Experiencing Hope
Sermon
Experiencing Easter
The Lenten Journey of Death to Life
After he had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem.
When he had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, saying, "Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, 'Why are you untying it?' Just say this, 'The Lord needs it.' " So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, "Why are you untying the colt?" They said, "The Lord needs it." Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying, "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!" Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, order your disciples to stop." He answered, "I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out."
-- Luke 19:28-40
Experiencing Hope
During spring break a few years ago, my family and I went to Disney World. We tried to plot out our route through the park so we would squeeze in all the "must do" rides. We also scheduled in a Disney character parade that we felt was a "must see." All the great Disney characters ranging from Mickey Mouse to Arial the mermaid would be there.
When we told our son, Spencer, the next thing we were doing was a parade, he got excited. After all, he had been to many parades back home in Heavener -- often standing on the corner of East First and C Avenue. He knew what to expect, so he wanted to get a front row seat. Based on his great knowledge, he eagerly asked, "Are they going to throw out candy?"
We had to explain to him that there would be no horses, no fire truck, no classic cars, and no candy thrown. This was a different kind of parade.
And it was a different kind of parade that took place in today's scripture from Luke -- unlike anything the people had ever seen. There wasn't any candy and there wasn't even a multitude of VIPs. Just one man humbly riding on a young donkey, but his presence caused the crowd to spread their coats on the ground like a red carpet and proclaim him king. The crowd sang, "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!"
But like I said, this was no ordinary parade -- and no ordinary king. Kings of the day didn't ride into town on donkeys. In a typical processional, the king would ride a warhorse.
So what kind of king was Jesus? He was the king of tax collectors, fishermen, Samaritans, harlots, blind men, demoniacs, and cripples. Those who followed Jesus were a ragtag bunch -- pathetically unfit for their grand hopes of a Jewish kingdom. They were the least, the last, and the lost -- the blind, the lame, and the outcast.
These coats they threw were not fine garments -- they were sweaty, dusty rags. Before Jesus came, these people in the crowd were desperate and nearly hopeless. Now Jesus was riding into Jerusalem and he brought a moment of possibility. Their last hope was riding into town on a borrowed young donkey.
Have you ever been that desperate? Have you ever felt so hopeless that you were looking for any sign that things could be better?
Bruce Larson tells about a friend who was driving through Kentucky and decided to leave the main highway to see more of the rural areas of the state. He found himself in a small town called No Hope, Kentucky. He drove around to see the town with an eye toward the churches. Sure enough, he came upon a lovely little white structure with a big sign in front that identified it as "No Hope Baptist Church."
Unfortunately, I've known too many churches of various denominations that were the No Hope Church. That's because there are so many people -- including Christians -- who live as if they have little or no hope.
The good news is that we don't have to live that way -- King Jesus brings us hope. Even in their hopelessness, this ragtag group at the Jesus parade knew that the man on the donkey was king. They placed all their hope in him.
By riding on the young donkey, Jesus was sending an unmistakable message about his identity. One of the best-known prophecies in that day concerning the coming of the Messiah came from Zechariah:
Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you, triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
-- Zechariah 9:9
By entering Jerusalem on that colt, Jesus was saying in no uncertain terms, "The prophecy is talking about ME! I am the Messiah. I am the Son of God -- the Savior of the World!"
The Pharisees and religious leaders who were watching this triumphal entry recognized that. They knew what was going on. They knew what Jesus was claiming. And they wanted Jesus to stop the crowds from worshiping him. In essence they tell him, "Control your disciples! Only God deserves our worship. So stop those people from saying that!"
And Jesus responds by saying, "If they were quiet, the stones would shout my praise. Even a rock -- or anyone as smart as a rock -- knows who I am!"
The bottom line is that we who are Christians have hope. Our hope is in our Savior who has fulfilled the prophecies -- Christ Jesus. We only need to be smarter than a rock to figure that out. Like the ragtag bunch gathered at that first Palm Sunday parade, we're not perfect. We know that evil pervades this world. But like those parade goers, we also know that Jesus gives us hope amidst the evil.
According to Greek mythology, a woman named Pandora was created by the gods to punish humanity. She was sent to Prometheus because he had secured fire from the gods. Knowing that she was a trap, he refused her. However, his brother, Epithemeus, gladly accepted her and fell in love with her. The two, along with the rest of humanity, had lived a life in a paradise -- dancing, playing, and enjoying delicious foods.
