04/13/2025: Palm Sunday 2025 (RCL Year C)

Palm Sunday is a great example of how God exceeds our expectations. The people welcoming Jesus like a triumphant king expected one kind of deliverance, but got something much, much more. Pastor Beth shares other examples of how we see this in the world and how she has experienced this in her own life.

Scripture is read by Kim Maxwell.

Sermon by Rev. Beth Demme
For more information, visit www.graymumc.org

Transcript

Kim Maxwell (00:05):

Today's gospel reading is Luke chapter 19 verses 28 through 40, Jesus's triumphal entry into Jerusalem. After he had said this, he went on ahead going up to Jerusalem when he had come near Beth Phage and Bethany at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples saying, go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find tithe. [00:00:30] There a cult that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you why are you untying it? Just say this, the Lord needs it. So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them as they were untying the cult, its owners asked them, why are you untying the cult? They said, the Lord needs it. Then they brought it to Jesus, and after throwing their cloaks on the cult, they set Jesus on it.

(00:57):

As he wrote along, people kept spreading their cloaks [00:01:00] on the road. Now, as he was approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had been saying had been seen, saying, blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest heaven. Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, teacher order your disciples to stop. He answered. I tell you, if these [00:01:30] these were silent, the stones would shout out. This is the word of God for the people of God.

Rev. Beth Demme (01:36):

Thanks be to God to God. Amen. You may be seated. So if you are paying close attention to the gospel reading just now as Kim Reddit, you may feel shortchanged or cheated or maybe just confused because there are zero palms in that reading, and here we are on Palm Sunday and the pastor [00:02:00] didn't even give us a scripture that had palms in it. What kind of church is this? What's going on? Well, the truth is the four gospels, Matthew, mark, Luke, and John all describe Palm Sunday and they all describe it a little differently. We're so blessed to have four unique accounts of the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. If I were to ask four of your friends to tell me about you, I would get four slightly different variations. Now, hopefully [00:02:30] your friends would be honest with me, right? Hopefully I'm going to hear four true stories about you.

(02:35):

Even though there are going to be these slight variations because they know you from different angles, different contexts, they've had different experiences with you. So it's a gift to us that over the course of time, our four gospels have not been condensed into one version, but rather we are given all four of them so that we can see Jesus and his life and his ministry from these four different angles. [00:03:00] It's better to have a four dimensional Jesus than a one dimensional Jesus, right? So we have all four of them. And so today, as we celebrate Jesus's triumphal entry into Jerusalem, we're using the gospel of Luke. And in Luke, there are no branches. There are not any poem branches at all. But make no mistake, Jesus entered Jerusalem like a king. He rode while others walked, and the people reacted to him as if this were a royal procession.

(03:30):

[00:03:30] Luke tells us that people laid down their cloaks in front of Jesus as he entered the city. It was like their version of rolling out the red carpet, you might say, right? They're just going to make a path for him. Now, Matthew and mark those gospels, they say that people laid down their cloaks and they cut branches from trees and laid them on the road, and then it's in the gospel of John where we hear palm branches because in the gospel of John, we read that people waged palm branches [00:04:00] in the air and they shouted, Hosanna, hosanna, hosanna. All four gospels depict this event. And as they all share this other thing in common, all the people are shouting. They're declaring. Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. They all seem to recognize who Jesus is. Now in Matthew, mark and John, the crowd also shouts hosanna, but just like we don't get any palm branches [00:04:30] and Luke's gospel, we don't get any hosannas either.

(04:33):

Instead, we get this incredible exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees. And remember, the Pharisees are the religious leaders, right? The good church folks. So some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, teacher, teacher, order your disciples to stop. Tell 'em to knock it off. And Jesus answered. I tell you, if these people were silent, the stones would shout out or some translations [00:05:00] say, cry out. The stones would cry out, the earth will cry out. See, what's happening here is that when the crowd reacts to Jesus as if he were a king, a triumphant king coming in, the religious leaders get very nervous because they have a fragile peace with the Roman leadership. They've brokered a sort of truces with Rome. They're allowed some religious freedom in exchange for not opposing the Roman [00:05:30] government, for not disrupting the Pax Romana, the peace of Rome.

