April 14, 2019 “He Rocks” – Luke 19:28-40

Luke 19:28-40
“He Rocks”
April 14, 2019 – Palm Sunday

Which is it going to be, the rock or me? How many of you have asked that as you dug a posthole, a trench or just a place to plant a shrub? Last year I watched as several of our men hacked away at the earth around a big rock in the trench we dug for electrical power and water for guests in the RVs we sometimes host in our parking lot. Our guys heroically battled the stubborn stone and soggy clay and came out triumphant.

During what is sometimes called Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, there arose for a few charged moments another sort of contest between human beings and rocks. It started with Jesus approaching Jerusalem from the east. He stopped on a hill called the Mount of Olives, to the east of the city, and sent his disciples for a mount so He could ride down the rocky road. He asked them to find a donkey, in fulfillment of Zechariah 9:9,

Lo, your king comes to you
triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

Jesus came to the capital of His nation, riding in procession like conquering rulers ride. It was a pompous entrance.

Yet mixed with the pomp was a curious humility. Jesus was not met by government officers rolling out a red carpet. Those who come to meet Him were a ragtag mix of His own disciples and the common people of Jerusalem. The whole thing was not at all like the official arrival of a head of state. It was a last-minute, thrown-together parade, not well-organized at all. People threw their coats in the road in Jesus’ path. John’s gospel tells us they also carried palm branches.

Verse 37 relates that when they rounded the Mount of Olives and began to descend, the whole city laid out before them, they started shouting slogans of popular faith, which again fulfilled the first part of Zechariah 9:9,

Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!
Lo, your king comes to you…

Jewish people understood those words to refer to a promised king, someone anointed to rule over them. “Anointed” is what “messiah” means. As they praised God and welcomed Jesus as the king coming in the name of the Lord, they were welcoming Him as the promised Messiah, the liberator and savior of Israel.

Jewish people had expected the Messiah for hundreds of years. He would be a king from the lineage of David. He would raise Israel to her former glory. He would cast off the Roman oppressors and make their country a world power again. He would set up a kingdom which would make them fabulously wealthy and happy, like everyone was in the golden age of David and Solomon.

It was a golden moment, a gorgeous spring day. The Messiah rode into His city to be crowned, so they thought. His followers were sure this day was the fruition of their devotion. It was a day to praise God. It was a day to declare out loud who Jesus was. It was a day for a parade and shouting, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” Children got caught up in it. From the other gospels we learn that someone started saying, “Hosanna!” Then everyone was saying it. Hosanna! The Messiah was coming! It was a great moment on the road to Jerusalem.

We don’t know how much real faith was in the crowd. We don’t know if anyone thought too much about what it meant to call Jesus king, the Messiah. They had seen Him do miracles, so they praised God and acclaimed Jesus. It may have been only a nice distraction on a boring day in Jerusalem. We know from history that other people had been hailed king and Messiah of the Jewish people. Jesus wasn’t the first. He wouldn’t be the last. And not everyone there was pleased.

Verse 39 tells us not everyone in the crowd joined in. Some good, conservative people called Pharisees stood by watching the whole thing with fear and disdain. To be caught in a large crowd shouting things you don’t understand or don’t agree with is frightening. They were also frightened of what the Romans might do if they heard the shouts. Jewish kings then were appointed by the emperor, not anointed by God. To the Roman military this parade might seem a traitorous threat to peace. They might stop it with violence, as other popular Jewish uprisings had been quelled.

So the Pharisees pushed their way through the crowd up to where Jesus sat quietly on the donkey. They said, in verse 39, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” The rock opera Jesus Christ, Superstar, has some nice lines here, sung by a sinister sounding bass:

Tell the rabble to be quiet;
We anticipate a riot.
This common crowd;
Is much too loud.
Tell the mob who sing your song
That they are fools and they are wrong.
They are a curse!
They should disperse!

Those words nicely capture the pride and fear of the Pharisees. They are above this “rabble,” this “common crowd,” and they fear what the excitement might bring down on them all. But then the rocks appear.

In that moment Jesus responded to the Pharisees, something happened that shook the earth. In verse 40, Jesus told them, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.” The stones had been there all along, the backdrop to that day and so much that happens in Scripture. Little rocks lay across the ground along the road. Big rocks poked up from the Mt. of Olives itself. Stacked rocks formed walls and buildings. Stones were everywhere. In the next chapter or so of Luke alone, stones are mentioned again at least four times. But here the rocks overheard that confrontation between Jesus and the Pharisees. And they woke up.

Jesus was not just the master of a little band of disciples. He is the Master of the universe, the master of all creation, the master of the rocks. And He had called their name. He gave them a charge. If the crowd is silent, shout! You can picture even the tiniest pebble beneath someone’s sandal begin to tremble, ready to shout, ready to cry out, “Hosanna!, Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!” And it would have. If the disciples had been silenced, then that pebble and all its stony brothers were ready. This would be their moment, the moment the rocks themselves acknowledged their creator. It was going to be either that crowd of men, women and children… or the rocks.

I put to you a moment like that. Jesus rode a donkey into the midst of the people of Jerusalem. They refused to be silent and unwittingly praised Him and called to Him for salvation with that word, “Hosanna.” They may not have even realized its original meaning, “Come, save us!” Jesus reply to them was a cross. He saved them by dying, by giving them His own life and then rising again a week after Palm Sunday.

Jesus still comes to meet His people. As we may sing next Sunday on Easter,

Lo! Jesus meets us, risen from the tomb;
Lovingly he greets us, scatters fear and gloom.
Let his church with gladness, hymns of triumph sing,
For her Lord now liveth: death hath lost its sting.

