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[0:00] All right, good morning once again. My name is Anthony Parrott, and I'm one of the co-lead pastors here.! And this sermon was written in a couple hours yesterday.

[0:12] So you will give me all of the grace in the world, correct? Yes, thank you. But it's Palm Sunday. We're not breaking tons of new ground here. So if you want to follow along with the notes, you can do so at table.center.

[0:27] You can follow along the notes there and fill in the blanks. We have our kids in the room with us this morning, so we're going to try to keep them entertained. We'll do our best. So Palm Sunday, we're doing a couple things simultaneously.

[0:42] We are finishing up our Jeremiah series, so we're going to talk a little bit about Jeremiah. And we are launching into Holy Week or Passion Week, this last week of Lent, where we recognize Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, the institution of the Last Supper, Good Friday, what my son accidentally called Fun Friday. Not so fun for Jesus.

[1:07] And then, you know, Holy Saturday and Easter, Resurrection Sunday. So we are going to get right into it. If you have a Bible, you can join along if you want in Jeremiah chapter 42.

[1:21] And I'm just going to sort of keep this short for us. Today, we're going to talk about three ways to respond to empire. And option one that we see in Jeremiah towards the sort of chronological end of Jeremiah's life is the option of the retreat.

[1:52] Running away is the option that you have. When you are faced with the bad guys, when you are faced with violence, when you are faced with empire, you have the option of running away.

[2:03] So in Jeremiah 42, at this point, Jerusalem has fallen. Exiles have been taken to Babylon. And there is a frightful remnant, a group of people left behind.

[2:15] And they come to Jeremiah, and they say the right thing. They say, Jeremiah, pray for us. Whatever God says, we will do it. God's answer, fascinatingly, takes 10 days.

[2:27] Even for the prophet Jeremiah, he has to wait 10 days to get an answer from God. And when it comes, God's answer to Jeremiah is to stay. To the remnant, stay.

[2:37] Stay in the land. Don't be afraid. God says, I will build you up, not pull you down. I will plant you and not pluck you up. Whatever you do, don't run to Egypt.

[2:48] Because what the folks who are left behind want to do is they want to run away and retreat. Run away! Run away to Egypt.

[3:02] Matt's going to have a lot of fun with this, I can tell. They want to run away to Egypt because they think they're going to be safe there. Now, is it safe? Eh. But it's known.

[3:13] Egypt is a known quantity. And sometimes the chains that are familiar feel safer than the freedom that's unfamiliar. Are you with me? Are you with me? So Jeremiah 42.10, don't go.

[3:25] I will build you up. I will not put you down. And the people hear Jeremiah's word. They go to Jeremiah. They say, pray for us. What does God say? And Jeremiah says, stay. Don't go. And they reject it.

[3:35] They call Jeremiah a liar. They go to Egypt anyway. And they drag Jeremiah with them. And they didn't disobey because God was unclear. They disobeyed because it was scary to do what God said.

[3:46] When the answer required trust, stay put, face the unknown, they chose the familiar cage instead of the unknown freedom. For the kids in the room, have you ever asked your mom and dad for permission to do something?

[4:01] Yes? Yes? Have your parents ever told you no? Okay? If they've never told you no, there's a parenting seminar afterwards. No. All right. And have you ever done it anyway?

[4:14] I see that hand. I see that hand. And that's what's happening here. Now, the consequences are a lot bigger than losing screen time. So, the option that you have when you are facing empire, when you're facing dominion, when you're facing living under violence and oppression and you're scared is to run away and retreat.

[4:38] To run back to what you know, even if what you know is a cage. But, there's another option. And it's the one that probably, most of us, many of us, think of first.

[4:50] And that's to attack. To fight back. When the retreat doesn't work, the obvious alternative is to fight back. So, you want to gather up your army.

[5:13] You want to gather and get your sword. Wave it in the air. Get on your horse. Yell death. And run towards the enemy. And there's actually a story in Jewish history where that's exactly what happened.

[5:25] It's the reason that we have palm branches today and what they mean. So, about 165 years before Jesus, three, four, five generations before the life of Jesus, there was a Jewish family named the Maccabeans.

[5:38] Let me hear you all say the Maccabees. The Maccabees. And the Maccabees, that was a nickname. And anybody know what the Maccabees meant? What that nickname means? The hammer.

[5:49] That's right. There was a guy named Judas. Judas. He saw enemies come into his land. And so, he picked up a hammer and he started swinging on it nails. But at people. Do not try this at home. All right? So, Judas Maccabeus and his family, the Maccabees, lead this military revolt against the empire, occupying Israel at that time, the Greeks.

[6:07] And they actually won. They actually managed to keep their land for a while. So, the Maccabees, they take over the land from the Greeks and they march into Jerusalem.

[6:19] And as Judas Maccabeus marches into Jerusalem, do you know what they're waving? Palm branches. So, in our Catholic Bibles, you can read about this in 1st through 4th Maccabees, about this whole era, and about the Maccabees coming into Jerusalem and then being celebrated by waving palm branches in the air, waving them as victory banners.

