The Risen King

We’ve spent these four Sundays leading up to Easter considering the dimensions of Jesus’ kingship. We’ve been poking around John’s account of Jesus’ Passion Week listening to the stories of people who were there. We’ve learned that Jesus is a lowly king, a servant king, and a suffering king. None of those adjectives sound very kingly. And when Jesus is riding a donkey’s colt instead of a stallion, washing the disciples’ feet instead of the disciples washing His, and willingly enduring suffering rather than dishing it out, well, Jesus doesn’t look like much of a king.

That all changes on Resurrection morning. That all changes in John 20, when Jesus Christ is raised from the dead. Jesus is the risen King. It was the resurrection of Jesus that caused His followers to take a second look at Jesus’ life and ministry. Maybe Jesus wasn’t just a Nazarene peasant with a bunch of new ideas. Maybe Jesus was more than just another martyr for a lost cause. He really is the Messiah King. This is Jesus’ followers’ conclusion: “Though in disguise, the eternal King was among us all the time.”

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I don’t know why I went to the tomb so early on Sunday morning. I couldn’t sleep. It was still dark. I guess I just had to be near him. I guess I just had to convince myself that it was true—that this was not just a nightmare from which I’d awake. Jesus is really dead.

On the way to tomb, I replayed it over and over in my mind. There are images of sights and sounds seared in my memory that I suspect will never go away.

· The shouts of the crowd: “Crucify him! Crucify him! Crucify him!”

· The snap of the whip upon His back, coupled with the grimace on his face and the guttural groan rising out of the agony of bloody wounds that covered him from head to toe.

· The clank of the hammer on the nails driven into his hands and feet.

· The mocking crowd.

· The laughing soldiers throwing dice for his clothes, carrying on as if killing Jesus was no different than butchering a cow.

· I remember his gasping for every breath … his last breath.

I’m afraid to close my eyes lest I see it all over again. If I’m going to be miserable, I might as well be miserable at his grave. At least I will feel that I am close to him again.

It was dark and I was careful not to trip over a rock or a root as I made my way to the tomb where we had buried Jesus’ body just two nights before. But dark as it was, even from a distance, I could tell something was wrong. Things were not as we had left them Friday night. I could smell damp earth, cold rock from inside. Oh, no … the stone … someone has moved the stone! Were they afraid Jesus would become a saint, afraid His tomb would become a shrine? Wasn’t killing him enough? They can’t even let his body rest in peace. And where have they taken him? To toss him off a steep cliff? To bury him among the garbage at the town dump? Why disturb his body? His body is all I have left, and now it’s gone too?

I didn’t stay to investigate. I’ve got to tell Peter and John. I ran faster than I’d ever run in my life to find them. I banged my fist on the door. “Peter? John? Wake up. I’ve got terrible, terrible news!” Apparently they weren’t sleeping all that well either; they opened the door immediately. Gasping for breath, I fell into Peter’s arms. “Catch your breath,” he said, “and tell me what’s wrong.”

So I took a deep breath and said, “They’ve taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they’ve laid him.”

Their eyes got big. “What?”

“Somebody’s taken Jesus’ body and who knows where he is now.”

Without a word, they pushed right past me on a dead run to the tomb to check this for themselves. I followed as best I could. By the time I got there, they were just coming out of the tomb. I hadn’t thought to go in. But with daylight breaking, they could see at least a little bit. They told me they saw the linen burial cloths there. And strangely enough they found his head cloth folded and in its own place. They weren’t sure what to make of it. Nor was I. If someone stole his body, why take the time to unwrap the burial cloths? It made no sense. Our heads were spinning. Puzzled, Peter and John returned to their homes.

I stayed. I had come to the tomb to be near him, and even though he was no longer there, it’s the last place he was. I didn’t know where else to go. I didn’t know what to do next. I just stood there and cried like a baby.

Finally, I composed myself enough to stoop down and peek into the tomb. I saw what must have been two angels. “Why are you weeping?” they asked.

“Why am I weeping? They have taken away my Lord, and I don’t know where they have laid him.”

It never occurred to me that these angels might have done the taking, but I was not doing my best thinking in those moments. I was in something of a daze, I guess. So much so, that when I left the tomb I didn’t see the gardener either and bumped right into him. “Why are you weeping?” he asked. “Who are you looking for?”

“Sir,” I said, “if you’ve carried away my Lord, tell me where you’ve laid him, and I will take him away.” Like I said, I wasn’t thinking clearly. What was I going to do, pick him up all by myself, or ask the gardener to throw him over my shoulders? My request must have sounded rather silly, but the gardener didn’t seem to mind.

“Mary,” he said to me.

Hmm? I know that voice. I turned into the sun to get a better look. “Rabboni!” I said, “My Teacher!”

It was Jesus … alive! “Don’t hold on to me,” he cautioned, “because I have not yet ascended to the Father.”

