The Last Temptation

 

Matthew 27:11-54

 

 

 

            Palm/Passion Sunday has to be one of the strangest days in the church calendar year. It’s the mirror image to the scene when we’re watching a sitcom on television, and suddenly a news flash breaks in about some tragedy, followed by “we return you now to your regularly scheduled program,” and we go back to the silliness.

 

            In this case, we interrupt the somber season of Lent for a quick, lively parade to celebrate Palm Sunday, and then while the band is still playing we dive right back into the grimmest time of the year, Holy Week. We do this all within the course of a one-hour service.

 

            It’s like we are sitting respectfully at a solemn memorial service, when suddenly we get the giggles, and then erupt into howls of laughter and a few hip hip hurrays and bring in the food and the drinks and spend the next few minutes in wild partying, and then with the shouts and laughter and dancing still echoing in the room, we quickly hustle all the food away, sit back down, put on our grim faces, and return to the solemn service of mourning.  

 

            Wild parties are out of place at a time of tragic remembrance. Why do we throw this Palm Sunday party into the middle of this sacred and reflective and penitential season of Lent?

 

            What makes it worse is that Palm Sunday is a phony party. All these people who are praising Jesus and spreading palm branches before him and shouting Hosanna and proclaiming their love for him--What a bunch of front runners! So many people suddenly hopping on the bandwagon you’d think Jesus was the Drake University basketball team.

           

            On Palm Sunday, it appears that Jesus could win election in a landslide over any opposition. At least that’s what the people tell the pollsters.

            A week later an election is held and it’s a no-brainer. Jesus the miracle worker and healer and savior of the nation is running against a vicious thug. We’re not even talking about a public office anymore--all the people have to do to save Jesus’ life is agree that he’s a better public safety risk than the murderer Barabbas. Instead, those same people who on Palm Sunday proclaimed Jesus the greatest thing since sliced bread, vote for the criminal and doom Jesus to death.

            What a joke! The Palm Sunday entrance into Jerusalem was one of the phoniest public displays in history.

 

            So why do we celebrate the Palm Sunday entrance as if it were a good thing? As if those hymns of praise and waving branching actually meant something? As if in repeating the songs and behavior of that treacherously fickle crowd, we are actually honoring God?

 

            Obviously, I think there is a reason for waving palm branches and singing hosannas, or I would not have gone along with what we did this morning. In fact, as I reflect on this, I think it makes perfect sense to do it right in the middle of Lent.

I think there is a reason to celebrate Palm Sunday that will bring a new depth and meaning to Holy Week and Easter.

            On Palm Sunday, what we are doing is acting out a moment of intense drama. In fact, this is a crucial moment in history. It is not too great an exaggeration to say that the future of humankind depends on the outcome.

 

            It is a moment that was foreshadowed in a story way back at the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew. Remember the story of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness? Remember the third of the devil’s temptations?

            “The devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. `All of this I will give you,’ he said, `if you will bow down and worship me.’”

 

            At that time, Jesus recognized the trap of self-centeredness. The garden belongs to God; it is so much a part of God that it cannot thrive apart from God. It cannot work under any other management no matter how well-meaning. He declines the forbidden fruit, and instead spends his ministry honoring the generous giver of the garden.

 

            But as we all know, temptation is seldom a one-shot thing. You don’t beat it once and it’s gone forever. The devil keeps coming back.

 

            Palm Sunday was the Big One. The final test. It was a struggle so intense it made the devil’s scheming up on that wilderness mountain seem like child’s play.

 

            When Jesus entered the city of Jerusalem, he had the world at his feet. He had shown who he was and what he could do. The people were ready to make him king.

 

            Here was the person that the people had been waiting for, for centuries, ever since the fall of Jerusalem nearly 600 years earlier.

            Here was a person who could feed the hungry and heal the sick, a person who could make the blind see and bring new life.

            Here was a person who had the power to take on the Roman Empire, the oppressors of the world.

            Here was the man who could bring freedom to the people; the man who could rule with wisdom and compassion. Who could single-handedly restore Israel to the glory days of King David and Solomon.

 

            The people wanted Jesus to know that they were behind him 100%. That they were ready to help him make history. That they would follow him in his crusade to overthrow their godless Roman masters. They would organize for him, finance him, fight alongside him, do whatever he asked to establish the Kingdom of God on earth. They would help Jesus rule in power and majesty throughout the earth.

