Words of Wonder: Triumph

Sermon

We’ve come to that part of the story of Jesus that’s known as “the triumphal entry into Jerusalem.” It’s really the story of Jesus entering the great city for the last time in his earthly life. It’s the story of his disciples still not getting it, calling Jesus “king.” It’s the story of different sorts of triumph – yes, a modest triumphal entrance on a donkey, a beast of burden, with plain-spun cloaks marking a path. It’s also the story of the triumph of evil in the injustice of Jesus’ sentence and the killing of him on a cross.

In so many ways, Jesus shatters the illusion of glory and triumph that accompanies this story. In the days that follow this triumphal entry, Jesus will live out the words he had told his followers all along: your Messiah has come and he will die a humiliating death. The King is here but his crown is made of thorns and his throne is a cross. You call me “blessed”; in a matter of days, the people will demand my life and shout “Crucify!” “Crucify!” “Crucify him!”

All that we’ve been preaching on in this season of Lent comes to a head in this week that begins with competing triumphs. We see all these words at play: glory, sin, righteousness, salvation, atonement, and redemption.

After preaching or hearing all these sermons, I have settled on this: the events of Holy Week, and all those big words we talked about, are really, at their heart, about a mystery we may never fully understand in our hearts, minds, or souls. In what is perhaps the most profound of the divine mysteries, God-in-Jesus saved, healed, the world in love and died because of that love. Jesus chose dying for the likes of you and me.

Dying for those who shouted “Crucify!”

Dying for Peter who denied him three times.

Dying for Judas who betrayed him for a bit of money.

Dying for Pilate who washed his hands of the whole affair.

Dying for Herod who mocked him.

Dying for the women who wept at the foot of his cross.

Dying for the guilty, the undeserving, the ignorant.

Dying for the sinner, which is to say, for all.

I don’t understand the holiness in all of that, or the salvation in it, but I do understand that the world had to be saved. I understand that God loves us so much that God had no choice but to save us. I understand the depth of sin and the chasm that had widened between God and God’s people.

I understand the history of sin and grace that brought us to the cross. For a few brief moments at the beginning of time, all was right with the world. God created everything, and for a brief

moment, it was good. But when God created the human beings, God also created free will, giving these human beings the ability to choose what they would do.

God gave them a few rules to live by, knowing they could choose to follow these rules or choose to break them. Then the moment of the perfect, flawless creation passed because the human beings chose to break the rules. A generation sinned, and then the generation after that sinned, and the generation after that and after that; for thousands of years people sinned. Because the generations sinned, and because God loved them nonetheless, God kept making covenants with the beloved people.

In ancient times, when covenants were made, they were not between individuals but between two communal parties, usually political entities, who probably did not have equal power; that is, one entity was more powerful than the other. But the covenant ensured a way that these two entities would relate to the other, with a bit of equality and equanimity. To seal that covenant, an animal would be killed, blood would be spilled, and that would set the promise.

So when God’s ancient world became utterly corrupt, God washed out all that sin and corruption in the terrible flood, and then God made a covenant with Noah and his family never to do that again. God made a covenant with Abraham and Sarah that their descendants would be as numerous as the stars, and so they are. God showed the people wandering in the wilderness how to hold up their end of the promise by following ten simple commandments. After the complete destruction of the kingdom of Israel and Judah, God made a new promise, the covenant to end all covenants, to be their God, as they would be God’s people.

And then a generation sinned and a generation after that, and a generation after that and after that; for a thousand more years, men and women sinned. The time had come for a new covenant, and this time God really pulled out all the stops. This time, there would be no rainbow, no sky filled with stars, no stone tablets, but someone’s blood would be spilled, and someone’s heart would be broken. With this new promise, God’s own heart was broken, and God’s own blood was spilled.

So remember, at the end of the Passover meal, after Jesus and his disciples remembered God’s promises to the people of Israel in the liturgy of the seder, after drinking a nice red, the kind of red you or I might drink at one of our holiday meals, Jesus broke the moment. Jesus spoiled the mood of celebration and sleepiness. He took a cup of wine and said, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant [set] in my blood.”

Jesus dies, of course. If you only come to church on Palm Sunday and Easter, you could very easily miss that critical detail. If you only experience the triumphal entry into Jerusalem and then the risen Lord in the garden, you might forget that Jesus was found guilty of a crime he didn’t commit; he was tortured and killed, was dead and laid to rest in a tomb. You might not realize that up there on that cross, God-in-Jesus died, knowing the utter depths of human despair.

We don’t like the death part of the story very much. People shy away from Good Friday for good reason; who wants to hear yet another story of pain, of suffering, of innocence lost, of the depths of depravity that lie in the human heart? Who wants to hear that our beloved Jesus went through all that?

Some people do.

People who’ve suffered find a strange comfort in knowing that God suffered too.

People who’ve been betrayed by a friend know they are not the only ones who’ve experienced that.

People who’ve been deserted in their hour of need find solace in the garden of Gethsemane.

People who’ve been mocked, bruised, and punished wrongly find an ally in Jesus on the cross.

People who believe that God has forsaken them may someday know that Jesus, too, bore that unbearable pain.

People who have experienced the triumph of evil and suffering find comfort in the cross.

Some people find a strange comfort in knowing that God suffered too, because they know that if God suffered and died, and then rose, there is hope that they too will rise – rise up out of despair, rise up out of the pain, rise up into a new, whole, healed, reconciled life. But one cannot rise to a new life until one dies in an old life.

I don’t understand why God had to suffer in order to save the world, and I struggle to believe that’s the way it had to be. But I do understand—no, I believe—that God loves us that much. I believe that in his agony in the garden and in the trial and on the cross, Jesus knew all the pain of human sin and wretchedness. I believe that in a mystery I cannot fathom or explain, in his death and resurrection, Jesus took that wretchedness away.

God was triumphant over sin and even over death. I can’t explain to you how it works; I can only encourage you to find a way to believe in your own heart. To follow Jesus requires that we follow him to this ignoble, horrifying end, so that as we followed him to death, we will follow him into new life.

But we’re not there yet.

The tomb is not yet filled.

The hour is close at hand but hasn’t arrived yet.

The cross is still just two pieces of wood.

The thirty pieces of silver still jingle in the priest’s pocket.

The table hasn’t been set, the cup is not poured, and the bread not yet baked.

Not yet. But soon. All too soon.

Amen.