The Strength To See It Through
Sermon
The Glory Of Our Weakness
Sermons With Children's Lessons For Lent And Easter
Things are not always as they seem, and this may be more true on Palm Sunday than any other day of the Christian year. Today we have celebrated the superficial meaning of Palm Sunday by parading into church waving palms and singing praises. The deeper meaning of Palm Sunday has yet to be revealed.
Superficially, Palm Sunday is as our text from Mark describes it: we are told what happened that day, what Jesus saw with His eyes and heard with His ears as He entered Jerusalem. But our other text from Isaiah tells us what Jesus felt in His heart and knew in His mind, and this is where the real drama of Palm Sunday unfolds. This is also where Palm Sunday becomes not just an event to be remembered from the distant past, but a profound spiritual lesson for the living of our own lives today.
As Mark recounts it, Palm Sunday is a day of joy and jubilation. Jesus is coming to Jerusalem as the Old Testament prophets had said the Messiah would come: riding on a donkey (Zechariah 9:9-10) and appearing at the Golden Gate on the eastern side of the city (Joel 3:1-12). The cheering crowds are filled with excitement as they spread their coats and leafy palm branches on the road before Him. Shouts of 'Hosanna!' (which means 'Save us!') fill the air, and the people are calling Jesus their king. Judging by what the eye can see and the ear can hear, Palm Sunday is a festival, a street party, a day of promise and celebration.
For someone like Jesus, who has been embroiled in controversy since the day He was born, it must have been a day of vindication and validation. To hear your praises sung when so many people have condemned and rejected you is a high moment indeed.
But as is so often the case in life, the real meaning of a situation lies beneath the surface and paints a different picture. In this case, even as Jesus receives the adulation of the crowd, He knows what is coming. He knows that in just a few days, the cheers will turn to jeers and the hosannas will descend into hisses. This is not Palm Sunday for Jesus so much as Passion Sunday -- not the culmination of a triumph but the commencement of a test which will only grow more severe during the week which lies ahead.
Do you ever wonder what Jesus was thinking as the cheering crowd surged around Him and swept Him into the city? It would have been entirely natural and perfectly human on His part to let His mind drift back a few centuries to the prophet Isaiah. After all, when we have certain problems today, we join support groups with other people who share our experience; so might our Lord have sought support in the words of a prophet who had experienced in some measure what He Himself was about to endure.
In Isaiah ïs case, he tells us in our text that God has given him the tongue of a teacher and preacher, that he may 'sustain with a word' those who are weary. He listens daily to hear what God would have him say, and then the prophet 'does not rebel' or 'turn backward' -- he goes forth and gives the people the message which God has given him to speak.
To preach God ïs word courageously is always a hazardous duty, and Isaiah is no stranger to the consequences. He says he is physically attacked by people who strike him, insult him, and spit upon him (v. 6). He is also emotionally attacked by people who hide in the shadows, gossiping and criticizing him amongst themselves from the safety of anonymity, people who refuse to 'stand up' and 'confront' him face to face (v. 8).
The book of Isaiah as a whole makes it clear that the people of Israel have two main complaints against him. First, they find his preaching offensive. They are offended when he condemns their nation ïs leaders (chapter 28), the unjust policies of their government (chapter 10), and their reliance on the strength of their army (chapter 31). The men are offended when Isaiah denounces their idolatry (chapter 44), and the women are offended when he criticizes their moral complacency (chapters 3 and 32). Across the board, the good people of Israel want a preacher who will pander to them, who will tell them what they want to hear and affirm the values and ideologies they hold most dear. Woe to the preacher whose faithfulness to God fails to oblige the
people!
Their second complaint against Isaiah can be stated like this: 'You care for newcomers and strangers we don ït even know as much as you care for those of us who have been God ïs chosen all along.' To the dismay of a people who want to believe they are uppermost in the mind of God, Isaiah continually looks outward to 'all people' and 'all flesh' (e.g., 40:5, 49:26, 66:23), rather than confining his ministry solely to the existing congregation of Israel.
Of course, Jesus could identify with all of this, since He, too, offended people with His preaching and He, too, ministered as much to the Gentile/outsider as the Jew/insider. Jesus could also identify with the way Isaiah responded to his critics: 'I gave my back to those who struck me,' Isaiah says in our text, 'and â I did not hide my face from insult and spitting.' This will be Jesus ï way as He suffers His Passion in the coming week, and I suspect our Lord may well have found comfort in the words of an ancient prophet who had gone that way before Him.
