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Jesus enters Jerusalem – Palm Sunday.
Then he goes to the Temple.
Made me think about gates and doors. Doors and gates feature throughout the Bible. Sometimes they are literal portals, sometimes they are symbolic, sometimes they are both. In the ancient world doors and gates were even more important than they are today because they were the first line of defence.
Cities were walled and fortified and expensive materials were used for the entrances to cities, including solid oak and bronze, after all, better to repel an enemy at the gates than to have to deal with them inside your city. Jerusalem has 12 gates in through the city walls and Jesus goes in through one of them. Then he goes through a second set of doors to go into the Temple compound or complex – like Canterbury: city walls and then cathedral cloisters. He is cheered today but in less than a week he’ll be jeered.
Cheered to jeered in five days.
He comes in through the gates today, Palm Sunday, as a popular hero, but on Friday, Good Friday, he’ll be hounded out through the gates, hated by both the occupying Romans and his own people, the Jews and then he will be killed outside the gates, beyond the city walls.
How? Why?
Well there’s a bit of a clue in the what the crowd say to him today: "Hosanna!"* "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!", "Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!", "Hosanna in the highest!" There, in verse 10, is smuggled in a dangerous and unbiblical assumption: "Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!" Among the scriptures they quote and the spiritual hopes they espouse is an invented and selfish agenda: "Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!" They think – they hope and pray and believe -- that Jesus will come and reinstate the great social, political, economic and military kingdom of Israel when it was at the height of its power under King David.
They want Jesus to free them from Roman oppression and occupation and lead them in splendor and glory.
They want salvation and glory but they want it here and now, in a social, political, economic and military way and they are going to be sorely disappointed. Then they’re going to turn against Jesus and we’ll up on Friday with him dying slowly on a cross.
Maybe, though, the crowd are a bit like us. Maybe we want to see God do something on our terms, meet our expectations. Maybe we want healing and health, happiness and wealth, peace and prosperity. Maybe our hopes and prayers are a little more spiritual but still our own limited and selfish agenda rather than God’s. Maybe we want a our children to do well at school, maybe we want a decent holiday, maybe we want more of this or less of that.
Things that we deserve, things seem right and good, things that surely God must want as well and yet Christ gives us the way of the cross, the way of suffering, service and sacrifice. The way of saying no to self, “no” to my own ideas and agendas and hopes and expectations even if they seem noble or reasonable or basically good and right.
Let me tell you that since I was 18 I haven’t lived in any one place for more than four years, I don’t own my house and probably never will and in the last two years my 7 year old daughter Daisy has been to three primary schools. Why?
Because I’m in the ministry. Do I feel hard done by? No.
After all, I’ve chosen to do this and besides there are Christians who are being seriously persecuted for their faith. So I’m neither complaining nor boasting, but in a very small way I have lived all my adult life with a degree of service and sacrifice for the sake of the gospel. I see Christians on either side of me – those on the one side who have sacrificed and suffered a thousand times as much as me for the sake of the gospel – genuine persecution -- and those on the other side who think suffering and sacrifice means giving a little time or money or effort to God, and who use the “P” word – persecution -- if they don’t get their own way over this or that and for many comfortable Western Christians issues like owning a nice house, or making sure their children are in the best schools, or generally getting their own way in life are all seen as quite compatible with the gospel, even the will and blessing of God. But when we talk about the cross we are not just talking about one cross, once. Yes, Jesus made the one perfect sacrifice for sin once and for all.
There is no other death on any other cross which is able to save those who believe. But Christ commands us, too, to take up our crosses and follow him and that’s the bit we don’t like. We all want the cross of Christ to be preached and proclaimed but we all want to have our own way as well, but hear what Jesus says
Matthew10 - 37 "Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; 38 and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
Matthew16:24 - 24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. (Also Mark 8:33-35)
Luke 9 - 23 Then he said to them all: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. 24 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.
When we think of the cross we should think first and foremost of the cross of Christ, the death of God which brings us life. But we should also think of our own cross, not the cross of Christ but the cross that Christ demands and requires us to bear. The cross of Christ is the cross of salvation borne by Christ once and for all. But our own cross is the cross of our own suffering, sacrifice, service and selflessness. So often we want our Christian life and faith to bring with it all the blessings and benefits of comfort and ease and getting our own way and having our own boxes ticked and our own prayers answered. Christianity is the way of the cross and the way of the cross is surrender to the will of God. Before his arrest Jesus prayed the same prayer three times: “not my will but yours be done” and even in the Lord’s Prayer we say: “your will be done” That’s easy to say and pray but hard when it actually comes to the time and the place and the issue and when we don’t get our own way.
God, we hate that, don’t we?
Let’s end by going back and thinking about doors and gates.
It’s Palm Sunday: Christ is going in through the gates. In a few days time, Good Friday, he’ll be dragging a cross out of those gates at the point of a spear. One of the first things that God says to a human is this: “Sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it." It’s a warning to Cain just four chapters in, but he goes ahead and kills his brother anyway.
Wow.
One of the last things God says in the Bible is: “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.”
Doors at the beginning and end of the Bible and in both cases the door is ours, as is the choice of whether we open it. We can open our lives to Jesus, who stands and knocks, and will come in as an honorable guest or we can open our lives to sin, which lies in wait, wanting to burst in and take over. But the choice is ours. Will we open to the open who knocks and that will mean willing that our will be laid aside and willing that the will of God be done, and willingly taking up our cross. Because the sacrifice of Christ is not one of flesh and blood but the self-sacrifice a will willingly denied and the will of another – God – willing chosen.
Or do we open the door a crack to the crouching beast, thinking we can entertain sin on our own terms only to find ourselves overpowered and enslaved? Will your door be flung wide to the one who knocks and waits and who carries two crosses – his own and one for you. This is the way of a death that brings life. Will your door be opened a just a curious crack to the beast of self-will, who will squeeze through and have you. This is the way of a life that brings death.
We have these two choices: to die to self, live to God and so be really, truly, fully eternally alive; or live for sin, which is self-will, and be spiritually, eternally, profoundly and permanently dead. We have a will, we have a choice and we have to choose: to the way of death through the decorated and wide gate of this life or the way of eternal life through the rough and narrow door of death to self and sin.
Let us open our doors this week, to let God in and self out. |
Amen |
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