Who Is This? Palm Sunday — Journey to the Cross

The stone will be rolled away and the answer will ring out across the whole of history. Who is this? Not a prophet. Not a martyr. He is the risen Lord. The king of kings. The one who went to the cross for our sins and he rose again so that we might have eternal life. The question lingers today. Who is this? The empty tomb gives us the only answer that lasts. But, let me finish with an invitation. [00:50:46] (46 seconds)  #HeIsRisen

The city's earthquake response was not a failure. Today, we live in an anxious world. A world of political tension of things that feel fragile and uncertain. Many people in our world today are shaking not with excitement, but with fear. And, the invitation of Palm Sunday is this. Even there, even in that place, the right question can still rise to the surface. Who is this? It's not a bad place to start and it may be exactly where God meets us today. [00:48:34] (48 seconds)  #HopeInTheShaking

But, this is the world that Jesus rides into. The crowds cheered because they thought he had come to change their world by force. The city shook in fear of what his arrival might cost them. Neither of them could see what was actually happening. Because what was actually happening was not a revolution, but it was a rescue. Today marks the start of a journey. Our posters, our social media posts sum it up by saying a lot can happen in seven days. [00:49:21] (41 seconds)  #RescueNotRevolution

In seven days, we go from the streets of Jerusalem where we are now, to the upper room, to a garden, to a trial, to a hillside outside the city walls. At every step, the question will press harder, who is this? Who is this washing his disciples feet? Who is this sweating blood in Gethsemane? Who is this silent before Pilate? Who is this dying on a Roman cross? And then, days from today, on Easter Sunday, the question will be answered in a way that no crowd and no city could ever have anticipated. [00:50:02] (44 seconds)  #SevenDaysToEaster

It is a declaration of genuine faith. But it is a faith that has not yet seen the whole picture. They're not wrong. Jesus is a prophet and he is a great one. But, the prophets before him had pointed towards something greater than themselves. And, Jesus is not simply the latest in that line. He is what the whole line was pointing towards. He is the king of kings and he is riding into Jerusalem to do something that none of them, for all of their love and loyalty have yet grasped. [00:45:34] (38 seconds)  #KingOfKings

Their initial response is not to step into the parade and to follow Jesus. Rather, it is to stare and to ask, what is going on here? They appear to be in turmoil. The Greek word that Matthew uses for turmoil is the same word for an earthquake. Seismos. The same word that will appear at the crucifixion and at the resurrection. And so, the city is not merely just watching and curious. It is seismically disturbed. It is shaken to its very foundations. [00:42:11] (43 seconds)  #SeismicShift

Matthew's been giving us the answer since the very first chapter of his gospel. From the very beginning, he has shared and written that this is Emmanuel. God with us. This is the one the prophet pointed towards. The city doesn't yet know it, but in their uncertainty and in their shaking, they have stumbled onto the question that the whole of history turns on. Who is this? And so, this is the question that we are going to sit with this morning. [00:43:32] (39 seconds)  #GodWithUs

And yet, they write they ask the right question. Who is this? Not, is he dangerous? Not will he cause trouble, but who is this? Even from a place of fear, from self preservation, even from the instinct to keep their heads down and stay safe, they stumble onto the question that matters most. Because faith is not always born from a place of enthusiasm. Sometimes, it begins in the shaking, in grief, in crisis, in the kind of unsettledness that simply refuses to go away. [00:47:44] (50 seconds)  #FaithInTheShaking