"The Messiah Nobody Wanted"

Sermon: Palm Sunday year A

The Rev. Matt Kennedy

The Church of the Good Shepherd

Talk about a bad week. Jesus entered Jerusalem on Sunday a King, adored by the crowds and loved by his disciples.

By Friday was leaving Jerusalem. This time carrying a cross over his shoulders; the crowds now clamoring for his death, his disciples scattered. What happened?

One of the key things to watch when you are reading the gospels is the expectations game. Almost everyone who meets Jesus has certain expectations about how he should behave, what he should say and what he should do. I’m not just talking about his enemies, I mean his friends too. All of these expectations came to a head the day Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey.

The disciples were excited. Now that Jesus was finally entering Jerusalem in the same way the ancient kings of Israel used to enter centuries before, riding on a donkey to shouts of Hosanna, who could doubt that Jesus was about to set up his kingdom? Soon they’d be ruling Jerusalem and later the world. Jesus was going to give them untold power and wealth. They believed and expected that this was the day that following Jesus was finally going to pay off.

The people in the crowd that ran out to greet them also expected Jesus to establish a kingdom. But they weren’t excited about receiving power and wealth. They were excited because they believed and expected Jesus was going to end 100 years of Roman occupation. In Jesus, God was finally going to give them what they have wanted for so long, independence and the destruction of the gentiles.

The Pharisees and teachers of the law who likely watched the procession from a distance expected Jesus to claim a crown of some sort, but they also expected him recognize their authority as the teachers of Israel. He would have to. They were the most powerful Jewish faction in the city and if Jesus wanted to get anywhere in politics he was going to have to respect their turf and not step on their toes. They expected Jesus to fear and respect their political clout and not presume to challenge their laws or their teachings.

The Sadducees, chief priests, and scribes also had political clout. But theirs was based on collaboration with the Romans. They thought that Roman occupation was the best thing that ever happened to Israel, and it didn’t hurt their pocketbooks either. They didn’t believe all that stuff in the bible about keeping Israel pure of foreign gods. That was written so long ago and it just wasn’t relevant anymore. Besides, now God is obviously doing a new thing. They expected Jesus to see the wisdom in cooperating with the Romans and not stirring things up. They had a pretty good thing going and they were willing to go to any lengths to protect it.

So Jesus enters Jerusalem in way that tells everyone who sees it, I am the king. But he rides into a sea of expectations. Everyone whether they believe Jesus or not expects that he’ll follow their script. That he’ll be their kind of messiah.

If you haven’t spent time really getting to know Jesus on a personal level then most likely you have certain expectations of Jesus too. You may still have the same image of him you had when you were growing up. We all grow up with perceptions of what Jesus is supposed to be like based on pieces of stories our parents tell us or that we hear in Sunday school and so we think we know who he is or what he should be like. For myself I grew up with the nice Jesus. I don’t just mean compassionate and loving, he really is those things, I also mean well just an all round nice guy. Not the sort to judge anybody or set down really strict rules. A guy who wouldn’t get all upset over things the way some preachers do. Jesus wouldn’t ever raise his voice or get angry. Just a nice guy. My wants from Jesus, at least before I stopped believing in him at all, were simply that he would be nice to me, that he would smile down benignly as I wandered through life, affirming all my decisions, happy with whatever it is I might decide to do, because that’s what love is, being nice, supportive, and unobtrusive. Every now and then I’d want him to swoop in and help me with this or that, but basically, I just wanted him to be nice and to keep his distance.

Some of you might have expectations of Jesus based on movies you’ve seen. The solemn blue eyed, blond hair Jesus who speaks with an English accent and always seems to be staring out into the distance and saying incomprehensible things that are probably really profound if we could just understand them. People with this picture of Jesus generally respect and revere the guy a heck of a lot. But also don’t expect much personal attention from him. Their motto is: “Jesus is too busy ruling the universe to pay too much attention to me which is good because I’m too busy running my life to worry about him.”

Or, depending on what sort of parents you had or what sort of church you were raised in you might have the socially conscious Jesus. The Jesus, who surprisingly, agrees with you on every major social issue, who is more concerned about the environment or poverty in general than he is morality or good behavior, whatever that is. This Jesus won’t care what you do in your bedroom or what sort of thoughts are going on in your head. No, so long as you’re caring about the right things, supporting the right causes, volunteering to help the poor and doing good works, Jesus really doesn’t care how you live your life.

Or, again depending on where you grew up or who your parents were, you may have the really mean Jesus, the Jesus who really doesn’t like you and is very upset about your past and is not at all sure whether he wants you to be a Christian. This Jesus holds grudges and cannot forgive anybody until they’ve suffered. You expect Jesus to be very angry at you most of the time and for that reason you’d rather he just stay out of your life altogether.

Well, I don’t know what kind of expectations you had of Jesus or have of Jesus or how you were raised to look at him, but I do know this: my expectations about Jesus were shattered the moment I met him.

Jesus did not come to me on my terms, I had to drop my terms and come to him empty handed and it was only then that I could really get to know him.

When I read my bible, finally, instead of just trusting what I thought I knew or what everyone told me about Jesus, I found out that Jesus didn’t really care all that much about what people wanted him to do and say.

He is who he is. He never once gave his disciples or the crowds or his enemies what they wanted because they wanted it or expected him to give it, but he always and everywhere gave them what he knew they needed.

And that’s what got him in trouble.

The people of Jerusalem, be they his followers or his enemies, part of an adoring crowd or part of the Temple elite, all needed first and foremost to repent their sins and return to God. They may have wanted the Romans gone, they may have wanted their king to establish an empire, they may have wanted bread and circuses, they may have wanted political power and clout.

But instead they got God himself who came to tell them what they needed to hear. “You are all very far gone from my house, but I love you and I want you back. I want you to drop all of your expectations, all of your conditions, all of your childhood images of what a proper messiah should be and do, and I want you to come to me empty handed and with an open heart.”

They couldn’t bear him. They could not bear to hear his words. This was a man, this was a God, who did not and was not ever going to play by their rules and worst of all he knew them.

When he looked into their eyes he saw straight through them to their very core, he saw the truth about them, and he loved them. He loved them enough to tell them to repent, drop everything, and come home.

But they could not bear it. They could not bear to get to know him because the real God was nothing like the God they had shaped to fit their own desires.

And so, 5 five days later, the very same crowd that shouted Hosanna blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, cried out Crucify Him!

Amen