FIRST UNITED METHODIST CHURCH
P.O.BOX 936
Bloomington, IN
47402 (812) 332-6396

Rev. Howard Boles
April 16, 2000

"Messiah Unplugged"

Ernest Campbell has written: "It is not the case that if we study hard and discipline ourselves sufficiently, then light will break upon us and all puzzlement disappears. No, at every level of Christian experience, there is both meaning and mystery."

Today, on this last Sunday of Lent, we will pause to watch the events of Holy Week as they unfold before us, and each of those days is filled with its own measure of meaning and mystery. In this week, Jesus will enter into Jerusalem triumphantly. He will celebrate the Passover meal. He will wash the feet of his disciples and pray in a garden. He will be betrayed, arrested, denied, crucified, and buried. Let us journey together into this week filled with its meaning and its mystery that we might discover insights together.

Would you join me in a prayer by Zeta Perez: Dear God, open our eyes to the depth of your sacrifice, our ears to your call, our hearts to your will, and our hands to the work that you would have us do for your honor and glory. Amen.

The following graffiti appeared on a wall at a university in Minnesota. It read, "Jesus asked them, ‘Who do you say that I am?' and they replied, ‘You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground of our being, the kerygma in which we find our ultimate meaning of our interpersonal relationships.' And Jesus said, ‘What?'"

The part that keeps me on my toes in this congregation is that I know there are some of you who understand what that means. If you would explain it to me after the service, I would appreciate that.

On Palm Sunday, we get a glimpse of the kind of Messiah that Jesus will be. He doesn't do so with lengthy dialogue or with long theological jargon. In fact, he doesn't say a word. He gives us a glimpse of who he will be by what he does and by the actions that he carries out. These actions are so very subtle that it would be easy for us to overlook them. They get lost in the noise of Palm Sunday, and with all that is going on, we lose them in the shuffle. What we need is the opportunity to peel back the layers of meaning until we find that core and then to put it back together and let the full mystery and meaning present itself.

In the early 1990's, MTV launched a new television show called "Unplugged." It featured prominent rock musicians playing their favorite popular tunes but with a slight twist. No electric instruments were used. Everything was unplugged. The electric guitars were replaced with the stand acoustic guitars. Keyboards were replaced by pianos, and when the music was stripped bare, what emerged were talented musicians, crisp lyrics, and wonderful harmonies. The simplicity of the "unplugged" style was wonderful.

I remember one show in particular. I watched the group Nirvana. That probably doesn't mean anything to a lot of you, but I guarantee you that if your children or grandchildren were playing their music, you would say, "Turn that noise down!" They were a group that was known by the category of "Grung Rock." I probably am in the same category as many of you who say, "Turn that noise down!" I never quite understood the lyrics that they were singing, but on that "Unplugged" program when they began to sing with simple acoustic harmony, what you realized was that there were wonderful, talented, and gifted musicians behind that music. Lead singer Curt Cobane stole the show with his vocals and raw emotion. When all of the peripheral music was laid bare, what remained was the simple beauty of the group's music.

I was not a Nirvana fan before and I had not bought any Nirvana CD's. I probably never will, but in that brief concert, they displayed what it is that made them the talented musicians that they are.

Palm Sunday would be easier to understand if we could just "unplug" it, and if we could strip away the bare matters and listen for that core that remains...but it is easier said than done. Palm Sunday is about a parade. It is about a triumphant entry. It is about people waving palms and shouting "Hosanna" in the streets. It is about those who are excited to see the Messiah arriving and shouting "Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord." How can we possibly cut through and discover the essence of this day?

I think the children in our midst have given us a clue today. If you want to get to the essence of Palm Sunday, look for that which seems most out of place. It is not the palms or the processional. It is not the singing or the shouting. Find the essence. Find the meaning by looking at the way Jesus comes into the city, riding on a donkey.

This is the part that always makes staff meetings a little uneasy when we get closer to Palm Sunday because Phil is always concerned - especially when Nancy and Mary Beth and I begin to measure out the elevators and decide whether we could actually get a donkey in the elevator and get them into the sanctuary. I am sure Phil is never quite sure whether to believe us or not. I think that may have been the reason he had his daughter's wedding yesterday instead of next week.

Every year, there are those surprises that come with having the donkey here and the excitement that builds as kids say, "That's not what I expected to see at church on Sunday." The message that Jesus is giving by the way he enters the city by riding on a donkey is at the core of what it means to be the Messiah.

Here comes a grown man riding on a simple animal. Because of the smallness of that animal, Jesus would probably have ridden side saddle through the streets looking more like a circus than a coronation.

Surveying the situation, Samuel Wells, an Anglican priest has written, "Where is the horse - the steed that bears the triumphant general, the untamable champion loyal only to the skilled commander so beloved by great leaders from Alexander to Napoleon? It is not here. In its place is a young donkey, hardly the symbol of leadership. Jesus seems to have no understanding of rank. After all the fuss about procuring the right animal, just the kind of action worthy of a king, he gets the wrong animal. He chooses an agricultural tool, not a weapon of war. A tractor, not a tank."

The Palm Sunday crowds have come to proclaim Jesus as king but he sets before them a different image or model of what that king would be. He has come to proclaim a kingdom in which those who would be greatest, those who would be its leaders must first be humble servants. Jesus cuts to the core by the way he comes into the city of Jerusalem.

