A little boy was sick on Palm Sunday and stayed home from church with his mother. His father returned from church holding a palm branch. The little boy was curious and asked, "Why do you have that palm branch, dad?" "You see, when Jesus came into town, everyone waved Palm Branches to honor him, so we got Palm Branches today." The little boy replied, " Aw Shucks! The one Sunday I miss is the Sunday that Jesus shows up!"
We begin Holy Week celebrating Christ’s presence in Jerusalem. We have been prepared by the gospel writers to understand the joy of the people greeting Jesus. We are about to see Jesus in the fulfillment of his role as messiah.
How can anyone really explain or understand Jesus Christ? First, there is the mystery of explaining how one Man could be fully God and fully human at the same time. Then there is the enigma of understanding Jesus just in His flesh and blood, as one of the most multifaceted and complex individuals who ever lived. I suppose one could spend an entire lifetime searching and never uncover every dimension of Jesus’ character and personality.
There was Jesus the Teacher, who taught with authority even at the age of twelve (Luke 2:41f) and all through His adult life. There was Jesus the Healer, who healed the sick in body and soul, curing their deformities and casting out their demons. There was Jesus the Preacher, who drew great crowds of people to hear Him speak words which lodged directly in the human heart. There was Jesus the Scholar, who knew the law intimately, even as He changed its letter to uphold its spirit. There was Jesus the skilled Craftsman, who spent the first thirty years of His life as a carpenter’s son. There was Jesus the Friend of the despised and downtrodden, Jesus the friend of women, Jesus the lover of children, I could go on and on. These are just a few aspects of the character and personality of the Man from Nazareth named Jesus.
1. Today, I offer you yet another facet of Jesus’ character: Jesus the political power player, Jesus the supreme political realist, Jesus the formidable political adversary. This is the Jesus who comes to the fore during Holy Week, from Palm Sunday to Easter. Indeed, we can’t understand the dramatic events of this final week of Jesus’ life without understanding Him in this way.
Even before He approaches Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, we see that Jesus is not simply leading a harmless handful of rag-tag followers through the countryside. Jesus has a well disciplined organization, what we might call an "underground" organization today. He has to! Jesus lives in dangerous times; He has powerful enemies who plot against Him and watch His every move.
We see evidence of this in the way Jesus carefully plans His entry into the city. He sends two disciples ahead to get a donkey from an unnamed supporter and Jesus gives the disciples a password. Someone will say to them, "Why are you taking this donkey?" and the answer will be, "The Lord has need of it:" That’s what this language is in Scripture - these are passwords! Jerusalem is full of spies and informers. Those who follow Jesus can’t be too careful.
Now He enters the city. There is a huge crowd making its way to Jerusalem for the Passover. And there is Jesus, riding on a donkey. People are singing His praises and throwing palms before Him. The high priests and the Roman soldiers are watching. The modern church has taken the donkey as a symbol of the meekness and humility of Jesus, and so it was. Jesus said more than once that He came to serve, not to be served. But to the Jews of Jesus’ day, the donkey had a double meaning - it was also a symbol of kingship. The old Testament prophets had said that the Messiah would come riding on a donkey (Zechariah 9:9-10); they had also said He would appear at the very city gate Jesus was entering (Joel 3:1-12). Jesus knew full well that by coming to Jerusalem in this way and at this time, He was using the symbolism of a king, even a Messiah. He knew full well what this symbol would mean in the super-charged atmosphere of Jerusalem.
Today, we who want a comfortable religion are fond of saying, "Don’t mix religion with politics," but here we see them mixed inextricably as Jesus enters Jerusalem. Here is Passover, the most political of Jewish holy days - the celebration of their liberation from Pharaoh. Here is Jesus, coming as the prophets had said He would, and here is the crowd cheering Him on. Listen to what they are saying: "Hosanna to the king!" They are calling Him "king" (Luke 19:38) and "Son of David" (Matthew 21:9), and everyone knows what this means in an occupied nation hungry for deliverance from the heavy hand of Roman oppression.
On Monday, the day after His provocative and triumphal entry into the city, Jesus goes into the temple and starts a riot in this most sacred of places. This is a side of Jesus we don’t think about very often, we who want to keep Jesus meek and mild and "apolitical!" He picks up a whip and drives out the moneychangers: "My Father’s house shall be a house of prayer for all the nations, but you have made it a den of thieves!" (Mark 11:17). Then, because of the uproar He has caused, Jesus slips out to Bethany for the night, a few miles outside of Jerusalem.
But Jesus isn’t through. He comes back to the temple on Tuesday and Wednesday and provokes the authorities even further. Listen to what He says: "Woe to you scribes and Pharisees! You load the people with heavy burdens, but you yourself do not lift a finger!" (Matthew 23:20. "Woe to you, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear clean and beautiful, but inside are full of the bones of the dead" (23:27).
In four short days, Jesus has antagonized both the Roman political leaders and the Jewish religious leaders. He has united them in opposition to Him. If they feared or disliked Him before, now they want Him dead. Jesus knows that regardless of what He does or fails to do, the world is going to put Him to death, one way or the other. He knows the Scripture: the Messiah must be "wounded for our transgression and bruised for our iniquities" (Isaiah 53:5). He knows that a world which has rejected God’s love and God’s law and followed its own bloody course through all of human history isn’t going to have a sudden change of heart. Jesus knows that such a world will certainly despise and reject Him as well (Isaiah 53:3).
