Palm Sunday: Humble King Calling Us Forward

And so Jesus chooses this path of humility. But what you may not know or you may not remember is that the Palm Sunday parade was a protest parade. You see, Jesus rode in from the East, and he was surrounded by children and families and, the poor because that's who he ministered to, the peasants, the poor people. And he was surrounded by all of them, and I'm sure it did not look like a very dignified parade. [00:43:26] (34 seconds)  #PalmSundayProtest

And Jesus is here just emptying himself out, and he says he was obedient even to death on a cross. What an amazing vision of a king. A king who would serve us out of the depth of that love, a king who would give us a new alternative of what this world can be like, not from a place of power and might and forcing people to do what they want, but from a place of humility, a place of gentleness, and ultimately, a place of deep, deep love. [00:49:13] (39 seconds)  #ServantKingLove

And so it was presenting two different kinds of understandings of what the world was about. In Rome, the emperor was seen as, you might be surprised by this, the the emperor was called the son of God. And so here were two contrasting visions of what the world should look like. One where there is wealth and power that dominates people, where oppression is just part of the life that they expect, where the taxes went from the poor to the rich, and then another picture, a picture where a king would ride in on a donkey, including children and the poor, a vision of a place where there is no more war, where there is no more hunger, where the the wolf will lie down with the lamb, and where little children will lead them. [00:45:52] (62 seconds)  #KingdomVsEmpire

But this article offered a whole new way. They said, what if we instead call forward? They said, what if we paint a vision of what we want this world to look like and invite that person into the vision. And it requires you to have a conversation where you can learn and grow together. It requires you to be vulnerable, to be humble, but it it invites us into a better future. [00:52:31] (30 seconds)  #CallForwardTogether

That's what we'll discover this week once again as we follow in the footsteps of Jesus. But in following those footsteps, yes, it can be humiliating. It can require us to be vulnerable. And yet, when we do, we may walk together into this new future. We may call each other forward into a new future where everyone is celebrated, all are recognized, where justice is is reality for us, and where we can live together in hope. That's the future that Palm Sunday calls us forward to. [01:01:01] (43 seconds)  #HumilityLeadsToHope

He says he he humbled himself. He emptied himself. He poured himself out. That emptied himself, the Greek word is kenosis. And it's a it's a beautiful sense of not caring about yourself anymore, just completely giving up yourself in order to serve other people. So it's this this self emptying that Jesus did that's completely the opposite of the emperor and Pontius Pilate and the rulers who are trying to get rich. [00:48:40] (33 seconds)  #KenosisInAction

And so he was coming in for the Passover, not because he was gonna celebrate the Passover, but because the Passover was often a time when Jewish people had some uprisings. You see, the Passover remembers when they were delivered from slavery in Egypt. And so there's this sense that they had been promised, and they had in the scripture, that a new king would come in and would deliver them. And so Passover was a time when there was a lot of anticipation, a lot of excitement about a messiah. And so Rome couldn't deal with that. And so they wanted to come in to make sure that if any of that happened, they could put a stop to it right away. [00:44:30] (48 seconds)  #MessiahHopeAtPassover

And I know that we have been focusing on things during Lent that have been challenging. We've been focusing on forgiveness and reconciliation. So we've asked you all to to forgive others, to confess yourself, to try to make amends, to, you know, reconcile with people. And this is difficult stuff, and it requires us to be humble. But luckily, we have Jesus who shows us the way. [00:50:00] (32 seconds)  #LentReconciliation