Everything Is Not What It Seems

Series: Mark: The Life of Jesus

“Everything is Not What It Seems”
 Message @ Jericho Ridge Community Church –Sunday, April 5, 2020
Text: Mark 11:1-11 (PALM Sunday)

Hello, friends. My name is Brad, I’m part of the teaching and leadership team here at Jericho Ridge.  Welcome into this space. As we spend some time together today, I’m stuck by how much the world has changes and can change in just one short month!    

A little over a month ago, on Wednesday, February 26 we entered the part of the Christian calendar known as Lent.  Lent is a time of preparation leading into Easter which we will celebrate next week.  Lent is a time for self-reflection. and it is often associated with giving something up.  But 2020 is about the lentiest Lent I think I can imagine!  But there is grace and mercy – if you planned to give up sweets and you find yourself in home isolation, reach for the chocolate, friend! Stay well and be safe! 

The season of lent begins with what is known as Ash Wednesday.   And it is marked by a more simple, solemn church gathering where the attendees come to the front and have the sign of the cross placed on their forehead with ashes.  It is a call to repentance and a reminder of our own fragility and mortality. 

This particular ash Wednesday, my wife Meg and I attended a local gathering at Willoughby Church with Pastor Ed and the team there.  I’m so grateful we work in wonderful partnership with the other churches in our area.  It was meaningful gathering and we were appreciative of our time with them.  But then immediately following the gathering, I realized I had to go out and get some gas.  So down to Costco I went. And as I got out of the car and put my card into the reader, a lady whom I know from our neighbourhood was opposite me and she said ‘Pastor Brad – good to see you!”  We chatted for a bit and I could see her repeatedly looking up a my forehead and motioning that I had something there.  She kept indicating that I had a smudge or some kind of funny looking stain on my forehead a I had completely forgotten that I still had the sign of the cross on my forehead in ashes! 

What struck me in the moment was that we were both looking at the same thing but we were seeing two completely different realities.  She was seeing this as a simple smudge or stain that should be quickly wiped off and I was seeing this as a deeply meaningful reminder of my human mortality that I wanted to keep on. 

I was reminded thinking about that encounter again this week that often in our lives, everything is not what it seems

Here at Jericho, we’ve been studying the life of Jesus as it comes to us in the New Testament gospel of Mark. 

We have reached the final week of Jesu’s life and ministry.  The Sunday before Easter is known as Palm Sunday, which takes its name from the passage which was so wonderfully read for us from Mark 11.  But even here, everything is now what it seems to be. 

Let’s look more closely at these events and see what the Scriptures can teach us about own lives and how we handle it when everything is not what it seems around us and inside of us. 

In Mark 11, we read the story of the disciples who are sent on a bit of a funny mission.  They are told to go into and basically do what can read to us like stealing the first donkey they come across.  And they are told to say if anyone asks “hey@! What are you doin with that donkey?” the cryptic answer “The lord needs it and don’t worry – we’ll return it soon”.  Um, kinda reads like a donkey jacking to me, doesn’t it?!   

But Mark is fond of putting in subtle details into his account of Jesus’ life that indicted that there is more going on that meets the eye.  For example, by saying that the Lord needs it” Jesus is taking up a kingly prerogative.  The reigning monarch has the capacity – then as now – to impress into official duties the property of private citizens.  For example, in 1988, the Canadian Government replaced the outdated War Measures Act with the newly termed “Emergencies Act” which allows the federal government to take “special temporary measures to ensure safety and security during national emergencies… including the requisition or use of property.”  Jesus is essentially taking on this same mantle of authority and saying to his disciples and to the donkey’s owners – “I am acting as the king.  I have the authority to borrow this as it is needed for royal duties.” 

And the Old Testament images that give texture this story are also important to understand here.  The donkey or colt is identified as what Messiah, the Holy One, will ride in Zechariah 9:9 and Genesis 49:11.  Riding on a beast that had never been ridden on before was also considered sacred and according to the Mishnah, no one else was to ride a king’s horse.

And so while this might look like a brazen donkey jacking, everything is not as it seems.  This is Jesus acting with the prerogative of a King because He IS the King of Kings and the Lord over every Lord. 

The entry into the city, starting in verse 8 is also laidened with irony.  Mark’s gospel prefers showing us to telling us outright what is going on.  Look with me again at Mark 11:8 – “Many in the crowd spread their garments on the road ahead of him, and others spread leafy branches they had cut in the fields.”

The people who attended this event would have a strong picture in their mind from their own national history.  In the Old Testament, in 2 Kings 9:13, there is a ceremously welcoming of a new king.  This ancient king was named Jehu.  And the text says ‘they hurried and took the cloaks and spread them under him on the bare steps and they shouted… Jehu is king”. 

