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Happy people singing. What a special day! Jerusalem was
going to be Camelot, and Jesus was going to be King Arthur. The
crowds were dreaming of trumpets and towers, capes and sashes,
flowing robes and sparkling scepters. The disciples would be
knights at the round table, shining in their armor, using might
for right, battling evil. The rain would never fall till after
sundown. By eight the morning fog would disappear. Camelot!(2)
Five hundred years earlier, the prophet Zechariah said that
one day there would be a day like this one. That ancient promise
was etched indelibly in the mind of a glory-starved nation. The
words of the Psalmist had been a continuing national lament: "Be
gracious to me, O LORD, for I am in distress; my eye wastes away
from grief, my soul and body also. For my life is spent with
sorrow, and my years with sighing; my strength fails because of
my misery, and my bones waste away."(3) For half a millennium,
they had kept an eye out for David's successor to gallop into
town, assume the throne, and change their sad song. The
orchestra was forever ready to play, "Happy days are here again."
It had been SO long.
Would this be the day? As Jesus rode into his capital city,
tourists from all over Israel lined the street and cheered
wildly. The faithful cut down palm branches and spread them over
the road just as their ancestors had done over a century-and-a-half before in a rare moment of national triumph when the
Maccabees finally completed the overthrow of the Syrian Antiochus
Epiphanes.(4) He had been horrible! Antiochus had forbidden the practice of the Jewish
faith on pain of death. He had taken over the Jerusalem Temple
and dedicated it to the worship of Zeus. He had desecrated the
altar by sacrificing pigs on it. After a 20-year guerilla war,
the Jews finally won. Would this be deja vu all over again?
Would Jesus lead the conquest of the hated Romans? The crowds
shouted, "Hosanna!" which means "Save us, please," or "Save us NOW!" "Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of
the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!" They shouted until they were
hoarse. They laughed and cried and danced and sang. The
disciples thought that it was the best day they had ever known.
The crowds lining the route of the procession should be
commended for their enthusiasm. They were not there just because
they loved a good parade. They were there because they wanted to
believe. They had hope. Hope..."Hope springs eternal in the
human breast"..."Where there's life, there's hope." And they had
it.
Good for them. The reality
is that, if we figure to survive in this world, we had better
have hope. The ancients knew that. Do you remember Pandora?
Mythology has her as a lady endowed with every charm...the gift
of all the gods. She was sent to earth with a little box which
she had been forbidden to open, but curiosity finally got the
better of her...she lifted the lid and out from that box escaped
every conceivable kind of terror. Pandora made haste to close
the box up again, but it was too late. There was only one thing
left...HOPE. That was the ancients' way of saying how important
hope is. Even when all else is lost, there is still hope.
This was what had sustained the Israelite faithful from
generation to generation. This was what energized the crowd
along Jesus' parade route that day. But hope is apparently a
fragile commodity. We know the story. By the end of the week,
the crowds will have disappeared and be replaced by a few
faithful friends gathered on a hill outside Jerusalem called
Calvary. What in the world happened?
Perhaps the answer is as simple as a loss of hope. It might
have taken different forms for different people. For example,
there were those in the crowd known as the Zealots whose top
priority was ridding the land of Caesar. For them it was
religious duty to drive the infidels out. They were looking for
the coming Messiah to lead them into battle, riding in a chariot
or mounted on a fiery stallion. But here comes Jesus riding on
the colt of a donkey, a notably undersized farm
animal. An adult man on a full grown donkey would almost have
his feet scraping the ground. Hardly the image of the conquering
hero. Goodbye, hope.
There were the religious leaders. Hope for them would have
involved bidding a not-so-fond farewell to the Romans, but that
was not their true priority. Truth be known, their deepest hope
would have been for Jesus not to upset their apple cart. No
chance. According to Mark's gospel, the day after the parade,
Jesus came to the Temple and made a wreck of things.
Of course, near the end of the week, Jesus gathered with the
Twelve in the Upper Room to celebrate the Passover. One would
think that these who had traveled with him and known him so
intimately surely would never lose hope - they had seen him give
sight to the blind, heal withered limbs, even restore the dead to
life. They could never lose hope, could they? Well.
Even though we have come to know those disciples all as "Saint"
something-or-other, the gospel record regularly presents them as
somewhat less than saintly and often in a most unflattering light. This Last Supper
over, they go over to the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus is
soon arrested, betrayed by Judas - an inside job, if there ever was one. Jesus' other
good friends scatter like scared rabbits.
We know the story. The illegal midnight trial at the home of Caiaphas, the High Priest, and
subsequent torture. The next morning the transfer to Pilate, the
governor's Passover festival offer to the gathered crowd:
freedom for some prisoner - "Do you want me to release for you
the King of the Jews?" They cried out for Barabbas instead.
