organ, one of the greatest sounds I have ever heard and the words, then take o God, thy power and reign!
This magnificent hymn does what God did at Easter. You see, ultimately it’s the end that matters. All’s well that ends well! We all know this experience from baseball, when that homerun comes at the bottom of the ninth with the bases loaded, with two strikes against the batter, and there is a clean hit and the ball soars into the stands. It isn’t over till its over.
Norman Vincent Peale died at Christmas time. His father was a man who feared death. After his father’s funeral Peale’s mother had a dream about her husband. He came to her and said; don’t worry about dying—there is nothing to it. Once after his father’s death, Peale was preaching in a large church in Georgia. There he had a startling experience. At the end of the service, the presiding Bishop asked all the ministers in the audience to come forward and sing a hymn. Watching them come down the aisles, Peale suddenly saw his Father among them. He says, “I saw him as plainly as when alive. He seemed about forty, vital and handsome. When he smiled at me and put up his hand in an old familiar gesture, for several unforgettable seconds it was as if my father and I were alone in that big auditorium. Then he was gone. But he was there and I know that someday somewhere, I’ll meet him again.” That took place on December 24, 1993.
I suppose a number of things might happen to Pastor Meredith. If the trends go forward, he might not keep his job at Tabernacle Baptist. And the next pastor might say what the associate said who also left. I agree with Mr. Meredith that God loves everyone, including Gays and Lesbians. “ But God corrects you because he loves you”, explaining that for Gay Christians such a correction would probably mean lifelong celibacy or eventually being with someone of the opposite sex. That would certainly be a risk free theology…
Stephen when he was stoned to death was preaching: “You stubborn people, can you name a single prophet your ancestors never persecuted? In the past they killed those who foretold the coming of the Just One and now you have become his betrayers and his murderers.” They were infuriated when they heard this and ground their teeth at him. They rushed at him sent him out of the city and stoned him.
There is a doctrine in the Scripture about the right Hand of God. The phrase usually is sitting at the right hand of God. We find it in the Apostles Creed which says; “Was crucified, dead and buried, He descended to the dead; the third day he rose again from the dead, he ascended into Heaven And sitteth on the right hand of God the Farther almighty.
Was The Jesus of History interested in the plight of Stephen? Just before he dies Stephen has a vision: “I can see heaven thrown open, he says, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” The implication is this: He who was sitting, is now standing with deep focused attention and involvement in this world because Stephen was a man who could be Baptized with the Baptism that Christ was Baptized with. I suspect that Pastor Meredith is discovering the meaning of Christ’s Baptism.
Power is the ability to fulfill purpose. Jesus may be standing at the right hand of that Power and Tabernacle Baptist may experience both Christ’s Baptism and The Resurrection. Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. The person who believes in me, though they were dead, yet shall they live. He that loses his life for my sake shall find it!” So when trouble comes looking for you, when the chips are down and your hope is evaporating fast, remember, the ferocity comes first and then grows more intense but never has the last word! Thanks Be to God!
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