(05:34):

But this arrangement with Rome is super fragile and they know it. So for the religious leaders, their own personal power and authority are at stake because Rome can take it from them in the snap of a finger. Scholars estimate that during Jesus' lifetime, during just that 33 years, there were at least six zero rebellions [00:06:00] against the Roman occupying forces, people waving palm branches and shouting. That was not a good sign, right? This is the threat, especially when they're shouting that this is a new king who's coming into town. So the religious leaders tell Jesus to silence the crowd. They say, tell them to knock it off. Don't you know how dangerous this is? It could ruin everything for us. One United Methodist scholar who still Gonzalez, he [00:06:30] says, the religious leaders are so afraid of what Rome might do, that they cannot see what God is doing.

(06:40):

What about you? Can you see what God is doing in not just in this passage but in your life? How would you finish this sentence? One thing I expect from God is we do have expectations of God. [00:07:00] It might make us uncomfortable to admit it. Maybe we haven't even realized it or articulated it that way yet, but we do have expectations of God and the crowd, the people surrounding Jesus on that first palm Sunday, they definitely had expectations. As Jesus rode into Jerusalem, they lined the road and they're shouting and they're cheering and they're waving palms, and they're taking the cloak, the shirt off their back, and they're laying it in front of him because they thought this. This was [00:07:30] the moment when everything would change. Finally, finally, the Messiah could confront the Roman empire. Finally, justice would roll down like the prophet Amos said, justice would roll down and the worldly powers would get their comeuppance on that road into Jerusalem.

(07:52):

The crowd had a picture in their minds of what they expected, a victorious king, [00:08:00] a political liberator, someone to march up to Rome's doorstep, to the emperor's doorstep, to the leadership there in Rome, the occupying forces in Jerusalem to walk up to them and finally, finally break the grip of the empire on them, they shouted, Hosanna, which means save us now, SOS. And they laid cloaks on the road rolling out the red carpet and they waved palm branches, symbols [00:08:30] of victory. The crowd was ready for a revolution and they got one, but it was not the one they expected. Jesus wrote in humbly right on a donkey, not because he wasn't powerful, but because he was going to exercise his incredible, never seen before power in a different way. Zacharia's prophecy, which Kim also read to us. It was the first scripture reading today. It pointed to this moment, the prophet says, see, [00:09:00] your king comes to you triumphant and victorious as he humble and riding on a donkey, on a cult, the full of a donkey.

(09:10):

In other words, not on a war horse as you would expect. Now, at the time of Zechariah's prophecy, there was no Jewish king. There was no Israel. All of that had been lost. This is after the Babylonian exile. This is when Cyrus has been in power and allowed rebuilding [00:09:30] to happen. So there's a region called Judah, and it's under Persian rule. And yet Zechariah prophesied that in the future there would be an ideal king, a Messiah like figure who would bring moral and spiritual renewal and who would be politically triumphant and defeat every enemy. Zechariah offered a poetic vision of what leadership could look like in God's kingdom. So [00:10:00] the gospel writers generations and generations and generations and generations later, they're recording the stories of Jesus after his crucifixion and resurrection and ascension, and they've had the benefit of a few decades of living into everything that Jesus taught them.

(10:20):

And they realized that when Jesus came into town, that fateful day, it was just like Zacharia said, a humble king [00:10:30] coming in on a donkey who would change everything. In our gospel reading, Jesus tells the disciples, go and find a cult that had never been ridden. And he does that because he knows the Zechariah prophecy too, and he knows that people want him to come in on a war horse. The people want him to come in like a conquering ruler, but he knows he has an even bigger mission in mind. [00:11:00] He knew that he was going to accomplish something beyond what they expected. The crowd expected Jesus to triumph, and he did. But Jesus's triumph wasn't only over Rome, it wasn't only over Caesar. It wasn't only over one single political system. It wasn't over just this first century economy that didn't work for everybody.

