When I Was a Kid, When I Was an Adolescent and a Teenager, My Youth Group Frequently Got

Sermon April 1 Palm Sunday Mark 11:1-11

When I was a kid, when I was an adolescent and a teenager, my youth group frequently got involved with Praise Christianity. It's the sort of thing that most of us associate with huge megachurches – loud praise music with all sorts of instruments, rock songs and ballads. We went to concerts with big-name praise bands, the seats packed with thousands of people, most of them teenagers and their parents or youth group leaders. They had a way of tweaking our emotions, of working the crowd into a frenzy. At the right moment, you could look around and see hundreds, see thousands of eyes closed and hands raised high into the air. I always thought of it as the lightning rod to Jesus – the higher you stuck that hand out, the more you strained, the closer you were getting to God, the more likely that the Spirit was just gonna find that hand and zap right into you. I never had any kind of otherworldly experience, no great revelations or flashes of brilliant glory, but I was always plenty inspired. It'll get you pumped up. I spoke a few weeks ago about the Apostle Paul's use of rhetoric to guide you into believing a premise – in the same way, these bands and their preaching colleagues knew how to whip a crowd, especially a young excitable crowd, into a frenzy for God. It was always a moving experience, and there was always some sort of altar-call, and there were always folks, again mostly kids and teenagers, who went down front and whooped and hollered and the preacher would lead them in the accepting-Jesus prayer.

I think the format is a little different, but most adult Christians would recognize the same theme as coming from your standard tent revival. Work the crowd up with declarations of God's mighty glory and threaten them with the fires of hell, and by the end you've got a handful of folks up front weeping and repenting of their sins, begging Jesus for mercy. It's the same basic premise, updated for a new generation. Replace Gospel music with Jesus rock'n'roll, replace the traveling evangelist with the tour-bus full of guitar-and-drum-playing youth-minister types, and you've got yourself a service.

As I got older, as I started to shy away from youth group and focus more on the regular worship services, I guess I started to get disillusioned. I started to see that whole praise-Christianity scene as empty, or at least single-minded. I mean, look at the typical Disciples worship service. You've got all the bits of what you're supposed to do with God. You've got the teachings of the stories of God, lessons and interpretations, in the sermon. You've got repentance and acknowledgment of sin, in communion. You've got thankfulness in the prayers and in the songs. You've got service, in the offering. You've got fellowship, in the passing of the peace. You've got commission, sending out disciples into the world, at the benediction. It seems pretty complete. And there's still praise in there, too, with the Doxology (praise God from whom all blessings flow), and sometimes with the Gloria Patri. That's praise. That's sort of why we have church services the way we do – yes, you're supposed to do and feel these things every day, but if nothing else, worship services are one-stop-shops for all the stuff you gotta do to fulfill your Christian obligations.

It seemed like such a contrast to the revival-slash-concert model of worship that I had gotten used to. I had almost gotten this idea that unless you were in the middle or a worship service that includedeverythingthen praise wasn't good enough. Even worse, it seemed like praise was being used to manipulate people, to drag them up to the front so they would accept Jesus and the leaders could notch another tally on their list. Another soul saved, my job is done here, onto the next town. And underneath, there's always a fear that it's exploitation, that it's manipulation for somebody else's gain – yep, God is awesome, I'm so glad that you're responding and coming down and accepting Jesus, now if you'll just buy this CD and this t-shirt, if you'll just drop something into the offering plate, I know that God will appreciate your service.

In some ways, praise has been tainted as a part of Christian life. I wonder if anybody else shares this feeling. I know that people outside the faith do – they see revivals and those praise-concerts and they seenothing butmanipulation and exploitation. I think this happened because it’s a powerful thing. People can get caught up in the fervor of praise, it can make them do things that they otherwise wouldn’t. It’s a strong emotion – being that enthralled with God, that even doing things that seem ridiculous feel perfectly natural.

Think about the folks in our story today. They tore off their cloaks and threw them on the ground, they tore branches off trees and waved them and laid them on the road. They shouted and sang at some guy riding a donkey on a dirt road, because they were caught up in praise.

This story does need some background. It’s full of rich symbolic imagery that we modern readers might easily miss. Jesus sends two of his followers on into the city of Jerusalem ahead of him, and they borrow somebody’s donkey, referencing an old prophecy that the Messiah would appear riding a young, unbroken donkey. Once he has the animal, he starts his journey from the Mount of Olives, which the prophets said was the place where God would appear to usher in the final judgment and the Kingdom of God. He rides into the city of Jerusalem on this donkey, with the crowds cheering along the sides.