There comes a time in the life of every servant of God when the will to continue is sorely tested. The criticisms cut too deep, the cost seems too high, the controversies seem too much to bear. The loneliness seems overwhelming and the desire to quit the ministry God has assigned is most alluring. Isaiah knew that feeling, and Jesus may have flirted with it on Palm Sunday as He watched a fickle crowd cheer His name, knowing how soon they would turn against Him with a savage fury. Jesus surely knew the feeling on Maundy Thursday as He prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, and on Good Friday as He hung on a cross to die.
But at that very moment, when the temptation to give up is strongest, God draws near to His servant in a way which sustains the flickering spirit. God somehow enters the weak and hurting heart, and resignation instantly gives way to resolve. Suddenly, and 'in the twinkling of an eye' (1 Corinthians 15:52), someone who was ready to quit God ïs service now feels ready to take on the world.
This is certainly what we see in Isaiah, who is able to tell his adversaries, '[But] the Lord God helps me â and I know I shall not be put to shame.' It is a sense of God ïs presence and care which fills the prophet with a mysterious courage and then allows him to say to all who will hear, 'Who are my adversaries, and who will contend with me? Let them step out of the shadows and stand here with me. Let them confront me face to face, for it is the Lord God who helps me, and He who vindicates me is near.'
Jesus may well have drawn upon such reassurances as He looked at the crowd around Him and contemplated what lay ahead during the ordeal we call Holy Week. Surely He was not fooled by the flattery of their Palm Sunday cheers, and if He was comforted by knowing that other faithful servants of God had taken this path before Him, He was also sustained by the prophet ïs faith that come what may, the God who would vindicate Him was near, that God would give Him the courage to stay the course and the strength to see it through.
All of this is the deeper meaning, the inner script of the Palm Sunday drama, but it is a drama which is played out in our own daily lives as well. After all, it isn ït just prophets and preachers who are criticized by others, who suffer slings and arrows or moments of doubt and despair. Everyone faces at one time or another the trials which test our spirits; we all are subject at some point in our lives to the tyranny of tears and fears.
I dare say we learn this early in life and never escape it.
I think first of teenagers, who live in that frustrating, confusing state called 'adolescence.' One day they feel all grown up; the next day they feel like children. One day they are wildly in love; the next day their broken hearts teach painful lessons about friendship and commitment, betrayal and disillusionment. One day they are saturated with sexual images in music, movies and advertising; the next day they are told they are too young to act on the sexual feelings growing within them. One day they are told that the future is theirs for the taking; the next day they see a world in chaos and wonder how kindly the future will treat them.
They want to know where the long arc of life is leading them, but, of course, no one can know what the future will bring. What they can know, however, is that faith makes the question much less terrifying than first it seems. In faith, they can know that the God who helps them is near, that no matter what may happen in the years ahead, God will be with them at every twist and turn in the road, helping them move onward to their destination in life. No, they cannot know what the future will bring, but they can know that God will be with them to see them through, and maybe that is all they really need to know.
Of course, we need that same faith in our adult years as well, with the problems of parenthood, the hard economic times and all the other pressures we face. But the longer I serve in ministry, the more I am convinced that this faith is most essential when we are very old, when we struggle through what we ruefully call our 'golden years.' I spend more time visiting with this group than any other in our church, and I cannot help but appreciate the tremendous courage and grace our older members possess.
Imagine taking your eyesight or your hearing for granted all of your life and then suddenly finding that it is failing you. Imagine being active and 'on the go' for as long as you can remember, and then finding yourself virtually confined to your home. Imagine having legs so unsteady that a simple fall can be a catastrophe, or having bones so brittle that they break even as you sit in a chair! Imagine having to give up your home, along with all the furniture and accoutrements which have been part of your life for too many years to count. Imagine living long enough to watch all your brothers and sisters and your lifelong friends die one by one, until everyone who knew you in the prime of your life is gone! How many setbacks and losses is the human spirit to take before melancholy becomes one ïs permanent companion?
