4-14-2019 Lessons & Sermon

A reading from Isaiah.

The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word.

Morning by morning he wakens, wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught.

The Lord God has opened my ear and I was not rebellious.

I did not turn backward.

I gave my back to those who struck me and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard.

I did not hide my face from insult and spitting.

The Lord God helps me.

Therefore, I have not been disgraced, and therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame.

He who vindicates me is near.

Who will contend with me?

Let us stand up together.

Who are my adversaries?

Let them confront me.

It is the Lord God who helps me, who will declare me guilty with the word of the Lord.

A reading from Philippians.

Taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness, and being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Therefore, God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Thanks the word of the Lord.

Acknowledge, we humbly beseech you a lamb of your own fold, a sheep of your own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming.

In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Well, a happy and joyous Palm Sunday to you.

And of course, we got to hear this story.

In Luke, there's no mention of palm branches, there's just the cloaks.

We get the palms from Matthew and Mark, in which palms are put on the road and waved in the air.

One of the things we don't get in any of the Gospels is the fact that there was another parade that day.

The city of Jerusalem had about 4,000 residents during the year, 4,000 residents.

And during the week of Passover, that number swelled to more than 400,000 people.

People who came from all over the diaspora, all over the known world, to celebrate the Passover.

And say with that many people, the Roman government was always very concerned with rioting.

So on Palm Sunday, the Sunday ahead of the Passover, on the coming Friday, the 7th Legion made their own procession from what is called Caesarea Maritima on the coast to Jerusalem.

And it looked like, well, the Nuremberg rally.

Soldiers goose stepping, the equivalent of tanks, those would be heavy horse coming through, standards and banners, red mohawks on helmets, a sign of superiority, a threat, lest you do anything wrong and be crushed.

And here comes Jesus on a donkey, and this is critical to know.

A donkey is an animal you ride into a city after you've already beaten it, because in the military world, you're better off on foot than you are on a donkey.

A donkey is stubborn.

That's why we call them asses.

A donkey is slow and it's contrary.

You don't ride a donkey into battle.

You go on foot.

The oldest symbol is David riding in Jerusalem on a donkey, but he only does that after he has completely subdued the city, which shows it's a sign of peace.

And as we approach Holy Reek, I think it's really important to think about these two parades on Palm Sunday.

There's the way of Rome, there's the way of the Empire, which is all about might and suppression, and then there's Jesus.

And this is important to know.

Look around us with our palm branches.

We're a pretty good image of what a counter-military parade looks like.

Consider our relative age, consider these branches, and then consider people with AK-47s.

That's the image of Palm Sunday.

And so I want to tell you just really briefly this thing, and you've heard it before from me if you've been here, but this I think is the frame of Holy Week for me year after year.

This reading we get from Philippians is actually, scholars say, the oldest reading in the entire New Testament.

It comes likely from the late 30s.

And it's a hymn.

Christ being in the form of God did not consider a quality with God something to be grasped, but he emptied himself.

We don't know the hymnity, but we know it's set in stanzas.

And there's this word, you know, you go to church and you hear these sort of magical Greek words like agape.

There's a magical Greek word in here.

It's the word kenosis, self-emptying.

Kenosis.

It was the earliest Christian confession about what Jesus did in Holy Week and his ministry.

And uh I want to tell you a story about self-emptying.

Um I was privileged to spend a couple summers living in Alaska.

And if you've ever seen a BBC documentary or a National Geographic documentary about salmon, here's the story.

They're born, you know, in freshwater lakes that are so clear you can see the bottom of them from up high or down low.

Female salmon lays about 3,000 eggs at a time.

And those eggs, um, about 300 of them make it uh three months.

They go from being eggs to this little eye with a tail that goes around to sort of swimming, and then they turn into something that's called a par, and the par is about uh half the length of your pinky finger.

Two years later, um they're about the length of your hand, and then this strange urge overtakes them, and they start to swim downstream.

So they enter into these glacially fed rivers and they go, and um, of course, they're going to the ocean.

About 167 of them make it in, make it into the swim.

And when they hit the bay, that's where the waters start to become brackish.

Um, their senses become overloaded.

It's really hard for the debris.

So they literally start to go belly up, and they're easy fodder for things like birds, other fish.

Many of them uh are able to make the transition, about 30, and they start to breathe in the salt water.

So they change literally what they're able to survive on.

And they spend about a year and a half swimming in the bay there uh before they enter into these huge, they're called gyres in the ocean, and they'll spend two or three years swimming approximately 25,000 miles.

All of the salmon in Alaska will swim around all of the um, will actually swim pretty close to Japan.

So they'll come all the way around, and then interestingly enough, one day that same signal hits them in reverse, and now they swim exactly against the waters that they once were carried down.

Um, this is really curious because some of these rivers differ only by like one part per billion in mineral content, but somehow they know from whence they came.

And they swim against the tide, against the current.

This time they're not going to make the transition, so they have this biological advantage.

They cover themselves in slime to kind of prevent that fresh water from destroying them, because it will.

Uh they've become accustomed to the brackish.

They start to swim against, and the slime rubs off, and they don't eat because they're really their goal is just to make it to the end.

And as the slime comes off, uh there's this really curious transformation that occurs to this streamlined silver fish.

They grow a really large hump on their back, their jaws elongate and become hooked, and they grow these needle-like teeth that are one or two inches long.

The other interesting thing is that they change their colors.

It turns out they burn all of their fat.

And if you've seen the inside of a salmon that's fit to be eat, it's not orange, it's blood red.

So the silverfish turns red, its head turns green.

Now, if you watch the journey, they're swimming up against these currents, and sometimes they're swimming up waterfalls, literally, smacking their way up the waterfall with their tail.

You can watch this on YouTube, it's great.

