Tomorrow’s Sermon: The King Rides In

Matthew
21:1-17

1. Humility
On Thursday morning, I had to take two assemblies at Broomfield Primary School. Sharon
Young, the RE Co-ordinator, had asked me to take ‘Palm Sunday’ as my theme. I wondered
what to do. Then, stealing inspiration from a book on my shelf, I asked them
whether they watched Top Gear[1].
From the raucous response, I gathered the answer was ‘yes’. So I asked them
about people and cars. If the Queen turned up to visit their school, what kind
of car would she be in? The consensus was Rolls Royce. If Gordon Brown came for
a political photo opportunity, what car would carry him? Some kind of black
limousine was the main answer. And if David Beckham arrived to launch a branch
of his Football Academy, what would he drive? Here, the argument was purely
about which kind of sports car it would be: Ferrari, Lamborghini or Porsche.

Then I asked them what they would think if David Beckham
turned up in a Reliant Robin, or on a pushbike. I think the overall response I received
could have been summarised by the word ‘derision’. A famous or important public
figure just wouldn’t travel that way. We discussed how people would feel if
(locally born hero) General Sir Richard Dannatt, the Head of the British Army,
rode a bike rather than a military vehicle to an official function.

But that, I said, was exactly what Jesus did on what we call
Palm Sunday. He came, not on a warhorse, but a donkey. He came as king, but not
as the warrior king. He came fulfilling the prophecy of Zechariah on a donkey,
an animal signifying peace and humility. Jesus was a different kind of king. What
kind of different king?

To make this point, I asked for two volunteers. The forest
of hands was dense! I invited one boy at the back to come out with a friend. I sat
the boy down on a chair, and asked him to remove his shoes. Then I asked his
friend to smell his feet. Fortunately, the boy didn’t use a rude word! He looked
closer to it when I then suggested he should wash his friend’s feet!

So I explained the foot-washing story from John 13, and how
it was necessary to wash feet after long journeys on Palestine’s dusty roads, wearing
sandals. I told them how Jewish servants found it too demeaning to do, and how
the task was allocated only to Gentile slaves. How shocking, then, for Jesus to
wash his disciples’ feet. The same Jesus who had ridden into Jerusalem on a
donkey, now also shows peace and humility in the act of foot washing. This is a
different kind of king. This is not one who lords it over others, but one whose
deepest concern is for those who – in terms of rank – are far beneath him.

We know all this – don’t we? It’s something we cover most
Palm Sundays and every Holy Week. Jesus is the ‘humble king’. But it raises the
simple points about Christian humility. Do we prefer the needs of others to our
own? Do we consider some activities beneath us? Are we a little too keen to
name-drop and make ourselves sound more important than we really are? Maybe this
year it’s time for a little check-up on our pride and self-importance. If Jesus,
the king of God’s kingdom, could behave with such humility, what would he call
us to do as a sign of that kingdom? Have we become more serious about ourselves
than about Jesus? Is it time to take ourselves a lot less seriously, and Christ
much more so?

2. Peace
Humility isn’t the only way in which Jesus will confound his crowd of
supporters. They shout, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David’, thus giving him a
messianic title. And – as we know again – they had certain ideas about what
Messiah would do when he came. He would save his people from the sinners who
were oppressing them. But Jesus has been given that name at birth for a
different reason. Not that he will save his people from sinners, but that he
will save his people from their sins.

And for that reason, he rides in on a donkey, not a
warhorse. He comes in peace. He will not save his people from their sins with
violence – he cannot do it that way. The humble king comes in peace, not to
inflict violence, but to suffer violence. In doing so, he will in some
mysterious way stand where his people should, absorbing that which rightly should
be theirs, sin being condemned in his body instead. Jesus rides into Jerusalem,
knowing that later in the week he will walk out of the city, carrying a crossbeam.
Hence, we sing:

Ride on, ride on in majesty
In lowly pomp ride on to die

This is how he establishes his kingdom. He conquers the evil
that opposes his reign not with force but suffering. And if that is how he sets
up his kingdom, then it sets the tone for life in that kingdom. This is why we
can never advance the Gospel violently. It is not a matter of arguing over what
individual verses of the Bible mean: it is a question of the Cross. The Cross
is why we can say clearly that historical atrocities like the Crusades and the
Spanish Inquisition were unequivocally wrong. It is why we can be dubious about
the conversion of the Emperor Constantine, who allegedly saw the Cross in a
dream and heard the message, ‘In this sign conquer’, taking it as the promise
he would win a battle. It is why – in my opinion – it is dangerous for the
Church to be too closely allied to the State, because the State inevitably has
to use violence.

We can argue all we like as Christians about whether there
is ever such a thing as a just war, or whether all Christians should be
pacifists. However, one thing should command our universal agreement: we cannot
and must not promote Christianity by force, because that is contrary to the
Cross.