“Don’t hold on to me?” What did that mean? I wasn’t holding on to him. And then, before I could respond, he gave me a job to do: “Go now to my brothers and tell them I’m ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”

Go? He told me to “go”? I wanted to stay with him. I wanted to be sure it was really him. We were together, and in those moments, that’s all that mattered to me. But he said, “Go.”

So I went. I took only a few steps and looked back, but he was gone. I don’t know if the disciples will even believe me. When I arrived at the house most of the disciples were there, buzzing about the empty tomb Peter and John had told them about, speculating about what it might mean. “Mary,” they said, “you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Not a ghost, the Lord. I have seen the Lord.” And they stared at me as if I had two heads: stunned silence. I told them the things the Lord had told me. More silence. I don’t know if they believed me or not. And we sat in that room not sure whether to laugh or to cry or to shout for joy, without one clue as to what to do next. But we were certain of this—at least I was: things would never be the same again.

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Mary was right. Things were never the same. Jesus’ resurrection changed the course of history and the course of countless lives across the ages. So join me in worshiping Jesus Christ, the Risen King, on this Easter Day. All hail King Jesus! All hail!

The Suffering King

This is the third installment in All Hail King Jesus! In this Easter season I'm exploring some of the dimensions of Jesus' kingship. He is no ordinary king. This time we're looking at Jesus' death. Did He die like a king? Well, not like most kings. When most kings die, their people mourn; when King Jesus died, most of the His people, the Jews, applauded. When most kings die, there is a state funeral with visiting dignitaries and great ceremony; when King Jesus died He was hastily buried in a borrowed tomb with no dignitaries and no ceremony. When most kings die, flags fly at half-mast and there is a period of national mourning; when King Jesus died, it was business as usual in Jerusalem. Jesus is no ordinary King; He is the suffering King.

And we're going to explore that dimension of Jesus' kingship through the eyes of Governor Pontius Pilate, the man who made the decision to kill Jesus on a cross. Just a word before you read the monologue: Pilate doesn't see the cross like Christians see it. He sees it like most anyone else who doesn't know what King Jesus did for us there. Keep that in mind as you read.

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I do not feel as if I am among friends here. You know me for one thing and one thing only. I ordered the beating and the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. As Governor of this Roman province, I alone had the authority to execute Jesus or set him free. And as you well know, I chose to execute him on a cross.

But before you judge me too harshly, understand this: politics is politics. Did I like Jesus personally? Yes. I only knew him a few hours, and I found him mysterious and engaging. The man had courage—I will certainly give him that.

It was those pesky Jews that brought Jesus to my attention. It was Passover time so I was in Jerusalem. The city loads up with people on that holiday, so I send in extra soldiers and go there myself. Of all the various nations under our Roman thumb, the Jews were the hardest to subjugate—seems like they were always complaining about this or protesting about that. And at Passover, with Jews streaming into the same place from all over the Empire and their religious fervor stoked, well, it’s important to flex our Roman muscles and remind them who is boss. I had spent the last four or five Passovers there with not a single incident. This year was different.

Along with his cohorts, their high priest Caiaphas, a real malcontent, brought Jesus to me early Friday morning, and they had blood in their eyes. Of course, they are too holy to enter my headquarters, so I had to go out on my porch to meet them. They shoved Jesus toward me and said, “If this man had not done evil, we wouldn’t have bothered you and certainly wouldn’t have bothered you this early.”

“Why’d you bother me at all?” I said. “You’ve got your own laws; judge him yourselves.”

“We have judged him already,” they said, “and found him guilty. We are bringing him to you because he deserves to die for his crimes and we don’t have the legal authority to execute him. That authority belongs only to you.”

And immediately I felt a headache coming on. Since I didn’t trust Caiaphas, I didn’t ask him to explain the charges. I decided to ask the accused about that. I had heard about this Jesus of Nazareth. I ushered him into my office away from his accusers. “So,” I said, “you’re the King of Jews?”

Jesus raised his eyebrows and asked, “Did you come up with that yourself or did others tell you this?”

“Do I look like a Jew to you? Your own people and their priests brought you to me. What have you done?”

“My kingdom is not of this world,” Jesus replied. “If it were, my servants would be fighting tooth and nail to set me free. But like I said, my kingdom is not of this world.”

“So, you are a king?”

“You said it. And I was born for this purpose. This is why I came into this world—to witness to the truth. Those who are of the truth listen to my voice and know the truth when they hear it.”

“Truth, you say. What is truth?”

I was getting nowhere with him, but he seemed harmless enough to me. So I left Jesus and walked back out on the porch to talk to the Jews who had grown in number while I questioned Jesus. “Not guilty,” I said. “He’s done nothing worthy of execution. But you have this custom that I should set one prisoner free at the Passover. How about I release the King of the Jews?”

“Not him!” they shouted. “Barabbas! We want Barabbas.” I can’t say I was surprised that they didn’t want Jesus released, but Barabbas? The man was bad news—a hardened criminal: tried, convicted and sentenced. And they wanted Barabbas? Do you see now what I had to contend with here?

