I’ve always thought that if I could re-title this famous Palm Sunday story of Jesus procession into Jerusalem, I would call it “Adventures in Missing the Point.” For if ever there was a time when people showed just how little they understood who Jesus was and what he had come to do, this Palm Sunday parade was it.
Do you know why they were lining the streets with their palm branches and shouting “Hosanna!”? They thought Jesus was on his way into town to kick some Roman tail, to expel the Romans from their land once and for all, and to sit on the throne of David as the first legitimate political king that Israel had had for a long, long time. The truth, of course, was very different. Jesus was coming into town to offer himself, to sacrifice himself, to submit to the Roman authority rather than overthrow it. So Palm Sunday was one big adventure in missing the point.
But to be fair, this huge throng of Palm Sunday hopefuls wasn’t the first group to miss the point where Jesus was concerned, and they certainly wouldn’t be the last. Think of the Pharisees and the Scribes. They had their image of what Jesus was supposed to do and supposed to be as well. In their highly educated view, Jesus was a Rabbi and they knew what any true rabbi “should” do. They wanted Jesus to comply with the letter of the scriptural laws; they wanted Jesus to fulfill their expectations of what a rabbi, a holy man of God should be. They didn’t want a messiah who fraternized with sinners and tax collectors. They couldn’t have that, any more than they could have a messiah who touched lepers and unclean women. They wanted Jesus to conform to their image of a holy man of God, to separate himself from all that was common, impure, and sinful, The Pharisees and Scribes time with Jesus was on big adventure in missing the point.
The disciples weren’t really any better when it came to grasping who Jesus was and what he had come to do. They missed the point too. Think of Peter. He loved all of Jesus’ miracles – the healings, the feedings. Peter was the one who boldly jumped out of the boat to walk on the water with Jesus. But Peter’s problem came whenever Jesus started to talk about having to go to Jerusalem to suffer and die. Peter yelled, “Never, Lord! You shall never be handed over and crucified! Not you!” Peter, like the Pharisees and like that huge Palm Sunday crowd, wanted to hold onto his notion of a messiah, a victorious, miracle-working, and mighty messiah, not some weak, silent lamb led to the slaughter. Despite living with Jesus for three years, in the end Peter’s time with Jesus was an adventure in missing the point.
Think of all the people who tried at some point to define Jesus, to fashion and shape him, and to make him conform to their image, to pigeon-hole him, and to get him to do what they wanted him to do rather than to do what he came to do. Remember the mother of James and John who tried to get her two sons special seats in the kingdom of heaven, right alongside of Jesus? Remember the disciples trying to shoo away all those little children who were flocking to Jesus and trying to touch him, while Jesus was saying, “Let the children come to me! For to them belong the kingdom of heaven…In fact, if you want to be a part of my kingdom, you need to become more like these little ones.” Or what about the time Jesus entered Samaria instead of walking all the way around it – which is what law-keeping Jews were required to do to maintain their ceremonial cleanliness and purity? Jesus walked right into Samaria and then sat down at the well in the center of town and had a conversation with a Samaritan woman who had been married five times! The disciples were freaking out! They were thinking, “C’mon, Lord! We don’t do this! We don’t enter Samaria and we certainly don’t talk to unclean Samaritan women!” The disciples missed Jesus’ point every bit as much as the Pharisees on that night Jesus was dining with the Pharisees and that unclean prostitute entered their home to anoint Jesus with oil.
Now it’s one thing that all of these people who should have known better completely missed Jesus’ point. But the real tragedy in all of this is that these same people – whether they were Jesus’ supposed enemies or his supposed friends – in their missing of the point of who Jesus was also tried to limit who could and couldn’t be a part of Jesus’ ever expanding community. This is where missing Jesus’ point crosses the line from being foolish to being dangerous. This is the real problem with missing the point of who Jesus was and is and what he came to do. When we miss the point of who he was, then it becomes a virtual certainty that we will also miss the point of and the nature of the community he came to establish. When we limit Jesus and box him into our own narrow understandings, we can’t help but also limit and define in much too narrow a way his community, his church, his ever-expanding people.
Think about it…The Pharisees didn’t think that Jesus’ community should include or embrace sinners, tax collectors, lepers, or prostitutes. The disciples didn’t think Jesus’ community should include children, teachers of the law like Nicodemus, or Samaritans like that the woman at the well.