Now, each of the gods had endowed Pandora with their own special quality, making her as attractive as possible. The most significant of these gifts was a pithos or storage jar, given by Zeus. It contained her dowry and over time became known as Pandora's Box. Being warned from his brother, Epimetheus told Pandora never to open the jar she had received from Zeus.
However, Pandora's curiosity got the better of her. She was no longer interested in playing and dancing in the garden. So she opened it, releasing all the misfortunes of humankind -- diseases, sorrow, poverty, vices, crime, despair, and greed. They flew out in the form of horrible little moth-like creatures who mercilessly stung Pandora, Epithemeus, and their friends. People cried, and began quarrelling.
But Pandora had shut the jar before everything came out. She took the chance to open it again deciding it would be impossible to do any more harm than had already been done. Hope flew out. Having been concealed among the evil creatures by the gods, hope was now free to heal the wounds inflicted by evil.
Even amidst our modern-day evil, we know that hope is always present. In Jesus, hope wasn't just released -- it was enfleshed. Hope was born in stable and raised as a man, now coming to the people. In our desperate times -- in the dark night of our souls -- we have a hope that endures.
Many of you will remember the Lebanese hostage situation in the mid 1980s. One of the hostages was David Jacobsen who was in Beirut as a hospital administrator. For eighteen months he endured a harsh existence of chains and blindfolds, of cold dirt floors and terrible loneliness.
He was finally released on November 2, 1986. He later told of attending a California Angels baseball game the summer following his release. He went early to take in the whole experience: studying the crowd as they drifted in, listening to the venders hawk sodas and ice cream, watching the players warm up, and tasting a steaming hot dog with extra relish and mustard.
In his mind, he had been there a million times while still chained to a wall in Beirut. In almost a prayer, his mind drifted to wonderful memories of freedom. Mentally, he attended his daughter's wedding, bounced his grandson on his knee, attended Fourth of July picnics, and drove along the California coast in his old Plymouth convertible.
Jacobsen believed he would do all these things again because he had absolute faith that God would see him through. He said, "My patriotism, my faith, and my belief in myself all grew during my ordeal. It had to." And he explained how he endured his captivity by saying, "More than anything, hope is the nourishment of survival."1
Where did he turn to find hope? His hope was grounded in his faith -- grounded in God. Because of his hope and faith, he was able to survive a year and a half of captivity.
How do we experience this hope? Where does it come from? As the great hymn of faith says, "My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness." When you really think about those words, they seem strange to us. We may ask, "Really, our hope is found in blood? In suffering?"
As we've already pointed out, today is Palm Sunday. However, today is also designated Passion Sunday. It is a reminder that even though today is a triumphant entry, there is a seemingly not so triumphant exit at the end of the week. As we think about the death of Christ, do we naturally think, "Wow! Jesus will be tortured and crucified. Now I have hope!"? I doubt it. Yet, because of the painful bloody death of Jesus, we have hope. Because of our sin -- our evil, vices, crimes, greed, and dishonesty -- we have earned a death sentence. Because Jesus took on our death sentence, we have hope. Our hope lies not with the belief that Jesus came to suffer with his people -- but that he came to suffer for us. He took our place in death.
This is not what those ragtag followers who gathered at the palm parade were expecting. A king who dies was not in their plans. But it is what they received. They hoped for an earthly king and received a heavenly king. They hoped for the temporal but received the eternal.
In Christianity Today, Gary Thomas relays that when George Bush was vice-president, he represented the US at the funeral of former Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev. Bush was deeply moved by a silent protest carried out by Brezhnev's widow. She stood motionless by the coffin until seconds before it was closed. Then, just as the soldiers touched the lid, Brezhnev's wife performed an act of great courage, hope, and civil disobedience: She reached down and made the sign of the cross on her husband's chest.2
There in the stronghold of atheistic power, the wife of one of world's most powerful faithless leaders expressed her hope that her husband was wrong. She hoped that there was another life. She expressed hope that Jesus really had fulfilled the prophecy -- the hope that Jesus was the Messiah -- the Son of God -- the Savior of the world.
This is the hope we have in Christ: in life, in death, in life beyond death, Christ is with us. He died, so that we might live -- so that we might have hope in this life and the life to come.
In the midst of all the evil and darkness that we experience in life, we know we can experience hope. Jesus comes fulfilling prophecy: Your king comes to you, triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey. Amen.
____________
1. Guideposts '94 (Carmel, New York: Daily Guideposts, 1994), pp. 47-48.
2. Gary Thomas, Christianity Today (Carol Stream, Illinois: Christianity Today International, 1994), October 3, 1994, p. 26.