But politics is politics, and I had yet to eat my breakfast, so I figured I’d give them something. I turned to the captain of the guard, “Take Jesus, tie him to the post, and flog him.” Well, they did more than flog him; they always do. They had heard all this talk about him being the King of the Jews so they made sport with him. They found a purple robe and draped it over his shoulders. One of them weaved together a crown of thorns and pressed it on his head. They shoved him around, roughed him up as they do all Jewish prisoners, and then bowed in mock reverence saying, “Hail, King of Jews!” That was a bit childish, I admit. But soldiers get bored and need a little entertainment now and then.

They administered the beating and finished their gruesome task while I enjoyed my breakfast. They brought him back to me, and I presented him to the Jews adorned in his robe and crown. His face was streaked with blood; more blood dripped out from under his robe. He stood in a pool of it. “I find him not guilty,” I said for the second time. And I really thought the beating might be blood enough for them, but it was not. “Don’t stop now!” they shouted. “Finish him! Crucify him! Crucify him now!”

“Crucify him yourselves,” I said. “I find him not guilty.”

“He is guilty!” they shouted. “Our laws say he has to die because he’s made himself out to be the Son of God.”

“What?” I thought to myself. “The Son of God?” They’re all crazy. But that’s the first I heard of that. We Romans believe in lots of gods and for all I know he could be the manifestation of one of them. We Romans want to appease the gods, not anger them. So this “Son of God” talk sent a shiver down my spine. I hurried Jesus back into my office, hoping he wouldn’t bleed on the marble floor. “Who are you really?” I asked. “Where are you from?” His head was down and he said nothing. “Speak up,” I demanded. “Don’t you know who I am? Don’t you know who you’re dealing with here? I have the authority to crucify you or set you free.”

He looked up and spoke through swollen, bloody lips, “The only authority you have over me is what has been given you from heaven. That’s why the one who turned me over to you is a worse sinner in this matter than you are.”

And suddenly I was in waters I had never sailed before. Ask anyone who knows me from my military days to my days as governor and they’ll tell you that while I am sometimes wrong, I am never in doubt. And this time I was in doubt. It wasn’t that I was afraid to kill him. I’ve sentenced plenty of people to death, killed plenty by my own hand. So what if one more Jew gets hung on a cross. I won’t lose any sleep over it.

But this Jesus was no ordinary criminal. I had never dealt with anyone like him before. What to do, what to do? He sure didn’t deserve to be crucified, and I sure didn’t want to give those priests the satisfaction.

So I went out to talk to the Jews again. I tried to persuade them to back off, told them Jesus had been punished enough already, “He’s a bloody mess. I’ve a mind to let him go.”

Their eyes got big and they shouted, “If you release this man, you are no friend of Caesar. You know that anyone who makes himself a king raises his fist against Caesar.”

Have I told you how much I hated these people? But the last thing I needed was one more confrontation with Caesar over my governance. By now it was nearly noon. Sheesh … what a long morning! But it was time to bring this thing to a head, so I brought Jesus out to them. “Behold your king!” I said that just to spite those arrogant, no good ….

“Away with him!” they screamed. “Crucify him! Crucify him! Nail him to a cross!” They were out of their mind with hate and bitterness. I hadn’t seen them this riled up since I took some of their precious temple money to build an aqueduct that helped everybody. So I toyed with them some more. “Shall I crucify your king?”

And that’s when the chief priests said it, “We have no king but Caesar.”

Got ‘em! And I couldn’t help but smile at that. I’ve governed these rebels for more than four years, and I finally coaxed them into saying that Caesar is their king. That was victory enough for me in this whole fiasco.

So I decided to call it a day and made the call: “Jesus of Nazareth, I hereby sentence you to death by the cross. Guards, take this man and carry out this sentence today.” Did the Nazarene deserve it? No. But the political reality is that it had to be done. What’s one more dead Jew to me? Just one less rebel to worry about it. Caesar put me here to preserve order and keep the Roman peace. Trust me: I’d have had a riot on my hands if I’d have set Jesus free. Crucifying him was my only option. It had to be done.

I despise letting those chief priests have their way, but that’s politics and you have to compromise now and then for the greater good. I did goad them one more time. We Romans often nailed an inscription of the criminal’s crime to the top of his cross. You know, let people know what got the poor schmuck crucified so it might be a deterrent to others who were thinking of committing the same crime. So I told my soldiers to nail this inscription at the top of Jesus’ cross: “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” Nice little touch, huh? And I told them to write it in Aramaic and Latin and Greek so everybody could read it for themselves. The chief priests pitched a fit. Caiaphas was all red in the face and the vein in his neck was bulging out. “Don’t write, ‘the King of the Jews,’” they argued, “write ‘this man said I am the King of the Jews.’” Well, they weren’t winning this one: “What I have written, I have written.”