If our scriptures are clear about anything, they are clear about the fact that those who thought they knew Jesus best, those who should have known better, were as wrong about Jesus – and about the community he came to establish - as they could have been. And if they – the very people who lived with Jesus, heard him speak, saw his miracles and his unlimited compassion and love – could be wrong about Jesus and who would be a part of his community, then so can we…so can we. Palm Sunday nineteen hundred and seventy nine years ago was a gigantic adventure in missing the point. Could Palm Sunday 2012 be an equally mistaken endeavor?
Every single generation of Christians, going all the way back to Jesus day, has tried to draw boundaries around the Christian community. For the first chunk of years, followers of Christ believed that Gentiles or non-Jews should not be permitted into the Christian circle. For the next hundred or so years, Christians battled about whether the followers of the Apostle John’s school of thought or the followers of Peter’s school of thought should be considered the true fellowship. Moving into more modern times, American Christians debated whether African slaves should even be allowed to be baptized, much less welcomed into the full fellowship of the church. And you know the debates about women being allowed to speak or minister in Christ’s name, and whether gay, lesbian, and transgender people can be allowed into our churches. There are many Christians today who still don’t think that Jesus’ community should include assertive women, gay and lesbian people, pro-choice proponents, or those who are open to other religions.
People are still trying to limit and narrowly define Jesus, his ministry, and his community today. Faithful men and women are still trying to pin Jesus down, confine God and ways of thinking about God. Do you know that in our own denomination right now there are people fighting about the doctrine of the trinity? There are many folks in our denomination for whom understanding God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit doesn’t work. It’s too limiting, too gender specific. It reduces God instead of magnifies Him. So these folks have worked on coming up with alternative language to express God’s multi-faceted nature. But even as they do, more traditional folks in our denomination are saying, “You can’t do that! You can’t change the way we’ve always talked about God. God IS Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and always has been, and if you try to say that in some other way, you’re going to have to leave our denomination.” We’re still fighting about words and doctrines that we humans made up in the first place to try and express something that’s beyond all human words.
Jesus is more liquid than solid. He’s like the water I poured into your hands earlier this morning. He gets us wet, but we can’t contain or hold onto his living water. The living water of Jesus keeps flowing through us, squeezing out of the cracks and crevices of our lives, so that others can taste and feel and see his living water too.
It is this deep truth of our wanting to contain Jesus and Jesus’ refusal to be contained that has led me to be very careful and very suspicious of doctrines and systematized, institutionalized beliefs. It is this flowing and liquid nature of Jesus that makes me equally suspicious of any efforts to limit or draw boundaries around Jesus’ community – who can be in it and who is to be kept out. We Christians have a long, long history of trying to hold onto Jesus and to our particular understanding of him, of trying to draw lines around him and around his community by constructing doctrines and then casting them in stone as a way of saying, “This is how we will understand and talk about Jesus and his community forever and ever. Amen.”
With both his actions and his words, Jesus was always saying, “Do not hold onto me!” Why? Because Jesus doesn’t want to be doctrinalized or institutionalized or put in some theological box. Even our best, most clever doctrines can only give us a tiny glimpse of God. They never have been and they never will be entirely accurate or true. Every doctrine or statement or way of talking about Jesus that we’ve ever come up with is a bit misleading, incomplete, and seen through that foggy mirror Paul spoke of in 1st Corinthians 13. When it comes to Jesus and his community, we, too, have missed the point, and in so many ways we continue to miss the point.
And God knew this was going to happen, which is why He said what he said to Moses all the way back in Exodus 3. Moses asked, “What is your name? Who should I say sent me?” God showed his infinite wisdom when He answered, “I am who I am, and I will be what I will be.” “Yahweh” is so much more than a name. It’s a reminder and a warning that the God we worship is not to be quantified, categorized, nor contained in any way. We mustn’t seek to contain God in human words, in theological systems, nor even in our finite human minds. When God gave Moses that second commandment, “You shall construct no graven images of me,” God wasn’t just talking about golden calves. God was forbidding us from ever limiting Him or boxing Him in with words or doctrines or anything that fixes Him – or his ever expanding community - in some permanent, solid, unchanging state.
God is like water, and what He wants more than anything else is people and churches and communities that are willing to have that living water flow through us – not just INto us, but OUT of us as well, to ALL people.
The people who waved those palm branches and shouted loud Hosanna’s 1979 years ago today couldn’t have been more wrong about who Jesus was. I hope and I pray that they won’t be saying the same thing about us a few years from now.
