All In.

Mark 11:1-11

 Ever have one of those moments when you just know what’s going to happen next, and you’re like, “Uh, that’s not going to end well”? It’s as if you can hear the menacing music in the background as the unarmed girl wanders into the dark alley, and you're like, "DO NOT go in there!" Or there are those times when you can just foretell the future, or you have the gift of precognition. That mechanic is going to charge me too much, or this storm’s gonna knock out the power, or that predatory lender is going to get them into a hot mess of trouble. And yet, the girl just keeps walking into that alley, you let the mechanic do the work, you don’t charge your cell phone just in case, and you sign off on that loan anyway. Or you splurge on the new dining set you can’t afford. Or maybe you go for a run for the first time in months, and you can predict what it's going to feel like the next morning. Or you drink too much, but you’re having such a great time that you just keep drinking. You do the thing you know is going to lead you into trouble. Or you do the thing you know is going to hurt the next day. And you just do it anyway.  Dan and I do this with our kids all the time. It just happened the other night, as a matter of fact. Jonah and Levi were wrestling in the hammock, and Dan and I were pleasantly finishing our dinner. It was so nice not to have to get up to get them seconds or to get up and get them the salt or to get up and refill their water, or to get up and pour a bowl of cereal because dinner is just so “disgusting” that Dan and I just let the kids go crazy kicking each other for a few minutes. But, I swear, just as the words, “you guys are going to get hurt; this isn’t going to end well” came out of my mouth, Jonah cries out in pain, jumps out of the hammock, and there he is right in front of me with his finger at an odd angle and him telling me, “don’t touch it, it hurts!” Well. 

That was the end of dinner. Commence the next three hours consulting my hockey-mom-nurse sister and scrolling through websites to see if we, indeed, had to head to the emergency room. 

I’ve done this in job interviews. I just know that they are going to ask me about atonement theories or eschatology or radical inclusion, and I’m going to have to tell them the truth. And it’s probably not going to end well for me. But I just have to do it anyway. No matter how much I might have needed the job. it’s the right thing to do.

This is Jesus’s situation in our reading today. This is not going to end well. And he knows it. The first seven verses of our reading are about how he’s got this all planned out. And he has predicted his death to his disciples three times before this. He is stepping in it, and he knows it. He doesn’t want it, but he’s no idiot. A plus B equals C. 

This is an overtly political act. And it’s planned. And like the folks marching in Selma, or in Birmingham, or in the Black Live Matter Protests, or like the politicians who pick a fight with the NRA, he knows that it’s not going to end well, but he also knows that it’s absolutely the thing he has to do. Jesus sets up this whole parade in order to subvert the political and military parade that’s happening on the other side of the Temple. Pilot is processing in. 

And he has his soldiers and his chariots and his banners a-waving to remind the pilgrims into Jerusalem for the Passover feast that they may be celebrating their liberation from Egypt, but they have not been liberated from Rome. Rome is still in charge. Rome will remain in charge. Rome will allow you to have your little piddly celebration, but Pilot is here to make sure that all of that stays under control. He wants things decent and in order, thank you very much.

Meanwhile, through the back door, is Jesus arriving on the back of a colt. And he’s got the crowds all riled up. The Matthew account has them literally tearing the branches off of trees. This is no orderly, peaceful protest; this is pandemonium! They’ve pulled branches they’ve cut from the fields, they’re yanking off their cloaks, and they’re shouting “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!” Now. These are treasonous words. Jesus has this whole thing set up like a military parade, although a strange, subversive one, at that. Jesus is marching in to the city as if he is a victorious military commander showing off his strength and prowess and power. But he’s doing it on a young colt or a donkey, which is a symbol of peace, and he’s doing it surrounded by peasants, and he’s doing it through the back door. But this is still dangerous. To quote scholar Amy-Jill Levine, “when the crowds hail a new hero, they are also challenging Roman authority.” See, this parade, this celebration, this energy and bedlam and mayhem and anarchy, leads in one direction: The Cross. Jesus is stirring the pot, he’s ruffling the feathers, he’s poking the bear, he’s adding fuel to the fire, and he’s rocking the boat. This is Jesus’s crude middle finger to the powers and principalities of his time. 

And he knows where this thing is headed. He knows he has it coming. But he does it anyway. All throughout the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is commanding everyone to keep the truth of who he is to themselves. This even has a name. It’s called the Markan secret. But now, when it is absolutely the most dangerous time to do so, even when it absolutely makes no sense whatsoever, Jesus accepts and embraces his title. He’s let the cat out of the bag. He is the Messiah. He is the lamb of God who comes to take away the sins of the world. 

This is why it is so important that we celebrate the combination of both Palm and the Passion Sundays. You cannot separate the one from the other. Although the disciples are utterly shocked at the proceeding series of events, Jesus is not. 

He knows exactly what he’s getting in to. He knows exactly where this is gonna lead. And he does it anyway.

He doesn’t want to do it. And yet, he knows he’s called to it. He trusts that God’s going to do something with it. He hopes that God will make something out of it. So he hops on this unbroken colt and he lets the chaos happen and he knows it’s all downhill from here. Jesus willingly steps into the hard stuff because he knows that somehow, God is going to make lemonade and open the window and bear fruit out of the broken and dying seed. 

So what’s the hard thing we are called to do? Should we go down to Georgia and hand out bottles of water on polling days? Should we protest in the streets? 

Should we refuse to pay the same percentage of our taxes that go towards war and weapons of mass destruction? Or maybe it’s just the simple acceptance of where all of this, all of this accumulating and relationshipping and life living is going to lead. We are going to die. Our institutions are going to die. Even when we’re celebrating our victories, even when we’ve got the raise and we’ve won the election and we’ve landed that big account, we know that in the end, it’s all going to end. 

Jesus steps into this mess and this heartache and this predictable, inevitable suffering because he trusts. He hopes. He desires and he needs for the God of life to be true, to be real, to be him. Good has to come out of bad. It just has to. So he throws it all in. He throws all his chips in. He bets it all on God, he bets it all on who God has made him to be. 

I don’t think God asks all of us to be the gadfly on the “steed of the state.” I don’t think we’re all called to disrupt the powers and principalities in such a way as to cause chaos and pandemonium. Some of us are. But I do think God calls all of us to enter in to this hard thing of being who we were made to be, even if that means a death. Even if that means a sacrifice. Even if it means the heartache of trying and trying and getting it wrong and trying again until we finally get it right. We are absolutely called to give a cup of cold water to the thirsty, no matter what the government and the newly passed voting laws have proclaimed. We are absolutely called to be our fullest and most complete selves, even if that doesn’t fit with what the magazines or Facebook or the movies tell us. There is a death in accepting that. But there is also real life. 

Jesus says, “Enter in, as you are, even if it means hard stuff. It will be chaotic and confusing and I know you know where this is all going to lead, but do it any way. There is life on the other side. 

And to that I say, “Hosanna,” “God save us.”

Thanks be to God.