I don’t know about you, but I’ve always been a bit
suspicious of parades. There is something about the
crowd—something about the chaos, the noise, the
frenzy, the disorderliness of it—that makes it hard to tell
the truth from all the shouting. And where are they all
going, anyway?
In six days, he’ll be dead. But this morning, there is a
parade. There is a donkey. There are children. There are
branches and cloaks and a crowd pressed against the
gates into Jerusalem shouting a word so ancient and so
urgent it already knows where this road ends.
Hosanna. Don’t get this wrong. It’s not a greeting. It’s
not a cheer. It’s a 911 call. Save us. Now. Save us. We
have been waiting so long. And that crowd, they meant it
with everything they had, and so do we. Save us. He will
answer that prayer, just not the way any of us wanted.
Six days. The cross is already there, casting its shadow
backward over the parade, over the branches, over the
children, over the whole beautiful, desperate, chaotic
mess. No, they can’t see it yet, but this is the week the
light shifts.
It’s the eve of Passover. Jerusalem is filled with pilgrims,
and Rome is watching it all. And the religious authorities
are watching Rome watch it all. And here comes Jesus.
Where is he going?
Well, he’s done being careful. He rides into Jerusalem
in a deliberate fulfillment of Zechariah’s prophecy—the
king who comes not on a warhorse but on a donkey.
Humble. Unarmed. Lowly he rides.
And the crowd goes wild. Blessed is the one who comes
in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the kingdom of our
ancestor David.
David. That’s who they want. They want to crown a
conquering king. They want a lion. They get a lamb on
a donkey. This Messiah they seek will break their hearts
before he saves their souls.
Flashback. Weeks earlier, on the road, Jesus turned to
his disciples and said, “Who do you say that I am?”
Peter answered first. And he is right. “You, Jesus, are
the Messiah.”
But Jesus did not congratulate him. He shuts Peter
down. And then he says what no one wants to hear.
“The Messiah must suffer. The Messiah must be
rejected…and killed.”
What kind of parade is this? Peter wants none of it. He
pulls Jesus aside. “No, no, Jesus. That’s not how this
works. Messiahs don’t get killed. They slay.”
And Jesus turns on him with the sharpest words he ever
speaks. “Get behind me, Satan.”
You see, Peter has the right word and the wrong
definition. Peter wants a Messiah too strong to suffer,
but Jesus will show him a love strong enough to die.
Peter spends the next three weeks trying to steer Jesus
away from the cross—until Thursday night.
Thursday night, Jesus is inside being interrogated, and
Peter is outside in the courtyard. He’s warming himself
at a fire, and a stranger looks at him across the flames
and asks, “Aren’t you one of them? You were with him,
weren’t you?”
“Who, me? I don’t know what you are talking about.”
Three times. Before the rooster crows.
You see, Peter is us. Peter is us every time we choose
silence over solidarity. Peter is us every time we warm
ourselves at the fires of comfort while the vulnerable are
handed over. Peter is us every time we look away. I do
not know this man!
You see, this week, you are not only in the crowd that
shouts Hosanna. You are in the courtyard, warming your
hands, hoping no one looks too closely, ready to deny
the one you promised to follow all the way to the end.
Watch the religious authorities in this story. They are
not cartoon villains. They are leaders who have made
a carefully calculated accommodation with Rome to
survive. They give Caesar what Caesar demands. They
protect the temple. They keep the peace. And what
choice do they have? Rome executes resisters. So, they
make a bargain.
But compromises have a way of shaping our
convictions. Perhaps you’ve noticed. Each one comes a
little easier than the last. And soon the courage is gone,
surrendered to appease those who control the crosses.
This is not ancient history. Every generation must
decide the cost of discipleship. Today we see the same
surrender, its monstrous effects. Religious leaders who
betray the Gospel of the crucified Christ to become
chaplains to power. Scripture wielded not as holy word
but a harmful weapon. The name of Jesus invoked to
target the very people he drew closest—the hungry
child, the sick, the refugee, the one with nowhere to lay
her head. The faith that sets captives free used to justify
captivity. For shame.
You see, whenever the church marries power, it’s always
power that calls the shots. If you grieve this twisting of
gospel truth to fit the demands of power, you are not
losing your faith. You are on the way to finding it. The
church has always been renewed by those who love
Jesus too much to let his name be stolen.
You cannot conscript the crucified Christ. God will not
be mocked.