I visit people facing these and many other problems of aging, and I often find myself saying to them, 'You know, you really are a very brave person.' They invariably (and sincerely) protest that they are not brave at all, and I know what they are thinking. They are saying to themselves, 'He doesn ït know about the fears which flood my mind as I lie here alone at night. He doesn ït know how lonely I feel, or how often I feel like giving up, or how the tears come to my eyes when we say the Lord ïs Prayer together -- tears which come from places too deep to understand or explain. If he knew about things like that, he wouldn ït think I am so very brave.'
But I know something they don ït know! You see, courage is not a matter of having no doubts or fears -- courage is a matter of doing what you have to do in spite of your doubts and fears! Each day (and taking one day at a time), our older members do what they have to do in spite of whatever traumas or terrors may lurk without or within, and that is why I tell them I admire them for their courage.
During the long Cold War between nations on either side of the Iron Curtain, dissidents within the former Soviet Union struggled bravely for the cause of human rights against a communist state which observed few restraints in suppressing them. One of the most famous of such dissidents was Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov (1921-1989), a prize-winning nuclear physicist and tireless gadfly on the body politic of the Soviet 'people ïs republic.'
As he neared the end of his life, Sakharov was increasingly determined to complete his memoirs, and not surprisingly, his totalitarian government was equally determined to see that those memoirs never saw the light of day. Eventually, the memoirs were smuggled out of the Soviet Union and published in the West, but the story of how hard it was to complete them is almost as interesting as the memoirs themselves.
Time and time again, Sakharov would write a section of his book, only to find that it had mysteriously vanished from its hiding place. Once, the half-written manuscript was stolen from a dentist ïs office; Sakharov gave his wife the news with trembling lips and a broken voice. Another time, when the project was nearly completed, it was stolen from a secret hiding place in the Sakharovs ï car. Sakharov ïs wife said that when he discovered it was gone, he looked like he had just been told his best friend had died.
But each time, after pining a few days in discouragement, Sakharov would sit down and start writing again. Some parts were written better than before and others worse, but his wife explained how the book finally came to be: 'My husband has a talent (I call it his main talent) to finish what he starts.'1
On Palm Sunday, we look beyond the waving palms and triumphant parades to see Jesus facing His future and finding the courage to finish what He started. On Palm Sunday, we remember that Maundy Thursday and Good Friday lie between here and Easter Sunday. Forget the honor and praise we normally associate with this day, for honor can be a frivolous reward and praise is at best a fickle friend. Honeymoons end, bubbles burst, and friendly crowds shall disappear. Jesus shows us that what matters most is how we respond when the hour of testing draws near.
At every stage of life, there will be problems to dishearten and discourage us, but with faith they can never defeat us. There will be difficult situations which challenge us to the very limits of our endurance, but with faith they can never leave us crushed. With faith we can keep putting one foot in front of the other, because we know no valley is walked alone. 'Behold, the Lord God helps me â
and I know I shall not be put to shame, [for] He who vindicates me is near.'
Today our trials and troubles loom large before us, but at the end of our years, when all is said and done, we shall look back and say, 'Yes, it was difficult at times, and I sometimes wondered how I would make it, but now I see I did not travel that hard road by myself. Now I see that no matter how arduous or overwhelming it seemed at the time, God was there to help me every step of the way. Now I can see that by His grace, I kept the faith and finished the race, and found within myself the strength to see it through.' Amen.
1.
Elena Bonner, Alone Together (translated by Alexander Cook, Knopf Publishers, New York).
Pastoral Prayer
Most Holy and Faithful God, who asks us not to let our heads be turned by public praises which come and go, but instead have our hearts set on You during moments both high and low, we gather with the cheering crowds this Palm Sunday morning as Your Son goes riding by. We call Him our King and hope we are faithful enough to put Him above every person or idea which would claim our highest loyalty. We call on Him to save us and pray we are willing to receive the salvation He offers. O God, we sing forth our easy praises today knowing that the greatest test is yet to come, for Your beloved Son and for all of us, Your children, as well.
Compassionate and Loving God, we pray we will pass as best we possibly can all the tests life may give us. Do not let us think we must face these tests alone, for this is surely an invitation to frustration and failure. Make us aware of Your nearness and help, that we may live with the confidence of knowing that the wounds which afflict us can never be fatal. Teach us, O God, to seek Your presence and pursue Your peace all the days of our lives, that filled with Your grace and guided by Your love, we may live faithfully in this world and gratefully in the next. In Jesus ï name, we pray. Amen.