Thus, a friend of mine in the 1980s, a Kenyan clergyman,
once told me: ‘If I am attacked because I am a black man, I have no problem in
fighting back. It is a matter of justice. But if I am attacked because I am a
Christian, then I must accept suffering.’

Such talk about suffering in peace rather than responding in
violence may seem remote for many of us (although it isn’t for millions of our
sisters and brothers in Christ). But we have our smaller acts of violence that
we need to repudiate. Our acid tongues. Our character assassinations. I can
think of churches I know where stories like this are common: ‘W won’t come to
church any more, because X was cruel to her’; ‘Y can never trust Z again,
because he ripped him to shreds’. A peaceable kingdom doesn’t just mean non-violence:
it means reconciliation.

3. Inclusion
But then this peaceable Jesus goes to the Temple. And here he doesn’t look too
peaceable at all. In a sign of the judgment to come, he overturns the tables of
the moneychangers and the seats of the dove sellers. He quotes Old Testament
prophecy:

‘It is written,
“My house shall be called a house of prayer”;
but you are making it a den of robbers.’
(Verse 13)

Why is Jesus mad? He doesn’t oppose the sacrificial system,
but he is angry that changing ordinary Roman coinage for the special Temple
currency and then the selling of doves for sacrifices using this holy money is
happening in a particular place. Is it that it is happening in the Temple? No.
To get a clue, we need to think about where Matthew got his material, and when
he wrote it.

Matthew adapts a lot of Mark’s Gospel. Mark records Jesus as
saying that the Temple should be ‘a house of prayer for all nations’. However, unlike Mark, Matthew is probably writing
after the destruction of the Temple by Roman armies in AD 70. It is now
irrelevant to his readers that non-Jews might use the Temple as a house of prayer.
But that thought is probably central to Jesus’ original actions. Why? Because
the moneychangers and dove sellers had set themselves up in the one part of the
Temple to which Gentiles could be admitted. It was called, ‘The Court of the
Gentiles’. The presence of moneychangers and dove sellers there prevented
Gentiles from coming to worship Israel’s God. They had been excluded as a
result of preoccupation with religious business. That makes the Temple ‘a den
of robbers’: the authorities have robbed Gentiles of the opportunity to worship
the Lord.

And if you doubt the idea that the religious tastemakers
were an excluding lot, look at their offence over the noise, the healings and
especially the children. They protest at the noise – a din that has arisen
because Jesus has healed sick and unclean people; a racket that is all the
louder, because children are participating in it and don’t know how to fade the
volume. It’s as if the authorities would have been happier to see the sick
remain unclean and outside the Temple. And they certainly didn’t appreciate
children who should still be learning the ropes in synagogue school leading the
worship.

Outsiders, the unclean and children: still today these
groups face exclusion rather than the welcome Jesus issued to his kingdom – a welcome
found through the grace of repentance. So, for example, when I finished my
second assembly at Broomfield Primary on Thursday, I was invited to go to the
staff room for break time and drink a welcome cuppa. Among a few conversations
was one with the Head. I never realised before that she, too, was a Christian. But
she told me a shocking story of a ‘christening’ she had recently attended in a
parish other than her own. One child was
apparently so happy at the service that she began to sing and dance. The vicar
demanded that her parents keep her under control. Then two other children
wanted a better view, so they walked down the aisle and sat on the carpet near
the font, holding hands. Was that an ‘Aaah!’ moment? Not in the eyes of this
vicar. ‘Get these children out of my way!’ was his response.

It’s a good job my Head Teacher friend is a Christian, but
what must it have been like for the families of these children, and others attending?
What did it say for the welcome to the church family that was purportedly being
issued in the baptism of the infant? The opposite message was being conveyed
loudly.

It’s actually not much different from saying that children
are the church of tomorrow – a claim that excludes them from their proper
participation now in the community of God’s kingdom.

I wonder whether we have any groups of people who would be
silently or subtly excluded. Are there those whose backgrounds we dislike, and
whom we’d rather find a way of suggesting they don’t belong here or should find
a different spiritual home?

The crazy thing is, when we exclude those who don’t usually
fit our conventional ideas about who might be worthy citizens of God’s kingdom.
If Debbie and I have an urgent personal prayer request, there are a small
handful of people to whom we turn. If we have time to get on the phone, there
are my parents and a couple of people from our last circuit: a man in his eighties
called Cyril, and a woman in her seventies called Isa. My parents, Cyril and
Isa meet conventional church-insider stereotypes. But the other person we will
ask (provided the situation is suitable for her to know about) is Rebekah, our
daughter, who will not be five until next weekend. If anyone has a hotline to
God, it’s her!

Maybe you just find that a heart-warming story about a
little girl. But I challenge you to consider that those whom we exclude are
those for whom Christ rode into Jerusalem and then died outside its walls. They
miss their inheritance of faith, and we miss their contribution to the kingdom.
Their inclusion in the kingdom is required by the humility and peace that
Christ sets as core values.

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