And its very hard for us not to read Matthew and Luke’s accounts of what they term the Triumphal Entry into this text in mark.  But if we pause for a moment and look carefully at it, we see that Mark’s account is way more low key.  Their cries of Hosanna, meaning literally “Lord, save” which is taken from Psalm 118:25-26, refers in the Psalmists liturgy of entry into Jerusalem not as a Messianic cry or a political statement but rather was a liturgical text used for worship that was chanted every year as crowds made their way into the city gates of Jerusalem for the festival of pilgrims. ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord” is not, in that sense, a reference to the messiah. But to the pilgrims as they enter in the temple sanctuary.  “The acclamations of the crowd, then, are likely less specific than later Christian readers have tended to understand them. Jesus’ entry was likely regarded by the masses as a pilgrimage rather than a Messianic triumph.”  We see yet again that everything is not what it seems. 

We take the enthusiasm and pomp of Palm Sunday hype and we inadvefrtedly project it backward into the text.  Unlike Matthew 21 and John 12, Mark does not use the messianic quotation from Zechariah 9:9 in his account.  In keeping with Mark’s focus on showing us how Jesus acted, he invites us again to make our own conclusions as to the identity of this one whom the crowds adore. Because they are coming into God’s presence, they anticipate that they will experience blessing.

Mark’s gospel and the scriptural witness invite us to consider the claims Jesus makes.  And not only the words that He spoke and were recorded about Him, but also His actions.  Did Jesus act like a King?  Yes. Did He people who encountered Him encounter God’s blessing?  Yes. And if so, what are we to make of His kind of Kingdom as it comes to us?  The fundamental question for us to consider is a question that Jesus himself asks: “Who do you say that I am?” 

Maybe that is a new question for you.  Maybe you have never thought about Jesus very deeply before.  Sure, you might see Him as a moral person who loved others and who was a good example.  But Jesus’ actions and the response of those around him to those actions and claims shows us that Jesus was much, much more than that.  Jesus was and is the great and mighty King the One sent by God not only to live a perfect life, but also to lay down His life as an act of Divine love so compleing that in invites us to offer Him not only the praise of our lips but our very lives as well. 

Because what do you do when you find yourself in the presence of a King? One the responses if bowing down.  This is simply a physical posture that indicates and interior recognition – that you are in the presence of someone greater than yourself.  And friend, if you are listening and you have never made that declaration – you have never come to a place in your life where you have said to God, “I acklenge that You are greater”, then friend today might be the day for you where you experience God’s blessing.  The blessing of being in a restored and right relationship with the King over all creation.     

Let’s return for a moment to the story of the smudge on my forehead at the Costco Gas station.  In Christian tradition, the palm branches that might be waved today are kept and dried and stored.  And next year, the palms from this year are burned and used as the ashes that will adored the foreheards of the worshipers on Ash Wednesday.  It’s a potent symbolism that what feels celebratory and certain today can, within a relatively short period of time, become ashes and dust

As Dr. Tim Geddert in his commentary on the passage note: “at a deeper symbolic level, Mark’s text is loaded.  There is irony in the acclimation of the crowds and disciples. Is Jesus entering Jerusalem in victory or has he come to die?.. However little the crowds themselves understand, Mark wants their celebration of the coming one to serve as an announcement the Malachi‘s prophecy is being fulfilled.  The messenger, John has the prepared the way, now the Lord is coming to His temple”

And my sense as I read this text this week is that one thing God wants us to hear and be reminded of in the midst of all of this, despite all the things that can and may be challenging for us in this season: “The Lord is still coming to His temple.”  The Lord is still ready to bestow blessing on those who come and seek His face.  God is still worthy of receiving praise and honour and glory and majesty – even if it feels awkward and less than majestic to give that to God from your living room couch.

Acts 7 is an instructive reminder for us as we worship as a community beyond the walls of a building: “The Most High doesn’t live in temples made by human hands. As the prophet says, 49 ‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. Could you build me a temple as good as that?’ asks the Lord. ‘Could you build me such a resting place? 50     Didn’t my hands make both heaven and earth?’”   

The maker of the heavens and earth on that day long ago, rode on a colt up to the city gates of Jerusalem and entered the throng of worshippers who were simply crying out with an ancient Psalm and seeking to receive a blessing from God.  And yet irony was that the second person of the Trinity, God incarnate, was right there amongst them.  Riding on a donkey as a humble King. 

Sometimes I have expectations of how God is going to “show up” in my life, and often these expectations are not met.  But I wonder sometimes if, like the crowds on that day, we are looking in the wrong places. Sometimes we are expecting God to manifest in a powerful way in a building or when we are in a large group or when we have just the right song selection.  But I wonder if sometimes God is inviting us to come with Him into God’s presence right where we are at.  As we walk along the journey of life.  To experience the blessing the comes on those who come as seekers and as the curious ones and not the ones with all the answers.  Because often, when it comes to how God works in the world and in our lives, everything is not quite what it seems. And yet Psalm 11:4 reminds us powerfully that despite all the chaos and noise and disruptions in our lives, But the LORD is in his holy Temple; the LORD still rules from heaven.”  

Is your heart ready to receive Him?  Are we as a community Ready to receive Him?  I’m going to turn it over to one of our elders, David McFarland, who will lead us in responding to God in communion. 

 

  

 

A closer look at the events of Palm Sunday shows us not only more clearly who Jesus is, but also about how we can handle things in our own lives when things are not quite as they seem.

Speaker: Brad Sumner

April 5, 2020
Mark 11:1-11

Brad Sumner

Lead Pastor

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