Where is he going? A Roman cross. They designed it to
be slow, public, humiliating. They stripped him, pressed
down a crown of thorns, nailed his wrists and feet to
the wood, and lifted him up where everyone could see
the spectacle. Crucifixion kills by suffocation. You push
yourself up to breathe until you can no longer push.
We built that cross. Out of fear. Out of the need to
control. Our lust for power. Our addiction to brutality. We
built that cross.
But he would not turn aside. He would not accept power
on our terms. The cross is humanity’s most damning act
of violence. The cross is God’s most radical act of love.
Our cruelty put him there. And God said: I would rather
die than abandon you. I would rather lose everything
than win your way.
The theologian Jürgen Moltmann was conscripted as
a German soldier at age sixteen and taken prisoner at
the end of World War II. He spent months surrounded
by devastation so complete it seemed to preclude the
existence of God entirely.
Instead, he came out of it with this conviction that
shaped his life: only the suffering God can help us. Only
the suffering God. Not the God who watches from a
balcony. Not the God who rewards displays of power. A
God who enters the darkness all the way to its depths.
And stays. This is the God of the cross.
Some of you know my friend Sarah Brouwer. Former
Lake Fellow. Pastor in Minneapolis. This winter she
watched fear take up residence in her city. The kind
that changes how people move through their days, that
asks everyone to decide what kind of neighbor they are
willing to be. She watched her community rise to answer
that question. In the middle of it she wrote these words:
Sometimes I think Jesus became the Messiah because
he was the only one who could not look away. The only
one who couldn’t look away. I’ve read those words a
hundred times.
It seems to me there are two kinds of faith. One reaches
up for power, seeks the Messiah who conquers, the God
who blesses our warring madness, the muscle-bound
Jesus itching for a fight.
The other kind of faith reaches out toward the neighbor,
toward the stranger, toward the suffering, the God who
chose sacrificial love.
When I read this story, I notice that while everyone else
was looking for a king, Jesus had his eyes set on the
cross. He could not look away. I have seen that kind of
faith. I’ve seen it here at Second Church.
A couple of weeks ago, I saw it in two children standing
at that lectern, at their grandmother’s funeral, where
together they read scripture in voices that were not
quite steady. But they didn’t look away.
I saw it in a saint who said what saints say when they’ve
made their peace. “Chris, I’ve had a blessed life. I’m tired
now. I’m ready for what comes next.” No fear. Just faith in
a God who stays.
When word spread that their friend had cancer, nobody
asked what to do—they just started doing it. Organizing
support, showing up. The love of God arriving in
takeout containers and space for tears to flow. They
didn’t look away.
I see it in a thousand small acts of faith lived out in
parking lots and pews and text threads and kitchen
tables—families finding their way home, one relationship
at a time.
And you, this congregation, hungry for the real thing
and finding it. I know this because you tell me. Week
after week, something lands, something opens, and you
write me to say, “Keep telling the hard truth. We can take
it. We need it.” That is a congregation that has found its
faith not in the comfortable, but in the costly.
You can keep that God crafted in the image of a tyrant’s
dream. You can keep that leader hellbent on crushing
the weak to look strong. You can keep the church so
intoxicated by power it abandons its mission. And I will
keep preaching this truth: that only the suffering God
can help us. That only the suffering God will stay.
On that Roman cross, the crucified one took on the
worst that we can do, and he looked on us with eyes of
love. That’s the God I know. That’s the God I worship.
That’s the God to whom I give my life.
Yesterday, Sara and our boys rode out to Lebanon
with Dick Kruse to pick up Enright. That’s our beloved
donkey. And believe it or not, she spent last night
at our house. At our house, not in our house. In the
afternoon, Sara and Enright went for a walk around the
neighborhood. Quite a scene in Carmel. As word spread
there was a donkey on the sidewalk, children from every
house in the neighborhood came running out. Adults
peeked out their windows, maybe took a step onto the
porch. The children gathered, and Sara asked them
why they thought Jesus chose a donkey. One of our
neighbors—eight years old—patted Enright’s back and
said: “If he wanted to get away fast, he would choose
a horse. But, if he wanted to stay, he would choose a
donkey.” The gospel according to Liam.
The parade ends here. Not in triumph, but in death’s
shadow. And so, you came in here waving palms, but
you will leave carrying something much heavier. Do not
look away. Do not trust those whose god is power.
He chose the donkey. He chose the cross. His eyes on
you. He did not look away. He stayed. For you.
Hosanna. Save us. Stay close.
He will.