And that was that. I didn’t waste any more of my day watching Jesus die, but I’m sure it was like any other crucifixion. My soldiers stripped him of his clothes, they stretched him out, they drove nails through his hands and his feet, they hoisted the cross, dropped it in its hole, and waited for him to die. So yes, your King Jesus suffered, at my orders. Mine—a governor. A king that can be sentenced to die by a governor is not much of a king. Sure, kings get killed from time to time, but never without a fight, never without an army to defend them. If a king can’t take care of himself, how’s he going to take care of his people? People follow and rally around powerful kings—a king like Caesar—not weak, suffering ones like your Jesus. You call Jesus your king, right? Well, behold your king … on a cross.

You know … you can have him.

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Okay, I'll take Him! I'll take the King who planned a way to forgive me sins and bring me into relationship with Him. I'll take the King who did for me what I could never do for myself. I'll take the King whose love is so deep and so wide and so high that He would die for me to bring me life. And I'll take the King whose death was hardly the end of the story. (But more on that next week.)

I'll take that King eight days a week and all eternity. How about you? Are you willing to serve and follow the suffering King?

The Servant King

Last week I began a sermon series in church called All Hail King Jesus! We're poking around Jesus' Passion Week in John's Gospel looking at dimensions of Jesus' kingship. Jesus is no ordinary king. As He walked on the earth Jesus lived in no palace, wore no crown, had no money, employed no servants, owned no land, collected no taxes, had no horse and carriage to ride around in. Jesus was a poor man who walked everywhere he went. And Jesus was more the servant than the served. He said as much to His disciples: “The Son of Man has not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mk. 10:45). Jesus is a servant King. Few stories capture that part of Jesus' kingship like the time He washed the disciples' feet the night of His betrayal. I wonder if Simon Peter's retelling of that event might sound something like this …

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I can be a little thick-headed at times. I’ve never been all that good at interpreting signs and symbols. I’m a straight-forward man. If you’ve got something to say, say it. Don’t speak in riddles. Don’t beat around the bush. Don’t dress it up with 20-dollar words and a bunch of poetry. Just say it. Be clear. Be blunt. Just say it. Whether chasing fish on the Sea of Galilee, bartering for the best price at the market, or hashing out things with my wife, straight talk has always served me well.

When I left my fishing business to be a disciple of Jesus, straight talk paved the way. “Follow me,” said Jesus. It doesn’t get much clearer than that—“Follow me.” I know what that means: Jesus is the leader, I’m the follower, I go where He goes, and I do what He tells me. “Follow me.” I can understand that.

But there were times when Jesus didn’t talk so straight and when He wasn’t easy to understand. The story you heard in the Scripture this morning is one of those times.

Though we didn’t grasp it in the moment, Jesus was just a day away from being nailed to a cross. We were in Jerusalem for the Passover and had gathered in the evening for a meal. It had been a tense week. The week began on a high note with Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem to the cheers of an admiring crowd. The week had spiraled down from there. Opposition to Jesus seemed to be growing larger and bolder. Most of us sensed we were at some kind of turning point here but none of us could put our finger on it. You could just sort of feel the tension in the room that night as we ate our meal. Conversation was limited and Jesus seemed lost in his thoughts.

And that’s when Jesus did a very strange thing. He got up from the table. Every head craned to see what He was up to. Strangely, Jesus took off his robe, draped it across a chair, grabbed a towel, and wrapped it around his waist. Caught off guard by this strange behavior, none of us said a word. When He got the towel squared away, Jesus took hold of a pitcher and poured the water into a large basin. I thought to myself, “Surely He’s not going to do what I think He’s going to do. Not Jesus. Not the Master. Not for us.”

But that’s exactly what He did. He knelt down and began to wash our feet—patiently, carefully, tenderly, individually. Messiah Jesus was washing our feet.

Our feet! Feet are rarely one’s most distinctive feature. I’ve seen them all—hammer toe, corns, bunions, fungus, crooked toes, missing toenails, toenails a half-inch thick, crusty, callused, filthy, stinking feet. You walk our dusty, muddy roads in sandals, and you are going to have foot issues. I don’t even like washing my own feet let alone anybody else’s. Yet King Jesus knelt down to wash our feet.

The men were in shock. And why wouldn’t we be? Most people washed their own feet. Washing feet was about as low as it gets. The task of foot-washing was so menial that even Jewish slaves were exempt. That job was kept for Gentiles. Foot-washing was a degrading and lowly task. When done by a wife for her husband, a child for her parents, a student for his teacher, it was viewed as an act of extreme devotion. But I’ll tell you what never happened in regard to washing feet: never did persons with a higher status wash the feet of those beneath them. Well, anyway it never happened until that night in the upper room when King Jesus washed our feet.

We were in shock all right. Nobody said a word as Jesus worked His way around the table. One would look at another and just sort of shrug his shoulders. What are you going to do?

Well, I knew what I was going to do. I was going to refuse. My brother disciples may stand for such a thing, but I won’t. Jesus is better than this. He’s certainly better than me. “Lord, you wash my feet?”

“I know it seems strange to you now, Simon, but you’ll understand it later.”

