7. What Does Jesus See?

In the morning lesson today we look at Jesus entering Jerusalem on the Sunday before he was crucified, at the beginning of what we have come to call Holy Week. We all know this familiar story. Jesus rode on a donkey. Grownups and kids waved palm branches. Everyone shouted, “Hosanna!” We know the story.

We need to remember, however, that in all of these details Jesus intentionally enacted things that identified him as the Messiah. Certain Old Testament prophecies suggested that when God’s kingly rule was established again, the Messiah would ride into Jerusalem on a donkey coming from the Mount of Olives, a hill just across the Kidron Valley from the city.[1] That is precisely what Jesus did.

Remember also that he came at Passover, one of the three great pilgrim feasts in the Jewish calendar. Thousands of people were arriving in Jerusalem along with Jesus and his followers. All of them would have been singing songs of “hosanna.” That word comes specifically from Psalm 118 which is one of a series of psalms (113-118) known as the Hallel. With great joy pilgrims sang the Hallel as they approached the temple at the end of their long journeys.

Finally we should note that pilgrims always entered the city on foot. So it was impossible to mistake Jesus’ intentions in riding into town on a donkey. This clearly identified him as God’s Messiah. He was not just one of the crowd pushed along against his will. He choose to be identified as Messiah. Who Jesus was, as I’ve said throughout Lent, an identity often hidden in plain sight, was no longer a secret. Some of the pilgrims, at least, began to sing their Hallel in honor of Jesus.

When they were approaching Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples and said to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately as you enter it, you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden; untie it and bring it. If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.’” They went away and found a colt tied near a door, outside in the street. As they were untying it, some of the bystanders said to them, “What are you doing, untying the colt?” They told them what Jesus had said; and they allowed them to take it. Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it; and he sat on it. Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields. Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting,

Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.

All through Lent we’ve looked in Mark’s Gospel at various aspects of what is called the “messianic secret.” The term arises because whenever Jesus healed someone or cast out evil spirits, he commanded that they not tell anyone. Of course, no one did keep the secret. The blind received their sight, the sick were cured, the demon-possessed were exorcised and they blabbed the good news to everyone. Except next Sunday when we look at three women discovering that Jesus was raised from the dead, they were told to tell everyone the good news. But they fled in silence and apparently told no one. So when people are told to keep the secret, they blab to everybody and when they are told to shout out the good news, they tell no one. Kind of ironic, isn’t it. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

It all illustrates, however, this sermon series’ title — “Hiding in Plain Sight.” Jesus wasn’t doing things to be kept secret. He was doing things that could only be seen, that is, understood, with the eyes of faith. So often disciples didn’t really see. The question is, do we? Do we really see Jesus’ way, the way of the cross?

I was struck, therefore, by how the last sentence in today’s text turns things around. After Jesus got to Jerusalem, Mark tells us he went to the temple and he “looked around at everything.” Do you think that means he was gawking at the temple’s magnificence just like some tourist? No, I think it means he was looking to see if people were ready to go his way, the way of the cross. So let’s think about what Jesus sees when he looks at us.

To look at Jesus with the eyes of faith and to go the way of the cross opens new possibilities. New relationships begin that were not possible before. Certain things can happen that were not possible before. Hopes and dreams can be expressed and certain longings blessed that were not possible before. Can we live into these new possibilities?

I came to this while pondering the text where Jesus instructed two disciples to go into town and find a colt. They were told to tell the donkey’s owner that the Lord needed it. “Lord” was not a word Jesus used to speak of himself, nor was it one that his disciples probably called him before the resurrection. At the time of his ministry “Lord” would have meant God and that’s how the people in the story understood it. God needed that donkey and saying that was enough for them. The authority of God claimed that colt and the people let their property go. They were open to a new possibility. In the same way, the way of the cross claims our lives and new things are possible.

Back in January in a couple of sermons I mentioned that at the church I served in Birmingham, Michigan there was a small group of women who decided to do ministry in the county jail. A nearby jail with a large female population had no chaplaincy program and some of the women from the church wanted to meet some of the needs at that facility.