(11:23):

There were haves and have nots. Jesus was triumphant over it all. He was triumphant [00:11:30] over the sin, fear, shame, and even death itself. The people in the crowd, that first Palm Sunday, they wanted freedom. They wanted freedom from empire. They wanted a lifetime of freedom, but Jesus brought them freedom for eternity. The crowd wanted Rome fall, but Jesus came to make death fall to make sin fall. The worst thing that the Roman empire [00:12:00] could do was to end someone's life. The worst thing they could do was to make someone suffer a humiliating execution on a cross, and they did it to thousands of people a year. Some scholars estimate that in the time of the Roman Empire, if you added it all up, there was something like 2 million crucifixions. So Jesus showed people that the worst thing the Roman Empire could do, it didn't [00:12:30] matter much.

(12:31):

It was temporary, right? The people in the crowd thought that they knew what that next piece of the puzzle looked like, but Jesus handed them something that didn't seem to fit, handed them himself, handed them his life, but it did fit. It was exactly the right piece. It was bigger, it was deeper, and it was eternal. Now, maybe you know what it's like to have God show up in your life that way. [00:13:00] Maybe you've had some expectation about who God is and what God should do, but God has surpassed your expectations and done not what you thought needed to be done, but done what God knew needed to be done, the power, the kind of power Jesus carried. It's the kind of power that shows up in unexpected ways. Even now as a congregation, we've partnered with this wonderful ministry called Zoe Empowers, [00:13:30] excuse me.

(13:33):

All the churches in our district have been invited to participate, and we were happy to jump on board. Zoe Empowers is an incredible organization, but it doesn't work the way people expect. It definitely exceeds expectations. It started back in 2004 by some folks offering food and medical care and other forms of relief to children who [00:14:00] had been orphaned by the HIV AIDS epidemic in some countries in Africa, some of the most vulnerable children in the world. And at first, the work of Zoe looked just like every other relief organization, right? They went in trying to meet immediate needs to provide food, to provide shelter, to provide medicine, and they were doing that and they were easing suffering, and that mattered. That was good work. They were doing what was expected of an international aid group. But three [00:14:30] years into that, in 2007, something shifted Zoe Leaders were introduced to a bold new idea by a Rwandan social worker, a woman named Epiphany Mana, and after the genocide in Rwanda, epiphany and a group of her colleagues, social work colleagues, they were really overwhelmed by the sheer number of orphaned children, the number of children without family.

(14:54):

There were literally hundreds of thousands of children left to fend for themselves in the wake of [00:15:00] that terrible war and epiphany and her colleagues, they were working really hard and they were growing frustrated. Relief efforts helped, but what Epiphany realized is that it made the children dependent on receiving that assistance. It made them dependent on handouts. That cycle was never going to end. So epiphany changed the foundational question. She said that instead of asking, what can we do for these children, [00:15:30] we need to ask what would these kids need in order to help themselves? What if they weren't just recipients of what we hand out? What if we saw them as leaders in their families, leaders in their community? What if instead of treating them like projects, we treated them like partners? It was a paradigm shift, and with that shift, that change in focus, the puzzle pieces started to snap into place.

(15:59):

So they designed [00:16:00] a three year empowerment program led by get this, the kids themselves. You can go to their website and you can read all the stories for yourself, but I want to highlight just one for you. PAs. Pascal was just 14 years old when her mother died and her father abandoned their family. She became the primary caregiver for eight siblings and cousins. She has five siblings, and then there were also three cousins who had been abandoned. So she took [00:16:30] all of them under her wing. She worked long hours collecting leftover charcoal to resell it, and she would get jobs working in people's fields whenever she could. But most nights, there was no food. There was no money for food, and so the children were starving. And she says that there were a lot of nights when the night just seemed endless because the babies were crying because they were so hungry.

(16:58):

She prayed daily, but she felt abandoned [00:17:00] until she met with a Zoe Empowers group. And like all participants, Pascaline made what's called a dream chart where she literally, they're very simple. They're like stick figures, but you draw out what you dream your life will be. And at the top of hers, in the middle of the page, her kind of motivating image was hungry, babies crying. She wanted to fix that problem in her life. [00:17:30] Well, the second meeting of the empowerment group came around, and these meetings are mandatory, and Pascaline wasn't there. And our group thought, well, that's strange, because she seemed really excited about this and we really thought that she was committed. So they went out looking for her. They realized that she was begging. She was out on the streets begging, trying to get enough money and get enough food that she could feed [00:18:00] her siblings.