When he had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, saying, "Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, 'Why are you untying it?' Just say this, 'The Lord needs it.' " So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, "Why are you untying the colt?" They said, "The Lord needs it." Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying, "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!" Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, order your disciples to stop." He answered, "I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out."
-- Luke 19:28-40
Experiencing Hope
During spring break a few years ago, my family and I went to Disney World. We tried to plot out our route through the park so we would squeeze in all the "must do" rides. We also scheduled in a Disney character parade that we felt was a "must see." All the great Disney characters ranging from Mickey Mouse to Arial the mermaid would be there.
When we told our son, Spencer, the next thing we were doing was a parade, he got excited. After all, he had been to many parades back home in Heavener -- often standing on the corner of East First and C Avenue. He knew what to expect, so he wanted to get a front row seat. Based on his great knowledge, he eagerly asked, "Are they going to throw out candy?"
We had to explain to him that there would be no horses, no fire truck, no classic cars, and no candy thrown. This was a different kind of parade.
And it was a different kind of parade that took place in today's scripture from Luke -- unlike anything the people had ever seen. There wasn't any candy and there wasn't even a multitude of VIPs. Just one man humbly riding on a young donkey, but his presence caused the crowd to spread their coats on the ground like a red carpet and proclaim him king. The crowd sang, "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!"
But like I said, this was no ordinary parade -- and no ordinary king. Kings of the day didn't ride into town on donkeys. In a typical processional, the king would ride a warhorse.
So what kind of king was Jesus? He was the king of tax collectors, fishermen, Samaritans, harlots, blind men, demoniacs, and cripples. Those who followed Jesus were a ragtag bunch -- pathetically unfit for their grand hopes of a Jewish kingdom. They were the least, the last, and the lost -- the blind, the lame, and the outcast.
These coats they threw were not fine garments -- they were sweaty, dusty rags. Before Jesus came, these people in the crowd were desperate and nearly hopeless. Now Jesus was riding into Jerusalem and he brought a moment of possibility. Their last hope was riding into town on a borrowed young donkey.
Have you ever been that desperate? Have you ever felt so hopeless that you were looking for any sign that things could be better?
Bruce Larson tells about a friend who was driving through Kentucky and decided to leave the main highway to see more of the rural areas of the state. He found himself in a small town called No Hope, Kentucky. He drove around to see the town with an eye toward the churches. Sure enough, he came upon a lovely little white structure with a big sign in front that identified it as "No Hope Baptist Church."
Unfortunately, I've known too many churches of various denominations that were the No Hope Church. That's because there are so many people -- including Christians -- who live as if they have little or no hope.
The good news is that we don't have to live that way -- King Jesus brings us hope. Even in their hopelessness, this ragtag group at the Jesus parade knew that the man on the donkey was king. They placed all their hope in him.
By riding on the young donkey, Jesus was sending an unmistakable message about his identity. One of the best-known prophecies in that day concerning the coming of the Messiah came from Zechariah:
Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you, triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
-- Zechariah 9:9
By entering Jerusalem on that colt, Jesus was saying in no uncertain terms, "The prophecy is talking about ME! I am the Messiah. I am the Son of God -- the Savior of the World!"
The Pharisees and religious leaders who were watching this triumphal entry recognized that. They knew what was going on. They knew what Jesus was claiming. And they wanted Jesus to stop the crowds from worshiping him. In essence they tell him, "Control your disciples! Only God deserves our worship. So stop those people from saying that!"
And Jesus responds by saying, "If they were quiet, the stones would shout my praise. Even a rock -- or anyone as smart as a rock -- knows who I am!"
The bottom line is that we who are Christians have hope. Our hope is in our Savior who has fulfilled the prophecies -- Christ Jesus. We only need to be smarter than a rock to figure that out. Like the ragtag bunch gathered at that first Palm Sunday parade, we're not perfect. We know that evil pervades this world. But like those parade goers, we also know that Jesus gives us hope amidst the evil.
According to Greek mythology, a woman named Pandora was created by the gods to punish humanity. She was sent to Prometheus because he had secured fire from the gods. Knowing that she was a trap, he refused her. However, his brother, Epithemeus, gladly accepted her and fell in love with her. The two, along with the rest of humanity, had lived a life in a paradise -- dancing, playing, and enjoying delicious foods.
