The End of the Parade (Rev. Dr. Charley Reeb)
I don’t know about you, but for me Palm Sunday always has the feeling of being like a tailgate party before Easter. I guess we just cannot help ourselves, right? We’ll find any excuse to celebrate, won’t we?
We have tailgate parties before the big game. We have graduation parties before graduation. Heck, I know a lady who, when she celebrates her birthday, she celebrates it the whole month long. And she tells all of her friends, listen, this is the month of my birthday. So the whole month, gifts are welcome and any kind of parties are welcome. That’s not really a bad way to do it, is it?
And since we love to celebrate, we really can’t wait to celebrate. Literally, we can’t wait to celebrate. I mean, after all, we start celebrating Christmas right around Thanksgiving, don’t we? And it’s the same at Easter. All of us know at Walgreens. They’ve had the eggs and the candy and the baskets and the fake grass and all the little fun little things for Easter on the shelves since February.
And so we find ourselves on Palm Sunday today, already celebrating a week before Easter. We really can’t help ourselves. Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem seems to lend itself for a holy tailgate party before Easter. Jesus has this dramatic effect.
He calls for a donkey to sit on for dramatic effect, he comes in peace. And then he gets on the donkey and he enters Jerusalem with a big crowd and they throw confetti at him in the form of leafy branches. And everybody’s singing and shouting, Hosanna, Hosanna, O our Lord, Hosanna, Hosanna, Hosanna.
It must have been some scene. And so we take our cue, right? You don’t have to tell us twice, and so we get all the children together, and we put them in the back, and we have these palm branches, and we bring them down, and we wave these palm branches, and we sing, Hosanna, we sing to the Lord, and we celebrate, and we party.
Why not, right? We know it’s a little early to be celebrating. It’s a little early to be celebrating Easter, but why not? Why not get a little excited? Why not have a little fun? Why not go ahead and celebrate?
This was really the attitude of the crowd that day when Jesus made his entrance into Jerusalem. Oh, there were lots of fans of Jesus at this point, lots of fans of this Jesus guy. He was amazing. He was unlike any other person anybody had ever met. He had charisma.
He was able to take the marginal people in society and make them feel important and make them feel big. He had dinner with all kinds of people. He accepted all kinds of people. He put the pious religious leaders in their place. He performed miracles. He made the blind to see. He said things that no one else ever said. I mean, this guy you could really get behind.
And now he was entering Jerusalem. Oh, he was entering Jerusalem. He was really going to make some changes. He was going to make things right. And so it was time to celebrate him It was time to throw this big parade. It was time to have Jesus come in and set the world right.
It’s easy to see why Jesus would attract such a crowd. Why they would turn him into a hero. It really is. We’re the same way. We have this tendency. We have this need to worship hero figures, don’t we? We have this need, we have this tendency to lift up and praise people who do bold and sensational and powerful things. We love our heroes.
I think, of course, Captain Sully, right? Remember that courageous pilot, who landed his plane on the Hudson River and made emergency landing on the Hudson River. Saving 100s of lives, saving the lives of his passengers and his crew. Of course, the crowd swept Captain Scully away and they called him a hero. And he attended the next Super Bowl and they called him a hero and they cheered him and then he was in parades and and they cheered his name and then he was reunited with the passengers and crew and the family members of the passengers and crew, and they cheered him on. We love our heroes.
Oh, we love our heroes. We love our heroes, don’t we? It’s easy to see why the crowd admired Jesus so much. He was the ultimate hero. He encouraged and empowered people who were kicked to the curb by life. He would accept and affirm everybody. He liberated the oppressed. He told the truth about those who were corrupt.
Why not throw a parade for Jesus? Why not celebrate Jesus? I bet they thought he would perform a miracle after the parade? I am sure the crowd was waiting for him confound another religious teacher with this silver tongue. Perhaps they thought “Maybe he’ll just pull another rabbit out of the hat for us.”
Well, the gospel of Mark is interesting because the gospel of Mark tells us that Jesus Christ did not do anything spectacular like that. Nothing astonishing like that. In fact, according to Mark, what Jesus did after the parade and after everybody threw confetti at him in the form of pall branches, it says that he did something very ordinary and boring. He went into the temple. He went into the temple. No magic. No spell binding teaching. No miracles. He just went into the temple.
Now, can you imagine the response of the people in the parade at that point? What’s he doing? Why did he go in there? What is he doing? Why is he going in the temple? What is he doing?
And then what’s interesting is Mark says that after he went into the temple, he then left the temple, he got with his disciples, and then he left the crowd. Now, that’s rather rude, isn’t it? That’s not very gracious. After all, if you’re the center of the parade, if you’re the person who’s being honored in a parade, you at least address the crowd, you at least entertain them a little bit, maybe sing them a song, maybe perform a miracle, maybe do something. I mean, you don’t just leave the crowd.
Why did Jesus go into the temple? Maybe he just needed some downtime, right? Maybe he just needed to get away from the crowd and get some downtime. After all, being a public figure is exhausting. People always grabbing at you. All these needs that are around you all the time. People always need something all the time, grabbing at you. Can you imagine what it was like to be, Jesus? Jesus, Jesus. I need you to heal me. Jesus, Jesus, can you tell me what you said in point three? Jesus, Jesus, could you say that again? Jesus, Jesus, I need you, Jesus, Jesus. I need you. Exhausting. Maybe he went into the temple to get away from the people. for a while.
