Scripture: Matthew 21:1-11
Preached 04/12/2014
No doubt you’ve heard this modern
parable, but it’s worth repeating this morning.
A man was trapped in his house during a flood. He began praying to God to reach down from
heaven and lift him up to safety. While
he was praying, a neighbor came by with a pick-up truck, and offered to help
the man out of his house and give him a ride to safety. The man responded that he was waiting for God
to save him, and the neighbor drove off.
The man continued to pray and hold
on to his conviction that God would reach down and lift him up to safety. As the waters began rising, the man had to
climb up to his roof. A boat came by
with some people heading for safe ground.
They yelled to the man and offered to thrown a rope for him to grab, so
they could take him with them to safety.
He told them that he was waiting for God to save him. The shook their heads and moved on.
The man continued to pray, holding
on to his conviction that God would reach down and lift him to safety. The waters continued to rise. A helicopter flew by and a voice came over a
loudspeaker offering to lower a ladder and take him off the roof. The man waved the helicopter away, shouting
that he was waiting for God to save him.
The helicopter flew off. The
flood waters rose, swept him off his roof, and he drowned.
When he reached heaven, he asked God
why God didn’t save him. “My child,” God
said, “Did you not notice my truck, my boat, and my helicopter? What more could
I possibly do for you?”
A ragtag group of people were
gathered on the eastern outskirts of Jerusalem. Actually, there were two
groups. The first was Jesus and his
disciples. The second was the group of
people who were going to greet them on their entrance into the city. For both of these groups too, the flood
waters were rising. For Jesus and his
disciples, the violence has already started.
John the Baptist, the one who heralded Jesus as the messiah, has already
been killed. Jesus has been foretelling his
own death three times already, and he’s been getting pretty specific. The
disciples have heard him, even if they don’t really seem to believe him, or at
least really, really don’t want to.
And then we have these people of
Jerusalem, the people who were part of that first palm parade. Some of them were probably from Jerusalem,
others from the outskirts, and others pilgrims, coming there to celebrate
Passover. But they did have some things
in common. All of them, and really,
Jesus and all his followers too, were living in the flood of the Roman Empire,
and it wasn’t necessarily pretty. Sure,
if you were lucky enough to be wealthy, and you decided to play by the rules
that Rome set up, you would do pretty well.
But this wasn’t likely the case for those in the palm waving, cloak
laying down, crowd. And if you weren’t in
in Rome, being out was very bad.
Yes, the flood waters were rising. And that group that greeted Jesus with palms
and cloaks knew it. “Hosanna,” they
shouted out to him. Do you know what that
word actually means? Save us. Save now.
Their greeting to Jesus is also their prayer to God- save us. Save us from this oppressive empire. Save us from Rome. Save us from this violence, poverty, and
ominous warnings of death.
They were waiting for God to save them, because no one
else could. And unlike the man on his
roof in the flood who was convinced that nothing was God’s intended way of
saving them, they were convinced that they had found the one God sent to reach
down and lift them up. Though he didn’t
enter like a warrior on a horse, they expected Jesus to be their fierce
powerful leader who would liberate them from the oppression of Rome. They were sure he would lead them to a
military victory. And then they would
have the power of Rome, and they would be the dominant ones.
Save us, they cried.
They were so sure that day of Jesus triumphal entry into Jerusalem. This was it. This was the truck, the boat,
the helicopter, and the hand of God, all rolled into one messiah. On the one
hand, they were right. Jesus was there
to save them. He was there to liberate
them. He was there to set them free not
just from the Roman Empire, but from everything that kept them in shackles, and
ultimately from the powers of sin and death, the things from which no one else
offered them freedom.
On the other hand, though, they were wrong. They understood, at least partially, what Jesus came to save them from. But they missed the boat on what Jesus came to save them for. Jesus didn’t come to make his followers the new Empire. He didn’t come to make them the military victors, the ones who could impose their own will on others. No, he came to save them, and save us, for something much different, much bigger, and ultimately, much better.
Jesus didn’t come to save any of us
for a better, more prominent and powerful position in the world the way it is
today, in society the way that we know it.
He came to save us for a whole different kind of life—the life
eternal. This is what Jesus teaches and
models. A life of service to God and to
our neighbors, freely given, instead of forced servanthood to the powers of the
state, or money, or fear, or anything else that seeks to get us to submit to
anything but God’s intended way of life for us on earth, where everyone serves
everyone else, where everyone has enough to live, and where all can feel God’s
abundant love.
That crowd that greeted Jesus
rejected him later because he wasn’t who they thought he was. He wasn’t going to be who they wanted him to be, and do what they
wanted him to be, and he wasn’t going to save them for the kind of salvation
they wanted. It’s not that they were
wrong to want to be liberated from the oppression of Rome. Jesus was all for them being freed from that
oppression. And Jesus is all for us
being freed from all that binds us too- from poverty, oppression, fear,
jealousy, greed, from power and control seeking. And as we look at writing, giving, and
consecrating what God has led us to in this time of discernment, remember that
Jesus came to free us from fear of the budget not being balanced. He came to free us from slavery to how we’ve
always done things, or the idea that we don’t have any more to give, or that
nothing we do will work.
We don’t have to be the man who dies
in the flood waters, waiting for God’s savior.
We don’t have to be the Jerusalem crowd, rejecting the savior that God
sent. We can embrace the kind of saving for that Jesus offers us. Saving us from false constraints for freedom to dream really, really big.
Saving us from worry about what others think for the ability to serve all those in need. Saving us from our need to horde our
resources and hyper-concern with protecting ourselves, and what we have right
now for clear, imaginative vision of
all kinds of ways we could make God’s intentions on this earth come to life.
Saving us from fear of failure, for
the courage to try new, big, wonderful things in Jesus name.
Jesus comes victorious, to offer us
a kind of salvation that goes beyond our wildest dreams. What more could God do for us? Amen.
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