What we can easily miss in this story is that it’s designed to set Jesus up as an antitype of kings. Jesus sends two of his followers ahead to commandeer a donkey – it was extremely common for Emperors and governors and officials related to the Empire to commandeer the property, homes, and livestock of the citizens. The ride into town itself, with the cheering crowds, is a reference: in the Roman empire, whenever a general wins a great victory, this is the greeting he received upon coming home. People would wave palm fronds in the air, they would lay their coats on the ground for the general to walk on. Just a few years before Mark’s Gospel was written, still fresh in the minds of the readers, Jews had revolted for freedom in Judea, and when the soon-to-be-Emperor Vespasian squashed their rebellion, killing thousands of Jews, he rode into Jerusalem on his great horse with cheers and shouts of acclaim and rode right into the destroyed Temple. It was his way of claiming total and complete ownership over the whole place, even their religion. Surveying his new territory, just as in verse 11, when Jesus gets into Jerusalem and “looks around at everything”. Surveying his new territory.

The people shouting for joy in the streets? They are proclaiming Jesus with a quote from Psalm 118 – Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!” This was a Psalm of praise to King David, and to God who has saved the people by giving them a righteous and holy king. They same thing people sang to David, who expanded the territory of Israel, who united the kingdoms, who brought peace, who demanded righteousness in the name of the Lord – they sang it to Jesus, the guy riding the donkey.

Clearly, this whole scene is carefully designed to emphasize that Jesus is King. The King takes your animal, rides into the city on it, receiving shouts of praise and parade festivities fit for a King’s entry. He even refers to himself, for once, as Lord, a title that you can only use for a very superior person. In this story, Jesus is depicted as King, taking possession of the city of Jerusalem.

But the story is moreover designed to depict Jesus as a different kind of King. When the Empire takes something, like your donkey, it’s theirs, whereas Jesus vows to return the property. When Vespasian entered the city, he rode in on a great war horse, the very picture of triumph, might, and majesty. Demonstrating his strength, his military prowess, he and his mighty steed tromp into the city, having killed thousands of people and burned villages along the way to get here, but Christ enters on a donkey – not only is it a lowly donkey, not a great horse, it’s a donkey that has never been ridden, unlike a battle-worn warhorse. When a ruler takes a city – even David, the King that the Psalm is praising – the city is taken by violence, by death and destruction. Christ enters the city in peace. And here is the greatest contrast of all – Mark is, by this subtle reversal of familiar imagery, telling us that Jesus is taking this city, it is becoming his, but he’s doing it in a different way. He’s victorious not by battle, but by peace. Not by conquering, but by submitting. Not by killing… but by dying.

Of course, the people cheering Jesus and waving their branches? They don’t necessarily get all that, because they don’t know what is to come. They don’t know Jesus is going to die, that he’s going to rise again, that he will be king in a way that nobody could have imagined. They couldn’t have known what was to come. They probably expected him to march right to King Herod’s palace and take the throne, to kick out the Romans – heck, maybe he’d even march to Rome and overthrow the Emperor. He is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! That’s his thing, right?

The thing is, it didn’t matter that they got it wrong. It didn’t matter that they expected him to be a King that they were used to, and he turned out to be something completely different. What mattered was their praise. What mattered was that they were completely jubilant that Christ was coming into his kingdom, that God was doing a new thing for them.

There’s this word that we keep seeing in praise. We see it today, in our own praise music. We hear it in the Psalms, in the Torah, we hear it in today’s passage of Mark. Hosanna. We tend to think of it as a generic praise-word, like “Hooray!” But it means something. It means, “Save us, now.” When they shout joyously, shouting in praise, to Jesus, they’re saying, “Save us, now!”

And that’s the key. Whatever they understood or didn’t understand about Jesus, it didn’t matter. We, today, two thousand years later, we try so hard to see everything clearly, to understand everything perfectly, to be right about God. But what was important for the people along that roadside in Jerusalem was their confidence, their assurance, that whoever this Jesus guy is, whatever he’s up to, wherever he comes from… through him, God can save us. In one way or another, either by overthrowing oppression or by providing a path to righteousness, God can save us. Whether by Christ’s death or by his resurrection, by his wisdom or his victory over death, God can save us.

That’s why those people were out there, shouting and singing. Waving their branches and throwing their cloaks. They were taking a risk, doing something crazy – not just waving around branches, but doing it for somebody other than the earthly king. TThey were praising in danger, praising against all good sense. Because they were confident that, whatever else may happen, God can save us. That conviction along is enough for joy. The assurance of salvation is enough for praise. That deep abiding love is enough for celebration.

So now, I invite you to celebrate. I’m going to end this a little differently than usual. I want us to sing a few lines of music a few times over. I’ll start it, and we’ll repeat it together, and I want us all to get caught up in the beauty of that promise, to get caught up in the wonder of Christ, to get caught up in praise to the God who gives us life. Please, stand if you can, sing with me, shout stomp, wave your branches. Lose yourself in praise to God.

Shout to the North and the South

Sing to the east and the West

Jesus is savior to all

Lord of Heaven and Earth