Palm Sunday: Welcome to the Upside Down Kingdom

This Palm Sunday kind of hits different.

If you're like me, I'm finding it a little harder to judge the crowd this time around. Because, like them, I kind of wish someone would ride into town and fix all this. Not later. Now. And not on a donkey. Maybe something with a little more "umph." 

Like the people there, I can get an idea in my head of how God should operate, and usually my imagination for Holy things falls short.

The people gathered weren't dumb or bad like we sometimes like to portray them. They had good reason to want what they wanted. They had good reason to be a little confused. Because things were bad. And things were confusing.

 

To set the scene, I’m borrowing a little from something I read in N.T. Wright's commentary on the Book of John…

Imagine you’ve been in a coma, and you wake up unsure of what time of year it even is. But there are signs. 

Maybe there are chocolate bunnies lining the shelves of Walgreens, little girls running around in foofy pastel-colored dresses and white little dress shoes. You might assume what? I'd guess it's Easter time.

Or, maybe there are different signs. You turn on 99.9 and hear Jingle Bells. There are wreaths on doors and lights on houses. What might you figure out? It's Christmas, right?

But what if you woke up to kids pulling plastic eggs and chocolate bunnies out of red stockings? It might feel a little backwards and confusing, right? Upside-down if you will…

That’s pretty much what I want to point out about Palm Sunday.

My congregation, The Table, has been tracing this idea of “signs” throughout the Gospel of John. We’ve thought of signs as the clues embedded throughout, pointing to Jesus as the Messiah, through miracles and symbols and prophecies fulfilled. We’ve also thought of them as literal signs like we see on the side of the highway, stating “This is the intersection of the kingdom of heaven and earth.” 

In John 12, there's this confusing mix of clues linking Jesus to Passover and Hannukah (how fun, right?!), that ultimately ends in a big road sign saying, “Welcome to the Upside-Down Kingdom.” I've you too have been reading through John, we’ve been on a long journey. And we have now arrived.

John 12:12-16

12 The next day the great crowd that had come for the festival heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. 13 They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting,

“Hosanna![d]”

“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”[e]

“Blessed is the king of Israel!”

14 Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, as it is written:

15 

“Do not be afraid, Daughter Zion;
    see, your king is coming,
    seated on a donkey’s colt.”[f]

16 At first his disciples did not understand all this. Only after Jesus was glorified did they realize that these things had been written about him and that these things had been done to him.

Let’s stop there for a minute. There are signs to mark time throughout this that a simple straight-forward reading might gloss over.

If someone had been in a coma and woke up in the middle of this week, they could probably have figured out what time of year it was by the people around them preparing for Passover. And I know it is no accident that this is when he chooses to make his entry. It is the belief of Christians everywhere that Jesus was the final sacrificial lamb, the Messiah, who would deliver his people from slavery to the power of sin and death. While the wording or semantics of the different atonement theories might vary by denomination Christ's sacrifice coinciding with the celebration of Passover has universal significance.

Even without the hindsight we possess, many in the crowd seemed aware that Jesus was sent from God to deliver them from something as well. They shouted “Hosanna” which means “Please Deliver Us "just as the Israelites had prayed before the Exodus. They put down their garments, maybe even their prayer shawls. There was something very “Red Sea Rescue” going on.

But, someone waking up in a coma in the middle of this might have been a little confused too. Because, even though it was the wrong time of year, the celebration happening as Jesus rode in on that donkey was also heavily laced with Hannukah symbolism.

Hanukkah was a delayed celebration of The Feast of Tabernacles. It came after the Maccabean revolt, in which the Greeks were driven out of the Temple and it was cleansed and re-dedicated.

A person waking up from a coma in the middle of this would have recognized everything from people chanting “Psalm 118”, and waving Palm Branches (which conveniently looks a lot like a Menorah) to cheering on the entrance of the newly anointed “king” as mirroring the entrance of Judas Maccabeus about 200 years earlier.

But wait…something very, very different is happening.…

The entrance of Judas Maccabee celebrated driving out the foreigners, The Greeks. And that makes our next passage all the more important…

John 12:20-30

20 Now there were some Greeks among those who went up to worship at the festival. 21 They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, with a request. “Sir,” they said, “we would like to see Jesus.” 22 Philip went to tell Andrew; Andrew and Philip in turn told Jesus.

23 Jesus replied, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24 Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. 25 Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.

27 “Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. 28 Father, glorify your name!”

Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.” 29 The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him.

30 Jesus said, “This voice was for your benefit, not mine. 31 Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. 32 And I, when I am lifted up[g] from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”

Jesus’ response to the visit of these Greek worshippers of God feels oddly out of place. Almost like John began writing about the visit of the Greeks and then forgot what he was doing and went on to something else. UNLESS their visit is the sign that Jesus, as both fully God and fully human, is waiting for in order to know without a shadow of a doubt that this marks the moment his time has come.

Throughout the Gospel, he keeps saying, “My time has not yet come”, and John keeps writing, “His time had not yet come.” And then these Greeks come to visit and He knows that the time has come for God to “draw all people” to himself.

It’s the final sign marking where Heaven and Earth are intersecting and we have now arrived in the Upside Down Kingdom. 

We say this kingdom is both right now and not yet. Arrived and also still coming.

But what does this mean?

I mean that what seemed logical and proper before has been turned upside down…

Conquering Kings ride in on donkeys.

The foreigner is welcomed into the family.

In the coming stories:

The master washes the servant’s feet.

The sword is put away.

The Lion of Judea is also the slaughtered lamb.

Death is defeated.

The tiny kernel of wheat falls to the ground, and before long the whole world is covered in fields of wheat.

But are we living today as though we have arrived in the Upside Down Kingdom? Or are we still just as stuck and just as confused as many among the crowd on Palm Sunday? Maybe the Pharisees or those just caught up in some excitement? Or those who just thought they knew what was happening but their imagination for what God can do was limited?

Are we trusting in fundamentalism, nationalism, and military power? Or are we living like citizens of a kingdom that doesn’t operate by the same patterns as everything else?

During this Holy Week I'd like to post a few times with some questions we can reflect on together. I hope you'll join me.

QUESTIONS:

1. Imagine yourself as a character in this story. What would you be doing or thinking?

2. The way of Jesus goes against the norms sometimes. How might following Jesus lead you to live in counter-cultural ways?

3. Is there something you’ve been putting your trust in besides Jesus, that you need to let go of?