The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for April 9 (Passion/Palm Sunday)

Various texts

“He Got a Ticket to Ride”

              Let me try out some “what-ifs” on you.  What if some of the Nazi leadership corps had decided to assassinate Hitler before his program of conquest and slaughter got underway?  What if the Great Depression had proven to be too big a nut for Roosevelt to crack, and he had been voted out of office before Hitler made his move? What if Churchill’s failures at Gallipoli during the First World War had destroyed his reputation and career?  Three scenarios, either of the three having the potential to change the course of human history so profoundly as to leave us with a world barely recognizable from where we stand today.  

              The year is 2001, summer in Minneapolis.  What if an agent working out of the FBI field office in that city had been able to convince his higher ups in Washington that his suspicions about foreign nationals taking flight training were on target?  It is highly possible that the 9-11 tragedy would have been averted it, and our whole project to root out terrorists and establish democracy in Iraq would never have been undertaken. 

              What if?  Here’s a good one.  What if Katrina, gaining strength and mass off the coast of Africa, after giving south Florida a scare, had taken a northeasterly course into the Atlantic?  What if?

              Let’s try one final “what if.” What if the owner of the colt Jesus sent his two disciples to fetch had refused to part with his animal?  No colt, Jesus walks, rather than rides into Jerusalem.  What if? The acquisition of that animal was presumably important enough for Jesus to dispatch his disciples.  Jesus on foot is not the same as Jesus riding on the colt for the very substantial reason that Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on the colt revived memory of the prophesy of Zechariah, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!  Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!  Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”  Take away the colt and what have you got?  Jesus on foot makes a mess of the symbolism that placed Jesus in the role of a grand king who would establish Israel’s ascendancy among the nations.

              What if Jesus had walked rather than rode into Jerusalem?  He arrives anonymously.  No crowds.  No palms.  No hosannas.  No fanfare to put the Jewish hierarchy on notice that a claimant to the throne of Israel had arrived in town.  No notoriety to inflame jealousy. No plots to arrest and try Jesus.  Jesus is in town, and no one really notices, no one cares.

              What if?  Jesus is in Jerusalem, and he continues his ministry without any of the “king has come” overlay.  He preaches, heals, and teaches as he did while visiting the villages and cities of Galilee. The people over in the synagogue keep tabs on what Jesus is doing, but no one is threatened.  Life goes on.  Instead of a single week in Jerusalem, Jesus becomes a fixture there.  His ministry and popularity growing, in time Jesus is accorded the respect and adulation enjoyed by our own Billy Graham. 

              What if Jesus had walked into Jerusalem instead of rode?  His ministry does not abruptly conclude after three years, but continues on for five, ten, or twenty-five years. Imagine the possibilities.  New encounters, new lessons taught, and new marvels to behold.  The gospels that have passed down to us swell to twice or three times their current size. 

              Think of all the good things Jesus might have accomplished had he been allotted more years.  Barely in his stride at age thirty-two or thirty-three, Jesus at forty or fifty may have been a truly awesome force.

              If God is, in fact, the Lord of history, nothing occurring without his knowledge or beyond his control, one has to wonder why he chose to direct the course of history down the path it took.  Why the showdown in Jerusalem so early in his career?  Why not give Jesus more years, allow his ministry to reach the potential it undoubtedly had? 

              Of course, that opens other questions as well, doesn’t it?  What about all the human potential that has been snuffed out so tragically as a result of man’s folly?  Why a Hitler?  Why events like 9/11?  Why terrorists and suicide bombers?  It is so senseless.  Innocent lives lost, all that untapped potential lost. A senseless waste.

              What if?  Try to imagine a world devoid of all the tears that have been shed over the graves of loved ones struck down as a result of human depravity, a world where we didn’t have to lock your doors at night, or worry about where your child’s innocent conversation with a stranger might lead.

              What if?  It is akin to imagining Easter without the events of holy week.  But it is also to imagine Easter without a cross, isn’t it? 

              The cross changes everything doesn’t it?  We must contend with the cross. We must contend with the questions it prompts regarding God’s motives pertaining to his son.  Why did God allow him to die?  We must contend with a question even more fundamental than that.  Why was God personally willing to endure the suffering his son’s death prompted?

              Humans suffer.  God suffers. Personal experience confirms the first.  Holy Scripture confirms the second.  Suffering is a fact.  Why we must accept it, why God accepts it, is beyond our capacity to know. This we do know, however, God and humanity suffer together.  God is present to our pain and suffering in ways we cannot comprehend, at least in this lifetime.  There is, however, something we can comprehend in our lifetime, and that is that Jesus, the resurrected Lord, is standing behind the vale of tears waiting to welcome us home.

              What if Jesus had walked into Jerusalem rather than rode?  Fact of the matter, God gave Jesus a ticket to ride. No, it didn’t have to go that way.  Choosing to spare his son the agonizing journey, God could have re-written that ticket, but he didn’t.  Jesus rode. He rode, and we know where his journey took him. When you come back next week we will pick up the story from there.  AMEN.