Today is Palm Sunday, the day Jesus traditionally entered into Jerusalem riding on a donkey in preparation for the Passover Feast the week before the Resurrection. Most of us know the traditional Christian version of the story, which I am in no way discounting, so I will not repeat it here. Instead, I want to look at Matthew’s portrayal of the overall story and show the bookends to his account of the overall story up until this point.
I want to draw attention to a subtle contrast regarding the types of people that were present when Jesus rode into town. In Greek there is a conjunction de that expresses contrast, often translated as “but” in English. The contrast is subtle, and sometimes it is simply translated as “and” or is left untranslated as an unnecessary conjunction that simply passes along the narrative of stories. But given the nature and placement in Matthew 21:6-9, I feel it is a subtle contrast that is intentional and want to put it into perspective in Matthew’s gospel.
In Matthew 13, Jesus’ ministry via parables begins with a story about four types of soil, differentiated simply by how yielded they have been to a plow. The good soil represents the ideal follower of Jesus: seed is planted into them, they hear the words of God, understand them, and go out bearing fruit, blessing others up to 100 times what God had blessed them with. This being fruitful with seeds goes back to Genesis and man’s original vocation as custodians of the Earth and how it plays out in Genesis 12 and the call of Abraham to bless all peoples of the Earth.
In Matthew 21:6-9 we again see four types of subtly contrasted people, an intentional bookend to this point in Jesus’ ministry. We see the disciples compared to the road, who simply do what they are told yet don’t understand the significance of it. Later, when the sower (Jesus) leaves, the disciples disperse in fear. We see “most of the crowd” compared to the rocky soil, rejoicing in joy without letting it sink in. Those cutting palm branches ironically are compared to thorny soil, letting their worldly interpretation of the Message get in the way of what God wants to do. But the good soil that is fruitful is compared to the fourth group, those who follow Jesus and go out before him. They recognize Jesus as the true Messiah and proclaim this by quoting not passages about him being a political leader but rather as heralding the name of YHWH alone, declaring Hosanna (salvation) of the highest degree, not only to Jesus but also to the world!
Now while I could stop there with an exclamation mark explaining the significance of the placement in Matthew’s gospel that most people would agree is an good interpretation, my current Inductive Bible Studies course in the Torah has trained me that a good message can only become very good if it is practical and invades people’s comfort zones. Jesus’ identity as Messiah not only for Israel (Jesus immediate followers) and the world (those going out in front of Jesus) is a Biblical truth that is relatively undisputed amongst Christians. But what people don’t like to admit is that Jesus Message was not primarily about himself but was primarily about serving God through serving others.
I am not denying the nature of Jesus but simply saying that simply believing his identity is not the call of the Gospel. As James says, “faith without works is dead.” In other words, belief in the nature of Jesus without applying the Message of the Gospel is vanity, worthless, and unfruitful. Going back again to Genesis, it is the equivalent of Noah’s contemporaries, following God’s command to multiply without obeying his command to be fruitful. The Bible tells us that at this point in time, the world was corrupt enough to be destroyed and wiped out. Yes, I am comparing belief in the divinity of Jesus without applying the Message of the Gospel to utter corruption worthy of death!
So how do we apply this? We look back to the parable of the sower in Matthew 13. We take the seeds that we are given from our harvest and turn it into up to 100 fold by investing our personal resources into the needs of the community around us. We move beyond proclaiming salvation and into enacting salvation. We follow Jesus, and we go out from Jesus into the world and serve God by being a servant in the world.
While the above is a general message that goes out to all Christians, I want to make this practical for myself and my family and commit to my followers that as for me and my house, we will serve YHWH. I want this commitment to be practical, not merely ideological. This year for Easter, we will not go to Church. We will go do Church. The services will be recorded, and we can always watch them and listen to them later. There will be plenty of pastors, elders, and deacons in the Church building and the online services who can handle any “seekers.” But the Church, the ekklesia, is not called out of the world, it is called into the world. So this Easter we are going to take our own dead faith and work it, physically, with the small seed that God has given us in our tax return. And by doing so, ironically on Joshua’s third birthday (as the Hebrew Joshua has the same meaning as the Greek Jesus), we are going to resurrect our dead faith.
I invite any and all Christians who do not have an official responsibility on Easter Sunday, wherever you are in the world, to join us. If you decide to proclaim the good news while serving others, please do so with the still small voice of God, not with dogmatic condemnation or simple ideological beliefs.