(18:02):

And so her empowerment group said, Pascal, we've got you. We're going to marshal our resources and we're going to put together a week's worth of food for your family so that you can be with us and you can do this work, and you can get this training that you need without worrying about how your family is going to eat. Pascaline said, it was the first time in her life she truly felt seen. It was the first time she felt like somebody saw [00:18:30] her and understood the scope of her problems and actually wanted to help. So with her group's help, now they all help each other do these things. This is incredible. This is children doing this with each other, but with their help, she was able to actually rent some land, and it had already been planted with a sweet potato crop. So she harvested the sweet potatoes with the help of her friends, and they said, you don't have to pay us pesca until you sell the sweet potatoes to the school.

(18:57):

When you do that, then you can pay us when you have the money. [00:19:00] And so that worked. She got the sweet potato crop sold, and she reinvested her profits, and she eventually got more land. She actually hired other children from the community, and then she started school again. She went back to school and she became a leader in her school. They elected her to be class leader. She says, now, before Zoe, I thought I'd never smile again. I believed God [00:19:30] had punished me for something, but today I can smile because I am happy. This is Pascaline with seven of her eight siblings. This family is thriving thanks to Pascal's hard work, and thanks to the help and guidance she received from Zoe. It's incredible because there are very few adults involved in this process because what they've learned is that when there are adults in the room, the kids don't do for themselves, [00:20:00] and so it's a ratio of, it's an incredible ratio, like one to a hundred or something, like one adult to a hundred Zoe participants really low numbers.

(20:10):

It was like the people on that road to Jerusalem. When Jesus was entering the city, they thought they knew what they needed. Pascal thought she knew what she needed. She needed her daily bread. She needed a break from the struggle, but what she received was more than that. It was more [00:20:30] than just survival. It was a whole new life. Zoe didn't just meet her expectations. It shattered them in the best way. Since 2007, more than 230,000 children have taken part in a Zoe Empowers group, almost a quarter of a million kids. Zoe hasn't rescued them. Zoe simply gave them the tools, the training, and the community they needed so they could rescue themselves. [00:21:00] Zoe helps them discover their own strength and wisdom. It doesn't give them handouts. It just equips them with skills, with confidence for a new future. And like Pascal, these kids all start businesses.

(21:14):

It's incredible. They become seamstresses. They become barbers. They sell vegetables. They become farmers, and they aren't a living not only for themselves, but they earn a living that can support their siblings and that can then pay back into the community. [00:21:30] So they're really changing communities, kind of one kid at a time. It's not what the world expects. It's not the typical relief model. The world expects an organization to come in and do what they've always done, identify a need, and start throwing money and resources at it, thinking that that's going to solve the problem. We try to solve these problems from the outside in, but Zoey empowers is teaching us that the long-term solutions work best [00:22:00] when they come from the inside out. Zoe offers not just help but hope, not just survival, but transformation, not charity dignity and Zoe doesn't work the way people might expect, right?

(22:15):

But by working the way they do, they accomplish more than is expected. Jesus wasn't the Messiah, the Palm Sunday crowd expected. He didn't come to lead a rebellion against Rome in the way they thought. He came to [00:22:30] defeat every empire, every human impulse toward greed, selfishness, and all the things that lead to death. He wasn't a messiah in the way they expected, but by working the way he did, he accomplished more than they could have expected in the puzzle of life. Sometimes the peace we expect is not the peace we actually need. Sometimes God surprises us. I mean, think about it. Have you ever [00:23:00] prayed for something and not gotten it and then later realized, oh, I'm so glad I didn't get what I prayed for. God knew so much better than I did. Maybe you prayed for a job and you didn't get it, but you then got a job that was a great fit for you.

