Introduction

Whose the Boss?: When Liza’s car started making that grinding sound when she applied the breaks, she took it to the Mechanic for some work. She explained the problem to the mechanic, and he got right to work on it. But he noticed she was an unaccompanied woman with an expensive car and designer clothes. At that point, in his eyes, she went from being a customer and instead became a mark, so he set out looking for anything and everything that he could justify telling her she needed to have done.

Time to overhaul the transmission. Those tires look like they’re getting to end of their usable life. The wheel bearings are showing some serious wear and needed to be replaced. While these things could be improved, none of the work was necessary now. While the mechanic was supposed to pursue the interest of his customer, his focus was on what was in his interest.

When we hear a story like this, we know the mechanic is shady

When we have an obligation to serve someone else (like a mechanic does with his customers), we’re dishonest if we look out for our interests at the expense of theirs.

But this doesn’t just happen in commercial relationships. It’s easy for us to cross that line when we uncritically assume that our interests are what is right and good

We see this problem in the story of Jesus ‘triumphal entry’ into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.

In the story, the crowd welcomes Jesus as their king (which is correct) but they do so with incorrect motives assuming Jesus has come to fulfill their agenda, when welcoming him as king means they are supposed to submit to his agenda.

As Jesus nears Jerusalem, he sends his disciples to fetch a donkey on which for him to ride into Jerusalem. That’s where we pick up the storyMark 11:7–11NIV

7 When they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks over it, he sat on it. 8 Many people spread their cloaks on the road, while others spread branches they had cut in the fields. 9 Those who went ahead and those who followed shouted, “Hosanna!” “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” 10 “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!” “Hosanna in the highest heaven!” 11 Jesus entered Jerusalem and went into the temple courts. He looked around at everything, but since it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the Twelve.

While Jesus has been coy about being Messiah before now, his actions are intended to look like a king entering his capital

Pilgrims would walk into Jerusalem. Riding was reserved for Royalty.

By riding a donkey Jesus is reenacting a prophecy about the Messianic King coming to Jerusalem riding a donkeyZechariah 9:9–10NIV

9 Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. 10 I will take away the chariots from Ephraim and the warhorses from Jerusalem, and the battle bow will be broken. He will proclaim peace to the nations. His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth.

The crowd are right to welcome Jesus as their king, but another crowd (that likely contains some of the same people) turns on Jesus a mere 5 days later. Why?

They welcome Jesus assuming he’s come to inaugurate the kingdom they want.

When Jesus shows that he’s not going to do that, they turn on him.

We can easily do the same

We can also acclaim Jesus as our king not because we want to submit to his will but because we expect him to submit to our will.

Just as the consequences for God’s people were disastrous, so they can be for us, if we don’t learn from their mistake.

To properly welcome Jesus as king we must welcome his agenda for our world.The Kingdom We Want to PursueThe Jews Wanted Freedom

The Kingdom the Jews wanted necessitated an end to the Roman occupation of their homeland.

By the time Jesus enters Jerusalem, ~30 AD, the Romans have been in power over the region for over ninety years.

As occupiers, the Romans weren’t nearly as bad as some of the previous foreign rulers the Jews had had.

Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon had destroyed Jerusalem & the Temple

Antiochus IV of Syria had tried to stamp out Judaism.

However, the Romans lacked sensitivity to the religious taboos of the Jews.

Pilate, for example, raided the temple treasury to pay for a new aquaduct to Jerusalem.

But Romans were not Jewish, and after centuries of domination by foreign powers, the Jews felt they couldn’t worship as they ought to with Pagan political overlords.

The overall sense of crisis was no doubt enhanced by the Roman’s savage violence towards those who threatened their political control

Crucifixion was shockingly common.

The Jews felt that they could only be the people God required if they were free to worship as they pleased

As a consequence, they assumed that God’s promised deliverer—the Messiah—would give them the political freedom they assumed was necessary for spiritual faithfulness.

They assumed their agenda and God’s agenda lined up.

Yet the birth and growth of the church even under Roman occupation, showed that political freedom wasn’t an absolute necessity for God’s people to remain faithful.

God worked in ways we assumed he wouldn’t. This reminds us that our assumptions might be as wrong as the Jews in Jesus’ day were.

While Roman occupation is no longer an issue we worry about, we too can assume we know what God must do.

The Jews think that for us to do God’s will, God has to do something we want him to do

Today we see that some in the church believe in order for us to carry out our mission, God must arrest and reverse the slide in the church’s influence that has been happening over the last 60 years.Christians Want Influence

All of this is the consequence of the undeniable reality that, Culturally speaking, the church in Canada has found itself on the back foot over the last two or three generations.

