Thank you, Ch. Don’t worry, this won’t be too long today. This is this is shorter today. You’ll still make lunch. So, this morning that this is the scene, the scene that Cat just read is the one that we’re looking at. It’s the beginning of Holy Week. All four of the gospel writers describe this event. Very significant event as Jesus comes into Jerusalem. It’s swollen with people celebrating the Passover feast. and he comes in and there’s shouts of great praise and triumph and accolades and messianic proclamations and the young donkey carrying him has to step over these coats and palm branches that are strewn on the middle of the road welcome mats for this king. So it’s a beautiful picture of this triumphal entry and we try to figure out what relevance or what does that have to do with us this morning. I think it’s freightated with meaning and significance for our lives because all of us have to imagine ourselves like people standing at the entrance to Jerusalem. All people who have need of a king but he has to be a very special kind of king and we have to respond to that king in a unique way. Now first let’s just think for a minute about our need for a king. If the arrival of Jesus 2,000 years ago has ongoing relevance, then uh the king has to fill something in our lives that otherwise would remain empty. And and the natural resting state of every human being then has to be one of dependence if we really need a king. I don’t I don’t think any of us probably have ever felt at any time in our lives that we need the king or queen of England. They’re not real kings in our lives. They’re not people that we would be tempted to bow in front of if they walked by. So, they’re kind of kind of ceremonial kind of plastic uh monarchy. But this is a king who’s different. author author Leslie Jameson in her book The Recovering, she details brutally honestly her own deep descent into alcoholism and all the uh the residue of that in her life, the broken relationships and the desperate mind maze and the things that accompanied her addiction and her eventual aching crawl, not without relapse toward recovery. And in trying to decipher what is it that threw her into alcoholism in the first place, she speculates maybe it had something to do with the fact that my dad was always away and his career took him away for long periods of time. Or maybe as some studies indicate, there’s a genetic reason. Uh some people have a predisposition toward alcoholism. Her father once told her that drinking wasn’t wrong, but it was dangerous. And it wasn’t dangerous for everyone, but it was dangerous for them. uh in the end she doesn’t find any particular single cause that she can identify in her life as to why she would have drifted into alcoholism. Uh but she relates strongly to the way most addicts uh describe their drinking and she got involved in alcoholics anonymous for for a number of years and and the description is we drink to fill a lack. She once met a woman who described herself as a bucket that had sprung a leak. She kept trying to fill it with liquor, with affirmation, with love. The author David Foster Wallace, who himself committed suicide in 2008, uh recalled alcohol as somehow the interior jigsaw’s missing piece in his life. As Leslie Jameson speculates, uh yeah, was it my family background? Was it my brain chemistry? Was it the values of my family? The the high um achievement that I was required to to to make. But in the end, she says all of that’s insufficient. She writes, “A state of insufficiency is simply part of being human. We’re all dependent, and different forms of dependence deform our lives in different ways.” So, alcohol promised her that if you take this, it’ll fill you. But it broke those promises again and again, and it just sharpened the need for that crave that was there in the first place. So, it was like a bait and switch. She says it promised bliss. It offered shame. Promised self-sufficiency. It offered dependence. Felt very good all the time, but it was just a temporary flight. And she would return to herself each morning. And that groove of lack would only have grown deeper. What Jameson writes, same thing that uh the clinician Gabriel Mate, he worked for years with addicts on Vancouver’s downtown east side. He describes addiction as a search for something outside ourselves to curb this insatiable appetite for relief or fulfillment. He says addicts don’t have the monopoly on that. People who are addicted to substances aren’t a different breed than the rest of us. He says in the dark mirror of their lives, we can trace the outlines of our own. And Jameus says that if we imagine the story of lack as something encoded within us, an internal set of blueprints for a sense of absence, it’s a story then that’s being written in all of our lives. One reviewer of Jameson’s book sums it up. Says, “Yearning is our most powerful narrative engine, and addiction is just one of its dialects.” So if if that’s true, if lack is something that’s encoded in all of us, like an internal set of blueprints, it opens us up to seeing how Christ’s entry into Jerusalem, it’s precisely what we need to have our heart set at rest and our lack satisfied. In Christ, our king, our natural state of dependency is given a proper outlet. So Jesus came into the city and the crowds are shouting all of these different messianic statements that are mentioned by the gospel writers. Each one of them is based on Psalm 118:26, one of the messianic psalms in the Old Testament. The crowd shouts things like, “Hosana to the son of David. Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David. Blessed is the King of Israel. