Sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Lance Moore on Sunday, March
23, 2008
John 12:12-16: “The next day the great crowd that had come for the Feast heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting, "Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!" "Blessed is the King of Israel!" Jesus found a young donkey and sat upon it, as it is written, "Do not be afraid, O Daughter of Zion; see, your king is coming, seated on a donkey's colt."
At first his disciples did not understand all this. Only after Jesus was glorified did they realize that these things had been written about him and that they had done these things to him.”
Mark 16:2-6: “Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb and they asked each other, “Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?” But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed. “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here.”
1st Corinthians 1:22-23: “ For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block [scandal] to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.…”
~~~
The news is always filled with scandals. If it’s not a scandal in Hollywood or Washington, D.C., then we have the Governor of New York helping out to sell newspapers. So we know the meaning of the word “scandal.” Did you ever consider how many scandalous scoundrels God has been connected with? The Bible is full of scandal. Start with Jacob. Jacob is the man God chose to be the father of Israel. Indeed, Israel was the name God gave first to Jacob, and later came to be the name of the Hebrew nation. But Jacob started out in scandal. He was the one who tricked his own elderly father, and embezzled the birthright away from his brother Esau. Nevertheless, God still used Jacob to start his nation.
Next we go to Moses, the one God chose to deliver the Israelites from Egypt. This guy was no saint. Moses had killed a man and was exiled into the desert. You might say he was a convict. On top of that, he apparently had some kind of speech impediment. God still insisted that Moses be his prophet. It was a scandalous choice, but in the end, a good one.
And talk about scandal—remember King David? The greatest king of Israel, loved and chosen by God. But this king had started out as a shepherd boy, a little harp player of all things. When I was growing up, if a kid played the harp we’d call him a sissy. And what a ridiculous scene when that little sissy went out on the battlefield with a SLINGSHOT against the mighty, sword wielding giant, Goliath. Yet, God brought victory out of that foolishness, and David was made King.
The scandal wasn’t over. Years later, David sent Uriah into the front-lines of battle, hoping he would be killed, to cover up the fact that Bathsheba had become pregnant by way of King David. Scandalous.
Yes, we sometimes might wonder about God’s discernment of character. God seems to need a better personnel manager or casting director. Even in the New Testament, God yet called on
rascals as recruits: a tax collector and a cowardly fisherman, and a shadowy fellow named Judas, who sold Jesus out for thirty pieces of silver. Another scandalous choice was Paul. Paul started out as a persecutor of Christians. He assisted in the stoning of Stephen. When God told Ananius that he was to anoint Paul as his “chosen instrument,” Ananius said, in effect, “Lord, you must be mistaken. You must be referring to some other Paul.” It seemed foolish, scandalous.
Perhaps that’s why later, when Paul was writing to the church at Corinth, he reminded them of this: things which seem like low foolishness to men may be high wisdom to God. Paul then pointed out to them the most apparently-foolish, scandalous thing God had ever done: God had come into the world as a peasant carpenter from the backwater town of Nazareth.
Next in this Corinthian letter, Paul calls Jesus a “stumbling block to the Jews.” By that, he meant that the idea of God coming in the form of a peasant was such a scandalous thing, the Jews couldn’t believe it. They were expecting a great and powerful king riding on a stallion; instead, they got a little baby in barnyard. This was a scandal. And the very word Paul used for this, translated in English as “stumbling block,” is in the original Greek the word “skandalon.” It is from the word skandalon that we get our English word “scandal.”
Jesus was born into scandal. Mary, with child out of wedlock, and Joseph, at first ashamed to take Mary as a bride. For Jews, this was the most disgraceful thing that could happen to a couple. It took an angel to persuade Joseph that Mary was innocent.
But from a disgraceful marriage and questionable birth in a barn, then on the lam in Egypt, finally to a little place called
Nazareth, of which they said “nothing good comes from,” Jesus grew up and started associating with shady characters: prostitutes, tax collectors and working class roughnecks. Jesus was indeed a stumbling block, a scandal, an offense to those who wanted a sterilized Messiah.
However, the prophet Isaiah had foretold this in his predictions about the Messiah. In Isaiah 8, he wrote of one who would come and be a “stone that causes men to stumble.” Right after that, he wrote the famous prediction “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given.…” The Israelites overlooked those prophecies. They expected a military ruler, a king, a superman. Instead they got a baby in a manger... and finally a bleeding, beaten figure dying ignominiously on a cross.
We, too, would like to overlook the scandals of the Bible. We’d like to screen out the unseemly parts—the human parts. Are you like my wife? When we watch a movie, bless her pure heart, she wants to fast-forward through any scenes of violence or crudeness. Please understand, I’m talking about Disney movies! She doesn’t want to see the scene where Old Yeller gets shot!
Seriously, people want to fast-forward through the scandalous parts of the Bible, and get to the sections on sweetness and innocence. But there are lessons to be learned from these scandals of the Bible. For one thing, they show that God doesn’t run from our sinfulness. God can take anything or anyone, even the foolish and scandalous, and make something wonderful happen. We may not feel important, or smart, or strong, or beautiful. We may feel vulnerable and weak. We may even have some scandal in our past and say, “My past is too sinful, God could never use me.”
But the message of Scripture is clear: God chooses the
scandalous. God uses the weak and the meek. God redeems the sinful. God ordains this fragile vessel of flesh and makes us his champions in the war against evil.
Paul also wrote in Corinthians (2 Corinthians 4:7): “We have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all surpassing power is from God and not from us.” In the end, it is to God’s glory that He is able to use what seems foolish and weak in order to achieve a grand purpose. Nowhere is this more clear than in the concept of Incarnation, of God coming into mortal flesh to touch us.