Along the way, of course, there are people trying to grab them.

Literally, people, it's called combat fishing for a reason.

People stand shoulder to shoulder and they're casting, and they're not fishing, they're catching.

Of course, you've seen grizzly bears standing on boulders in the middle of these waterfalls, grabbing them as they go.

Three of them make it back.

Three of them make it back to the same pool they were born in.

The female lays her eggs, they die.

That's the end of the salmon life cycle.

It's pretty amazing, especially to see.

But I actually think it's an interesting reflection on what it means to be a disciple and how it is that Jesus spent his last week.

Because you know, he grew up in a really small pond.

Nazareth, we think, had about a hundred people living in it.

It was a tiny, tiny village.

And as all children do, he started as a little eye watching and learning all of the customs and all the manners.

He was carried along by the currents of the Jewish faith.

And he spent a long time in the big sea working as a carpenter or day laborer until one day a switch flipped John the Baptist.

And then Jesus spent the next year, the next three years swimming against some of the currents that raised him, healing people on the Sabbath, associating with and well even touching women, spending time with tax collectors and sinners.

Palm Sunday is the day he decided to go up against the waterfall.

And there were all week, we'll hear each day if you do the the readings here, and people are trying to catch him.

Pharisees and Sadducees, Rome.

Of course, Jesus makes it to the cross.

And he lays about twelve eggs, not three thousand.

And from those twelve, here we are today.

The interesting thing about Jesus, I commend to you this week, both in the story of Palm Sunday and in the analogy, is that he reveals something that is truly extraordinary and supernatural.

You see, what the fish show us is that when you swim against the currents, you kind of start to be transformed.

Your colors change, you get a hump on your back, and you get teeth.

It's called self-righteousness.

I don't know if you've ever felt like, hey, I'm making a meaningful change in my life, and why are all these people not rejoicing?

Why are they making it so hard for me to do something that's better?

If you're not sure if what I'm saying is true, please just spend about 30 seconds on Facebook reading somebody's discussion of politics, and you will see, I think that's what's natural for us when we rail against things that we think are not right, is to grow teeth and to grow humps on our back and to change our colors.

These forces that separate people from the life and love that God intends.

Instead of teeth, he's going to say on Friday, Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they are doing.

This I think is the call of discipleship.

It is to swim God's way, whether against or with forces of our culture, and to do it in such a way that we stay true to God's dream, to do it without growing teeth, to do it without growing a self-righteous hump upon our back.

I invite you to swim this week.

I invite you to swim against some of the current that you're used to, to take on something different this week, regardless of how you spend and to make this an extraordinary, a holy week.

And to do it with generosity, with faith, with hope, and with love.

The passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to Luke.

The assembly of the elders of the people rose as a body and brought Jesus before Pilate.

They began to accuse him, saying, We found this man perverting our nation, forbidding us to pay taxes to the emperor, and saying that he himself is the Messiah, a king.

Then Pilate asked him, Are you the king of the Jews?

He answered, You say so.

Then Pilate said to the chief priests and the crowds, I find no basis for an accusation against this man.

But they were insistent and said, He stirs up the people by teaching throughout all Judea, from Galilee where he began, even to this place.

When Pilate heard this, he asked whether the man was a Galilean.

And when he learned that he was under Herod's jurisdiction, he sent him off to Herod, who was himself in Jerusalem at that time.

When Herod saw Jesus, he was very glad, for he had been wanting to see him for a long time, because he had heard about him and was hoping to see him perform some sign.

He questioned him at some length, but Jesus gave him no answer.

The chief priests and the scribes stood by, vehemently accusing him.

Even Herod, with his soldiers, treated him with contempt and mocked him.

Then he put an elegant robe on him and sent him back to Pilate.

That same day Herod and Pilate became friends with each other.

Before this, they had been enemies.

Pilate then called together the chief priests, the leaders, and the people, and said to them, You brought me this man as one who is perverting the people, and here I have examined him in your presence, and have not found this man guilty of any of your charges against him.

Neither has Herod, for he sent him back to us.

Indeed, he has done nothing to deserve death.

I will therefore have him flogged and release him.

Then they all shouted out together, Away with this fellow, release Barabbas for us.

This was a man who had been put in prison for an insurrection that had taken place in the city and for murder.

Pilate, wanting to release Jesus, addressed them again, but they kept shouting, Crucify, crucify him.

A third time he said to them, Why?

What evil has he done?

I have found in him no ground for the sentence of death.

I will therefore have him flogged and then release him.

But they kept urgently demanding with loud shouts that he should be crucified, and their voices prevailed.

So Pilate gave his verdicts that their demand should be granted.

He released the man they asked for, the one who had been put in prison for insurrection and murder, and he handed Jesus over as they wished.

As they led him away, they seized a man, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming from the country, and they laid the cross on him and made him carry it behind Jesus.

A great number of the people followed him, and among them were women who were beating their breasts and wailing for him.

But Jesus turned to them and said, Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.

For the days are surely coming when they will say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.

Then they will begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us, and to the hills, cover us.

For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?

Two others also, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with them.

When they came to the place that is called the skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left.

Then Jesus said, Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.

And they cast lots to divide his clothing.

And the people stood by watching, but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, He saved others.

Let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one.

The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine and saying, If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.

There was also an inscription over him, This is the king of the Jews.

One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, Are you not the Messiah?

Save yourself and us.

But the other rebuked him, saying, Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation?

And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds.

But this man has done nothing wrong.

Then he said, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.

He replied, Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.

It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, while the sun's light failed, and the curtain of the temple was torn in two.

Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.

Having said this, he breathed his last.

When the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God and said, Certainly this man was innocent.

And when all the crowds who had gathered there for the spectacle saw what had taken place, they returned home, beating their breasts.

But all his acquaintances, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance watching these things.