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest. Hosana in the highest.” None of those phrases are thrown around indiscriminately. They couldn’t apply to any old king. Nation of Israel historically had had a many kings and some of them had served them well and others had oppressed them terribly. But these Palm Sunday accolades, they’re reserved for one king only and that’s the long awaited Messiah. He’s the one who would fill up the lack in God’s people and the lack in the Jewish nation, the lack in the lives of everyone everywhere. This was the king who had come back and had set everything right. a storyline that we find dispersed throughout so many of our novels and poems and movies and music and art. Embedded in in us is this compelling theme. Tim Keller refers to it as a memory trace. something uh inside every human being that talks to us of the true story that needs to be fulfilled where everyone’s life there needs to be a hero who returns to earth returns to the sight of our anguish and our suffering and our insecurity then he makes sense of it sets everything right and if Jesus isn’t viewed as that source or that memory trace we’ll try to fill it through all kinds of kings and sovereigns in our lives maybe maybe an addiction Maybe a romantic relationship or a career or money, some monetary goal, maybe family, maybe having perfect children. Maybe we’ll turn celebrities into kings and queens. CS Lewis wrote, “Where men are forbidden to honor a king, they honor millionaires, athletes, or film stars instead, even famous prostitutes or gangsters. Because spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served. deny it food, it will gobble poison. He’s saying we’re all dependent people. If we all have this state of insufficiency as just part of being human, and if yearning is that powerful narrative or plotline in our lives, that mysterious sense of lack, then it opens us up to receiving this king who’s riding into Jerusalem. If Jesus is the one who will take away our lack and give uh our natural sense of dependency a proper outlet, well, he can be the kind of king we need. And if we think about the kind of king we need, we don’t need a king who’s going to come and oppress us and lord over us. He would have to be a king who knows us. He knows how fragile we are, who treats us according to our nature. He knows we’re like dust or grass that flourishes for a time and then withers the next. uh we have this gaping lack, this dependence. We need a king who understands our brokenness, one who won’t uh oppress us or take advantage of our weakness. He won’t place burdens on us that we can’t bear. We need a king uh the most beautiful description of the kind of king we need, I think, is in Hebrews 4. We need someone who can sympathize with us. He’s not unable to sympathize because he’s been tempted uh as we are in every aspect yet without sin. He stood through it all. Where can we find such a sympathetic sovereign? Author Carolyn Chen in her book Work Prey Code. When work becomes religion in Silicon Valley, she details the lengths that these uh uh tech companies will go to to satisfy the deep needs of their employees. Pew Research Center shows that the people of the San Francisco Bay area are far less religiously affiliated than anywhere else in uh in the US. But it doesn’t mean that such workers aren’t spiritual. They’re as hungry for meaning and belonging and personal transformation as anyone else. But their workplace becomes their church. Their workplace, the tech company moves in to fill all those holes in their lives. She writes, “The decline of religious affiliations doesn’t mean that religious needs have disappeared. They’ve just been displaced. Religion exists in the sacred cosmos of a work- centered world.” So she talks about how these employees in Silicon Valley are shephered throughout their whole careers by an array of supervisors and human resource managers, executive coaches, meditation gurus. Says it’s no secret that these tech companies provide extraordinary perks for their employees. Gourmet meals three times a day, on-site gyms, dry cleaning, uh shuttles from the suburbs to their offices. And in recent years, those perks have become increasingly spiritual in nature. Lots of coaching and m meditation classes and mindfulness workshops and multi-day retreats where they bring in various spiritual leaders mostly from Eastern traditions. She says, “Today companies are not just economic institutions, they’re meaning institutions for their employees. They offer a gospel of fulfillment and divine purpose. And that God-shaped hole that evangelicals like to reference, it’s being filled by companies with deep enough pockets to meet their people’s every need, mind, body, and spirit. So these companies come in and they promise to unlock all the potential and reveal the true self and true purpose of the employees so you can be as productive as possible for your employer. The promise is uh yeah, you can discover yourself. You got all these amenities, but you do it so that they can leech every ounce of productivity out of your lives. Uh one reviewer says, “These highly skilled professionals, they gain much, but only by giving much, including a 70 plus work week and their absolute commitment.” Says, “Firms will lavish their employees with spiritual perks, teaching, and values. But when someone leaves a job, by choice or not, all of that gets terminated as well. This form of religious devotion ultimately will not end well for imagebearers of God. The kind of king we need is one who will not discard us because we’re not giving him the kind of productivity he needs from us. And we’re given a great clue as to the kind of king Jesus is. As he doesn’t come into the city riding the great waror of a victorious Roman general declaring a military victory. Instead, Jesus is riding on a colt on the fo of a donkey. This is something a child or a hobbit might ride on. It’s