Some of us on the staff had reservations about doing that kind of thing. We wondered at the value of affluent, white, suburban Presbyterian women trying to do something worthwhile in a jail with women from very different backgrounds. But that is one of the great things about the church. Wisdom does not always reside in the clergy and the women went ahead and did ministry in spite of our reservations. It was a good ministry and the right thing to do.

They went about it in a healthy way. They found out what the real needs of the women were. The inmates needed recreation and exercise. They wanted to do things with their hands. They wanted to sing, and many of them wanted to study the Bible and have a chance to share together about their faith. So the women from Birmingham tried to meet these needs once a week.

A lot of wonderful things happened and some caring relationships continued when a few of the women were released after serving their sentences. One of these was especially close to one of the older women from the church and when she got out of jail she said, “I’d like to just go for a ride out where things look better than they look in here.”

So on an early fall afternoon the two of them went for a ride out in some of the countryside and around the beautiful suburban homes of Birmingham. On that fall day the air was still warm but the leaves were beginning to turn and there was a blaze of color and a gentle breeze. Finally the two of them ended up back beside a little lake that sits at the heart of Birmingham. There they sat, watching the sunlight play off the water and the leaves and the grass, and young mothers with their children were feeding the ducks.

Note the contrast. Here was a refined, educated, affluent, mature Presbyterian woman and next to her in the same car a women very much defeated by life, a woman addicted to drugs, who prostituted herself to feed her addiction. But there they were together, a testimony to the power of following the way of the cross. Without the cross, that says no one is better than anyone else, without the cross, that says God loves us, without the cross, that claims us to take care of each other, those two women would never be together. But the cross of Jesus creates new possibilities.

Sitting there in the autumn sun, that released prisoner said after awhile, “Is it wrong for me to even desire a decent life like this?” Some have been on the outside looking in for so long that they even wonder if it is right to look in and desire decency and some of the basic things in life most of us take for granted.

I don’t know how that story should end. Some stories do not always have happy endings. I certainly don’t suggest that an afternoon drive solves the serious problems of drug addiction and prostitution and criminal rehabilitation. And we have to come back from those afternoon drives and do the hard work of finding programs and supporting programs and working with the helping institutions that try to do something in the midst of terrible circumstances and this is often discouraging work. There are no simple answers.

But still, the afternoon drive shows a new possibility, that because of the cross of Christ our lives are claimed, just as the Lord claimed that donkey, to be the bearers of grace. We cannot change everything. Sometimes we can’t even change very much. But we can open our hearts to others in love, in prayer, in encouragement, and in support, knowing that Christ loves all of us and because he does we are to love others.

Most of all what that afternoon drive shows, if we have the eyes to see, is that in reality we are all on the outside looking in, just like that onetime prisoner. C. S. Lewis wrote, “At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendors we see. But all of the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumor that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in.”[2]

We shall get in, my friends, because the cross of Christ claims us and while in this life we still cannot mingle, as it were, with the full glory of his kingdom, we can see glimpses of the new possibilities that exist only because of him and his way, which is the way of the cross.

That woman from jail did pretty well for awhile. She got involved in new things and made good progress. But finally the old hurts and the old fears still loomed too large and she fell back into her addiction and died of an overdose. That hurt all of us, especially that older woman who befriended her, and who was also my friend. Certainly we don’t condone what got that woman in trouble. But I believe that in the loving arms of her Lord she finally found the decency and dignity that this life so denied her. She was no longer on the outside looking in.

What we really need to see is this. While our circumstances are very different we are all as dependent on God’s grace as was she and without it we will always be outside looking in. There was no simple answer for her. God’s grace is not magic but it is life, life with new possibilities so that even tragedy cannot defeat it. Are we ready for this life which comes from the cross?

The text said Jesus entered the temple and looked around at everything. What does he see when he enters the temples of our hearts? Does he see us ready to go his way? Are we ready for him to make his home in us? Are we open to our need for his grace? Can we, with the eyes of faith, see what is hiding in plain sight? I pray we can, in Jesus’ name.

[1] Zechariah 9.9: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” Zechariah 14.4: “On that day his [the Messiah’s] feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives, which lies before Jerusalem on the east; and the Mount of Olives shall be split in two from east to west by a very wide valley; so that one half of the Mount shall withdraw northward, and the other half southward.”

[2] C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1949) 27.