"Then what do you wish me to do with the man you call the
King of the Jews?" he asked.
No "Hosannas" this time. They shouted back, "Crucify him!"(5)
The high hope of just five days earlier was gone. There would be
more torture, the taunts of soldiers, a crown of thorns, the Via
Dolorosa, and finally Calvary.
Have you ever lost hope? Perhaps because the answer to a
heartfelt prayer did not come in the way expected. A husband or
wife was NOT delivered from the cancer. A son or daughter was
NOT kept free from drugs. A deserved promotion went to someone
else. Or perhaps there was disappointment with the Lord's
Church, disappointment because the church sometimes proves to be
not quite that "fellowship of kindred minds...like to that
above." Those things can rob us of hope. Indeed, the cynic
would say that those who would live on hope will soon starve to
death.
Well, I have some good news for you this morning. I could
offer it in any number of ways, but one of my favorites is from a
special book called, It's Friday, but Sunday's Comin'.(6) My
mother gave it to me. It is a series of essays by Dr. Anthony
Campolo, and the title work tells of a church service in which
the author participated that remembered those horrific events
that led up to Jesus' death on Good Friday - it is a line from a
sermon preached by one of the other speakers that day, a wise old
African-American pastor. Dr. Campolo writes:
He came on louder as he said, "It was Friday and
Mary was cryin' her eyes out. The disciples were
runnin' in every direction, like sheep without a
shepherd, but that was Friday, and Sunday's comin!"
The preacher kept going. He picked up the volume
still more and shouted, "It was Friday. The cynics
were lookin' at the world and sayin' `As things have
been so shall they be. You can't change anything in
this world; you can't change anything. But those
cynics don't know that it was only Friday. Sunday's
comin'! It was Friday, and on Friday those forces that
oppress the poor and make the poor to suffer were in
control. But that was Friday! Sunday's comin'!
It was Friday, and on Friday Pilate thought he had
washed his hands of a lot of trouble. The Pharisees
were struttin' around, laughin' and pokin' each other
in the ribs. They thought they were back in charge of
things. But they didn't know it was only Friday!
Sunday's comin'! That is the good news, the Gospel, the word the world is
waiting to hear. That is the church's message of hope. When
life begins to get you down, our word is SUNDAY'S COMIN'. When
the love you had counted on is gone and you feel that you may
never know love again, remember that SUNDAY'S COMIN'. When you
see what is happening in the hallways of our schools or the
streets of our cities and are angry and afraid, we have to tell
you that SUNDAY'S COMIN'. When you have lost your belief in the
miraculous and no longer expect great things from God, look at
the calendar and note that SUNDAY'S COMIN'. When you are so far
down you don't remember up, the word is SUNDAY'S COMIN'.
Yes, there is lots wrong with this world. But it is hope
that we need to sustain us. Indeed, it is ONLY hope that gets us
through the darkest hours. I have hope, the same hope that energized that Palm Sunday crowd. On this first day of Holy Week, we know know there will be a Monday, a Tuesday, a Wednesday, a Thursday, and finally, a devastating, death-dealing Friday. But on that awful day we can think again and recall a special
time long, long ago. Then with heart and soul and every fibre of
our being we can shout, IT'S FRIDAY, BUT, PRAISE GOD, SUNDAY'S
COMIN'!
Amen!
1. Pastors Professional Research Service, March/April 1993 2. Tom Long quoted by Brett Younger, "Staying for the Whole Parade," Pulpit Digest, March,
April, 1999, pp. 73-78 3. Psalm 31:9-10 4. II Maccabees 10:1-8 5. Mark 15:9-14 6. Waco, TX: Word Publishing, 1985 7. ibid., pp. 124-126
For an hour and a half he preached one line over
and over again..."It's Friday, but Sunday's comin'!"
He started his sermon real softly by saying, "It was
Friday; it was Friday and my Jesus was dead on the
tree. But that was Friday, and Sunday's comin'!" One
of the Deacons yelled, "Preach, brother, Preach!" It
was all the encouragement he needed.
Campolo continues, "He kept on working that one phrase for a
half hour, then an hour, then an hour and a quarter, then an hour
and a half. Over and over he came at us, "It's Friday, but
Sunday's comin!" By the time he had come to the end of the
message...He had me and everybody else so worked up that I don't
think any of us could have stood it much longer. At the end of
his message he just yelled at the top of his lungs, `It's
FRIDAY!' and all 500 of us in that church yelled back with one
accord, `SUNDAY'S COMIN'!"(7)
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