not very impressive. Uh he lives out of prophecy uh given by the prophet Zechariah 500 years before Jesus was born. says, “Rejoice greatly, oh daughter of Zion. Shout, daughter of Jerusalem. Your king comes to you righteous and having salvation. He’s gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the f of a donkey. He will proclaim peace to the nations. His rule will extend from sea to sea, from the river to the ends of the earth.” So Jesus is a king who’s humble and gentle enough that we can trust him. He won’t oppress us. He won’t discard us. Even though he has this great power and mastery over all things, even though he’s mysterious and transcendent, he won’t treat us like an insensitive autocrat might treat us. You noticed in the reading when Jesus instructed his disciples to go to a village and fetch the donkey, he specified, “Get the colt that had never had never been ridden before.” And how would we expect an animal to react that had never had anyone on its back? How would we expect it to respond when Jesus straddled that animal? We wouldn’t expect it to end very well. But we’re told of no commotion that’s made when Jesus straddles this unbroken young donkey. Commentator Don Carson writes, “In the midst of this excited crowd, an unbroken young animal remains completely calm. Why? He’s in the hands of the one who controls nature. Thus, the event points to the peace of the consummated kingdom. See, the crowd is blessing Jesus as the one who’s coming in to set everything right, to consummate that internal kingdom of their father David. Isaiah 11 gives us this tantalizing glimpse of what that future kingdom looks like. Says it’s a kingdom where wolves lie down with lambs and leopards lie down with young goats. Calves and lions are together. Little child leads them. The cow and the bear shall graze. Their young shall lie down together. Lion will eat straw like the ox. Nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra. The wean child shall put his hand in the adder’s den and they they won’t hurt or destroy. And the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. So, it’s a picture of all nature, all creation being at peace. And this calm, unridden donkey that Jesus straddled. I think it’s like the precursor or the first fruits of the world that’s on the way. So, we have this most humble of kings. He’s capable of managing and subduing all creation, riding into the city, not to bring judgment, but to bear judgment. He’s the one who can fill our lack. He can reorder our disordered loves in our lives, the passions we have that need ordering, need to be put in proper perspective. He can heal our addictions to all the wrong things. He can rule us with a gentile touch and a humble spirit. He’s the one who can govern us without destroying us. Of course, he rode into the city with every intention of dying later on that week. Matthew 20, before they ever got to Jerusalem, he said to his followers, as Jesus was going to Jerusalem, he took the twel apostles aside and said to them, “Look, we’re going to Jerusalem. Son of man will be betrayed to the chief priests, the teachers of the law. They’ll condemn him to death, will turn him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified. On the third day, he’ll be raised to life. So, this calm, gentle, humble king riding into Jerusalem, he knows that later in the week, his blood’s going to drip out tortuously on the cross and his exhausted lungs will collapse and and uh he’ll fall by the slowest of decrees into the cold grip of death. But through it all, because of his overwhelming purpose to save us, Jesus wasn’t going to lose control. Just as he controlled the universe, he was able to control himself. And that natural human uh desire for self-preservation wouldn’t override his divine purpose for our preservation. So, we need a king. Jesus is the only kind of king though we can trust. someone who’s gentle and humble. And all other people and things and institutions and addictions that we look to to fill our lack, they’ll use us and they’ll empty us and they’ll discard us in the end. But the king who rides in Jerusalem, he won’t discard us. He’s exactly the kind we need. So, we need a king, but we need a special kind of king like Jesus. And once we recognize him as such, then we just need to respond to him appropriately. You notice the various responses to Jesus in our passage. The most surprising one, I think, is the one that Jesus anticipates. If someone gives you any static about taking that donkey that doesn’t belong to you, uh just say to them, “The master, the Lord needs it, and the Lord will bring it back in the end.” So these disciples have to go essentially and steal this donkey. And if they’re asked questions, they say, “Well, the Lord needs it.” And the assumption is that they’re not going to be stopped. They’re not going to be challenged or arrested or compelled to stop. There’s going to be this strange kind of unquestioning obedience, which really it’s the only appropriate response we can have if Jesus is our true king. Tim Keller mentions one of his sons as he was growing up when he was asked to do something would always say, “Why?” And uh he’d demand to know the reason. And Tim Keller would always say to him, “Because I’m 40 and you’re 10.” And he says, “If uh if you only obey after insisting that you understand first, you’re not really obeying. You’re just holding out for agreement. He Jesus needs to be our king. He’s not our consultant.” So the first appropriate response to Jesus, our king, is to yield to his lordship even when we don’t have a clue as to the reason why. Why does he want me to behave this way? Why why am I going through this desert time in my life? Why would he insist that I go counter to my culture in this way? I mean, if he’s our