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Being on the Advance Team (But = not in the Parade!)

Isaiah 50:4-9a
Philippians 2:5-11

Jealo= usy, privilege, rank and special place; sooner or later they infect every gather= ed group of humans. As Jesus and his disciples neared the city of Jerusalem, a dispute arose among the disciples about who was the greatest among them. Ja= mes and John went to Jesus privately to ask that they be seated, one on his rig= ht and one on his left when he came into his kingdom.

Mark = paints a most unattractive portrait of Jesus’ disciples. They uniformly are sh= own to be half-witted, misunderstanding, and slow to get what Jesus is talking about. In the end, when the going gets tough, they flee as cowards into the darkness. Even at the resurrection they are portrayed as full of fear and incomprehension.

As th= ey arrive at Jerusalem, it is clear that Jesus has a plan for the day; a plan = full of theological, spiritual and emotional significance. Things get going by J= esus sending two of his disciples to fetch a colt. Could it have been James and = John that were appointed to this advance team? Securing transportation is relati= vely important, but it was also a mundane, non-spectacular, even trivial matter. Half of Mark’s story about Pam Sunday is about acquiring a colt for J= esus’ transportation into the city! Thomas Long says: “Though no one knows = what these two disciples were thinking, I’m confident that they had imagin= ed for themselves a grander and nobler role on this day than being on the donk= ey detail.”

They = were probably thinking, “When we get him elected Messiah, surely we will a= ll get appointed to the cabinet, and who will get the most important posts?= 221; But here they are, sent out looking for a stable from which to rent a donke= y. Jesus could have easily decided to slip quietly into the city while they we= re gone, and they could have missed the whole thing! But of course Jesus did not do tha= t, because he had a plan. But his plan was not for the faint of heart or for t= hose seeking rank, privilege and recognition. He was fixed on the words of the prophet Zechariah: “Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victor= ious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.̶= 1; Well, which is it, triumphant or humble? Or, is it the kind of triumph that= is only found in humility and is never found in privilege?

Accor= ding to Mark no crowds came out from the city to greet Jesus. It was just those fol= ks whom he had collected along the way to Jerusalem; peasant folk who hung on = to his every word of hope and his presence of compassion - folks who witnessed= his caring and healing of people. But did they grasp what was about to happen in the city? Not even the disciples understood. In spite of all Jesus’ teachings about his coming rejection, confrontation with the Temple officia= ls, and his references to death and resurrection, the nature of Jesus’ kingship was not clear to anyone. This entrance into the city was ironic, a= nd the meaning was ambiguous.

Jesus= rode on the colt in enigmatic silence; it was a triumphal entry only for this rag -= tag band of followers. For Jesus it was entry into the midst of political intri= gue, conflict, suffering and death; where justice, religious purity and integrity would be on trial. In the tradition of the church, Holy Week is for those w= ho dare to follow in Jesus’ footsteps into the darkness

of hu= man jealousy, envy, and hatred. Easter makes no sense apart from the reality of this darkness, and the reality of death, implicit in corporate actions and = sin. Resurrection has no meaning for a people who have not entered the reality of death.

You s= ee, Jesus’ kingdom is more and strangely other, than we dare to think!

He is= not going to immediately restore the fortunes of Jerusalem as his followers hop= e. He is not going to drive out the Romans and restore the kingdom of David. H= e is not looking to the past. He only looks to the future! As I heard Ian Torren= ce, President of Princeton Theological Seminary say to students and faculty in chapel one day: “The future will never be like the past, be sure of t= hat. The glow of yesterday is a deceptive light. Progress most probably lies in unexpected directions.” All of you of my generation need to pay atten= tion to those words! At a meeting of transition specialists last week I heard st= ory after story of declining congregations seeking to recreate some glow of the past. In the first place it is just impossible to do. In the second place i= t is not what God wants us to do! = The world has changed; God has changed, not only in our perception but in the reality of the faith of the people of God; we have changed from the people = we were twenty years ago. “Progress most probably lies in unexpected directions.” The spiritually alert will follow those unexpected directions!

Where= does the Spirit seek to lead us if we follow this silent, lonely figure on a col= t? In this picture, the authoritative lowliness of God is displayed in Jesus. = This is not God the all powerful. This is a self-limiting God; it is God exercis= ing the power we all have; to opt for humility and even lowliness. We do not usually associate lowliness= with God. This Jesus we meet in Mark’s gospel, unlike the one we meet in t= he creeds of the church, makes few, if any, explicit claims for himself. He submits himself to the judgment of crowds, the religious leaders, the disciples, even his own family. The evidence he presents consists of deeds = and words of power, but his stance is paradoxically, one of lowliness. What is = the transformational quality of this day for our lives, in a time when we are experiencing the horrendous losses piled on us by those who enjoyed the excesses of wealth and privilege and rank?

A cha= rming, wise African American gentleman on the search committee when I was called to Westminster Church of Detroit, came to see me one day. He explained he need= ed to talk to me about the Rotary Club of Detroit.

He kn= ew I had been a Rotarian for a number of years. All of my predecessors in that church had belonged to the Detroit Rotary Club, and he told me the club only allow= ed two clergy members and one of those slots was reserved for me. And with a twinkle in his eye he said, “Of course I’m not putting any pres= sure on you.”

We ta= lked about what privilege and special places and memberships meant to Presbyteri= ans. He told of being invited to join a very special club in downtown Detroit. It always maintained 100 members and it cost $100,000 to join. During the cour= se of the year members would use the club for lunches, dinners, parties, family and business affairs. At the end of each year, regardless of how much you h= ad used the club, the year’s expenses were divided by 100, and each one = paid a share. Walter said: “I decided that club was not going to exist in heaven, and that I had better spend my time and money in more responsible ways.” He became the first chair of the Black Caucus in the Presbyter= ian Church and participated in sit-ins at the corporate offices of Chrysler, Fo= rd, and General Motors, at a time when none of them were hiring educated, compe= tent blacks for executive positions. He then said, “If you join the Detroit Rotary Club I will sponsor you and support you. But as my pastor I expect y= ou to lead our congregation to do something far more significant for the city = of Detroit and hurting people th= an that.”

The v= ision for our 13 years together began to take shape out of that conversation. The vision looked nothing at all like the past. For we knew there would be no Rotary Clubs, country clubs or Junior Leagues in heaven. But we knew there would be homeless people, hungry and oppressed people, marginalized gay and lesbian couples who would echo Jesus’ words “you did not do it = to the least of these.”

Think= about this day, as the day when the authoritative lowliness of God was revealed, calling us to transformational ministry with the “least of these.R= 21; You see, I don’t believe Jesus walked into that city of hatred and political intrigue and then suffered death on a cross so that I can go to s= ome soft heaven. He died at the hands of the unjust, the power hungry and the greedy so that I might be set free to join with all of God’s people i= n a ministry of justice, and the restoration of human dignity upon this earth. = What differences have we made where God has planted us? I don’t know that it will ea= rn us the right to be in the parade, we may always be on the advance team and the don= key detail! But it is there that we can become signs of the Kingdom of God upon this earth! Amen.<= /span>