 

            In short, they offered him everything the devil offered to Jesus on the mountain in the wilderness. Only this was 10 times more tempting than the devil’s offer. Jesus would not have to worship the devil to get all this, to get all the kingdoms of the world and all their splendor; he could just seize it for himself—with the peoples’ help.

 

            He could do it with a clear conscience. He would do it for a good cause. He could take over the world for all the right reasons. He could take over the reins of earthly power in order to bring new life into the world and to rule with compassion and wisdom. To bring peace and justice. Think how much better off the world would be!

 

            Don’t think he could have done that? You think Israel was too small and backward a country to challenge the might of the Roman Empire? Less than seven centuries later, it happened in an even smaller and more rustic country, Arabia. The spark lit by the prophet Mohammad overwhelmed the Holy Roman Empire. It blew up into an inferno that consumed the Middle East, took over North Africa, swept into Asia, overwhelmed Spain and advanced all the way to gates of Vienna.

 

            If Mohammad could do that, what do you suppose Jesus could have done?

 

            It was all laying in front of him, just ripe for the taking. The power of his message and his personality and his teachings had swept through Jerusalem and captured the people by storm. As proof, here they were crowding about him, spreading their cloaks on the road in front of him cutting branches and laying them before him, shouting praises to Jesus for all they were worth. 

 

            Jesus, take over. Be our king. Rule the world.

 

            The devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor.

 

            “All this is yours,” he said. “Take it.”

 

            Can you imagine the pressure Jesus was under? Can you imagine the power of this temptation? Especially when you consider the alternative, which Jesus explains in the verses immediately following the account of Palm Sunday. You can rule the world in power and wisdom and compassion for the betterment of all human kind. Or you can suffer humiliation and agony and defeat and despair and death? What’s it going to be? Choose.

 

            The fate of all humanity hung in the balance as Jesus rode into Jerusalem crushed by the unbearable strain of that temptation.

 

            What did Jesus choose? The answer is in the hymn that the Apostle Paul wrote in the 2^nd chapter of Philippians:

 

            “Christ Jesus, who being in the very nature of God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped

            But made himself nothing,

            Taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.

            And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself

            And became obedient to death—even death on a cross.”

 

            It was all within Jesus’ grasp as he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. He could have owned the world, and no doubt would have made it a better place. He would have been well within rights to do so. He had the power, the right, and the wisdom to do accept what the crowd was offering to him.

 

            And he turned it down. He walked away from the hosannas and the branches and the coats and the acclaim of the people, and instead chose the grim, dark path of Holy Week. Jesus resisted the temptation to exercise his power, because that was not his mission. He did not come to this earth to demonstrate the power of God. Power is an easy concept to grasp. We have no problem understanding power; we understand God’s power.

 

            Jesus mission in life was to demonstrate the part of God that is not so easy to grasp, the love of God. It is so hard to grasp, that we could never begin to understand what it is without the demonstration that Jesus gave. If Jesus did not do it, there is no way would understand what love is; there is no way we could understand what God is. We would know only the power of God, and nothing about the person of God.  

 

            This is what makes the strange theological whiplash of Palm/Passion Sunday so profound. Palm Sunday was the final temptation of Christ. If he could somehow withstand, one more time, the pressure to choose power over love, then we finally were home free. When Jesus walked away from the branches and the hosannas and headed into the terror of the Garden of Gethsemane, the crisis was over for us. The outcome assured. The future of the world guaranteed.

 

            So in our Palm/Passion Sunday worship, we celebrate the moment when Jesus withstood that last temptation. We play our part in the service as we reenact this critical decision. We sing and play music loudly and with all the joy and feeling we can muster as we replay the great temptation. We wave and lay palm branches on the ground, and we sing hosannas. We lay the world and the power and the glory before Jesus’ feet.

 

            We get all the momentum going behind the temptation; until it becomes a tide of righteous emotion that would sweep any of us away. And we feel the jolt when Jesus slams it into reverse, and says, “No. I’m not going that way. I’m headed for the cross.” As we sing these two sermon hymns today, I invite you to experience the powerful pull as we lay the world at Jesus’ feet. And then experience the jolt as Jesus slams it into reverse and goes the other way.

 

            For that is the moment of salvation. And that is what we celebrate on this Passion/Palm Sunday.