Hosanna is not praise. It's a plea. Save us now.
And he will answer it. Just not the way you're
demanding. You've been on the road for six days
now. Dust in your teeth, miles in your legs,
and word traveling faster than your feet that
a man in Bethany called a dead one back from
the tomb. You didn't see it, but you trust the
ones who did. And now you're walking behind him
towards Jerusalem, something in your chest, humming
like a storm about to break. When a donkey shows
up, you don't think, you just move. Cloak off
your back, laid on the road. Hosanna on your
lips. You think you know what's happening. And
now it's Sunday morning in a small town Oklahoma
church. Palm frond in your hand, voices raised,
we've walked in together, marking the beginning
of Holy Week. Something is stirring, even if
we can't name it yet. So slide into the pew,
take a breath, listen close, and I'll see you
on the other side. When we were last together,
we found ourselves in the crowd. of Galilean
Jewish pilgrims who this year have decided to
make that journey into the Passover celebration
following this rabbi they had encountered in
the Galilee region, Jesus. And we found ourselves
at the end of our discussion last time standing
in Bethany Looking at a man who had been dead
four days, Lazarus. But I want to focus on that
journey for just a quick second. You know, it's
about six days of walking. Nobody tells you that
part. They tell you about the donkey and the
palm branches and the crowd shouting, Hosanna.
But nobody mentions... that you have been sleeping
on the ground since Tuesday, and your feet, they
look like they have lost a bet with a gravel
road. It's 80 miles from Galilee to Jerusalem,
and you took the long way down through the Jordan
Valley because it's Passover, and the Samaritan
hills are no place. for Jewish pilgrims to caravan
this particular time of the year. You've been
eating what you have packed for the trip or what
you could buy in the villages along the way.
Your cloak, it smells like a campfire and dried
sweat. The mud from the Jordan River where you
washed your face two days ago. You are not important.
And you... Need to hear that. You are not one
of the 12. You're not a name anyone is going
to write down. You're a Galilean, which in Jerusalem
is roughly the equivalent to being from that
part of the state where you just try to drive
through as quickly as possible. You work with
your hands. Your Greek is bad. Your teeth are
bad, too. And you've been walking towards the
holiest city behind a rabbi you have staked your
life on. A rabbi whose name has been in your
mouth so often your wife told you before you
left that if you say Jesus one more time at the
dinner table, she's going to start charging him
rent. Because. You believe he's the Messiah.
You believe it in the way you believe the sun
is going to come up tomorrow. Not because somebody
proved it to you, but because you've just been
standing in the light long enough that the warmth
has gotten to your bones. You were there when
he fed the 5 ,000. You know a woman. In Capernaum,
whose daughter can see out of both eyes now.
And four days ago, word came up the road from
Bethany. It passed mouth to mouth, through pilgrim
column after pilgrim column, like a prairie fire.
That he had called a dead man out of the tomb.
A man named Lazarus, four days dead. Sealed in
rock. And Jesus stood at the mouth of that cave
and said his name. And the dead man walked out
wrapped in burial linen. You believed that happened
because you know three people who were standing
right in front of him when it happened. And now
you're walking towards Jerusalem behind the man
who did it. And something in your chest feels
like the morning before a thunderstorm. That
pressure change in the electricity. The sense
that the air itself is crackling. A thousand
years before your feet ever hit this road, another
anointed man climbed this same ridge. on a borrowed
animal, heading the other direction. David, fleeing
his own son, weeping barefoot, going up the Mount
of Olives while his kingdom unraveled behind
him. You don't know that story the way a scribe
knows it, but you know it the way a son knows
his father's voice. Somewhere underneath everything
else. Somewhere in the place where the Psalms
sit. The hill remembers. And you, you are about
to find out what it has been waiting for. Friends,
attune your ears to the reading of Holy Scripture.
Our passage comes to us this morning from the
Gospel account according to Mark, the 11th chapter
beginning with verse 1. When they came near to
Jerusalem to Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount
of Olives, he sent two of his disciples and said
to them, Go your way into the village that is
opposite you. Immediately as you enter into it,
you will find a young donkey. on which no one
has sat. Untie him and bring him. If anyone asks
you, why are you doing this? Say the Lord needs
him and immediately he will send him back here.
Then he went away and found a young donkey tied
at the door outside of an open street and they
untied him. Some of those who stood there asked,
what are you doing untying the young donkey?