king, it’s far above our pay grade to ask that question. Why? Ours is just to obey. And if Jesus chooses to give us the reasons in the end, well, fine. But we can’t demand that. And we certainly can’t demand it before we give him our obedience. Second response we see toward Jesus, this great crowd is worshiping him. They’re putting coats down in front of him and and palm leaves. And we mentioned earlier that anything can be our king. You know, a relationship, a job, a career, or money, or family, and we can pin all of our ultimate meaning and hope on any of those things. If things go well in those areas, we feel great. If things stop going well in those areas, we’re devastated and we don’t recover. But if our souls are trained to worship Jesus instead, he might give us those other things or he might not. He might give them to us for a time and then take them away again. But our entire well-being isn’t riding on any of those things. In Jesus, we’re worshiping someone who’s solid and stable and eternal and enduring and reliable. And if we refuse to worship him and worship other things instead, we’re just building our lives on quicksand. Sergey uh Pugachev, he was one of those Russian oligarchs who became spectacularly wealthy after the fall of the Soviet Union, the late 90s. He was once known as Kremlin’s banker. He had maneuvered endlessly behind the scenes to help Putin uh come to power. Eventually, he fell out of favor and the Russian government made efforts to appropriate all of his business and personal assets. And so, he went on the run. He relocated to England and to France, live living under the threats of those who wanted to harm him. In May of 2015, he was interviewed for a book being written about the people that Vladmir Putin surrounded himself with. And the day before the interview, he had to he had had to call upon the protection of the UK counterterrorism squad because his bodyguards found these suspicious looking boxes with protruding wires taped underneath the undercarriage of his Rolls-Royce and the car that would take his young children to school. And during the interview, Pugachev said he’d been a devout Orthodox believer since his teenage years. And it was he who had introduced Putin to the Orthodox priest who became known as Putin’s confessor. On one occasion, Putin and Pugachev had attended a service together on what is known as forgiveness Sunday. This is the last Sunday before the start of Orthodox Lent. And Pugachev told Putin that he should prostrate prostrate himself in front of the priest as was the custom and he should ask for forgiveness. Pugachev says he looked at me in astonishment. Why should I? He said I’m the president of the Russian Federation. Why should I ask for forgiveness? Now I don’t think that any one anecdote is sufficient to adequately capture the whole architecture of a person’s soul. But if we can’t like that crowd in Jerusalem, take off our coats and our and our palm leaves and place them on the ground for Jesus’ donkey to step on. And if we can’t worship Jesus and be desperate for him to offer us forgiveness, then we really don’t know him. We might believe in him in some mild abstract way, but we’re not receiving him into our lives as the king he truly is. And without his forgiveness, then all of our ill-chosen words and our anger and our lack of kindness and our selfishness, none of that disappears. It just gets archived so it can be pulled up again later. It’s like boxes of folders uh on the shelves of a basement warehouse. And the record of our sins is archived when we need it deleted. It’s saved for a later date and then those files will be brought out and they’ll be opened and we’ll all be terribly, terribly ashamed. But if we call on Jesus for forgiveness and depend on his grace, says those boxes are thrown into the deepest sea and the records are dissolved forever. So why wouldn’t we want to worship Jesus alongside that original Palm Sunday crowd with all of our might? The final response we see to Jesus is when some some of the Pharisees ask him uh they they tell Jesus to re in the exuberance of his followers. And Jesus replied to them,”Well, if they keep quiet, the rocks and stones themselves will cry out.” And I don’t know how hyperbolic that is because in Romans chapter 8, we’re told that all of creation is waiting. It’s on tiptoes for the time when Jesus will come and take everything that’s broken in the world and he’ll make it unbroken. And it’s described in the Bible a bit like Disney’s Fantasia where Psalm 96 says, “The earth trembles before him and the earth rejoices and the sea roars and the fields exalt and the trees of the forest sing for joy.” Isaiah 55, the mountains and the hills break forth in singing. The the trees of the field will clap their hands. And Jesus says to the Pharisees that if his followers are silenced, creation’s going to continue to shout his praises. If people don’t, creation will. Rocks and fields and hills and trees, they’ll all give testimony to the king. So our takeaway from this Palm Sunday, I think, is first of all, Jesus, yes, he’ll be our king, but he wants unquestioning obedience to him. It’s above our pay grade to ask him and try to to demand the reasons why we have to obey him in any particular area. And second, our worship is driven by that assurance of forgiveness. If we’re too proud to ask for forgiveness and to see our sin, then we don’t know him at all. And finally, we cooperate with all creation as we worship. Even as we worship on Sunday mornings, we’ll worship again in just a moment. We’re cooperating with all creation to the one who comes to a broken world and one day will make it completely unbroken. So that’s the best way I think for us to just prepare for the remainder of this Holy Week. So let’s pray together.