Or maybe Jesus went in the temple for nostalgic reasons. After all, he hadn’t been in that temple in Jerusalem since he was a kid. Remember that story when he went into the temple with his mother and father, and then he scurried away and got lost, making Mary and Joseph just mortified, totally scared about where their son was. He hadn’t been in the temple since then. And maybe he wanted to go back to see if the temple looked like it did when he was a kid. Kind of like when we go back to our old schools or homes when we were young to see what it looks like as an adult. Sometimes you need to take journeys like that. Sometimes you do.
I don’t know. I don’t know, something tells me, though, that that Jesus, he didn’t go into the temple just to get away from the crowd or for nostalgic reasons. Something tells me that Jesus went into the temple to pray. Because he knew what he was about to face. Something tells me that Jesus went into the temple to pray because he knew that very soon the celebration would be over.
No more confetti? No more smiles and cheers from the crowd. No more shouts of hosanna, no more shouts of Lord.
No, something tells me Jesus went into the temple to pray because he knew that soon that happy parade would be over, and that finicky crowd will be shouting something different at him. Something tells me that Jesus went into the temple to pray because he knew that this parade he was going through would not end in glory. It would end in blood.
Oh, Jesus, he tried to warn his disciples, didn’t he? He really did.
A couple days later during Passover he wan in the upper room, so he could get with his disciples a little bit and try to explain to him a little bit what was about to occur.
And, you know, the disciples, they were kind of slow. They were really slow actually. And so they’re around this table. And Jesus, he kept saying things like comparing the bread to his body and comparing the wine to blood. And the disciples, you know, they’re looking at each other like, what in the world is he talking about?
In fact, right after dinner, according to Luke, you know what the disciples decided to talk about after Jesus is trying to explain things, they’re fighting over who’s going to be his right hand man. They’re fighting over who’s going to be his chief of staff when he gets into power.
The disciples did not realize that Jesus, this person they were following, was about to do the most outrageous thing of his ministry, and that was get himself killed.
That really does put water on the fire, doesn’t it? That really does kill the party, doesn’t it? That really does spoil the parade, doesn’t it? Don’t we look foolish? Cheering for a man and praising a man and lifting up a man who’s about to sabotage himself.
We’ve always known Jesus was a little different, right? That Jesus did things a little differently, but who? What kind of person who has all the power in the world, all the wisdom in the world, all the know how in the world, throws himself willingly to the wolves? Who does that?
Peter felt the same way. You remember in scripture when Jesus kept talking about him needing to suffer and bad things happening. Peter said, no, no, no, that’s crazy talk, Jesus. That’s crazy talk. Don’t talk that way. We understand what it’s like to feel like Peter, don’t we? I know you do, I do.
That doesn’t sound like a hero to me. I mean, we need somebody who can roll their sleeves up, get their hands dirty. We need someone who knows that there are real problems in this world that need real solutions. We don’t need someone who’s going to give into oppressive powers. We need someone who’s gonna give people what they deserve. We need someone who’s going to recognize all the needs in this world and do something about it.
There’s hunger and there’s disease and division… We need somebody to get in and find real solution. We need a champion. We need a hero.
Many years ago Brandy and I were at a dinner party with some friends, and They invited a friend along with them that I’d never met. Really nice guy. We had fun, but it didn’t take me long to to see that he was sizing me up because he had issues with preachers and church and religion and Christianity. And I’m used to that, really. It’s interesting when people find out I’m a preacher, the reactions I get are always very interesting. It’s a fascinating thing.
Anyway, we’re having a good time At dinner, and I could tell he was getting comfortable enough with me that he wanted to get something off his chest. So he looked at me and said, Charlie, I’ve got to tell you something. There’s something I’ve never been able to figure out. So, well, what’s that? He said why in the world would you praise a guy and get excited about it, guy? Who got the snot kicked out of them and then killed? What’s this fascination, you Christians have with the torture and the killing of a man? It seems rather morbid. It seems rather weird. It seems rather disturbing.
And you know what? I thought at that point, I thought, he has a very good point. Yeah, that’s a good point, doesn’t he? Why don’t we just stay on the bright side of Easter? Just stay on the bright side of it. Let’s skip all this blood and guts. Just skip it all together. Just skip all the blood and guts, skip all the darkness. Most people do anyway. In fact, on Good Friday, we won’t have as near as many people here as we do on Easter. Why not just skip it? I know pastors that won’t even put crosses in their churches because they don’t want to turn anybody off. They want to attract a crowd. And, you know, that makes sense. I understand that. I do.
It makes sense. Just go ahead today and hide the eggs, let the kids go after the eggs and have the candy. Why not just go ahead and do that? Makes sense.
Makes a lot of sense. It makes sense until, you see, Jesus again in that parade. But instead of being on a donkey, he’s on his knees. And he’s got blood all over his body. And his eyes are bloodshot. And he’s carrying something. You’ve seen it before. You recognize it.
You know what it is. In fact, you’ve tried to forget about it. You hope no one else can see it. But he’s carrying it. And you don’t know why. It’s really not his to carry. It doesn’t belong to him, but he’s caring, carrying it. He’s determined to carry it. And he’s buckling under it. He’s groaning under it. He’s suffering under it, and he’s determined to carry it. He’s carrying it.
And you see all the blood and guts, and you see all of it, and just, and just, At the moment, as you’re about to walk away from all this awful scene and get back to your wife, you hear somebody say in the crowd, Behold, The lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.
He said, “Eat this bread. And drink this cup. In remembrance of me.”