And as I pulled my feet away from Him and up underneath me, I said, “Understand it later or not, you will never wash my feet.”

Jesus sighed (I heard that a lot in our relationship). “Simon, if I don’t wash you, then you won’t belong to me.”

Hmm. That shed a different light on things. I didn’t know exactly what He meant at the time, but I couldn’t bear not to be one of His. So I thrust my feet toward Him, bowed my head and extended my hands: “Lord, then don’t stop with my feet. Wash my hands and my head as well.”

“That’s not necessary,” Jesus replied. “A person who has bathed already only needs to wash his feet to be completely clean. And you are clean—well, all of you except one.” (I realized later the unclean one was Judas—but that’s another story. Jesus washed Judas’ feet too, by the way.)

But back to Jesus’ conversation, and if His words sound a bit confusing to you, it’s because they were confusing to me. Like I said before, I prefer straight talk, and Jesus was talking in riddles here. But He was right. I did understand it later—as in after the cross and the resurrection. That’s when it became clear. Jesus wasn’t talking about hygiene here; He was talking about holiness. His washing our feet was a picture of a greater thing, a greater, deeper cleansing. Only that cleansing wouldn’t come from a stooped over Jesus holding a basin and a towel; it would come from a stretched out Jesus nailed up on a cross. Jesus washing our feet with water was a picture of Jesus washing our souls with His blood. When He washed our feet, I didn’t think He could stoop any lower than that. I was wrong. The cross was lower, much lower. And Jesus stooped that low so He could wash more than our feet; He could wash out the stubborn stains of our sin and set us in relationship with Him—make it so we belong to Him. I shudder when I think that my pride almost got in the way of receiving Jesus’ gracious gift. What was I thinking?

Like I said, I prefer straight talk, and that’s what came next. When Jesus finished, He left us with our thoughts while He washed his hands, put his robe back on, and took His place again at the table. Once He was settled He said, “Do you understand what I have done to you?”

We looked at one another thinking, “Honestly, no.”

“You call me Teacher and Lord,” Jesus explained. “You’re right, that’s who I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, wash your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. Look, I’m trying to set an example for you here. As I’ve done for you, you do for others. No servant is greater than his master; no messenger is greater than the one who sent him. So now that you know these things, do them … and you’ll be blessed.”

Now that I could understand! Straight talk—it sounded a lot like “Follow me!” The whole mystery of the cross bound up in Jesus’ washing of our feet was beyond me at the time, but this “do for one another as I’ve done for you” I could understand. I still found it strange. It broke pattern with foot-washing’s social standards, etiquette, and customs. It wasn’t something I particularly wanted to do. Jesus was asking us to stoop awfully low to serve one another—washing feet of all things—not my deal. But King Jesus is greater than us. And if He would humble himself to serve us in this way, how can I think myself too great to follow His example? It doesn’t seem very kingly, but Jesus is no ordinary king. He is a servant King, willing to get His hands dirty and do the lowest task to grace His people with His love.

And since I like straight talk, I’ll give it to you straight: as Jesus did for us, He wants you and me to do for one another. We can’t die on the cross for anyone, but we can serve others in humble love and in so doing, we can help them experience something of the touch of the Servant King Jesus. And Jesus can work with that to do greater things than we can imagine. So humble yourselves, and serve one another in Jesus’ name.

The Lowly King

I’m calling my Easter sermon series All Hail King Jesus! We’re using the four Sundays leading into Easter to consider various dimensions of the kingship of Jesus. As part of my research for this series, I asked our crowd at a Wednesday night Bible study to do a little word association game with me. I asked them to tell me the first word that came to their mind when they heard the word king. Here are some of the responses: royalty, throne, crown, power, Jesus, sovereign, palace, wealth, queen, and majesty. All of those are dead on. And other than the word Jesus, those are the same words I’d have heard if I asked the question at the mall instead of at a Bible study. None of those word associations is a surprise. I’m likewise not surprised at the words I didn’t hear: meek, humble, lowly. Any king those words describe is ripe for overthrow. And yet those words describe King Jesus.

Each week in the series we’ll be considering a dimension of Jesus’ kingship and we’re doing it, in part, by hearing the story from someone who was there. We looked first at Jesus the lowly king. His triumphal entry into Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday captured the lowliness and humility of King Jesus. And the disciple John tells us about that event.

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I was there, you know … on the day Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey colt. We’d been to Jerusalem before, but we never made an entrance like this.

We had just come from Bethany and there was still quite a buzz about what Jesus did there. He raised a man from the dead. The man’s name is Lazarus. He and his sisters Mary and Martha are friends of Jesus. Lazarus got sick and died. We got word of his sickness, but Jesus just sort of blew it off and took his sweet time getting to Bethany. Lazarus didn’t have that time. His sickness got the best of him and he died.