When we gather here, the risen Lord Jesus comes down to meet us like He came down that rocky hillside outside Jerusalem. And He still wants to hear the praises of His people and the call for salvation. Jesus comes to be our king, Jesus Christ, the son of David, the Son of God, our Savior. He still comes. And the rocks are still here, still waiting.

The rocks laid in order out there on our church walks are waiting. The rocks mortared together holding up our church signs are waiting. All the rocks big and little in the flower beds and under them are waiting. They are waiting to hear if we praise Jesus. They are waiting on you and me.

There are still people saying we shouldn’t. There are still Pharisees around who worry about what might happen if Jesus is praised too much or too loudly or even at all. There are those who would like followers of Jesus to be quiet and not rock the boat. So the rocks wait quietly, ready to step in if God’s people fall silent.

But rocks are not made for praise. Stones were not made to follow Jesus Christ down the road of Christian life. You and I were made for that. You and I were made to sing the praises of Jesus Christ and to be His followers. We were made for that because we will be around longer than the rocks. The kingdom of God is made out of something more enduring than stone. It is made out of the Spirit of Jesus Christ living in the hearts and lives of His people. Like Him, His people will live forever.

The whole Palm Sunday scene was impromptu. They borrowed a donkey. They improvised a procession. They threw down their coats and cut palm branches from the trees. It was hastily arranged and it was over almost before it began. It was a temporary measure for the immediate situation.

I once saw a video tape of a sermon by Pastor E. V. Hill of the Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church in southern California. Preaching at a big white suburban church He said,

As I drove to your church building this morning, through your neighborhood, I noticed that you folk have a lot of fine things. You have big houses, and very pretty. You have lovely gardens. You have new shiny cars. You have schools that got no barbwire around them. Very nice.

But something’s missing, and at first I couldn’t figure out what. Then it hit me. You ain’t got no graffiti. None. You can’t have a hood without that. I tell you what, I’ll go get some of my boys, we fix that for you. And I’ll even suggest what word we write in our graffiti. We write it on your schools, on your homes, on your cars and your boats, even here on your church. The word I’d like write is this: “Temporary.” All this stuff one day goin’ up in smoke.

Hill went on to say we ought to write “temporary” over everything we do as Christians. We ought to write “temporary” on our buildings, on our church signs, on our bulletins. Our letterhead should say, “temporarily doing business at 3636 W. 18th Ave.” All the externals of the Christian church should be like that first Palm Sunday procession, like the palm branches we’re waving this morning, beautiful and good but temporary. None of it is going to last. It all goin’ up in smoke, like some of these palm branches will next Ash Wednesday.

Jesus didn’t come to set up a kingdom based on donkey rides or palm branches. He didn’t come to sit on a throne carved out of stone. He came to set up a kingdom based on dying and rising from the dead. He came to give people new life like His, a reason to sing praise. His kingdom is wherever people believe in Him and praise Him. As you can see in Jerusalem today, even buildings made of stone are temporary. But the praise is forever.

When I first came here, our building needed repair. There were two long cracks down that floor beneath your feet and they were getting wider. With a lot of prayer and a lot of help and a lot of sacrifice it got repaired and it’s lasted a long time. But it was temporary. One of these days it will crack again. It won’t last, just like the siding and the paint we need to replace this year. But what we do here will last. The praise you and I offer our Lord Jesus will go on and on. It will last because He lives forever and we were made to live forever with Him. Wood and concrete are temporary. Praise is eternal. That’s why Jesus wanted His disciples to praise Him that day. Because that is what they were called for, because that is what they would do for eternity. He didn’t want rocks to praise Him. Someday the rocks may be gone, but His people will go on and on.

You and I are called to offer Jesus the eternal, lasting offering of praise. We offer it by following Him down the road He walked. He gave up His life for us and He calls us to give up our lives for Him. He built an eternal kingdom by dying on the cross and He asks us to build eternal praise for Him by dying to ourselves and taking up His cross. He guaranteed that His kingdom would last forever by rising from the dead. He guarantees that your praise will last forever because He promises to raise you from the dead.

So let the rocks be quiet. Offer your praise to the King. It is better and more lasting praise. Praise Jesus with your voice. They shouted on Palm Sunday. You can shout like our children did. You can sing beautifully like our Valley covenant Singers. You can talk about Jesus to someone you care about and invite them to church. Let the world hear that Jesus is king.

Praise Jesus with your hands. Those first disciples threw down cloaks and waved palm branches. You can paint a picture or cook a meal or vacuum a floor. You can help a child make a craft in Sunday School, post a picture on our church Facebook page, or check-in backpacks for the warming center. As I said in an e-mail about our work day, Psalm 90 ends with a prayer for God to prosper the work of our hands. What we do with our hands prospers when it praises Christ our King and makes him visible to those around us.

Praise Jesus with your hearts. The disciples learned this last. On Palm Sunday their hearts weren’t ready for the cross. They weren’t ready to follow Jesus all the way down that road. But when He rose again He gave them new hearts. They loved the lonely. They cared for the sick. They fed the hungry. And they told people about the love of Jesus. Your heart too can do that. You can be a friend to the lonely. You can visit the sick or feed the hungry. You can care for the grieving. You can let the world feel that Jesus is king.

Our psalm today compared Jesus to a rock, “The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.” He is the only Rock that needs to speak, the Rock upon whose teaching and life we base our lives. And when we praise Him, we keep the rest of the rocks quiet. If you’ll forgive me the contemporary slang, Jesus is the one who truly rocks.

It is you and me or the rocks. Let’s keep the stones silent. The praise Jesus wants most is ours. As our reading from Philippians 2 said, someday at the name of Jesus, “every knee shall bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth [where the rocks are] and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.” Jesus is Lord! Someday everyone and everything will be shouting. Let’s you and I get started now.

Amen.