April 17, 2011
What Were They Thinking? - Matthew 21:1-11
Pastor: Luke Maybry
DownloadMatthew depicts Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem as happening on a Monday. The crucifixion happened four days later on a Friday. This was a very fateful week in the world’s history. And I have often wondered exactly what it was like. In fact, I have often wondered what everybody was thinking. What was Jesus thinking? This is a good day for Jesus. Zechariah’s prophecy is being fulfilled. This is the long awaited, like five hundred years awaited, entry of the promised King coming into Jerusalem. Jesus was the object of everybody’s affection. That must have felt good. But Jesus had been thinking about the Cross since way back in Matthew 16. In fact, he even said right after another mountain top experience that we call the Transfiguration that he was going to Jerusalem to die on the cross. And now he was in Jerusalem, and the cross was just five days away. I did the math the other day. Jesus had seen 12,040 days. He had five more. Jesus was thinking about the cross. He must also have been thinking about the pain, the humiliation, the agony, saying goodbye to his mother… all of that. We also know that Jesus’ thinking came through. Jesus did what he said he was going to do. His thoughts matched his actions. “Though Jesus was in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” That’s what Jesus thought, and that’s what Jesus did.
We also know a fair amount about what the disciples thought. They must have anticipated this triumphant entry. They had confessed Jesus to be the Messiah. They had seen him do some incredible things. In fact, they believed so much that they even got the donkey and the colt. They followed Jesus even though it was not convenient. They also knew about the cross. They never understood it. They argued about it. They questioned it. It made no sense to them, but at least they had somewhat of an idea.
We can also tell from their actions, though, that there was a clear disconnect between their thoughts and actions. One of those twelve disciples escorting Jesus into Jerusalem would betray him to his death. Judas sold Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. Another disciple, Peter, would deny that he even knew Jesus, three times. The other ten would run like cowards when trouble hit. They went along with this cross-talk for awhile. But when the tough got going and the cross got visible, they got out of town, really fast, and left Jesus literally hanging.
We also know a fair amount about what they people thought. They cried, “Hosanna,” which literally means, “save us,” but was probably more like a religious “hurrah.” They also referred to Jesus as the “Son of David,” and “the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” They don’t say that for just anybody, you know. They finally concluded that the man they had just hailed was a prophet from Nazareth, which, among other things, he was. For all their ignorance, they made quit a confession of faith.
But the same crowd that welcomed him on Monday killed him on Friday. Like the disciples, at the very least, there was a disconnect between their thoughts, and certainly their words, and their actions. It really doesn’t make much sense that they would praise him one day, and kill him the next. It doesn’t make much sense that the disciples would herald Jesus through Jerusalem as the king one day, and run like cowards five days later. Something’s not right there. Or, as a professor of mine would often say, we’re not real sure what they were thinking, or that they were thinking at all. “Not everybody who says to me ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord did we not prophesy in your name, and cast our demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?’ Then I will say to them, ‘I never knew you. Go away from me.Ҕ All of which is to say that it doesn’t matter if you’ve got theology nailed down to the nth degree. As one psychologist said, “it is possible to make an A+ in the course on ethics and still flunk life.”
Robert Coles is a professor at Harvard. He tells the story of a young woman who came to Harvard from a working class family in the mid-west. In order to make ends meet, she worked between classes as a housekeeper at the university. She constantly encountered classmates there who “apparently had forgotten the meaning of please and thank you, who did not hesitate to be rude to her.” Finally one day, she came in his office in tears. A classmate had sexually harassed her. It was not the first time, she said, but she had had it. She quit her job and had dropped out of school. The guy who had harassed her was a pre-med student. “That guy gets all A’s,” she said. “In fact, I’ve taken two moral reasoning courses with him, and I’m sure he’s gotten A’s in both of them, and yet look how he behaves… I’ve been taking all these philosophy courses” she went on say, “and we talk about what’s true, what’s important, what’s good. Well, how do you teach people to be good? What’s the point of knowing good if you don’t keep trying to become a good person?” What was that guy thinking? I don’t know. I’m not sure that he knew.
Now compare that story to this one. Phillip Hallie wrote a book some years ago about a French village whose people sheltered Jews from the Nazis in the German occupation. The surprising thing about them is that these people were not all that heroic or extraordinary or even enlightened – well educated people. The largest part of their education, actually, came from their pastor, Andre Trocme. Every Sunday he proclaimed the Word, and every week the members of his church studied the Scriptures. Over time, week by week, it all started to sink in. So when the time came for them to be courageous, they just did it. “Pastor always taught us,” said one elderly woman there, “that there comes a time in every life when a person is asked to do something for Jesus. When our time came, we knew what to do.” Unlike the premed student at Harvard, it’s obvious what those people were thinking. It’s obvious what they believed.
As much as I hate to say this, and as much as I wish we weren’t, we are probably a good bit like the Harvard pre-med student, and the disciples and crowd in Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem. As much as it pains me to say it, somebody will probably be reading about us a hundred or so years from now and wonder what in the world we were thinking. For example, they will rightly wonder, for example, how in the world we good, Godly Christians managed to completely defund education, and to almost write off an entire segment of Charlotte’s children in the process. If that does not change, then succeeding generations will very much suffer the consequences of our sin, and our inability to actually do what we say that we believe. That’s just one example. Of course, they may also wonder how we managed to keep spending money that we didn’t have, over and over and over again, just to make them pay for it. If we don’t stop that, it will mean economic devastation for them. Now maybe those two are mutually exclusive, but I am beyond confident that if put politics aside for just a brief moment and actually do what’s right, then we can find a way out of this mess.
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” Not everyone who says and even thinks “Lord, Lord” really means it. If they did, then their actions would show it. As it stands now, we are pretty certain what Jesus thought and believed, because we’re also certain of what he actually did. We’re not all that certain of what the disciples or the people thought back then. We’re not sure that they thought at all. At the very least, there’s a gaping chasm between their words and actions during the first Holy Week. We’re about two minutes away from standing up and saying what we believe. May our actions say the same thing.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
