Great Humility
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Introduction
Introduction
Today marks a turning point in the ministry of Jesus and in the Gospel of Mark itself. Mark begins his Gospel with a conflated quotation. He takes Isaiah’s promise the the Lord would return to his people and combines it with Malachi’s threat that when the Lord comes to his Temple, it may not go as well for the people as they would hope.
Malachi 3:1 (ESV)
“Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple.
Isaiah had said
A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
For the past three chapters in Mark’s Gospel, Israel’s God in the person of Jesus has been on his way back to his people, back to his city, and back to his temple. He has been “on the way,” and now, starting in chapter 11, he arrives. Notice the last verse in our reading.
Mark 11:11 (ESV)
And he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple.
The text is anticlimactic at this point. Mark simply says that Jesus looked around at everything, and since it was already late, he left.
Mark leaves his readers wondering, “What was this all about?”
This is how Mark often writes. If you were to turn in your Bibles to Matthew 21 where this same event in the life of Jesus is record, you’d notice a few differences. Matthew has Mark as one of his sources, and while Mark writes that Jesus instructed his disciples to find a colt, which could be a young horse, pony, donkey, or mule, Matthew wants to be more specific. In his version, Jesus says, “you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her.” Mark moves on from this, but then Matthew adds:
This took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet, saying,
“Say to the daughter of Zion, ‘Behold, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.’ ”
Notice that Mark leaves this ambiguous. Mark doesn’t stress that it was a donkey, nor does he mention the Old Testament quotation. He leaves his reader to wonder.
Likewise Mark has left his reader to wonder what exactly happened when Jesus entered the temple, looked around, and then walked away. Mark’s answer comes immediately, but it’s cryptic.
On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry.
And seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs.
And he said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard it.
And what does Jesus do immediately after this?
And they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons.
It’s ironic that we say that Jesus curses the fig tree but cleanses the Temple because Mark clearly sees them as two sides of the same coin. Israel’s God has come at last to his people, and he has found them wanting. Matthew cuts through Mark’s ambiguity by moving immediately from the Triumphal Entry to the so-called Cleansing of the Temple. Luke is even less subtle. Luke tells the story of Palm Sunday and then writes:
And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it,
saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.
For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side
and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.”
I’m sorry to be the Debbie Downer on Palm Sunday, but this is not the day that you think it is. This day is not the joyous celebration of Israel welcoming back it’s God and King into the city and Temple at least. This day is the beginning of the end. This day is the first day of a week the ends with the creator of the world lying dead in a tomb.
What Went Wrong?
What Went Wrong?
So, what went wrong? There are a lot of ways to explain this, but I’ll go with the obvious one, although it’s not obvious unless you know intertestamental history, that is, the history in between the Old and New Testament. About two hundred years before, when Israel was occupied by Greece, a certain Jewish family started a rebellion against the Greek Empire. They were known as the Maccabees. The most famous person in this family was named Judas, and in case you’re wondering, I don’t believe that’s a coincidence. He was a mighty conqueror. He was so mighty that the people gave him a nickname: maqqaba. Maqqaba, from which we call his family the Maccabees, is the Aramaic word for “hammer” or even “sledge hammer.” Judas was the hammer the broke the rule of the Seleucids over the people of Judah, but he died before Judah gained is full independence. That privilege fell to his brother Simon, who after finishing Judas’s war against the Seleucids, entered Jerusalem as the conquering king.
1 Maccabees 13:51–52 (NRSVCE)
On the twenty-third day of the second month, in the one hundred seventy-first year, the Jews entered it with praise and palm branches, and with harps and cymbals and stringed instruments, and with hymns and songs, because a great enemy had been crushed and removed from Israel.
Simon decreed that every year they should celebrate this day with rejoicing.
Jesus tried to flip the script on them. He doesn’t enter the city as a conquering king. He enters the city low, humble, riding on a donkey. But that is not who the people want. They want a Maccabee. They want Judas. They want Simon. They want someone who will wage war on their behalf, but that is not who Jesus is, which is why he says in Luke:
saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.
That prophecy about the King who comes humble and riding on a donkey. Do you know what the next verse says?
I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall speak peace to the nations; his rule shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.
Jesus is doing all that he can to tell the people: “This day is not what you think it is;” but they don’t see it. Jesus comes to the fig tree and finds it barren, and so he places a curse upon it.
A few weeks ago, I preached a sermon on the Transfiguration that was entitled “Listen to Him,” which is what the voice from heaven says about Jesus while he is up on the mountain. I argued that, given how this event follows directly from the scene where Jesus tells the disciples plainly that he will die and rise again, which causes Peter to rebuke Jesus for what he just said, the two texts were linked. Peter doesn’t listen to Jesus when he talks about dying and rising, and so the voice from heaven says, “Listen to HIm.”
Look at Him
Look at Him
I want to say something similar this morning, except, instead of “Listen to Him,” this morning I want to say “Watch Him.” This week is about walking day by day with Jesus through the most important events in human history. But they aren’t merely events. They are portraits for us of who Jesus is. So, listen to him, yes, but also, I want you to look at him this week.
There is an argument to be made that American Christianity has inverted the values of Christianity by failing to look properly at the king who comes humble and riding on a donkey, at the master who washes his disciples’s feet, and the God who dies on cross at the hands of those whom he created.
Think about what it is you value. Think about what it is that you think is good. Think about your ideal human, about who you look up to and admire. And then, compare that person to who Jesus reveals himself to be in Holy Week. We’ve been sold a bill of goods, my friends. We’re just like those people in the first century welcoming Jesus into the city. We want our conquering King. We want the man who will fight our battles. We want, to make this as American as possible, the cowboy with his pistol on his hip ready to take the law into his own hands if need be to make sure that the good guys, i.e., us, win. But that is not Jesus.
We do not get to decide who Jesus is as he arrives to the city today. Remember what happened when they tried to come and make Jesus king by force? He retreated from them. Remember what happened when everyone got together and waved palm branches in front of him to tell him exactly what they expected him to do? He wept over them and said they did not know the things that make for peace. Remember what happened when they came to arrest Jesus and Peter pulled out his sword? Jesus told him to put it away.
All I am asking you to do this week is look at Jesus and watch him closely. He is the one who defines reality. He is the one who defines what is good, right, and true. He is the one who defines what it is to be ideally human.
Did you hear the collect this morning?
Almighty and everlasting God, in your tender love for us you sent your Son our Savior Jesus Christ to take upon himself our nature, and to suffer death upon the Cross, giving us the example of his great humility.
Great Humility
Great Humility
Great humility. Your God and King comes to you today in great humility. He comes low, humble, and riding on a donkey. Do not wave your palm branches for him wishing that he was more like Judas Maccabeus or John Wayne. We are supposed to be changed into his image, but we work awfully hard to change him into ours.
Amen.