Now, each of the gods had endowed Pandora with their own special quality, making her as attractive as possible. The most significant of these gifts was a pithos or storage jar, given by Zeus. It contained her dowry and over time became known as Pandora's Box. Being warned from his brother, Epimetheus told Pandora never to open the jar she had received from Zeus.
However, Pandora's curiosity got the better of her. She was no longer interested in playing and dancing in the garden. So she opened it, releasing all the misfortunes of humankind -- diseases, sorrow, poverty, vices, crime, despair, and greed. They flew out in the form of horrible little moth-like creatures who mercilessly stung Pandora, Epithemeus, and their friends. People cried, and began quarrelling.
But Pandora had shut the jar before everything came out. She took the chance to open it again deciding it would be impossible to do any more harm than had already been done. Hope flew out. Having been concealed among the evil creatures by the gods, hope was now free to heal the wounds inflicted by evil.
Even amidst our modern-day evil, we know that hope is always present. In Jesus, hope wasn't just released -- it was enfleshed. Hope was born in stable and raised as a man, now coming to the people. In our desperate times -- in the dark night of our souls -- we have a hope that endures.
Many of you will remember the Lebanese hostage situation in the mid 1980s. One of the hostages was David Jacobsen who was in Beirut as a hospital administrator. For eighteen months he endured a harsh existence of chains and blindfolds, of cold dirt floors and terrible loneliness.
He was finally released on November 2, 1986. He later told of attending a California Angels baseball game the summer following his release. He went early to take in the whole experience: studying the crowd as they drifted in, listening to the venders hawk sodas and ice cream, watching the players warm up, and tasting a steaming hot dog with extra relish and mustard.
In his mind, he had been there a million times while still chained to a wall in Beirut. In almost a prayer, his mind drifted to wonderful memories of freedom. Mentally, he attended his daughter's wedding, bounced his grandson on his knee, attended Fourth of July picnics, and drove along the California coast in his old Plymouth convertible.
Jacobsen believed he would do all these things again because he had absolute faith that God would see him through. He said, "My patriotism, my faith, and my belief in myself all grew during my ordeal. It had to." And he explained how he endured his captivity by saying, "More than anything, hope is the nourishment of survival."1
Where did he turn to find hope? His hope was grounded in his faith -- grounded in God. Because of his hope and faith, he was able to survive a year and a half of captivity.
How do we experience this hope? Where does it come from? As the great hymn of faith says, "My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness." When you really think about those words, they seem strange to us. We may ask, "Really, our hope is found in blood? In suffering?"
As we've already pointed out, today is Palm Sunday. However, today is also designated Passion Sunday. It is a reminder that even though today is a triumphant entry, there is a seemingly not so triumphant exit at the end of the week. As we think about the death of Christ, do we naturally think, "Wow! Jesus will be tortured and crucified. Now I have hope!"? I doubt it. Yet, because of the painful bloody death of Jesus, we have hope. Because of our sin -- our evil, vices, crimes, greed, and dishonesty -- we have earned a death sentence. Because Jesus took on our death sentence, we have hope. Our hope lies not with the belief that Jesus came to suffer with his people -- but that he came to suffer for us. He took our place in death.
This is not what those ragtag followers who gathered at the palm parade were expecting. A king who dies was not in their plans. But it is what they received. They hoped for an earthly king and received a heavenly king. They hoped for the temporal but received the eternal.
In Christianity Today, Gary Thomas relays that when George Bush was vice-president, he represented the US at the funeral of former Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev. Bush was deeply moved by a silent protest carried out by Brezhnev's widow. She stood motionless by the coffin until seconds before it was closed. Then, just as the soldiers touched the lid, Brezhnev's wife performed an act of great courage, hope, and civil disobedience: She reached down and made the sign of the cross on her husband's chest.2
There in the stronghold of atheistic power, the wife of one of world's most powerful faithless leaders expressed her hope that her husband was wrong. She hoped that there was another life. She expressed hope that Jesus really had fulfilled the prophecy -- the hope that Jesus was the Messiah -- the Son of God -- the Savior of the world.
This is the hope we have in Christ: in life, in death, in life beyond death, Christ is with us. He died, so that we might live -- so that we might have hope in this life and the life to come.
In the midst of all the evil and darkness that we experience in life, we know we can experience hope. Jesus comes fulfilling prophecy: Your king comes to you, triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey. Amen.
____________
1. Guideposts '94 (Carmel, New York: Daily Guideposts, 1994), pp. 47-48.
2. Gary Thomas, Christianity Today (Carol Stream, Illinois: Christianity Today International, 1994), October 3, 1994, p. 26.
