Creekside Church Sermon of April 4, 2004 "When We Least Expect It" Luke 19:28-40	Rev. David Bibbee
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"Happy Palm Sunday!" Hold it… that doesn't sound right. "Merry Palm Sunday!" No… that doesn't work. "Welcome to our Palm Sunday festivities!"? No, that doesn't do it, either. It's hard to know what to say on Palm Sunday, and harder to know what to say about the Holy Week that follows. In one way, it's a week like any other. Monday becomes Tuesday, and before you know, the week is up and another begins.

But Holy Week is different. We are not looking back in time over the shoulders of people who watched Jesus clip-clop into Jerusalem on a borrowed donkey. It is not a, "This Day in History" lesson. The story is happening again, and we must decide what Jesus' little parade means to us. One thing is for sure-- keeping Holy Week would be a lot easier if we could hurdle from Palm Sunday into Easter Sunday. It would be easier on us if we could jump over Maundy Thursday and Good Friday-- skip the silence of Saturday as the disciple's hope grew cold as Jesus' corpse.

Someone called Palm Sunday, "A festive dress rehearsal for Easter triumph." But if it were only a dress rehearsal, if we could get it figured out, it would bring Holy Week down to our size, which would render it incapable of helping us.

I must confess that too much is going on in the story for the preacher to adequately convey. Preachers should take a seat and turn the Palm Sunday pulpit over to psychiatrists. Palm Sunday has a split personality. One part wants to celebrate. The other points to ominous clouds on the horizon. One waves palms and shouts, "Hosanna!" The other points to adulation gone sour and a crowd shouting, "Crucify him!"

This split personality is reflected in Palm Sunday worship. We start with the wind in our sails. The kids prance around the sanctuary waving palms while we sing, "Hosanna in the highest!" But as the service moves on, the wind settles and the sails go slack. Sailors call it, "being in the irons." When worship ends, we send you out with Jesus' plea: "Stay with me. Remain here with me. Watch and pray." Take a deep breath and you might detect a faint scent of hyacinths and Easter lilies, but not before you smell death.

Since Tim McFadden isn't here to preach, I'll do what I can. I want you to think about Palm Sunday in the context of expectation. The crowds that lined the street that day did not get what they expected.

Before turning to our text, let me tell you what happened to a man named. Robert Winnie. He was a boy back in 1945. Across the fence in his backyard was the backyard of a man named Mr. Bernhauser, who could best be described as a mean, miserable, nasty old man who was unfriendly toward children and rude to adults. In his yard was a plum tree with branches that grew over the fence into Robert's yard. If the plums grew on Winnie's side, Robert could pick them. But God forbid if he or his friends ventured into Mr. Bernhauser's yard.

When the kids got his goat, he would cuss and yell and scream until one of the parents came to see what the fuss was about. It was usually Robert's mother who had to deal with him. No one liked the man, including Robert's father, who was peeved because Bernhauser wouldn't return the toys and balls that flew into his yard.

One day, the boys crossed "no man's land," climbed the plum tree, and were caught, "purple-handed." Mr. Bernhauser screamed at the top of his lungs. This time, Robert's father came running and asked what happened. Old man Bernhauser took a deep breath and launched into a diatribe about kids who steal, breakers of rules, stealers of fruit, and kids who were little monsters.

Robert's dad had heard enough. He said to Mr. Bernhauser, "Drop dead!" Suddenly, Mr. Bernhauser stopped yelling. He looked at Mr. Winnie and turned colors; first, bright red, then purple. He grabbed his chest, turned gray, and slowly folded to the ground… DEAD! Robert writes, "That my father could yell at a miserable man and make him die was beyond my comprehension. I thought my father was God."

Mr. Winnie did not mean for Mr. Bernhauser to "literally" drop dead! When striving for a goal and someone says, "Go break a leg!" it doesn't mean you should fracture your femur. We say things we do not expect will happen. But we don't literally mean it. You say to someone, "God bless you." Do you truly desire God's blessings upon that individual, or is it something that sounds nice? Does it carry more weight than saying, "God bless you!" when someone sneezes?

Do we mean what we say in worship? You sang, "Praise, I will praise you, Lord, with all my heart." Did you? Do you really want to praise God? "Lord, make me an instrument of your peace." Are you sure you want to be turned into that kind of instrument? "Lord, make your presence known among us in our worship." Do you really want God to show up? Tom Long says that when devout Jews pray, "Lord have mercy," they say, "have mercy" as quickly as possible after "Lord," for fear that God will appear in terrifying power before they can say, "have mercy."

