“Cosmic Tremors”

Matthew 21:1-17

March 20, 2005

Our spiritual journey through this season of Lent is almost at the end. We have taken some important steps along the way. We have asked the hard questions about ourselves, we have been honest about who we are, and we have examined the quality of our faithfulness. My hope and prayer is that you have been stretched and challenged on this journey as I have been. I do believe that when we are stretched and challenged and when we wrestle with the hard stuff, then true growth will happen. But we are not at the end of our spiritual journey yet. The most important week of Lent lies before us. This Sunday is the beginning of Holy Week, the most important week of the Christian year and of the Christian faith.

You may have wondered why today is Palm/Passion Sunday and not just Palm Sunday as we are used to calling it. Maybe you’re thinking I just couldn’t make up my mind on which to call it, so I put both. No, this Sunday is called Palm/Passion Sunday, but it does sound strange to call it both. There is almost a contradiction to it, something confusing about it, leaving us scratching our head wondering just how we are supposed to feel about this Sunday.

When I first started hearing Palm Sunday being called Palm/Passion Sunday, it didn’t sit so well with me. I remember being a boy and walking down the aisle of the church with all the other children carrying and waving palm branches as the congregation sang “All Glory, Laud, and Honor.” This was always a day of celebration, and it still is, but to suddenly throw in the word Passion made me feel awkward and uncomfortable. Like you, I eagerly await Easter Sunday, and I know that I too have a tendency to take one giant step over this week in anticipation of the glorious good news of the Resurrection, but we need to be cautious about taking that giant step. The danger for us is to avoid the tension of this week and bypass the events of this week in favor of the celebration of today and next Sunday. We must be cautious about holding onto the triumphant Jesus of today and the glorified Jesus of Easter, and staying away from the suffering Jesus of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.

And yet, if we are honest with ourselves, we know that is exactly our first inclination, because we don’t like tension or anything awkward and uncomfortable, or anything involving suffering. It is much easier for us and safer for us to remain where it is most comfortable, in that place which is less threatening, less revealing, less self-exposing. We would much rather hold on to the Jesus who arrives as king, than the Jesus who is betrayed and arrested. We would much rather hold on to the Jesus who has the power to control an untamed animal, than the Jesus who is beaten, flogged, and spat upon. But deep down, we know that this is not the way of discipleship. We know that in avoiding the events of Holy week, we are only avoiding the truth about ourselves, only avoiding the truth about our own brokenness and sinfulness, only avoiding our own culpability in the cross of Jesus Christ, and in doing so, we end up missing the fuller message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

This is why we call Palm Sunday also Passion Sunday, because it is supposed to be awkward and uncomfortable. It’s supposed to keep us off balance as we both celebrate the arrival of Jesus into Jerusalem and the waving of palm branches, but at the same time we are also to remember that this week is about the Passion of Jesus Christ. Passion comes from the Latin word “pati” meaning “to suffer.” We cannot read this story of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem without also thinking about the suffering he will go through on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. We cannot read this story detached from the knowledge of the events that will soon play out. We already know the plot of the story. We already know what will happen to Jesus. We cannot read this story and not feel the tension in the irony of it, for we know that the same people who are shouting “Hosanna to the Son of David!” will be the same people who at the end of the week will be shouting “Crucify him!” Palm/Passion Sunday is a reminder that the only way to the empty tomb is through the cross.

For Matthew, as with all the gospel writers, there is supposed to be tension in it this event of Jesus’ triumphal entry. There is supposed to be something unsettling about, something almost foreboding about it. For Matthew, this story is more than just about Jesus riding into Jerusalem, this story is about what is coming, about the coming climax of the gospel, about the coming storm in the horizon. Do you remember those spring days when you used to play outside with your friends from sunup to sundown? I remember going to my friend’s house down the street and play homerun derby in his back yard for hours. We would play to the point when we could not even see the ball well enough to bat let alone trying to catch it out in the outfield. Those were the days weren’t they? We would shout out and hoot and holler. Everything was like it was supposed to be. Everything was right just like we wanted it to be, just like we expected it to be. But every once in a while, we never made it to sundown. Every once in a while, we would notice a darkening of the horizon, and we would hear the rumbling of thunder off in the distance. Soon the afternoon sky would turn dark, and the hushed rumbling of the coming storm in the distance would turn into tremors we could feel with under our feet from the sound waves of the thunder shaking the ground we stood on.