Superficially, Palm Sunday is as our text from Mark describes it: we are told what happened that day, what Jesus saw with His eyes and heard with His ears as He entered Jerusalem. But our other text from Isaiah tells us what Jesus felt in His heart and knew in His mind, and this is where the real drama of Palm Sunday unfolds. This is also where Palm Sunday becomes not just an event to be remembered from the distant past, but a profound spiritual lesson for the living of our own lives today.
As Mark recounts it, Palm Sunday is a day of joy and jubilation. Jesus is coming to Jerusalem as the Old Testament prophets had said the Messiah would come: riding on a donkey (Zechariah 9:9-10) and appearing at the Golden Gate on the eastern side of the city (Joel 3:1-12). The cheering crowds are filled with excitement as they spread their coats and leafy palm branches on the road before Him. Shouts of 'Hosanna!' (which means 'Save us!') fill the air, and the people are calling Jesus their king. Judging by what the eye can see and the ear can hear, Palm Sunday is a festival, a street party, a day of promise and celebration.
For someone like Jesus, who has been embroiled in controversy since the day He was born, it must have been a day of vindication and validation. To hear your praises sung when so many people have condemned and rejected you is a high moment indeed.
But as is so often the case in life, the real meaning of a situation lies beneath the surface and paints a different picture. In this case, even as Jesus receives the adulation of the crowd, He knows what is coming. He knows that in just a few days, the cheers will turn to jeers and the hosannas will descend into hisses. This is not Palm Sunday for Jesus so much as Passion Sunday -- not the culmination of a triumph but the commencement of a test which will only grow more severe during the week which lies ahead.
Do you ever wonder what Jesus was thinking as the cheering crowd surged around Him and swept Him into the city? It would have been entirely natural and perfectly human on His part to let His mind drift back a few centuries to the prophet Isaiah. After all, when we have certain problems today, we join support groups with other people who share our experience; so might our Lord have sought support in the words of a prophet who had experienced in some measure what He Himself was about to endure.
In Isaiah ïs case, he tells us in our text that God has given him the tongue of a teacher and preacher, that he may 'sustain with a word' those who are weary. He listens daily to hear what God would have him say, and then the prophet 'does not rebel' or 'turn backward' -- he goes forth and gives the people the message which God has given him to speak.
To preach God ïs word courageously is always a hazardous duty, and Isaiah is no stranger to the consequences. He says he is physically attacked by people who strike him, insult him, and spit upon him (v. 6). He is also emotionally attacked by people who hide in the shadows, gossiping and criticizing him amongst themselves from the safety of anonymity, people who refuse to 'stand up' and 'confront' him face to face (v. 8).
The book of Isaiah as a whole makes it clear that the people of Israel have two main complaints against him. First, they find his preaching offensive. They are offended when he condemns their nation ïs leaders (chapter 28), the unjust policies of their government (chapter 10), and their reliance on the strength of their army (chapter 31). The men are offended when Isaiah denounces their idolatry (chapter 44), and the women are offended when he criticizes their moral complacency (chapters 3 and 32). Across the board, the good people of Israel want a preacher who will pander to them, who will tell them what they want to hear and affirm the values and ideologies they hold most dear. Woe to the preacher whose faithfulness to God fails to oblige the
people!
Their second complaint against Isaiah can be stated like this: 'You care for newcomers and strangers we don ït even know as much as you care for those of us who have been God ïs chosen all along.' To the dismay of a people who want to believe they are uppermost in the mind of God, Isaiah continually looks outward to 'all people' and 'all flesh' (e.g., 40:5, 49:26, 66:23), rather than confining his ministry solely to the existing congregation of Israel.
Of course, Jesus could identify with all of this, since He, too, offended people with His preaching and He, too, ministered as much to the Gentile/outsider as the Jew/insider. Jesus could also identify with the way Isaiah responded to his critics: 'I gave my back to those who struck me,' Isaiah says in our text, 'and â I did not hide my face from insult and spitting.' This will be Jesus ï way as He suffers His Passion in the coming week, and I suspect our Lord may well have found comfort in the words of an ancient prophet who had gone that way before Him.