It is not a one time message. The images of Holy Week over and over again will show that servant image. He will repeat it at the table on Thursday. Before the gathering and serving of the Passover meal, there is something that happens that often makes us uncomfortable in churches - just as uncomfortable as it made them when it happened at the time. Jesus gets up from his seat of power, walks around, and kneels at the feet of his disciples and begins to wash their feet.

If you ever want to clear a congregation, tell them you are going to have a foot washing service immediately following. It makes us uncomfortable to even think about it, but Jesus is showing by his actions that we are called together to be servants to one another.

The images of Holy Week are subtle but they are profound - a donkey to remind us of the humility of the leader, the basin and the towel to remind us that we are called to serve, and the cross - the symbol of ultimate defeat turned into a symbol of victory and faithfulness. The images are easy to miss because they are not what we expect from our leaders, but Jesus makes it clear that he has come to turn it all upside down.

When we strip away all the external images, the overpowering core is the image of Jesus riding on the lowly animal - one who is humble and one who is prepared to serve others.

There is a story about two boys who were getting ready for breakfast one morning. They came to the table and found that their mom was preparing pancakes. Kevin, age 5, and Ryan, age 3, began to argue about who was going to get the first pancake from the griddle. Their mother saw a great opportunity to teach them a moral lesson. She said to the bickering boys, "If Jesus were here he would say ‘Let my brother have the first pancake. I can wait.' There was silence for a moment and then Kevin turned to his younger brother and said, ‘Okay Ryan, then you be Jesus.'"

Part of the reason why we find Palm Sunday so uncomfortable is that we don't always like where those symbols will lead us. It is not easy to step down from our positions of power and take the role of servant. We don't always want to be the last to be served. It seems counterintuitive. It would be easier just to continue as we are but the image lingers before us.

I am reminded of the story of Father Damian. It is a remarkable story of a young man who grew up in a family of privilege. He could have been anything or done anything that he wanted. He surprised everyone when he said that he was going into the priesthood and to top it all off, he was going to be a missionary in a far off land. He was serving his parish and doing so very successfully, admired by his fellow priests, and his actions were noticed by those in the hierarchy in the church.

One day, the missionary priests were called together. The church needed someone to volunteer to go to Hawaii to the island of Molokai. To us, that might sound like a vacation opportunity, but remember that at that time, Molokai was a leper colony and to be assigned to that parish was a death sentence. Before anyone else could speak, Father Damian stood up and said, "I will go." The church hierarchy tried to dissuade him and talk him out of it but he wouldn't listen. Following the example of the servant king, Father Damian embarked upon that island. He went to serve as the priest to people at Molokai. He became not only their priest but also their friend, sitting by the bedside of those who were dying, building homes for those who were without, and piping fresh water for drinking water. He understood the images of Holy Week - the example of the servant king.

Sometimes, the images that Jesus places before us make us uncomfortable. We prefer to think of Jesus as thinking like us and believing like us and acting like us. We tend to create him in our own image, assuming that he would bless the things that we bless and curse the things that we would curse. If we watch closely and listen intently, at times we will discover a Jesus who by his own actions calls us into places we wouldn't have imagined. He is the one who calls into question our easily held assumptions and invites us to see the world from a whole new perspective.

In a former parish where I served, we received disturbing news one morning that a young boy had been struck by a truck. I raced in the car up to Indianapolis fearing the very worst. When I arrived, Kevin was in surgery and his parents were waiting outside. We sat for long hours while the surgeons worked. The day turned to night and the night turned into day. The days passed. Kevin began to recover from this horrendous accident. Within a very short period of time, he was back at home.

I stopped by shortly thereafter to visit him in his home. Kevin wanted to show off his injuries to me - the scars and the pains that were not yet healed. There are moments in life when you realize you have missed getting to the door soon enough, and this was one of those times. It was time to change the bandages. Kevin began to put up a fuss. He didn't want his parents to do it. He turned to me and said, "I want Howard to do it." I wished I had had my job description in hand to show him that when the pastor comes to visit, he usually comes to say a prayer or to read a scripture. He is not there to change the gauze. There are no seminary classes on that. It is not something that comes up in the course of one's studies. I wanted to find a way out of this so badly, but Kevin was adamant. His parents shot me a look like, "Would you?" I knew that there was no escaping.

As uncomfortable as it made me feel, I knelt down before him and I said, "I know this hurts so if you will help me out, we will do it together and see if we can make it as pain free as possible." I peeled back the gauze, placed the ointment on his injury, and then we covered it.

Kevin taught me a great lesson about servant ministry. When everything within me said, "Get out of there. This is not your place. This is not what you are called to do," but Kevin knew what servant ministry was about, and he wouldn't let me off the hook.

Dear friends, the example of the servant king challenges us, takes us to uncomfortable places, and invites us to look at the world in a whole new way. As Ernie Campbell wrote, "At every level of the Christian experience, there is both meaning and mystery." One of the meanings of Palm Sunday is the opportunity for Jesus to show us a new level of leadership as one who is humble and as one who is a servant. The mystery of Palm Sunday is how we will live that out on a daily basis. Amen.