Barry Unwin, Welland, 9 April 2017
Matthew 21:1-11
As Jesus and his disciples approached Jerusalem, they came to Bethphage at the Mount of Olives. There Jesus sent two of the disciples on ahead 2 with these instructions: “Go to the village there ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied up with her colt beside her. Untie them and bring them to me. 3 And if anyone says anything, tell him, ‘The Master needs them’; and then he will let them go at once.”
4 This happened in order to make come true what the prophet had said:
5 “Tell the city of Zion,
Look, your king is coming to you!
He is humble and rides on a donkey
and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”6 So the disciples went and did what Jesus had told them to do: 7 they brought the donkey and the colt, threw their cloaks over them, and Jesus got on. 8 A large crowd of people spread their cloaks on the road while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 9 The crowds walking in front of Jesus and those walking behind began to shout, “Praise to David’s Son! God bless him who comes in the name of the Lord! Praise be to God!”
10 When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was thrown into an uproar. “Who is he?” the people asked.
11 “This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth in Galilee,” the crowds answered.
Zechariah 9:9-10
Rejoice, rejoice, people of Zion!
Shout for joy, you people of Jerusalem!
Look, your king is coming to you!
He comes triumphant and victorious,
but humble and riding on a donkey—
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.10 The Lord says,
“I will remove the war chariots from Israel and take the horses from Jerusalem; the bows used in battle will be destroyed. Your king will make peace among the nations;”
Ken – not is real name – was a “Here today, gone tomorrow” kind of Christian. He was someone I got to know at a church I went to many years ago. Initially I knew him from Sundays – we met in church – where Ken was regular: Singing, praying, praising, reciting the creed and so on.
After a while Ken did an Alpha course I was running, and as I got to know him better through that, I began to realise that the Ken I knew from Sunday wasn’t the midweek Ken at all. For a start midweek Ken often had a bit of booze on his breath.
In fact for him every day through the week was a battle with booze, and numerous other harmful habits. In time they cost him his job and his family.
But on Sunday, Ken always looked the part: singing, praying, praising, reciting the creed.He was a “Here today, gone tomorrow” kind of Christian.
I don’t know about you, but I think Sunday is the easiest day of the week to be a Christian. We’re here in a sanctuary, the holy huddle, singing, praying, praising and indeed reciting the creed, in a nice comfortable thick-walled building, and no one out in the outside world need know. But the rest of the week – then it’s harder. Here today, gone tomorrow.
And it’s not a new problem. Just think of that passage we read a few moments back, Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the crowds shouting out,
Praise to David’s Son! God bless him who comes in the name of the Lord!Praise be to God!”
A week later, they’re crying
Crucify Him
Their faith in Jesus is here today, gone tomorrow.
Now I always like to think of the Triumphal Entry as a two-horse race – between a donkey, and a great war horse.The war horse was ridden by a Jewish general called Judas Maccabees About 200 years before Jesus rode into Jerusalem,Judas Maccabees rode up the same road in triumph, after leading a successful revolt against foreign rule. And there’s a real sense in which the people of Jesus’ day were expecting a repeat performance.
Which is why our second horse is such a disappointment. And when I say horse, of course I mean donkey. But it’s still a noble steed – Or at least a significant one,Which is why our gospel writer quotes the prophet Zechariah,
Tell the city of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you! He is humble and rides on a donkey and on a colt, the foal of a donkey”.
It’s his way of telling us that Jesus isn’t Judas Maccabees reborn, he’s something else altogether.
Listen to how the Zechariah quote continues:
I will remove the war chariots from Israel and take the horses from Jerusalem; the bows used in battle will be destroyed. Your king will make peace among the nations”
This second horse isn’t carrying a general to free Israel from foreign rule – instead – he’s carrying the Prince of Peace.
Rather than march on Pontius Pilate’s palace, Jesus marches into the temple, overturns the tables of the money-changers, does a few healings, and then at dusk, retreats to Bethany. Like all the other pilgrims in Jerusalem for Passover.
Jerusalem’s a city of 50,000, swelled to 10x that number for the festival,so at dusk, if you want somewhere to stay, you leave town.
So Jesus came, he saw, and he left. Because once again there was no room at the inn. The conquering hero becomes just another tourist. What a disappointment. At least for the crowds. Their faith was here today, gone tomorrow.
So how do we avoid being here today gone tomorrow Christians?
How we can be followers of King Jesus who are here today, and out there serving him in the world tomorrow, and the day after and the day after and so on? How do we do become 24-7 Christians?
Well it’s all to do with two blessings. The first is God’s blessing to us, and the second is God’s invitation to us to be a blessing. It’ll make sense I promise.
First, God’s blessing to us: his promised Holy Spirit.
At the very end of Matthew’s gospel, the last thing Jesus says to us is,
Go, then, to all peoples everywhere and make them my disciples: baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teach them to obey everything I have commanded you. And I will be with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:19-20).
Jesus is saying at least two things there. First, that the essence of being a Christian is not church, not liturgy, not praise songs, but going and making disciples. That’s our very purpose in life. And second, when we do that, “I will be with you always.”