(23:16):

Maybe you prayed for a house and that deal fell through, but then you ended up in the house that was just right for you. Not just a house, but a home. Maybe. Maybe you prayed for an easier life. You prayed for life just to [00:23:30] ease up a little bit, only to realize that it was getting harder and harder, and that felt awful. But then in hindsight, you could see how you were really blessed by that struggle. You had a sense that God was with you in that. Friends. Maybe you are expecting God to work in your life in a certain way, but God is busy doing more than you expect. Let me just briefly give you one example of how this has been true for Steven and me. [00:24:00] You know that Steven and I became parents through the gift of adoption. Well, that was not the way we expected that to go, right?

(24:10):

Be glad that you didn't know 20 something year old Steven and Beth, because they were real know-it-alls. They were really something. They had it all figured out, college degrees, check healthy marriage, check, good paying jobs, check. We managed our money carefully so that before our fifth wedding anniversary, [00:24:30] we had bought a house with four bedrooms, plenty of room for all the kids we were going to have, and it was walking distance to Buck Lake Elementary and Swift Creek Middle School. We had no kids, and we lived walking distance to two schools because we just wanted to be ready. We had a plan. We had it all figured out. We saw life as a puzzle, and we knew where every piece went until we didn't, until we found out that we wouldn't have children, [00:25:00] let's say in the old fashioned way. When we look back on that time in our lives, it is so obvious that God was at work. But in that season, it was hard for me to feel it, if I'm honest. There were days where I really felt abandoned by God. There was a part of me that said, God, I was real whiny. God, we've done everything.

(25:28):

Why isn't this working? [00:25:30] Meaning I expected God to give me what I wanted in the way that I wanted it. Now more than 20 years later, it's easy to imagine God sort of smirking in heaven, looking at me as if to say, oh, Beth, oh, Steven, you think you know what's best? You think you have it all figured out, but giving you what you expect isn't enough? I'm going to give you something better than [00:26:00] you expect. Our adoption, I won't call it a journey, I'll call it an adventure. Our adoption adventure, it really drew us closer to each other. It drew us closer to God, and at the risk of sounding like a bragging parent, our kids are amazing, right? It might sound silly to you, but I really believe that Peter and Hannah are better for not being weighed down by our biology just because I can't.

(26:29):

This is a picture of them [00:26:30] from the trip that we just took to Iceland a couple of weeks ago. They do look cold. Remember, they are Russian by birth, so they shouldn't really have been cold, I don't think, but I guess growing up in Florida has made 'em soft. Steven and I joke with each other all the time that we searched the world for our kids, and we found the two very best ones. We just really like to lift them up in that way. We just love 'em so much. Whether it's the people [00:27:00] on Palm Sunday or that young girl in Rwanda named Pascaline or two 20 something, know-it-Alls we find that what we expect from God is not always what we receive, but what we receive is always more faithful, more powerful, more enduring during defeating and exceeding our expectations. That's the work of the God we know through Jesus Christ.

(27:29):

When Jesus wrote [00:27:30] into Jerusalem on a donkey cult of all things, people expected him to help him out. They expected him to lead a rebellion. They didn't expect that he would be arrested. They didn't expect that five days later he'd be hanging on a cross dying. It turned out they expected too little of Jesus. God had something more, something bigger, something beyond their wildest imaginations. Maybe you can relate [00:28:00] to that. How would you finish this sentence? One thing I expect from God is, and how are your expectations may keeping you from seeing how God is at work in your life? Alex is going to play Lord, who throughout these 40 days, and as he does, I invite you to get your puzzle piece out and think about when God has surprised you. Think about when you've prayed [00:28:30] for one kind of rescue and God answered with a deeper redemption. Think about a time when you've been confused or disappointed only to look back and say, oh, that was exactly what I needed, or, oh, that was way better than I expected. When has God surprised you? Write down a word or a phrase that represents a moment when something unexpected turned out to be a gift from God, and when you're ready, bring your peace to the altar and lay it down [00:29:00] as a testimony to God's greater vision.

(30:30):

[00:30:30] Friends, Jesus didn't come just to give us a little help. He came to turn the world upside down. He didn't just ride into a city. He rode into history and he rode into our hearts. Jesus didn't just confront Rome. He faced down death itself and walked out of the grave. Three days later this week, we walk with him to award the cross, but we already know [00:31:00] how the story ends, resurrection and victory and a kingdom that is greater than anything we could have expected. Amen.