There is a doctor in Atlanta who has a remarkable record of success in healing. The hospital chaplain had a chance to discover why. He told me of one particular patient who had a horrible infection on his feet. His feet were disfigured, nasty and pus-covered. The doctor came in, and with a gentle bedside manner, unwrapped the bandages. The chaplain said he was almost overwhelmed by the stench from the infection. But the doctor was unfazed. After removing the bandages, he gently touched and massaged those nasty feet as he inspected the progress of healing. He did this daily, until at last the man was completely healed and walked home. This doctor didn’t remain in the sterility of his office. He became involved with the flesh of his patients. His love, his care, his willingness to touch his patients at their point of hurt had more healing effect than all the medical journals he would read.
In the earthy events of both Christmas and Holy Week, we discover what kind of God we have. We have a God who doesn’t fast-forward past the ugliness of this fallen planet, a God who leaves His majestic throne, who comes into a scandalous and nasty world to touch and heal His Creation. He was born into real life, warts and all, and he showed us a love so
pure it is unafraid to touch us at the point of our wounds. That’s only the first part of the Incarnation story. The last part of the Incarnation story is what we consider on Palm Sunday, and on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and finally, Easter. It is a story, as you know, of a painful and—for a Jew, shameful—torture upon a Roman cross, and three days in a dark tomb.
And even the triumphal ride into Jerusalem, which we celebrate on Palm Sunday, was an earthy and scandalous occurrence. Jesus had recently performed some amazing miracles, even defeating death. His popularity was high, and the Pharisees were bracing for Jesus to come marching into their city with the mob on his side. They feared he might take over the temple, or attack the Romans, or both. Christ’s disciples believed they were on the verge of a military takeover and that soon they would be sitting triumphantly at his side in a throne room. They even argued over who would sit closest to the throne!
But we know what happened. Jesus did a most undignified thing. He poked fun at both his worshippers and his detractors: he rode on the back of a baby donkey—what my dad and the King James Bible used to call a “jack ass.” They are ignoble animals... only thing worse would have been if he had ridden a pig. A modern equivalent would be if President George Bush in his inaugural parade on one of those little go-karts that clowns drive. To the mannerly fussbudgets of the world, it was undignified, shameful, scandalous. Nevertheless, despite the seeming tragedy which Jesus would face in Jerusalem on Friday, his entrance on that donkey was a victory. Through the events of Holy Week, Jesus implemented God’s plan of salvation. With that silly donkey ride, he fulfilled the Messianic prophecies of Isaiah and Zechariah, he taught his disciples something about humility, and he revealed to us a new definition of triumph. A scandalous triumph.
Of course, the final scandal, and the final triumph, came on Easter Sunday. The scandal was this: The Hebrew Leaders and the Romans, with that powerful military force, had done what has always been done by the rich and powerful: they had used brute force to squash the rebellion and had put the criminal dissident to death. But Jesus had the audacity to violate those time honored principles, like “Might makes right,” and “To the victor go the spoils.” Jesus didn’t obey! He didn’t “roll over and play dead.” He didn’t take “no” for an answer. He didn’t stay dead! He came back to life!
The soldiers guarding him ran away in fear. The stone that sealed the tomb rolled away. The women—who were supposed to not get involved and who were supposed to keep quiet—the women were the first at the tomb and the first to tell the world the most scandalous news: “He has risen!” At first, it only seemed like a rumor, like the rumors that accompany most normal scandals. But the rumor was true. And now all the scandals that make up the Bible, all the things that heretofore had been more embarrassment than glory, were wrapped up in the greatest news, the greatest truth the world could ever know: someone had achieved victory over death.
I’ll close with a story. Little Philip was the most difficult child in Ms. Brown’s Sunday School class. He was the slowest in every regard, mentally and physically, and sometimes he would try the patience of the teacher and her other students. One Easter Sunday, she greeted her class with a surprise: rather than sit and study a lesson, they would get to outside on that beautiful spring day. She then gave each child a large empty plastic egg, and instructed them to go find some symbol in nature of new life, and put it in the egg. Back in the classroom, they would share their new-life symbols, opening the containers one by one in surprise fashion. After running about the church property in wild confusion, Philip and the other students returned to the classroom and placed the plastic eggs on the table. Surrounded by the children, the teacher began to open them one by one. After each one, whether a flower or leaf or even, best of all, a butterfly, the class would ooh and ahh. But then an egg was opened that had nothing inside. The children exclaimed, “That's stupid. That's not fair. Somebody didn't do their assignment.” And of course, all their heads turned toward Philip. “Philip, you don't ever do anything right,” one of the older children scolded. “There's nothing there!” “I did so do it,” Philip insisted. He was about to cry, because so many times he had done things wrong, or not known the right answer, but this time, he had thought long and hard about what to put in his egg. “I did do it. I thought the best sign of Spring was Easter. So my egg is empty, just like Jesus’ tomb was empty!”
Silence followed. Even the teacher was speechless for a moment, and then she realized that Philip had indeed been listening to her when she taught the greatest story ever told, the story of Easter, the story of resurrection and empty tomb, the story of Jesus the Risen Lord.
As fate would have it, not long after that event, Philip died. The same ailment that made him the slowest in the class had also made him weak to disease. And on the day of his funeral, all his friends and classmates came and placed an empty egg at the side of his grave, an expression of their hope in the very thing that Philip had come to understand... the one thing he had done right.
And the end of the story, the happy ending, is not just that Jesus
arose from the dead, but that he did it for Philip, and for all the other children and outcasts and losers... like you and me. And he invites you to join him in the victory... even if you are the slowest kid in the class, or the weakest or the poorest, the littlest rascal or the biggest sinner. Whatever your lot in life, God gives Easter to you. Give Him your humble heart, and he’ll give to you the title of champion! Jesus has risen...
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Foley, Alabama