Worship Service on Sunday, April 13, 2025
Palm Sunday commemorates the event described in all four Gospels where Jesus entered Jerusalem riding a donkey greeted by cheering crowds, waving palm branches or branches of some sort, and laying their coats on the road. The palm branch, as I told the girls, represents victory, triumph, and peace, and was used to honor kings and dignitaries in the ancient world.
As we celebrate Palm Sunday, we know it marks the start of Holy Week. Along with all the celebration, Jesus was sorrowful on his way into Jerusalem. Luke 19: 41- 44, “When he approached Jerusalem, saw the city and wept over it, saying, if you had known in this day, even you, the things which make for peace, but now they had been hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you when your enemies will throw up a barricade against you and surround you and hem you in on every side. And they will level you to the ground and your children within you. And they will not leave in you one stone upon another because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.”
This passage talks about as Jesus goes towards Jerusalem, he stops at the Mount of Olives and overlooks the city he loves. He weeps because the people do not understand what would bring peace to them and their children. He recognizes that they will follow the violence in their hearts instead of following his teaching where he could lead them to peace. And what is this peace that Jesus speaks about? It’s not just the absence of war. It’s the absence of any and all violence.
It is peace that surpasses all understanding. A peace that is not given by the world. It is a peace of love. and justice in which all people can live without fear, without rejection, without any form of violence at all. But being peaceful does not mean being passive. As Jesus went to Jerusalem, the Pharisees told him to silence the crowds, that they were singing his praises. But Jesus refused. Luke 19:39-40. “Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, teacher, rebuke your disciples. But Jesus answered, I will tell you, if these become silent, the stones will cry out.”
Jesus was showing the way of peace is not to be a passive doormat. When we are confronted with a person who does violence to others through manipulation, abuse of power, deceit, misinformation, or withholding information, we are called to stand against them with truth, transparency, and non-violence. Our example is Jesus. He did not use violence to defend himself. He allowed himself to be a scapegoat. He allowed himself to be crucified. He entrusted his reputation to God. and he chose to live and die rather than do violence and live. The difficulty with Lent, Palm Sunday, Holy Week and Easter or Resurrection Sunday for regular church goers is that we have gone through it all too often.
We know the story backwards and forwards. We absorb them from childhood. Some of us heard them from our parents, our grandparents, in Sunday school. Some of us heard them from school teachers. It’s not easy to see the story of Lent any other way than what we have already always seen it or experienced it. But let’s look at it from a different angle. Palm Sunday shows us God’s sense of humor. He has Jesus, our Lord and Savior, riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, not even a full-grown donkey, but a colt. Imagine how that must have looked.
Jesus’ legs draped over this poor thing, twice its size, like an adult riding a kid’s bicycle. Jesus is always draped over us, protecting us, but sometimes we fail to see that. I don’t know about you, but when I think of a donkey, it can be representative of a mascot for Hee Haw. Donkeys are cantankerous creatures who are known for resisting their masters. Kind of sounds like us, doesn’t it? The donkey can be representative of us carrying Jesus, cantankerous, into Jerusalem, Jesus draped on us, in which Jesus will carry the cross for us. Now you might think I forgot the joke.
I didn’t. The pastor of a rather large congregation was in the habit of making small miniature crosses by hand out of palm leaves. On Palm Sunday, he would give these out instead of palm branches. When he announced he was going to give them out, the congregation reacted with a loud, Alleluia! Pastor John told the congregation to put the cross in a room where your family argues the most. When you look at the cross, it will remind you and other family members that God is watching. When the congregants were leaving the church, a woman walked up to Pastor John, shook his hand and said, I’ll take five. Get it? She needed five for every room because they always argued. That was a joke.
This joke reminds me of how people back in Jesus’ day forgot that he was around watching. After he was hailed as the king and everyone was so excited about him coming into Jerusalem, he goes into the temple and becomes angry because the people were disrespecting his father as well as him by what they were doing in the temple. They were buying and selling in the temple. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves.
And he said to them, Matthew 12:13, “it is written, my house shall be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a robber’s den.” No wonder he got so angry. One minute, these people were cheering him, singing his praises. And the next, they were showing such disrespect. His anger was more than justified because he knew what he was going to have to do in order to save these people. And all they cared about was money. But wait, you say, I just talked about not being violent, right? And being peaceful. But this act symbolizes Jesus’ strong opposition, sorry, to commercialism and exploitation within a sacred place that was meant to be a place of prayer. He overturned the tables of the money changers and those selling doves, proclaiming that his father’s house would be a house of prayer, not a den of robbers. He was cleansing the temple. He was standing up for the people who were there to worship, and the money changers were making it hard for them to worship.
So, does this contradict what I said previously about peace? Some might argue that this was a violent act of retribution. Quite the contrary. It was a symbolic act of Jesus’ zeal for God’s house, and the whip that he used was a symbol of authority, not a weapon of violence. The act that he did in the temple angered the religious authorities and contributed to his arrest and crucifixion. We’ve touched on many subjects throughout this message today. Peace, violence, humor, but one I want to emphasize as I do every Sunday, laughter. Laughter is greatly underrated and an underused asset of the Christian community. God is the author of all things, which means that humor, comedy, and wit are expressions of his nature.
God is clever, coy, witty, and he likes to have fun. He delights in surprises, irony, even sarcasm, and is ultimately driven by joy. Take, for instance, the platypus. Really? Or the red panda. Elephants. That’s not a funny animal? Or hippos? Oh my goodness. Those are a few examples of God’s creation that are unusually funny. God created these cute and funny creatures to warm our hearts and give us a chuckle. Because Sarah laughed when God told her and Abraham that she was going to have a baby, he had Abraham give his son the name Isaac. What does Isaac mean? Laughter. I think this might mean that God always has the last laugh.
Psalm 37:12 -13, “The wicked plots against the righteous and gnashes at him with his teeth. The Lord laughs at him for he sees his day is coming.” God is joyful anytime a person comes to faith. It reminds us that God is a being of joy. Singing can be a part of this joy as we had today. Singing is a gift from God. Just as we see the angels singing in a few places in the Bible, we see humans and even God himself singing.
There are many examples of funny things in the Bible. Talking donkeys, seniors having babies, shepherd boys taking out a giant, an angel destroying 185,000 men in one night. These are tests of faith, but they also show God’s heart and how He delights in surprises and in confounding our limited mind with His glory.
There are many funny, witty, and interesting interchanges sprinkled throughout the Gospel that reveal God’s unique intelligence and sense of humor. Jesus, the son of God, was real, authentic. He was funny, incredibly witty, coy, playful, and loved a good time. He loved to be with people. He was joyful, full of life, and never let a good opportunity for a joke go by.
God’s wonderful sense of humor does not also give us license to do whatever we want, whenever we want. We must also continue to live according to the scriptures and what is expected of us. Even though God has a wonderful sense of humor, he also is a just God and he does not put up with disobedience. We see this time and time in the Bible. Jesus’ wisdom and his life here on earth gives us great hope and excitement to see him and interact with him face to face one day.
On that day, we will be basking in the joy and laughter of God for all eternity. But for now, we need to remember life can sometimes be overwhelming, and the journey we walk with God is often filled with difficulties. It is during these times we need to lean into prayer, build a habit of gratitude and meditate on the words of scripture. And always remember God’s glory, promises, and love. And laugh with God, because God does have a sense of humor. As we Christians celebrate Palm Sunday, it reminds us to welcome Jesus into our hearts and be willing to follow him as the crowds did in Jerusalem.
Amen.