There comes a time in the life of every servant of God when the will to continue is sorely tested. The criticisms cut too deep, the cost seems too high, the controversies seem too much to bear. The loneliness seems overwhelming and the desire to quit the ministry God has assigned is most alluring. Isaiah knew that feeling, and Jesus may have flirted with it on Palm Sunday as He watched a fickle crowd cheer His name, knowing how soon they would turn against Him with a savage fury. Jesus surely knew the feeling on Maundy Thursday as He prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, and on Good Friday as He hung on a cross to die.
But at that very moment, when the temptation to give up is strongest, God draws near to His servant in a way which sustains the flickering spirit. God somehow enters the weak and hurting heart, and resignation instantly gives way to resolve. Suddenly, and 'in the twinkling of an eye' (1 Corinthians 15:52), someone who was ready to quit God ïs service now feels ready to take on the world.
This is certainly what we see in Isaiah, who is able to tell his adversaries, '[But] the Lord God helps me â and I know I shall not be put to shame.' It is a sense of God ïs presence and care which fills the prophet with a mysterious courage and then allows him to say to all who will hear, 'Who are my adversaries, and who will contend with me? Let them step out of the shadows and stand here with me. Let them confront me face to face, for it is the Lord God who helps me, and He who vindicates me is near.'
Jesus may well have drawn upon such reassurances as He looked at the crowd around Him and contemplated what lay ahead during the ordeal we call Holy Week. Surely He was not fooled by the flattery of their Palm Sunday cheers, and if He was comforted by knowing that other faithful servants of God had taken this path before Him, He was also sustained by the prophet ïs faith that come what may, the God who would vindicate Him was near, that God would give Him the courage to stay the course and the strength to see it through.
All of this is the deeper meaning, the inner script of the Palm Sunday drama, but it is a drama which is played out in our own daily lives as well. After all, it isn ït just prophets and preachers who are criticized by others, who suffer slings and arrows or moments of doubt and despair. Everyone faces at one time or another the trials which test our spirits; we all are subject at some point in our lives to the tyranny of tears and fears.
I dare say we learn this early in life and never escape it.
I think first of teenagers, who live in that frustrating, confusing state called 'adolescence.' One day they feel all grown up; the next day they feel like children. One day they are wildly in love; the next day their broken hearts teach painful lessons about friendship and commitment, betrayal and disillusionment. One day they are saturated with sexual images in music, movies and advertising; the next day they are told they are too young to act on the sexual feelings growing within them. One day they are told that the future is theirs for the taking; the next day they see a world in chaos and wonder how kindly the future will treat them.
They want to know where the long arc of life is leading them, but, of course, no one can know what the future will bring. What they can know, however, is that faith makes the question much less terrifying than first it seems. In faith, they can know that the God who helps them is near, that no matter what may happen in the years ahead, God will be with them at every twist and turn in the road, helping them move onward to their destination in life. No, they cannot know what the future will bring, but they can know that God will be with them to see them through, and maybe that is all they really need to know.
Of course, we need that same faith in our adult years as well, with the problems of parenthood, the hard economic times and all the other pressures we face. But the longer I serve in ministry, the more I am convinced that this faith is most essential when we are very old, when we struggle through what we ruefully call our 'golden years.' I spend more time visiting with this group than any other in our church, and I cannot help but appreciate the tremendous courage and grace our older members possess.
Imagine taking your eyesight or your hearing for granted all of your life and then suddenly finding that it is failing you. Imagine being active and 'on the go' for as long as you can remember, and then finding yourself virtually confined to your home. Imagine having legs so unsteady that a simple fall can be a catastrophe, or having bones so brittle that they break even as you sit in a chair! Imagine having to give up your home, along with all the furniture and accoutrements which have been part of your life for too many years to count. Imagine living long enough to watch all your brothers and sisters and your lifelong friends die one by one, until everyone who knew you in the prime of your life is gone! How many setbacks and losses is the human spirit to take before melancholy becomes one ïs permanent companion?