2. He is the master of the tactics of nonviolent confrontation. But by provoking the authorities as He did, Jesus is making sure that the inevitable conflict takes place on His terms.. He will determine the time, the place and the issues. He will attack His opponents at their weakest point. This is what the riot in the temple is all about. Jesus is careful not to attack the office of the priesthood itself. He doesn’t dispute their authority or their right to be priests. Instead, He attacks the corruption they have allowed to flourish in the temple, which is God’s house, a house of prayer. How can the priests defend what the moneychangers are doing? What can be more distasteful than unseemly profit made in the name of religion, in Jesus’ day or in our own? And Jesus is also careful when He condemns the lawyers, scribes and Pharisees - He quotes the law and prophets at them. How can they defend themselves when everything Jesus says against them comes from Scripture? Again, Jesus is attacking them at their weakest point, making sure that the confrontation takes place on His own terms.
These are brilliant, beautiful tactics - the power tactics of Jesus Christ! Maybe now we can see why both Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. said that they developed their theories of nonviolent power from the teachings and example of Jesus.
But it isn’t Jesus’ tactics in the temple or His tactics against the priests and lawyers that get Him killed. It isn’t even the controversy over whether He is the Messiah. Those are Jewish religious questions which are of no concern to Rome. No, what sends Jesus to the cross is one question, and one question only. It is asked by Pilate later in the week when Jesus is on trial for His life: "Are you the king of the Jews?"
To claim oneself king of Israel is to deny the authority of Caesar and this crime of subversion is one crime Pilate will not overlook. To us, Pilate may appear weak and indecisive as He faces Jesus, but history records him as a ruthless, ambitious and blood-thirsty tyrant who made liberal use of crucifixions to put down insurrection. I think what Pilate is doing during the trial is manipulating the priests into saying what must be said so he can put Jesus to death as a subversive. He starts by saying he finds no fault in Jesus and claims he wants to release Him. But as the trial progresses, it gets more political. The turning point comes when Jesus finally speaks.
Pilate has said to him, "Why do you not speak? Don’t you know I have the power of life and death over you?" And Jesus finally answers, "You would have no authority over Me unless it had been given to you from above" (cf. John 19:1-11). That’s the turning point! Jesus is putting Pilate and Caesar in their place. Rome says Caesar is a god who rules by his own divine right. Jesus says, "No, all authority comes from the God of heaven and earth."He says, "My kingdom is not of this world" (John 18:36).
3. Jesus holds ultimate authority. Jesus does have a kingdom, but it exists beyond the reach and power of Rome. In effect, Jesus is telling Pilate: "You have no claim on Me. My kingdom is far beyond even you or your Caesar." This is a test of wills and Jesus beats Pilate hands down.
The priests pick up on that: "If you release this Man, you are not Caesar’s friend. Everyone who makes himself a king sets himself against Caesar." In other words, the priests are saying, "If you release Jesus, you are committing treason against Caesar. You are jeopardizing your office, risking your career and failing in your duty to Caesar." They are hitting Pilate where it hurts.
Now the priests are coming close to where Pilate wants them to be. He says, "Behold your king!" Then the priests utter the most fateful words imaginable. They utter the words which convict them, not only by Jesus, but by their own sacred Scripture. They cry out to Pilate: "We have no king but Caesar!" When Pilate hears this, he is satisfied. He turns Jesus over to be crucified.
"We have no king but Caesar." As the priests said that, I wonder if they heard in the back of their minds the words of their own Ten Commandments - the words of the very First Commandment - which they had just betrayed: "I am the Lord your God; you shall have no other gods before Me" (Exodus 20:2). "We have no king but Caesar!" In their zeal to destroy Jesus, they declared Caesar their highest king and so they convicted themselves before their God.
That same cry echoes down the ages, as people claim other "kings" as their first loyalty, instead of Jesus Christ. That same cry echoes down through the ages as people deny the claims of God to choose instead the things or the beliefs they love most in this world. We hear that cry today and maybe even say it to ourselves.
We have no king but Caesar! We have no king but our standard of living! We have no king but free enterprise! We have no king but success! We have no king but patriotism - my country, right or wrong!
We have no king but national security! We have no king but violent revolution! We have no king but the pursuit of happiness! We have no king but keeping up with the Joneses! All other claims of love, justice, mercy or faith must take a back seat, because we have no other king but ... Fill in your own. There are so many to choose from. As a well-known preacher said in one of his best sermons, Jesus was a Man with a tough mind and a tender heart. He shows how serious the struggle is between good and evil and what a formidable force God’s Spirit must be in this fallen world. Here we see Jesus stand face to face with human authority, with the salvation of the world at stake, and Jesus wins the day. This friend we have in Jesus - make no mistake about Him! In the cosmic contest between this kingdom and the next, this Friend of ours is tough as nails and that is the side of Jesus I have tried to show you today.
Of course, this same Jesus rides into our town and into our lives on this Palm Sunday morning and He is forcing some questions on us, as He did in Israel so long ago. As we cheer Him riding by, with palm leaves in our hands and hosannas on our lips, are the Caesars and Pilates of this world worried? Do they worry about a church whose "kingdom is not of this world," or is the church a comfortable partner with secular authority, fitting its worldly purposes like a hand fits a glove? Does Jesus have in His church a disciplined, "underground" organization - people who are alert to His purposes and ready to put themselves on the line for Him, like the keepers of that donkey did so long ago? When He sends someone to us and we hear the password, "The Lord has need of you," do we respond no matter what the cost or risk?
Last and most importantly, who is your king? This is the fundamental question Jesus forces on us this morning. Today we cheer Him, but soon our true loyalties will be put to the test. Soon we will have to choose between Christ and the many Caesars of this world. "Hosanna to the Son of David!" Jesus is riding into your heart today, and He wants to know ... who is your king?