Preaching text: Mark 11:1-11
The last few weeks, I’ve been enjoying the series Altered Carbon on Netflix. It’s an interesting series to say the least. Fascinating premise. Sometime in the future, humans stumble onto alien technology that allows them to transfer their souls from one body to another. This gives humanity something they’ve always wanted, always hungered for: immortality.
Warning: If sex, blood, violence, and nudity unsettles or offends you, this show is not something you want to watch. The trailer above is safe however.
It is said that sometimes the worst thing you can do to someone is give them everything they’ve ever wanted and that seems to be the undercurrent in this series. A world where humans cannot physically die is not a paradise, but a nightmare. Imagine for a moment all the worst our society has to offer; all the bloated arrogant CEOs and government leaders we all love to complain about. All the mob bosses and members of the criminal underworld. All the tyrants and megalomaniacs. Now imagine all of them living forever. Having forever to accumulate even more power and more money. Imagine what few morals they have degrading even further as the greatest consequence for their vile behavior is now gone. They cannot die. Some of them become so full of themselves that they even deign to pretend to be gods and among the common rabble are those willing and even eager to worship them.
Of all the sci-fi series and worlds I’ve visited in my reading and viewing of film and TV, this is probably the bleakest dystopia I’ve ever seen.
Of course, I don’t have to go to fiction to find examples of how getting everything we’ve ever wanted is not a good thing. Just look to the real world, to those nations where one faction, one party has control of everything. Places where that elite handful get everything they ever wanted. The results usually aren’t pretty.
Back in the 1980s, the British pop band Tears for Fears had a huge hit with “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” It’s one of my all-time favorite songs in large part because it is a perfect description of the human species. Truly, we all do want to rule the world. We want things our way. However, add into that the theme I’ve been harping on all Lent about how we are our own worst enemies and we find disaster. Because what happens when one of us does rule the world? What happens when one of us does actually get everything we want? It’s not paradise. It’s a nightmare, a calamity, even for us.
As bad as that is, there might be something that’s just a little bit worse and that’s what brings us to Palm Sunday, to Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem and to the events that follow over the course of this coming week. If you were a news reporter with the ability to time travel and you decided to go back to that moment, what do you suppose everyone would tell you about what was going on?
Why is everyone celebrating? What is everyone expecting? What is everyone hoping for? Why this grand jubilee? This over-the-top celebration? Why all the hubbub over this Jesus character? We think we know the answers to those questions, but the truth is however that I suspect we’d find 2000 years of religious upbringing and teaching has confused us.
This is not about salvation from sin and death. This is not about the culmination of God’s covenant with the world that he first made to Abraham. This is not about eternal life or forgiveness of sins. It’s not about any of those things that hindsight has imposed upon that first Palm Sunday. To the people there, in that moment, it was all about what they wanted most: it was about God’s anointed liberator kicking butt and taking names on those Roman monsters who had enslaved the people for almost 100 years. Those Romans who had taken over from the Greeks, who had taken over from the Persians, who had taken over from the Babylonians, reaching back almost 500 years into the past since the last time a true Israelite king had sat upon the throne.
They wanted blood on the streets and King David upon the throne once more. They wanted Jesus to be king. And they felt he could do it. The one who made the blind to see and the lame to walk would have nothing to fear from the swords of the Roman legions. He had the power of God on his side.
But then there’s Jesus himself, fully aware of what he’s come to do, of who he is and his purpose in bringing about God’s kingdom. As tempting as it might be to rule as an Earthly king (one of Satan’s three temptations, you may recall), that’s so small and petty a goal. So he passes by and does not do this thing the people want. He does not give them what they desire.
He understood that this small thing they demand of him, to rule as earthly monarch, would be the worst thing that could happen to them. If gives them what they want, hope will die. Sin and evil will win. And death will indeed have the last word for all time.
Jesus may have understood that, but the crowd does not. And when he refuses to do as they wish, they turn on him. Those who cry Hosanna today will cry Crucify on Friday. Same people. As bad as it is to give us what we want, it can sometimes be worse to not give it to us. In this case, not granting our petty little desire led us to murdering God himself.
The brilliance of God’s plan is that is precisely what he knew would happen. Everybody wants to rule the world. All the way back in the garden that was our sin. To be like God. To REPLACE God with ourselves. Okay, fine, we can’t be God, but as long as he does what WE WANT, we’re okay with it. And then, when he doesn’t....CRUCIFY HIM!!!!
The cross gives silent testimony against the whole human race. It is our indictment. It is where we murdered God because he would not bend to our petty and insignificant desires. Where we killed him because he dared to ignore our bloodlust, our ambition, our arrogance. That moment, perhaps more than any other, is proof of our damnation. We should be, rightly, beyond redemption. Guilty of the greatest sin of all time: killing God himself.
God knew that all along and still let it happen. Because despite all our depravity, he still loves us beyond words. It’s as if God saying to us, do what you wish. Break this body. Spit in my face. It will not stop me from granting what you NEED to have true life. It will not stop me from forgiving you. It will not stop me from loving you.
Some of the most powerful words from Scripture, if not THE most powerful, are “Father, forgive them. They know not what they do.” No, indeed we did not. We still don’t. Our folly can be seen all over this world. We march in line behind all sorts of would-be messiahs all because we think they’ll give us our every desire. And when they fail, as they always do, we metaphorically crucify them too. And then we chase after the next one and on and on it goes throughout history.
But all that we truly need has already been given us. All the true hungers of our inner self have been satisfied. If only we trusted in what God has done for us. Taking our greatest and most terrible sin and transforming it into what we’ve needed most. Forgiveness, salvation, eternal life. That’s the Christian story at its heart.
Every week, we return to this place to hear that story anew. Because we don’t trust in it. Our faith falters in the face of a unrelentingly evil world and in the face of our own inescapable flaws and vices. Every week, we begin with confession, with our admission that life has twisted us in many and various ways into what we do not wish to be. But every week we also conclude with that equally inescapable truth: “I have given my body and my blood for you. That’s how much I love you.”
Even though we’re the ones who broke that body. Even though we’re the ones who bled it. God loves us still. God forgives us still. God gives us all that we need for true life. Not what we want, but what we need. Trust in it again. Amen.
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