We got there too late. We even missed the funeral. By the time we arrived, Lazarus was four-days-dead, wrapped in burial clothes, and laid out in a tomb. Lots of mourners were still there. And nobody seemed particularly happy to see Jesus. First Martha and then Mary got in their little dig at Jesus: “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.” The crowd got into the act too saying, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept Lazarus from dying?” It was pretty tense. They didn’t need Jesus now that Lazarus was dead and all Jesus could do was pay His respects.

But Jesus didn’t come to pay His respects; Jesus came to raise Lazarus from the dead. And that’s exactly what He did. “Move the stone away from the grave,” Jesus said.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Martha replied. “The odor is going to stink to high heaven.”

“Wait till you smell the fragrance of the glory of God,” countered Jesus. “Now somebody move the stone!”

The stone was moved. The smell was bad. Everybody covered their noses except Jesus. Jesus did two things. The first thing He did was talk to God. The second thing He did was talk to Lazarus. Jesus shouted, “Lazarus, come out of that tomb.” Guess what—Lazarus came out. He was wrapped up like a mummy. He walked out stiff-legged, but he walked out alive. And Jesus said, “Unwrap the man and let him go.”

A lot of the people who saw it believed in Jesus on the spot. But the religious leaders did not. They got their heads together and said, “Jesus has to die. If we let him go on like this everyone is going to believe in him. It will create chaos. Rome will come down and take away what little freedom we have left. It’s going to get ugly around here.” The high priest Caiaphas piped up and said, “It is better that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.” Caiaphas was dead on, but in a different way than he thought.

So word got out that Jesus was a wanted man. We pulled back to a more wilderness area for a short time to let things cool a bit.

But things didn’t cool much. People were still buzzing over Lazarus’ resurrection. And now it was Passover time. Jesus wanted to celebrate it in Jerusalem, so we headed back to Bethany on route. Lazarus, Martha, and Mary threw a big thank you dinner for Jesus. Mary got so carried away she ended up anointing Jesus’ feet with about a year’s salary worth of nard. Leave it to Judas to raise a stink in a room that smelled like flowers. “The woman’s crazy,” he said. “That’s a lot of help we could have given to the poor.” Don’t believe Judas for a second. He didn’t care about the poor; he was the keeper of our purse and sometimes he even helped himself to the proceeds.

Judas didn’t like what Mary did, but Jesus liked it a lot. He said that she had anointed Him for burial. Huh? Burial? We had no idea at the time what Jesus was talking about. But it wouldn’t take long till we’d know exactly what he was talking about.

The next day was Sunday. The Passover was this week. It was time to go to Jerusalem, and we went. We didn’t go alone. You wouldn’t believe the crowd that came along and the crowd that was there to greet us. It seems that everybody had heard about Lazarus and wanted to see for themselves this man who raised him from the dead. That miracle was such a crowd-pleaser that the religious leaders said, “We better not stop at killing Jesus. We need to kill Lazarus too”—you know, get rid of the evidence, so to speak. But they made no move in that direction on that Sunday.

How could they? There were too many people in a crowd that was Jesus-friendly. If they tried to take Jesus or Lazarus that day, they would have instigated the very riot they were trying to avoid. So they had to sit back and watch with everyone else.

It was quite a parade really. I admit that I don’t tell the story with the detail of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. They explained how Jesus got the donkey’s colt on which he rode. I chose to cut to the chase. I did mention the donkey. That’s important. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, by choosing a donkey’s colt Jesus was fulfilling Zechariah’s prophecy: “Fear not, daughter of Zion, behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt.”

That whole processional was both glorious and bizarre. It was glorious because with knives gleaming in the sun, people were cutting palm fronds from trees along the trail. They were waving those palm fronds and laying them in Jesus’ path. You roll out the red carpet; we laid down palm branches. And the people were shouting phrases right out of the messianic psalms: “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” Hosanna means save us now. Those were big words, big praises and prayers. I know what the crowd was thinking—probably the same thing we disciples were thinking: is this the signal that Messiah Jesus is going run those pagan Romans out of town? It was glorious. It was like worship. It was like a royal procession.

And believe me, we knew all about royal processions: kings or generals making their grand entrance into the city mounted on bleached chargers, surrounded by soldiers and guards with their swords and their spears and their shields, people lined up along the route shouting and cheering the heroic conqueror. Such processions were a common occurrence.

And that’s why Jesus’ procession was also a bit bizarre. He sat not upon a great stallion but upon a donkey’s colt. Those who surrounded him were not soldiers armed to the teeth but the poor and the peasant and the common and the weak. If Jesus was trying to make a political statement here, He failed miserably. If He was trying to stir fear in the hearts of the occupying Romans, the best he got from them was a chuckle. If He was trying to signal Jerusalem that King Messiah had finally arrived, well, He sure didn’t enter like the Messiah they were expecting. Jesus was sending a signal all right, but not one of us picked up on at the time.

But still the people loved Him. They loved Him that day anyway. The religious leaders didn’t. They were up in arms: “What are we going to do now?” they said to one another. “He’s got the whole world eating out of the palm of His hand.” None of us—not us disciples nor the religious leaders—had clue one that by the end of the week this city, this crowd, would turn on Jesus like a rabid dog on its master. People wouldn’t be eating out of the palm of His hands any longer; the Romans would be driving nails into those palms instead.