They said to them, just as Jesus had said, and
they let them go. They brought the young donkey
to Jesus and threw their garments on it, and
Jesus sat on it. Many spread their garments on
the way. Others were cutting branches off of
trees and spreading them on the way. Those who
went in front and those who followed cried out,
Hosanna. Blessed is the one who comes in the
name of the Lord. Blessed is the kingdom of our
father David that is coming in the name of the
Lord. Hosanna in the highest. Jesus entered into
the temple in Jerusalem and when he looked around
at everything, it being now evening, He went
out to Bethany with the twelve. The sins. Reading
Holy Scripture this morning. He looked around
at everything. And he left. I want to talk for
a second about your cloak. Not his cloak. Sorry.
Your cloak. Yours. The one you have been sleeping
in this last six nights. The one that has been
your blanket, your pillow, your ground cover,
your rain jacket since you left home. Torah says
in Exodus 22 that if someone takes your cloak
as collateral for a debt, they have to give it
back to you before sundown. Because a man without
a cloak at night has nothing at all between himself
and the cold. And that's not a metaphor. That's
first century Galilee. If you're poor, you are.
Your cloak is the most practical thing you own.
Mark says, many spread their garments on the
way. That's you. You took off the most necessary
thing on your back and you laid it on a dirt
road so that a borrowed donkey carrying your
rabbi might walk across it, might walk across
it, might step around it, might, and I need you
to sit with this for a second, might. Do what
donkeys do on dirt roads, right on top of the
very best thing you own. You don't care. You
did it anyway. Not because someone told you to.
Not because you saw someone else do it first
and figured you were just keeping up. You did
it because something in you recognized this moment
the way you recognize thunder. You can't see
it, but you can feel it in your feelings. The
only thing you know to do with a feeling that
big is to give something of value away. And that's
faith. Not a creed, not a church doctrine, not
a position on the resurrection you've worked
out in your head. Faith is taking off the thing
you need most. and putting it on the ground in
front of a donkey because the man on that donkey
did something to death four days ago, and you
have decided with your hands, with your back,
with the shiver you're going to feel tonight
when the sun goes down, when that cloak isn't
there, that this man is worth it. Now I need
to tell you what you think is happening. Because...
What you think is happening in this moment matters.
You think this is a coronation. I don't mean
you think that Jesus is going to walk into Herod's
palace and sit down on the throne. You're not
stupid. But you know your scriptures. You know
Zechariah 9. Rejoice greatly, daughter of Zion.
Behold. Your king comes to you righteous and
having salvation, lowly and riding on a donkey.
You know that palm branches aren't decorations.
They're political. When the Maccabees retook
the temple 160 years before you were born, people
waved palm branches to celebrate the liberation.
You know what Hosanna means. It's not praise
God. It's Hebrew. Hosanna. Save us. Not later.
Not when we die. Save us. Now. Today. On the
road. You're shouting, save us now. And waving
the symbol of military liberation at a man on
a peace animal. And the contradiction hasn't
hit you yet because the adrenaline is so loud
you can hear your own heartbeat in your ears.
You think this is the week that changes everything.
Rome loses. The temple gets cleaned out. The
kingdom of David, your David, the shepherd king,
the one who killed Goliath, the one who wrote
the Psalms, that kingdom is coming back. The
man on the donkey is the one who's going to do
it. That is what blessed is the kingdom of our
father, David. That's what that's all about.
That's what you mean when it comes to your mouth.
You're not speaking theology. You're making a
prediction. And here's what makes that ache.
You're not wrong. Not entirely. He is the Messiah.
The kingdom is coming. Everything is about to
change. You just have no idea what change is
actually going to look like. You're waving palm
branches at a man who is riding towards a cross.
You are shouting, save us now at the one who
will. Just not by the end of this week and not
by removing Rome. Not without a cost that would
make you pick your cloak up off the road and
run the other way if you could see it from here.
But you can't see it. So you keep shouting. And
the shouting feels like the truest thing you
have ever done. But here's what I need you to
notice. Because Mark... does something at the
end of the story that everybody skips and nobody
should. Verse 11. After the parade, after the
hosanna and the palm branches and the cloaks
on the road and the whole glorious, dusty, electric
procession through the gates, up the hill to
the temple, Mark says, Jesus entered into the
temple in Jerusalem. When he had looked around
at everything, it being now evening, he went
out to Bethany with the twelve. He walked into
the temple. He looked around, and he left. No
speech, no overturning of the tables yet. That's
tomorrow. No confrontation with the priests,
no declaration. He just looked. The Greek word,
I'm not even going to try this one, but the Greek
word here for look around, it means to look around
carefully, carefully, deliberately. The way you
survey a room before you decide what needs to
happen in it. Jesus stands at the center of the
temple complex at the climax of the most dramatic
entrance in Jewish history. He looks at everything
and he says nothing. And he walks back to Bethany.