I visit people facing these and many other problems of aging, and I often find myself saying to them, 'You know, you really are a very brave person.' They invariably (and sincerely) protest that they are not brave at all, and I know what they are thinking. They are saying to themselves, 'He doesn ït know about the fears which flood my mind as I lie here alone at night. He doesn ït know how lonely I feel, or how often I feel like giving up, or how the tears come to my eyes when we say the Lord ïs Prayer together -- tears which come from places too deep to understand or explain. If he knew about things like that, he wouldn ït think I am so very brave.'
But I know something they don ït know! You see, courage is not a matter of having no doubts or fears -- courage is a matter of doing what you have to do in spite of your doubts and fears! Each day (and taking one day at a time), our older members do what they have to do in spite of whatever traumas or terrors may lurk without or within, and that is why I tell them I admire them for their courage.
During the long Cold War between nations on either side of the Iron Curtain, dissidents within the former Soviet Union struggled bravely for the cause of human rights against a communist state which observed few restraints in suppressing them. One of the most famous of such dissidents was Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov (1921-1989), a prize-winning nuclear physicist and tireless gadfly on the body politic of the Soviet 'people ïs republic.'
As he neared the end of his life, Sakharov was increasingly determined to complete his memoirs, and not surprisingly, his totalitarian government was equally determined to see that those memoirs never saw the light of day. Eventually, the memoirs were smuggled out of the Soviet Union and published in the West, but the story of how hard it was to complete them is almost as interesting as the memoirs themselves.
Time and time again, Sakharov would write a section of his book, only to find that it had mysteriously vanished from its hiding place. Once, the half-written manuscript was stolen from a dentist ïs office; Sakharov gave his wife the news with trembling lips and a broken voice. Another time, when the project was nearly completed, it was stolen from a secret hiding place in the Sakharovs ï car. Sakharov ïs wife said that when he discovered it was gone, he looked like he had just been told his best friend had died.
But each time, after pining a few days in discouragement, Sakharov would sit down and start writing again. Some parts were written better than before and others worse, but his wife explained how the book finally came to be: 'My husband has a talent (I call it his main talent) to finish what he starts.'1
On Palm Sunday, we look beyond the waving palms and triumphant parades to see Jesus facing His future and finding the courage to finish what He started. On Palm Sunday, we remember that Maundy Thursday and Good Friday lie between here and Easter Sunday. Forget the honor and praise we normally associate with this day, for honor can be a frivolous reward and praise is at best a fickle friend. Honeymoons end, bubbles burst, and friendly crowds shall disappear. Jesus shows us that what matters most is how we respond when the hour of testing draws near.
At every stage of life, there will be problems to dishearten and discourage us, but with faith they can never defeat us. There will be difficult situations which challenge us to the very limits of our endurance, but with faith they can never leave us crushed. With faith we can keep putting one foot in front of the other, because we know no valley is walked alone. 'Behold, the Lord God helps me â
and I know I shall not be put to shame, [for] He who vindicates me is near.'
Today our trials and troubles loom large before us, but at the end of our years, when all is said and done, we shall look back and say, 'Yes, it was difficult at times, and I sometimes wondered how I would make it, but now I see I did not travel that hard road by myself. Now I see that no matter how arduous or overwhelming it seemed at the time, God was there to help me every step of the way. Now I can see that by His grace, I kept the faith and finished the race, and found within myself the strength to see it through.' Amen.
1.
Elena Bonner, Alone Together (translated by Alexander Cook, Knopf Publishers, New York).
Pastoral Prayer
Most Holy and Faithful God, who asks us not to let our heads be turned by public praises which come and go, but instead have our hearts set on You during moments both high and low, we gather with the cheering crowds this Palm Sunday morning as Your Son goes riding by. We call Him our King and hope we are faithful enough to put Him above every person or idea which would claim our highest loyalty. We call on Him to save us and pray we are willing to receive the salvation He offers. O God, we sing forth our easy praises today knowing that the greatest test is yet to come, for Your beloved Son and for all of us, Your children, as well.
Compassionate and Loving God, we pray we will pass as best we possibly can all the tests life may give us. Do not let us think we must face these tests alone, for this is surely an invitation to frustration and failure. Make us aware of Your nearness and help, that we may live with the confidence of knowing that the wounds which afflict us can never be fatal. Teach us, O God, to seek Your presence and pursue Your peace all the days of our lives, that filled with Your grace and guided by Your love, we may live faithfully in this world and gratefully in the next. In Jesus ï name, we pray. Amen.