Hmm … not exactly what you’d expect … from a king.

Unless that King is Jesus.

Palm Sunday in First Person: What's with the Crowd?

It wasn’t exactly Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, but it was a pretty big deal for our little part of the world. We had no mammoth balloons of cartoon characters, no bands, no floats, no celebrity emcees. But we had Jesus, and on that day He seemed to be enough.

To put it in your terms, Jesus was “hot.” Had He lived in your day, Jesus would have been hounded by the paparazzi—invading His privacy, snapping pictures, a hundred flashing lights in his face every time they could steal a shot. He would have been on magazine covers, would have made the list of People magazine’s “The Year’s 25 Most Intriguing People.” He would have been a celebrity—and not just famous for being famous either, but famous for His mighty acts and deeds.

It’s not that Jesus tried to be famous or anything. He really didn’t court all the attention He received. Truth is, Jesus enjoyed quiet times and solitude as much or more than the attention of the crowds. But crowds were drawn to Him nonetheless. And it’s easy to see why. Jesus did things no one else could do—supernatural things, miraculous things, Messiah things. He healed the sick. He stopped a storm. He walked on water. He took one sack lunch and fed thousands. He made mincemeat out of demons, restoring the people they once possessed to sanity and wholeness, to family and community. He did some very amazing things. Things nobody else could do.

And word gets around about somebody like that. Even though Jesus usually told the people he healed not to blab it all over town, people just couldn’t keep it to themselves. And how could they anyway? Suppose you’d been blind all your life, led around by the hand wherever you went, and one day Jesus healed you. What do you say when a friend sees you walking around with 20/20 vision and asks what in the world happened to you? Do you say, “Gee … I don’t know … uh … I’ve been eating a lot of carrots lately”? Like who’s gonna believe that? Nobody, that’s who. So word got out. Jesus’ fame began to spread like a prairie fire. And people flocked around Him like bugs around a lamp.

He drew a crowd most everywhere He went. Many wanted His healing touch. Some loved to listen to His stories. Others were just curious and wanted to see this celebrity up close. You know, just in case Jesus ever amounted to anything lasting, they wanted to be able to tell their grandchildren, “Yes, I saw Jesus with my own eyes. Yes sir, I was close enough to touch him.” I don’t know, maybe they hoped some of Jesus’ fame might rub off on them.

Jesus was a celebrity in many ways, but He was not without His critics. He was not universally popular. For the most part, the common folks gave Him a thumbs-up, while the majority of the religious leaders gave Him a thumbs-down. They didn’t like Jesus much. Fact is, some of them hated him with a passion. I think they felt threatened by Him. In every encounter with them, Jesus ate their lunch. They could never outwit Him, outsmart Him, or outthink Him. Plus, Jesus didn’t keep the Laws like they thought He should—especially the Sabbath laws. And when Jesus said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven,” well, in the minds of the religious leaders, that was blasphemy. “Only God can forgive sins,” they said. And they pretty much had it in for Jesus the rest of the way. So whether for good or for bad, Jesus was the talk of Israel in those days.

And now it was time to go to Jerusalem for the Passover. We had a hunch that once word leaked out about this, there would be a crowd waiting for us. And sure enough there was. We had a pretty good contingent of followers already as we climbed up the mountains to Jerusalem.

And once we got up the Mount of Olives outside of Jerusalem, we stopped for a break. But this was more than a rest stop; this break had purpose. We didn’t stop just to rub our aching feet. We stopped because Jesus had a little mission to accomplish. He sent two of His disciples to get it done. The whole thing sounded like something out of a spy novel. The two disciples were to go to the village up ahead. Jesus told them that they would find a donkey and her colt tied up there. “Untie them,” Jesus said, “and bring them to me.” You could see these two disciples were a little confused about this. It showed in their eyes. And it looked like they were thinking, “Okay, You’re telling us to go steal a couple of donkeys. A fellow can get hung for something like that.” Jesus must have sensed their anxiety, so He quickly added, “If anyone says anything to you, your code words are, ‘The Lord needs them.’ Just say that and you’re home free.”

Those of us in the group who were paying attention realized that our entry into Jerusalem was going to be different from our entry into a hundred other dusty little towns in Israel. Believing Jesus to be the Messiah, some of us wondered if this was somehow connected to the prophecy of Zechariah: “See, your king comes to you, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” We wondered if that prophecy was about this entrance? But surely not. Messiah’s bound to enter Jerusalem with more boldness than on the back of some donkey’s colt. Why not a white stallion, a bleached charger—ready to rumble with the Romans and set things right?