And if you're the pilgrim standing there watching,
that's the first crack. You expected thunder.
You got silence. You expected the kingdom to
start tonight, and instead the king looked around
and went to bed. And I think that is a mercy,
even though it doesn't feel like one. Because
what's coming this week, tables overturned on
Monday, the confrontation with the Pharisees
on Tuesday, the teaching in the temple courts,
the anointing at Bethany, the upper room, the
garden, the arrest. All of that is coming, but
not tonight. Tonight, Jesus looks and leaves.
Tonight, prayed ends, not with a coronation,
but with a man walking two miles back to the
village to eat dinner. Kingdom doesn't work on
your schedule, but that's not a failure. It's
a kind of patience you haven't learned yet. And
by Friday, He'll have wished you had. So here's
where I need you to stay for a second. You're
standing in the temple courtyard. Crowd is thinning
now. The evening light is coming in low through
the columns. Jesus is gone. Back to Bethany.
Back over the hill. You have just walked down.
And the energy that carried you through the gates
is. Draining out of your legs like water. You're
tired. You're confused. And your cloak. Still
on the road somewhere behind you. Getting stopped
on by every pilgrim who came in after you did.
You are going to sleep cold tonight. And tomorrow.
Tomorrow the week is going to start moving and
it is going to move faster than you can follow.
And by Thursday night, something will happen
in a garden that you will not hear about until
sometime late Friday morning, maybe. And by then,
by then it will be too late for you to do anything.
But stand outside the walls of the holy city
and wonder what happened while you were sleeping
that night. But right now, right now, you're
standing in the place you have walked 80 miles
to reach. And your rabbi is the man you believe
him to be. And you gave him the best thing you
had. And nobody made you do it. And you'd do
it again. And that's the part I want you to hold
on to. Not because Friday isn't coming. It is.
But because the faith that puts a cloak on the
ground for a donkey that might not even step
on it, that faith is not naive. And it's not
foolish. It's the realest thing in this story.
Realer than the politics, realer than the Pharisees
calculating the crowd, realer than the system
already assembling to give its verdict in a back
room that you will never see. Now, Wednesday
night, I showed you what happened at the tomb
in Bethany, how resurrection got loose and the
crowd split in half. Believers and reporters,
same miracle, two different walks home. The reporters
filed their briefing. The believers walked this
road and threw their cloaks down. And you're
the believer. You're on the road. And the man
you are shouting for is worth every thread in
the cloak and every mile on those aching feet
of yours. Even though he's heading somewhere
you would not follow if you knew. And you don't
know. Not yet. So shout while you can. Mean it
while you can. Stand in the temple courtyard
in the fading light and let the silence of his
departure sit in your chest like a stone you
can't put name to. And Friday, Friday, I'll show
you what happened while you were sleeping outside
of those walls. That's Friday. Today, today's
Palm Sunday. Your cloak, cloak's now on the road.
You don't want it back. So, may the God who rides
borrowed donkeys into holy cities meet you wherever
you are standing today. Tired, hopeful, not sure
what happens next. May your faith be the kind
that gives before it understands. And when this
week gets darker, darker than you expected, may
you remember you were on the road. You were there.
And that cloak you laid down was never wasted.
Even if the donkey walked right past it. Amen.
Amen. Maybe you're still standing in that temple
courtyard. The noise gone quiet. The energy drained
out of the moment. You meant it. And that's what
matters. You laid something down because you
believed he was worth it even if you didn't understand
what you were stepping into. And maybe that's
where you are right now. Somewhere between Hosanna
and whatever comes next. Trying to make sense
of a road that didn't turn out the way you thought
it would. Hear me. What you gave wasn't wasted.
Not your faith, not your trust. not the thing
you laid down when it felt real in your bones.
Stay with him, even here, especially here. And
hey, if something in this stirred you, if you
heard something you hadn't heard before, something
finally clicked, toss that old like in the offering
plate, no pressure, just your way of saying I
was here and it mattered. And if you want to
keep walking with us through Holy Week into Resurrection
Sunday, go ahead and tie that subscribe. So you
won't miss where we're headed to next. Because
we'll be moving again soon. And until then, be
blessed.