Palm Sunday, Year A

“WHO IS THIS?”
Matthew 21:1–11; Psalm 118:19–29; Isaiah 52:13 – 53:12; Psalm 22:1-11; Philippians 2:5–11; Matthew 26:36 – 27:66
A sermon by The Rev. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois; Sunday, March 16th, 2008

“Who is this?”

That’s the question the onlookers ask of those who are crying “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!”

“Who is this?”

That is the question that has come to generations of people since the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem some 2,000 years ago.

“Who is this?”

That is the question that has led some within the Church – both in our own day and in the very early centuries of the Church’s existence - to question, or to try to explain away – the central message of Jesus Christ’s identity: His passion, suffering, death, resurrection and ascension into heaven.

For, as St. Paul says so clearly, “We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling to Jews and folly to Gentiles.”[1]

There’s no getting around the central meaning and theme of the Christian faith: That Jesus Christ came as King and Lord, but also as Suffering Servant.[2]

And both of these themes: King and Lord, but also Suffering Servant, are present in the scene that Matthew lays before us as Jesus makes His way into the Holy City of Jerusalem on this Palm Sunday.

So, before we look more closely at the question before us this morning, “Who is this?”, let’s look more closely at Matthew’s reporting of the Triumphal Entry.

In order to understand the setting and the context for today’s reading from chapter 21, we need to back up into chapter 20.

We begin by looking at chapter 20, verses 20 – 28….Here, the mother of the Sons of Zebedee (James and John) comes to Jesus and asks that each one of them be given a place of position and power in Jesus’ kingdom. But Jesus’ response is summarized in verse 28, where we read, “The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.”

Next, we turn to verses 29 – 34. Here, we see that Jesus is passing through Jericho on His way to Jerusalem. And along the way, He encounters two blind men, who cry out to Him, “Have mercy on us, Son of David!” The two are healed, and begin to follow Jesus along with the large crowd that are travelling with Him to the Holy City, 12 miles to the west, and 4,000 feet higher in elevation.

Now, we are ready to look at today’s passage, Matthew 21: 1 – 11. Presumably, the healing of the two blind men serves to identify Jesus as “Son of David” to the crowd. But this title for Jesus appears throughout Matthew’s Gospel account….Consider Matthew 1: 1, which reads, “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, Son of David, Son of Abraham.”

Right from the beginning, Matthew records this title for Jesus, which is filled with kingly association and power. To the first century Jew, the hearing of this title, Son of David, would have brought royal images to mind. (The point was not lost on Jesus’ opponents in the ruling councils of His time, who use this kingly association to good effect when they hand Him over to Pilate. They recognized the significance of the royal claims that “Son of David” represented, even as they also understood the significance of Jesus as Prophet.[3] Both titles created alarm in the ruling councils of Jesus’ day.)

But there’s something else at work here, as we see this Son of David, this kingly figure, riding into Jerusalem on a donkey….

And it is an association that would not have been lost on Jesus’ disciples, nor on the crowd which spread their garments and palm branches along the road that day: It is the image which the Old Testament prophet Zechariah records in Zechariah 9: 9, heard in verse 5, “Tell the daughter of Zion, Behold your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on an ass, and on a colt, the foal of an ass.”

We should pause here for a moment…..notice the key words king and humble. Those two words don’t seem to go together, do they? No, our human expectations are that a king will ride into the city on a white charger, sword held high in victory.

But this is not the image we have before us….We have the image of the king, riding into the city in humility, on a lowly beast of burden, a donkey.

Zechariah’s image is of the king who conquers,[4] who delivers Jerusalem and then extends his reign from “sea to sea”, but who rides into Jerusalem on a donkey. Moreover, this king stands in victory on the Mount of Olives.[5]

This image might well prompt us to ask, “Who is this?”

The two images, king and humble, don’t go together at all, do they?

That’s what many in the early Church thought, too…..We’ve just finished our Lenten Study Series, concentrating on some of the early heresies that challenged the Church to look closely at what it had received as truth from the Apostles.

In answer to this central question, “Who is this?” some of the movements we looked at this Lent came to vastly different conclusions about this humble king.

We looked at Marcion, who claimed that Jesus’ death was the work of the evil Old Testament God Jehovah, who was evil, vindictive, and judgmental. But, Marcion claimed, the God and Father of Jesus Christ is loving, kind, always wanting to shower us with all sorts of good things, but who never judges us.

And, at about the same time, the Gnostics claimed that Jesus Christ was a divine figure, but not really human. Moreover, they claimed, Jesus didn’t really die, since He wasn’t really human.

Finally, we looked at Arianism, that fourth century movement that denied Jesus’ divinity, claiming that He was just a human being like us, a “good guy”, a “charismatic figure and great teacher”, but nothing more.

The net effect of all these three challenges to the Apostolic faith that had been handed down through Jesus’ Disciples-become-Apostles had the same bottom line: 1. (Marcion) There’s no need for Jesus to suffer and die for us because God loves us and doesn’t judge us; 2. (Gnostics) Jesus’ death only seemed to occur…in reality, it didn’t because Jesus wasn’t really human. Besides, having special knowledge of the way to God is the key to salvation anyway; and 3. (Arianism) Since Jesus was the “first created being”, He wasn’t divine at all….He was just like us in almost every way.

All three make a mockery of the events of Holy Week. They attempt to gut the cross of its significance, and try to explain away our sinful condition as human beings that made Jesus’ death a necessity.

They all try to say, “I’m OK, you’re OK.”

But the question lingers, “Who is this?”

It is the question that is squarely before us this morning, and which ought to be before us all through this Holy Week.

For we cannot approach Easter Sunday morning, when Jesus rises victoriously from the grave, conquering all the powers of sin and death that would try to divide His divinity from His humanity, without walking alongside Him on the way to the cross on Good Friday.

“If anyone would come after me, let him take up their cross and follow me,” He said.[6]

“Who is this?”

To answer that question, there’s no getting around the events of this Holy Week….For the central Christian message – if indeed the message we hear is truly faithful to the Apostolic witness as we have it in Holy Scripture – is that Jesus Christ came as king, yet in humility, to suffer and die for us, to become the payment for our sins.

That is the doctrine of the Atonement, Jesus’ sacrifice making “at-one-ment” possible with God the Father, which is at the central core of the Christian faith. It is the meaning of the Lord’s Supper, given to all believers on Maundy Thursday evening during the Last Supper, which we, as believers today, celebrate not only as a commemoration of Jesus’ death and sacrifice, but as a unique means of Jesus’ continual presence with us in the bread and the wine every time we gather to receive this Sacrament.

“Who is this?”

Who is Jesus to us?

King? Prophet? Conqueror of death and sin? Payment for our sins and the sins of the whole world?

-Or-

A great teacher? A charismatic figure? A “good guy” who got a bum deal from Pilate? A human being just like us?

How do we answer?

________________________________________________

[1] I Corinthians 1: 23
[2] Drawn from Isaiah 52: 13 – 53: 12.
[3] The concept of prophet draws its significance from Deuteronomy 18: 15, where we read, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me (Moses) from among you; from your brethren – him you shall heed.” Many in Jesus’ day were looking for such a prophet…Notice that the Jews ask John the Baptist (John 1: 21) “Are you the Prophet?”
[4] Zechariah 9: 9 – 17 is well worth reading.
[5] See Zechariah 14: 4.
[6] Matthew 16: 24