[6:42] The Maccabees go into Jerusalem. They clean the temple by force. And they become national heroes. And this is what Hanukkah celebrates. So, when you hear palm branches in the Bible, that's what it meant to a 1st century Jewish person.

[6:56] Palm branches meant military victory. It meant liberation by force. It meant charging to the enemy. So, when the crowd on Palm Sunday waves palm branches and marches towards the temple, they know what story they're reenacting.

[7:09] It's 185 years ago. It's the story of the Maccabees coming into Jerusalem. And they're expecting a warrior liberator who will drive out the Romans the same way the Maccabees drove out the Greeks.

[7:22] But that's not what they get. The Maccabees won. They were heroes of their tradition. And their way still wasn't God's final answer.

[7:34] Fighting fire with fire sometimes works until it doesn't. Violence wins battles. And it loses the very thing that you're fighting for.

[7:45] So, we've got two options on the table so far. You can run away and retreat. You can run away and retreat. You can... Thank you.

[7:59] You can run away and retreat. You can counterattack. To be clear, I love this scene.

[8:13] I love Lord of the Rings. I listen to this song on the drive here and on the drive home and on the drive here. Okay? I get the feeling. But that's not what Jesus does.

[8:24] What does Jesus do? He comes into the city riding not a war horse, but what? A donkey. Jesus shows us a different way.

[8:35] A third way. The same palm branches. It's the same city. A little bit later, Jesus is going to clear out the temple. But everything about what Jesus does is different.

[8:47] And that difference is the whole point. Now, when Jerusalem was filling up for Passover, typically what would happen is that you would have... Let's see, from your perspective, the West.

[8:58] You would have Pontius Pilate. He was the sort of governor over Judea and Jerusalem. And he lived in a palace fortress to the West towards the Mediterranean Sea.

[9:10] And when Jerusalem was filling up for a festival, he would gather up his centurions and his Roman army, and he would march into the city using the Western Gate to basically remind the Jews who were coming into the city, don't forget, you are doing this by the grace of Rome.

[9:28] Rome is allowing you to do this. It's like a children's sermon, whether we want it or not. Okay? Amazing. Hello. Greetings. You are doing this by the grace of Rome.

[9:39] And Rome is letting you do this. But don't forget that you are surrounded by Roman centurions and an army. So the Roman leader, Pontius Pilate, comes in with his war horse, his parade, his military parade, right into the city.

[9:53] I would not play with the extension cord. Thank you. Simultaneously, from what we know of historical sources, you have Jesus coming in on the eastern gate of the city.

[10:05] And there's also a parade, but maybe other than Peter and his sword, there's no weapons. There's no war horses. It's Jesus on a donkey coming into the city.

[10:19] Two processions, the same city, the same festival, and opposite claims about how power works. Generals entered on war horses.

[10:30] Jesus chose the animal of a peaceful king. It would be like during that military parade last summer, where your response is to ride in on a bicycle. The crowd saw this, and I think they would have understood the contrast.

[10:47] And the crowd joined him anyway. And they shout, Hosanna. Hosanna means, God save us.

[10:57] Save us, please. And Psalm 18 was the parade liturgy. The crowd is quoting it directly. Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna.

[11:08] Hosanna. Save us, please. It wasn't a pep rally. It was a prayer. It was a plea. It was a cry. A desperate, public, and illegal prayer.

[11:19] It was a protest. An illegal protest. Because Rome did not tolerate rival kings. Shouting, Hosanna to the son of David. Hosanna to the son of the king.

[11:31] Hosanna to the king that we expect to come and save us. Within the earshot of Roman soldiers was not a smart, safe thing to do. And the religious establishment, the Sadducees at the temple, they didn't tolerate it either.

[11:45] When the chief priests heard children shouting in the temple, they were furious. And when they told Jesus to stop, be peaceful, obey, do what we tell you, Jesus refused.

[11:58] If I stop the children from singing, even the rocks will cry out. Matthew 21, out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies, you have prepared praise for yourself.

[12:10] Even the kids were part of the protest. Especially the kids. So, laying out the options side by side. You can retreat to Egypt.

[12:22] You can retreat to the familiar cage. You can fight fire with fire. You can win the battle and lose your soul. Or, you can ride the donkey.

[12:34] You can refuse to retreat and refuse to match the empire's violence. The people in Jeremiah's day asked for God's word and then they ran from it.

[12:46] The Maccabees took matters into their own hands. And the crowd on Palm Sunday did something more difficult than either one. They showed up, unarmed, in public, shouting for a king who rode a donkey.

[13:00] Now, I'll show you a movie clip because I feel like the clip gets it better than I can explain it. Anybody here familiar with a movie named Moana? Moana? Yeah.

[13:11] So, Moana, you know, we get these sort of three options that we just talked about. The villagers, for Moana's village, they just want to hide on their island.

[13:22] Pretend like everything's okay. That's the retreat. Maui wants to fight Te Ka with force. The counter-violence. And then watch what Moana does.

[13:34] Different from both. To the ending of the ending of the ending of the ending of the ending of the ending of the ending of the ending of the ending of the ending of the ending of the ending of the ending of ending of ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending Where your soul and the heart come inside This is not divine This is not who you are You will know who you are You will know who you are

[15:05] You will know who you are You will know who you are You will know who you are You will know who you are So did you see it?