The story of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem occurs in all four gospels, and for the most part all four Gospels tell the same general story. Matthew adds an interesting twist to the story and has Jesus riding both a donkey and a colt into Jerusalem at the same time. But Matthew says something else in the story that the other Gospel writers do not, and which could easily be overlooked because of our English translations. In verse 10, Matthew writes, “When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil.” The word translated in English as “turmoil” comes from a Greek word, which literally means to cause a violent movement or disturbance especially of a universal dimension; to cause the earth to shake, agitate, or quake.

Amidst all the commotion and celebration, all the shouting and hoot and hollering, there is a cosmic tremor shaking the ground upon which the city stood. Of course, the people do not even realize what is going on. They are caught up in the excitement of the event. Jesus has come to meet their expectations. He has come to deliver them from the hands of the Roman powers. He has come as the warrior king to wage war against the rulers and emperors. The multitude of people wanted nothing more than the Messiah of God to come and lead a military uprising and liberate the city. In the thrill of victory they cheered Jesus. This is the day that they had long awaited, a day that they had long dreamed of. Everything would be right again. Everything would be how it is supposed to be.

But then Jesus goes into the temple and starts shaking things up. Suddenly, the cheering stops. The crowd falls silent. Expectations are shattered. Soon they will turn on Jesus, one of his own will betray him, and his disciples will flee into the night leaving him alone. The crowd in their euphoria and celebration do not even notice the rumblings from the cosmic tremors under their feet. They don’t even notice that there is something earthshaking that is about to happen. They don’t even notice the coming storm that is darkening the horizon, the coming storm that will soon tear the curtain in the temple in two and turn day into night and cause the earth to shake and rocks to split. They don’t even notice the darkening storm over a hill in the horizon, over a hill outside the walls of a city, a hill called Golgotha. This story is about the One who has come to do something earth shattering with universal proportions. This story is about the One who has come to set off the cosmic tremors of the coming collision between our time and God’s time, our world and God’s kingdom, that will forever change the landscape of creation history.

Brothers and sisters, Jesus is the King of kings and Lord of lords, not because he rode into Jerusalem to wage war on the Roman Empire, but because he willingly humbled himself to the point of death – even death on the cross, as the atoning sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins, perfectly revealing the love God has for the world. This is what this Holy Week is about. It’s about what happens when the sins of the world comes crashing down upon Jesus’ shoulders. It’s about the depths of human pain that Jesus suffered on our behalf, so that we may be set free from the bondage of sin and death. This week is about Jesus’ passion. Holy Week is more than just a reliving of the past; it is a proclamation and witness of creation itself of the coming of the new age of God’s reign in Jesus Christ of which the whole of creation is in waiting. In the events of this week, we experience more than just what God has done and will do for us, we also experience what God has done and will do for all of creation. This week is about God in Jesus Christ righting of all that is wrong, reconciling of all that is estranged, and redeeming all that is broken.

On this Passion/Palm Sunday, let us rejoice in the triumphal arrival of the humble king who comes in peace. But let us also be mindful that this week is also about all of our own miss-placed expectations and miss-guided hopes about the kind of Jesus we want Jesus to be. Let us celebrate because God in Jesus Christ deserves our worship and praise, but let us also pay attention to the cosmic tremors under our feet and be willing to live in the tension of knowing what is to come. And when the darkness of night comes, and the sounds of betrayal is in the air, let us join together at the Lord’s table, sharing in the bread of life and the cup of salvation, and let us come together at the foot of the cross, for there is the only place where we will find the glory of God’s saving grace revealed, and the only path that will lead us to the dawn of the new day, the day of the resurrection. Amen.