In the 1960s, about 60% of Canadians regularly attended church. Current estimates are between 11-25% worship each week.

It’s not just church attenance. Fewer people identify as Christians than they did just a generation ago.

in the 2021 census just 53% of Canadians identified as Christian, compared to 77% in the 2001 census.

These numbers show why the Christian church feels like it has much less of a voice in our society today than it did not all that long ago.

For many Christians, these numbers mean the church is failing at its task of reaching the people of our country, and so the trend needs to be reversed.

But is it possible that, just like the Jews of Jesus, day, this is based on incorrect assumptions about how God can work.

The earliest Christians weren’t people who had much clout in the early days. Paul explains how God deliberately chose unremarkable people to demonstrate his wisdom.

Writing to the Corinthian church, he says, 1 Corinthians 1:26–29NIV

26 Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, 29 so that no one may boast before him.

Critics of the early church movement emphasized the lack of social standing of Christians

Celsus, a rabid critic of early Christianity, said, “[Christians] show that they want and are able to convince only the foolish, dishonourable and stupid, only slaves, women and little children”

He assumed that only the gullible could ever believe the faith

Yet despite the low status of early Christians and the scorn of the Roman cultural elite, (not to mention the outright hostility of the Roman authorities) the church was able to spread all over the empire in a matter of a couple of decades.

A movement with a dishonoured founder and dishonoured leaders attracting dishonoured people changed the world in a few decades

Perhaps God’s power is enough to overcome our lack of power.

Early Christians didn’t need power or widespread societal acceptance for the message to thrive

In fact, the headwinds of opposition blowing against the church merely illustrated God’s power at work in the church

if God’s power could spread the message of God’s kingdom through a group of scorned nobodies, then he is free to do the same today.

The church spread because it was faithful not because it was influential

So our attempts to regain our social acceptance in order to faithfully carry out our mission are misguided.

God may even be actively working to lower the church in the eyes of world, so that when the kingdom does spread, it’s obvious that the credit belongs to him and not us.

It is possible then, that we welcome God as King, assuming that his priority is to enhance our standing in the world.

How eager would we be be to get on board with his program if he came instead to lower our standing in the world?The Kingdom He Wants to Pursue

How might God’s vision look very different than ours?

As I said, Jesus isn’t necessarily trying to increase our social cachet, but may be at work to lower it.

this may seem counterintuitive to us if we don’t keep our eyes on the big picture

We might assume God’s reign means life is easier and more comfortable for faithful Christians.

But God’s rule isn’t about our short-term comfort, but about setting right creation that is in bondage to sin.

This might mean that God has bigger fish to fry than our short-term happiness

Again I’ll use the example of Jesus’ day to illustrate the point in our own day

The Jews of Jesus’ day had first-hand experience with the brutality of Roman occupation.

While I said the Romans weren’t that bad, that’s only because the other occupiers were even worse.

The Romans would humiliate, torture and kill anyone who stood in the way of their authority

The Romans extracted every bit of revenue from the country as they could, making life even more difficult for people who already struggled just to get by.

So it was only natural for them to see the Roman problem as the problem God must address

But they mistook their immediate problem, for the greater systemic problem

The Jews’ experience with the Romans was just one more chapter in a story that kept repeating itself.

In the preceding 700 years, They had been oppressed by Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Egypt, Syria and now, by the Romans.

If God had ‘merely’ delivered the people from Rome’s grasp, it would be a temporary relief.

When one empire falls, it won’t be long until another rises to take its place.

In our time, it’s easy to make the same mistake

While losing our social standing is certainly uncomfortable, it’s not the big problem we face

As I mentioned earlier, God is able to work through a church without status (as he demonstrated in the early church) so the loss of status is doesn’t keep us from being able to carry out mission.

Perhaps the bigger problem that God is trying to address is our self-reliance

God consistently allows his people to get into situations where they are over their heads so that his power can be clearly seen working through them.

Abraham, a guy who couldn’t father kids becoming the father of many nations

Gideon overthrowing the Midianite army of 120k with 300 men.

David, defeating Goliath

The working-class apostles standing up to the Jewish religious establishment and the Roman Empire

When God’s people learn that God is bigger than their inadequacies, they become bolder, more dedicated, and more effective.

God is less concerned with what makes us comfortable in the short term, and more concerned with transforming our world

He desires for us to be filled with joy, but our comfort must take a back seat to solving the larger problem.

