This is my twenty-fourth Palm Sunday at this church and I have preached about twenty-two of them, which raises an awkward question: what have I got to bring you that you have not heard me say already? Nothing is wrong with the old, old message. I just went to the Lord and asked for a new package for it.
I am an amateur history buff, so what came to me was weeks. Weeks that changed the world — give or take a day or two.
August 6th through 15th, 1945: the bomb on Hiroshima, then Nagasaki, and — you may not know this — Japan did not surrender on the spot. It took several more days before they accepted that they had to. The bloodiest war in human history ended on the 15th.
And one more, for which I cannot give you a date — you would have to ask somebody older than I am. Genesis 1. A week in which God spoke everything that exists into existence, and then took a well-earned day off.
Momentous weeks. But the week that changed this world most, and most for the better, ran from Sunday, March 29th to Sunday, April 5th, in the year we call 33 AD. On our calendar, providentially, we are sitting in it right now.
Let me set the stage, because I never assume you know the backstory. It is Passover week, so tens of thousands of Jews from all over the Roman Empire are streaming into Jerusalem. And coming in at the same time is another crowd entirely — the one that has been following Jesus out of Bethany, two miles off, where he has just called his friend Lazarus out of a grave he had been in for four days. That town is buzzing.
Jesus stops at Bethphage and sends two disciples ahead with an errand: go into the village, you will find a donkey tied there with her colt, untie them and bring them to me, and if anybody says anything, tell them the Lord has need of them.
The colt matters. Not a warhorse, not a stallion. A colt is a symbol of peace. He is not riding in as a conquering king. He is the Prince of Peace.
Now picture the scale of it here. Imagine the crowd from Calle Ocho moving downtown and joining the crowd from Ultra, and all of them walking together down Biscayne, down Brickell, across to Bayshore, past Vizcaya and Mercy, past Kennedy Park, all the way to Dinner Key — chanting the name of one man. Do you suppose the mayor and the commissioners inside city hall would notice a crowd out front shouting for somebody who is a threat to their power?
They laid their cloaks down in front of that colt. They cut palm branches and laid those down too. So put yourself in their sandals and let me ask you the question I want you to carry through this whole week: what would you lay at his feet?
Some of you would lay down praises, because you know him and you know he is worthy. That is a warm-up act for what we will be doing forever.
Some of you would lay down questions, a whole armload of them. You are in the right place. We welcome skeptics here — you are looking at a recovering one. I do not believe a thing simply because you tell me it is so. Make your case and I will listen. I speak skeptic.
But I will say one thing lovingly and directly. Some people say they have intellectual doubts, and some of them genuinely do — and some of them simply enjoy having doubts, because a doubt makes a very effective smoke screen. It means never having to bring your ego and your will and your comforts before a holy God who might change your life. If that is you: get that weak stuff out of here. We are not playing games. Bring me a real question and I will take it seriously all day. Play games with God and the clock runs out on that game.
Some of you would lay down pain. Chronic pain, the kind you have begged him to take and he has not taken. I have been there and I cannot tell you why. But I can tell you this. When we cry out about our pain we are not crying out to a God who says, pain — what is that like? He took on flesh. He has the same organs, tendons, nerve endings you and I have — and he made them. Riding in that day to shouts of Hosanna, he knew that in five days those same nerve endings would meet the scourge and the crown of thorns and the nails.
Other men were crucified in that empire; it was a cruel time. What was unique to him was this: the wrath of God poured out on a man, and the wrath of men poured out on God. No wonder he cried out forsaken. Fathers, can you imagine turning your face away from your son? I do not know how the universe held together.
And some of you would lay down rejection — a friend, a spouse, a child, a parent, someone who walked away. He knows that too. Despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.
You know the great sermon by Dr. S. M. Lockridge — one of the finest preachers this country has ever produced — "It's Friday, but Sunday's coming." I want to surf in his wake this morning and turn it around.
It is Sunday, and they are cheering as he rides. But Friday is coming, and they will be jeering as he dies. It is Sunday, and they are shouting Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Friday is coming, and they will shout crucify him, he is nothing but a fraud. It is Sunday, and they lift him up on a colt as their deliverer. Friday is coming, and they will lift him up on a cross as a pretender.
But after Friday — after the world goes dark and turns upside down — another Sunday is coming. And on that Sunday, for the first time since a man and a woman committed an act of cosmic treason in a garden, the world gets turned right side up again.
It is Palm Sunday. The King is coming. Make way. Make room. Make ready.
What will you lay at his feet?
