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Palm / Passion Sunday March 20, 2016

This Weekend's Readings (click each reading to view the passage)

Zechariah 9:9-13; Philippians 2:5-11; Psalm 31; Luke 19:28-40; Luke 23:1-49

Pr. Steve's Sermon: Being Untied

Children's Sermon: The Importance of Jesus

Youth Handbell Choir: Shall We Gather at the River

Sermon Notes from Pastor Steve...

One of the things that Donna and I often have to do in the office is edit announcements and information that people send us for the bulletins, email and websites. Often, people send us very detailed descriptions of what's about to happen, but it's just too long. In some respects, it's great that people include all this information, because it shows that they're excited and interested in the thing that's about to take place. But sometimes that means folks include details that probably don't need to be there.

So if I were copy editing today's Gospel reading, I'd probably take out all this stuff about untying the colt. After all, did the disciples really expect that there'd be a colt just wandering around? And since you don't have much space on a scroll to work with, couldn't Luke have set the same story up more efficiently?

After all, he could have simply said, "Go into the village and when you come to the first colt you see, bring it here. So the disciples did so, and they set Jesus on it."

But instead, we have all this stuff about the colt being tied up. And then the owner, asking why they're untying the colt. We seem to waste 5 whole verses just on this untying of the colt.

Or is it a waste? Luke does seem to be pretty careful about the way he tells he story of Jesus, so I wonder if there's something important about all of this untying.

But maybe the untying really isn't so much about the colt, as it is about Jesus' mission of untying people, because it actually seems like the journey to Jerusalem is, in one sense, about untying people from:

The way things had always been - people came and went from Jerusalem all the time, especially at Passover. But now, Jesus was coming into Jerusalem and doing something new - he was reordering the way the things worked and upending the status quo (right after Jesus entered Jerusalem, he went into the Temple and literally turned the tables on how things were "supposed to work". Jesus was untying people from the way things had always been...

A sense of resignation to the way the world worked - probably, a lot of the folks in Jerusalem were doing OK, but not expecting anything to really change. And they certainly didn't expect that God would intervene in a way that would make a difference in their lives. And yet, when they saw Jesus, they experienced something new happening. They were excited and hopeful, so much so that Jesus said the stones would cry out if they suppressed it. Jesus was untying people from feelings of resignation and hopelessness...

Death itself. Jesus mission in Jerusalem was ultimately to conquer death by dying. And in his death and resurrection, Jesus showed that even death was not the end. And forever afterwards, Jesus' disciples would be about the process of learning to live in new ways because they were untied from the finality of death...

So maybe all this untying is important. It isn't just a minor detail. And as we journey with Jesus on this Holy Week, maybe the best question we can ask ourselves is "From what is Jesus untying me? And how is Jesus leading me into new life?"

What are the things that have tied us down, and prevented us from being people who can rejoice in the new things God is doing in our lives? And how is Jesus working in our lives to untie us from:

The way things have always seemed to go for us? The way we think things have to be? The way we think things are supposed to be?

A sense of resignation that life really isn't going to change all that much? The temptation to just go with the flow, because we can't really make that much of a difference? The feeling that God isn't really going to change our lives in ways that makes us want to shout out in joy?

The fear of death itself? The desire to preserve our lives and our comfort at all costs? The ways that keep us in the grind of our regular old lives, instead of the looking for the ways of new life that Jesus is leading us into?

So I invite you to think about these kinds of questions as we follow Jesus on this Holy Week journey.

What is it that Jesus is calling you to be untied from? What ties you up and holds you back from following Jesus in new ways? And what kind of journey of new life is Jesus calling you to be part of?

Amen.