And unless we focus on what God is doing in the world, we’ll see our inconveniences and discomforts as the thing God should be focusing on.

My short-term comfort is less important that the permanent redemption of all creation – A reality I will directly benefit from.

So while we’re focused on short-term benefits for me and the people I know. God is focused on the long term redemption of the entire world.

This doesn’t mean that God is so busy looking after the big questions that he doesn’t care about little people like you and me.

God knows us intimately and cares for us

We see an analogy in parents who love their children, but still require them to do things they’d rather not because of the long term benefits

eating vegetables, going to bed on time, learning to persevere when things are hard

We know that teaching our kids these lessons will benefit them for the rest of their lives.

Likewise, God asks us to endure discomforts and inconveniences in this world, because they bring about his reign in us and in the world, and that will be an eternal blessing.Consequences for Pursuing the Wrong Kingdom

When we get our focus on the wrong Kingdom, the consequences are disastrous.

When God’s people pursue their own kingdom in God’s name, God brings judgment.

At the end of the story of Jesus’ entry it says that Jesus enters the temple, looks around and leaves because it is already late.

This feels like an anticlimax. What’s going on – This is an inspection. God has come down to see what is going on, and the evaluation is that it is late (ie. Things have gotten irrevocably messed up)

Developing the motif of Judgment, Mark is alluding to to the tower of Babel story in Genesis.

In that story, the humans build a kingdom to bring glory to themselves.

And in Genesis 11:5 it saysGenesis 11:5NIV

5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building.

God’s response was judgment (in that case confusing their languages).

In that story we see that when human built a kingdom for their own honour—not God’s—God comes to see it and then pronounces judgment on it.

Here we see Jesus comes to see it with his own eyes. what follows shows the part about the judgmentMark 11:12–21NIV

12 The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. 13 Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. 14 Then he said to the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard him say it. 15 On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple courts and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, 16 and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. 17 And as he taught them, he said, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’” 18 The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching. 19 When evening came, Jesus and his disciples went out of the city. 20 In the morning, as they went along, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots. 21 Peter remembered and said to Jesus, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree you cursed has withered!”

Jesus’ cursing of the fig tree is a symbolic gesture that points towards his judgment of the temple

The temple is supposed to be a house of prayer where the blessing of Abraham can be shared with the nations

But Jewish nationalists have turned it into a symbol of Jewish exclusivism. The sign that God is on our side

It isn’t producing the fruit God is looking for, so it will whither.

Jesus reinforces this pronouncement of judgment through his other symbolic act of stopping the temple.

His actions in clearing the temple, force the Jewish religious machine to temporarily grind to a halt

It only stopped things for a brief moment, but it was Jesus’ way of foretelling what would happen 40 years later when the temple destroyed by the Romans in response to an uprising of Jewish nationalists.

Well, that’s the Jews and the temple. Not really relevant, because Surely God wouldn’t judge us!

We’re his people, pursuing his kingdom!

That’s exactly what the Jews thought about themselves

Judgment means God exposes everything for what it truly is. We will all be judged (it’s not the same thing as condemnation).

When we are judged the truth about our actions motives will be revealed

Some of us are probably doing what we know is wrong and keeping it a secret. Those places will be exposed.

But there are probably also places where we tell ourselves we are doing what is right. Where we are deceiving ourselves. God’s judgment will expose such self-delusions.

The destruction of the Temple in AD. 70 was such an act of judgment, where God showed his displeasure with the Jewish religious establishment that had worked to discredit Jesus in order to protect it’s perceived interests.

Even when we think we are following God, we can fall into the trap of seeking our agenda over his

The remedy for this is a humble heart, that is attentive to God and willing to receive correction from the Spirit.

Like David, we must humble ourselves and sincerely pray,Psalm 139:23–24NIV

23 Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. 24 See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

But if we listen defensively, we can’t hear the Spirit calling us back to faithfulness.

If we listen, then God can use our efforts. If we presume we know what God would want, we may find God dismantling the things in which we have placed our hopes.Conclusion

On Palm Sunday, the crowd rightly welcomed Jesus as the king.

Their royal welcome makes their rejection of his agenda all the more galling.

They were so convinced that they were seeking God’s kingdom, that they refused to listen to God about the kind of Kingdom he wanted

We have their example to warn us.

So on this palm Sunday, let us welcome our king, not to fulfill our hopes, but to bring his reign among us.

Let’s trust that God’s way is the right way, even when it doesn’t scratch our particular itches.

What he’s doing is far greater than what we can hope for or imagine, if only we will submit to his will.