In Psalm 118 we find the Palm Sunday verse, "Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord." In its original context, the Psalm was used in worship when the king returned victorious from war. To give thanks to God for success, the king processed to the Temple and the priests shouted, "Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord."

Jesus heard this as he entered Jerusalem. But I learned something about the greeting I had not known before. It was not reserved for Jesus! The greeting was spoken to every pilgrim coming to Jerusalem for the Passover. It was the equivalent of having a banner over the street saying: "The Jerusalem Chamber of Commerce Welcomes All Religious Pilgrims! Enjoy Your Passover Stay!" For all we know, other pilgrims could have walked beside Jesus, hearing the crowds welcoming them with the same words as well.

When we say "Goodbye," we are using a blessing that hundreds of years ago meant, "God-bye." "God be with you till we meet again." People used to believe that parting was something much too difficult to do without God's help. Today it has lost its religious significance altogether and has become another way of saying, "See ya!"

The attitude among the citizens of Jerusalem was, "If you've seen one Passover pilgrim, you've seen them all." But it was different when it came to palms. The act tells us something about the expectations of the people who waved them. Waving a palm was like waving a flag. It was an expression of national pride and patriotism.

The crowd that greeted Jesus assumed he would lead the rebellion against Rome. Jesus was a revolutionary, but not the kind they had in mind. They wanted a "blood-and-guts" General Patton type, galloping into town on his great white steed. What they got was a very "unkingly" king, riding a ridiculous little 4-H County Fair donkey.

Given all they had heard, they thought Jesus was their man. He was coming to rally the troops and lead an insurrection. They waved stars and stripes palm branches for all they were worth. But when he came, they were disillusioned. What a waste of palms.

There is an incredible irony in this story. Jesus was not the one they were looking for. But the words they spoke to him; the dime-a-dozen words they said to every Passover pilgrim; the words they could say in their sleep; the words that were a formality were more true than they knew. Jesus was the one who came in the name of the Lord.

"Ohhhhhhh, be careful little mouth what you say. Oh, be careful little mouth what you say…" And be careful what you pray for, the expression goes-you just might get it.

For most of her life, Ann Garrett was plagued by anxiety. She stayed home most of the time. Slowly, she ventured out of the house to enjoy life's pleasures which fear had kept her from experiencing. She even managed to fly, though her husband was always with her. Then came a huge challenge. Ann lived in Chicago. Her mother-in-law who lived in Santa Monica, California was hospitalized, and had no one to care for her when she went home.

Ann had never flown alone. Her husband couldn't go, so he purchased tickets in first-class to make the trip more enjoyable. The anticipatory anxiety was overwhelming. She had nightmares about going insane and ordering the pilot to land and let her off. Still, she made the trip and handled it well.

After several weeks she was ready to return, and the panic was back. She considered calling her husband to fly out and come back with her, but it wasn't an option. She boarded, took her seat, and fought the urge to run off the plane. Beside herself with fear, she began praying over and over, "Please, God, help me, and do it now. RIGHT NOW!"

As she dug her fingernails into the armrests, a young man and woman came aboard, assisting a little old man to his seat opposite hers. His back was to her. The couple helped him remove his overcoat and placed it with his hat in the overhead bin. He kept his scarf and neatly pressed it around his neck. Then he turned. Their eyes met, and he gave her a beautiful smile. At first it didn't register, and then, "Oh God!" she said to herself. She had just seen the film, Oh God. It was God-- George Burns.

Sure, she prayed, "Please, God… help me…" But she said she really didn't think God would answer-not that way, and not that soon! Now she no longer fears flying alone. Now, prayer isn't words minus expectation.

Flags, our little ssytems, our achievements-all will pass. Palms don't stay green. They brown and wither. They are burned to fine ash and applied to our foreheads on Ash Wednesday as a reminder that we wither and perish as leaves on the tree.

Only God abides. Only the unlikely, unkingly looking Savior riding that little donkey down Main Street speaks words that are eternal. Our expectations need steroids. Our prayers need a backbone of boldness to believe that in Christ everything is possible.

Appearances are deceptive. Lord knows, our Savior didn't look like one. Who would have expected it? "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord."

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