[15:20] Three options. Hide, fight, or walk towards something scary with something that the empire doesn't have. Love. Humility. Joy.

[15:31] And the monster turns out to be self-defeating. Its own rage is destroying it. All Moana had to do was show up with something different. And that's what Jesus did on Palm Sunday.

[15:42] That's what we're invited to do. In 1982 in East Germany, behind the Iron Curtain, under surveillance by the Stasi secret police, a Lutheran pastor named Christian Fjord started hosting Monday evening prayer services at St. Nicholas Church in Leipzig.

[15:58] And every Monday at 5 o'clock, they would offer prayers for peace. And a handful of people showed up. Sometimes dissidents. Sometimes just ordinary folks who had nowhere else to speak freely.

[16:12] And the communist states didn't allow it anywhere else, but the church they couldn't fully control. They met for seven years. And almost nobody noticed. And then in the fall of 1989, things shifted.

[16:26] The prayers swelled. Dozens became hundreds. Hundreds became thousands. And on October 9th, two days after the regime's 40th anniversary celebration, the government decided it had seen enough.

[16:38] 8,000 armed security forces were deployed. Hospitals began to stockpile blood reserves and cleared beds in preparation for wounds. There were credible rumors of a Tiananmen Square-style crackdown.

[16:51] Not evening, over 2,000 people packed into St. Nicholas Church. When the prayers ended, they walked outside and they were met by 70,000 more, filling the streets and holding candles, sometimes one in each hand.

[17:07] And what Pastor Fiora said, he said, it takes two hands to carry a candle, one to hold it and one to shield the flame, which means you can't throw a stone and you can't swing a fist.

[17:19] The candle was the discipline. And so 70,000 people processed through the streets of Leipzig carrying fire in their hands, chanting, Wir sind das Volk.

[17:32] We are the people. And the soldiers refused to fire. And a month later, the Berlin Wall fell. A procession out of a house of worship into the streets of an empire city carrying not weapons, but lights.

[17:47] So what does it look like for us to join this parade today, this week, in this country, in this moment? Yesterday, people across this country, people in this church, joined the No Kings protest.

[18:02] And that's a Palm Sunday sermon all by itself. Palm Sunday was an illegal protest. A crowd of ordinary, frightened, hopeful people marching through the streets declaring that their allegiance belonged to a different kind of king.

[18:15] Not the one in the palace, not the one with the army, but the one on the donkey. And when they were told to stop, they refused. When the authorities got angry, Jesus quoted the psalm about children's praise, and the parade kept going.

[18:30] It's not triumphalism. It's survival testimony. The psalmist in Psalm 118 says, Out of my distress, I called on the Lord. The Lord answered me and set me in a broad place.

[18:42] I was pushed hard so that I was falling, but the Lord helped me. I shall not die, but I shall live and recount the deeds of God. The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.

[18:53] The psalmist has been surrounded, pushed to the edge, and has come out the other side saying, God showed up. The rejected thing became the foundation. Joining the parade does not mean that we have it all figured out.

[19:05] The crowd on Palm Sunday didn't know what the week would bring. They didn't know about the arrest and the trial and the cross. They joined the parade before they knew the ending. And that's what trust looks like.

[19:18] Not certainty, but movement. We've been living in the book of Jeremiah for a few weeks now. In exile and in uncertainty. I'm being tickled with palm leaves.

[19:30] What? Nothing better. Even the rocks will cry out tonight. It's fine.

[19:40] It's fine. All right, let's bring this plane to a landing. We have been living in the book of Jeremiah for a few weeks now. In exile and in uncertainty. In the long middle of a story that does not resolve neatly.

[19:54] And the truth is, we are all still living there. Living in the in-between. Between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Between the ascension and the hope for return. Between the world as it is and the world that God promises.

[20:08] And Saturday, Holy Saturday is the hardest day. Friday has its grief and Sunday has its joy. But Saturday is just not knowing. It's sitting in the ambiguity.

[20:18] It's wondering if the parade was worth it. The crowd on Palm Sunday joined a parade on what they thought was the beginning of liberation. And by Friday they watched Jesus die.

[20:30] By Saturday they have nothing but silence and uncertainty and locked doors for fear. And yet, even if they didn't know, Sunday was coming.

[20:41] They didn't know it, but Sunday was coming. We live in the Saturday and the invitation is not to run away to Egypt. It's not to pick up a sword.

[20:52] but it is to keep marching in the parade. To choose joy as an act of defiance. To trust that the donkey beats the war horse even when the evidence is thin.

[21:03] To refuse to let the empire tell us who we are or what is possible. Are you with me? The best image that I can come up with is any pride parade.

[21:15] Any time a people show up as fully and authentically themselves celebrating in the street refusing to hide even when the world has told them to hide.

[21:27] Not because the future is certain but because hiding is no longer an option. As Samwise says in Lord of the Rings, there is some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for and that fight is not with a sword or a rock.

[21:46]  It is with hope and it is with joy. And so our invitation this morning is to join the parade. Amen.