"Who Are You Expecting?"

Pastor Laura Guy

April 5, 2009

Here's an instant replay of what happened in worship:

We saw a drama in which the people of Jerusalem were gathering along the road to try to see Jesus. They were talking excitedly about how he had raised Lazarus from the dead, so he must be their long-awaited Messiah coming to free them from the Romans. They waved their palms and shouted "Hosanna!"
We read John's account of Palm Sunday in John 12:12-19.
We thought about what the people expected of Jesus - to lead a military coup and regain control of Jerusalem for the Jews. They shouted "Save us, save now!" The words were the correct words to shout to a Savior, but they were shouting them for the wrong reasons. When the people found out later in the week that Jesus did not have an army and would not resist the Romans who arrested him, they felt they had been duped by this "false Messiah", and they turned on him in anger. They threw down the palm branches and walked away in disgust, missing the Truth that what he was about to do was greater than any of their expectations.
We held our palm branch and thought of a time in our lives when we were disappointed with Jesus, when he wasn't who we expected him to be. Maybe we wanted him to be a miracle healer or relationship-fixer or wealth-dispenser. When he doesn't do those things on our schedule, we too can be tempted to throw down our palm branch and walk way.
We recognized that we have a unique advantage on the Palm Sunday story that those people in Jerusalem did not have 2,000 years ago. We live on the other side of Easter, and we know that the words they shouted to Jesus were actually the right words. We should be shouting, "Jesus, save us!"
We prayed that God would open our eyes to see Jesus as he is, and to worship him for who he is. We sang a song of praise to him.
We celebrated communion around the table of love.