Anyway, we laid our cloaks on the animals and Jesus sat on the colt. A humble way to enter the city. But the humility of Christ was balanced by the jubilation of the crowd. It was a very large crowd. You should have seen it. As Jesus made His way into the city, the crowd began throwing their cloaks on the road. I know that sounds odd to you. You roll out the red carpet; we threw down our cloaks. And with knives flashing in the sunlight, some in the crowd began to strip nearby trees of their branches. They threw them in the road too. People began to circle Jesus, some behind, some in front. And while we had no bands in this parade, we had shouting and singing. “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” It was quite a spectacle really. The whole city was caught up in it. People were asking who it was that was stirring up such a fuss. For a man who never seemed to be much in for fanfare, Jesus made anything but a quiet entrance on this day.

Some of us had been a little nervous about going to Jerusalem. The reception Jesus received was quite a relief. Jesus had been talking about going to Jerusalem to suffer and die (whatever that means), but with such a warm welcome, maybe Jerusalem will be kind to us after all.

The crowds that greeted us were certainly hospitable. But you never know about crowds. Were they sincere? Or did many of them just get swept up by the momentum of numbers? People can act very differently in crowds than they might act alone. There’s security in a crowd. There’s anonymity in a crowd. And there’s pressure too. Crowds create pressure to conform—for good or for bad. When a crowd is moving one way, it’s hard to move against them. I think your courts call this “mob mentality”—“He couldn’t help it, your Honor, he was the victim of mob mentality. He was swept up by the crowd. He would never have done this were it not for the crowd. He would never do such a thing alone.” We’re talking about mob mentality here … about crowds.

So we didn’t really know about this crowd on Palm Sunday. They were giving three cheers for Jesus today, but were they sincere, or were they just swept up in crowd and the passion of the moment? We didn’t know. But one thing appeared obvious: Jesus wasn’t caught up in this crowd. He seemed almost oblivious to their praise—as if He knew something about this crowd that we did not know.

But there was one particular thing that did trouble some of us on that day. When we got into Jerusalem, people were in quite a stir by all the commotion and you could hear them asking people in the crowd, “What’s going on? What’s all the fuss? Who’s the man on the colt?”

“This is Jesus,” the crowds answered, “the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.” The crowd was with us now, but they called Him a prophet. Those of us closest to Jesus believed Him to be more than a prophet. We believed He was Messiah. This prophet thing is troubling. Here we are in Jerusalem, and anybody who knows anything about Jerusalem knows this: Jerusalem is a good place for a prophet to get himself killed.

The Word Made Flesh

The Word became flesh and dwelled among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:14).

During World War I, Lawrence of Arabia influenced the tribes of Arabia to cast their lot with the Allies. These rough tribesmen said to him: "If you would lead us, you must eat the same food that we eat, find shelter in the same tents in which we dwell, accept the same risks that we accept, meet the same difficulties that we meet, live the same life we live, and live it better than we do."

Jesus did that! "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us." No, Jesus didn't get His start in Bethlehem, but Bethlehem became His beachhead, His entry point into human time and human history. And talk about incongruence. The infinite Word became finite flesh. God became man. In Philippians 2, the Apostle Paul uses the term kenosis to describe what Jesus did in becoming flesh. He "emptied" Himself. He humbled Himself. He never ceased to be God, but He subjected His God-ness to the limitations of human flesh.

In the flesh, this Word who could be everywhere all the time could only be in one place at any time.

In the flesh, this Word who had never been tempted would have to wrestle with temptation and even sweat drops of blood to stave it off.

In the flesh, this Word who never slumbers or sleeps would have to get His rest.

In the flesh, this Word who had never known pain could stub His toe in the night or hit his thumb with a hammer.

In the flesh, this Word who only knew sin from a distance could and would bear our sin in His body on the cross. In the flesh, this Word who is eternal could even die … which He did for you and me.

"And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us." No rags to riches for Christ. How about riches to rags?

"The Word became flesh”—divinity and humanity linked together, growing together in intimate connection, otherwise, as Calvin put it, “the nearness would not have been near enough.” “The Word became flesh.”

He came down. He came all the way down. He didn’t beam down and enter the world as a man. Though Mary was a virgin when the Holy Spirit overshadowed her and she conceived this child, Jesus was birthed out of a uterus, through a birth canal, and into the world just like we were. He didn’t make reservations at the Waldorf either; He came without reservations, found no vacancies in any motel, and ended up in a dingy, dung-filled stable in Bethlehem. In Voices of the Faithful (Book 1), a missionary writes about a language blooper she made as she was trying to explain the birth of Jesus to her Chinese guest. She tried to say that the newborn Jesus was placed in a feeding trough. But instead of saying the Chinese word for “manger,” she accidentally used the word for “toilet.” The just-born Jesus was placed in a toilet. Maybe she wasn’t as far off as she first thought. When Jesus left the glories of heaven to come down to earth, He didn’t come part way down; He came all the way down. “The Word became flesh”—and in the most humble circumstances of that day.

I have heard of the incarnation of Jesus since my childhood. I have studied it in the Scripture and in theological books. I have preached it for almost 30 years. Yet you know what? I am still utterly amazed by it all.