Think what that means. It means that when Jesus looks at us here on a Sunday, he’s not thinking
I’m going to give them my holy spirit so that they can listen to a sermon and sing hymns and read liturgy”.
No instead, he’s waiting for us to “Go and make disciples” because that’s the purpose of our lives. And that’s when he’ll come and be with us.
That’s when he says,
I will be with you always to the end of the age.”
You see, a lot of people get the idea that to get that sense of meeting with God you’ve got to come to church, but actually Jesus says if you want to meet with me, go and make disciples. That’s when he promises to be with us –not in the holy huddle, and not in Ken’s boozy fuddle, is that a word? No, Jesus promises to be with us by his Holy Spirit when we go about the business of making disciples.
So if we want to know the blessing of God’s power at work in our lives, we’ve got to start pursuing the purposes of God.
But how do we do that? How do we go about making disciples? Well I want to suggest that the best way to do this is to try to live life as a blessing to others.
There’s a church I was reading about in Canada that’s been encouraging it’s people to do this – they’ve turned the word BLESS into an acronym – and made it a sort of weekly to do list for their people, as a way of encouraging them to be a blessing to others.
So what does BLESS stand for?
The B is for Be a blessing. If you think all the way back to the beginning of the Bible, when God calls Abraham, he promises to make his family a Blessing to the whole world. We Christians are Abraham’s spiritual children – but are we a blessing to the world? And what does blessing even mean? Well the sense here is about being verbally encouraging. To be a blessing by saying kind things. Is that something we can do? B is for blessing.
The L is for LEARN SOMETHING NEW TODAY. This is all about receiving from God – which we do by reading our Bibles, and listening to God in prayer. Notice how it says “Learn something new TODAY”. The point is – listening to God isn’t just a Sunday thing – it’s an everyday thing. So find a way to make space to learn something new from God every day.
You know I’ve been blessed so much over the last 18 months by trying to read through the Bible cover to cover. Some people try to do that in a year – I felt that was a bit ambitious, so I found a two-year programme. There are some copies of it at the back on the information table if you want to take one. So L is for learn something new today.
E is for eat with someone you don’t know well. That’s a challenge to our hospitality. There’s a church I know of in London where they challenge everyone to try to offer hospitality to a stranger once a week. Not everyone does it – but when they do amazing things happen. Eat with someone you don’t know well.
S is for SHARE what you’ve learned today with someone. This one is to encourage us to learn how to talk about God. Most British Christians just aren’t in the habit of it. So we need to practice –by sharing the things we’re learning with others. Now it might not be every day – but why not get into the habit of sharing what you’ve learned? A housegroup is a great place to do that. Even church. We used to do that occasionally at my old church – give over part of the service so people could share what God was doing in their lives. Sometimes the silence was embarrassing, and challenging. But other times we received some wonderful encouragements. So S is for SHARE what you’ve learned.
And our final letter is another S – for serve someone by helping them. We all know people around us who need help with something. Gardening, DIY, and so on. So offer to help. This is all about being a good neighbour. Now in a village like this, I guess most of us are pretty good at this, but let’s not rest on our laurels.
In Solihull there’s a church called Renewal Church . About 20 years ago they bought a redundant primary school Which was surrounded by old people’s bungalows. And the old people hated the church. It was noisy, busy and so on. So they campaigned against it.
Eventually the council imposed a curfew on the church. All church had to be finished by 10pm – which ruined their all-night prayer vigils.
Now I don’t know how you’d respond to that sort of opposition.I guess it would be easy to get bitter.To write off the neighbours,Pray curses on the council and so on.But instead they responded by being good neighbours.One of the bungalows was occupied by a bedridden obese lady, who was doubly incontinent.
And two nurses who attended the church volunteered to nurse, toilet, bath her and help her through the last few weeks of what turned out to be a terminal illness.
One of the lady’s neighbours was the chief complainer. She had a terribly overgrown garden, and one day a church member mowed her lawn. She gave him a mouthful of abuse. So he weeded her flowerbeds and planted flowers while she shouted “Don’t think I’m paying for any of this”.
He went back a few days later to do some more work and she brought him a cup of tea and invited him in and he got to know her. And she stopped complaining. And over time this persistent godly gardener shared the good news of Jesus with the lady,and not long before she died, She became a Christian. Her funeral was held in the church she’d wanted closed.
As news of these two acts of neighbourliness spread, the community’s attitude to the church began to change. and within two years, the church had outgrown the school, but its rootedness in good neighbourliness continues.The church now helps feed 3000 people a year, supplies school uniforms to disadvantaged children, runs counselling services, works with autistic children, runs mental health and young mums clinics and employs four nurses that work in the community.
That’s what happens when Christians Seek to serve someone by helping them. They get to make disciples.
And that’s what BLESS means. And as we go out day to day trying to BLESS others, we’ll find we’re blessed by God through his Holy Spirit, and we’ll become not one-day a week Christians who are here today gone tomorrow, but 24-7 believers. Ready to serve King Jesus wherever and whenever he wants.
Let’s pray.