March 24, 2002
Matthew 21:1-9
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Matthew 26-27:31
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“Why Was Jesus Persecuted?”

"What shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?"

Pilate mouthed it, but it is the ultimate question that each of us asks; what will I do with Jesus who is called Christ?  That is the challenge in worship on this Sunday we call either Palm Sunday or Passion Sunday.  Somehow, I hope this service will force every one of you to ask yourselves: "What am I going to do about Jesus?"

This is difficult, because most of us, if we dare to be honest with ourselves, have messy spiritual lives.  "Messy Spirituality" -- that’s the title of a superb new book Chris Rygh gave to me.  The book is written by Mike Yaconelli, whom I have known for over 20 years, in his work with Youth Specialties.  He was one of my religious leader heroes when I was a young "Senior Pastor who had been a youth minister" and who now had a youth minister to supervise.  He remains one of my favorite evangelical writers.

Now Mike is almost 60, but he still has the bite that jabs us with the truth about ourselves, which is exactly what Jesus did.  You see -- what landed Jesus on a cross was the preposterous idea that common, ordinary, broken, screwed- up people could be godly.  What drove Jesus’ enemies crazy were his criticisms of the “perfect” religious people and his acceptance of the imperfect non-religious people.  The shocking implication of Jesus’ ministry is that ‘anyone’ can be spiritual.   (Yaconelli p. 13)

If there is one thing Christians in Churches can’t stand, it is people who are not afraid of their messy spirituality.  You know what I mean; most people in Churches don’t want children to be noisy;  but, really, how else are children going to act?  Most Church members don’t like young people who dress casually; many don’t like informal talk sessions; and they surely don’t like questions being asked which they might have to answer.

Suppose someone stood up in this Church some morning and said, out loud, “My life is a mess.  I just got divorced, and I’m still hung over from last night, and I don’t know what to do?”  

What would you do?  I’ll bet some people would be thinking, "What is that person doing here?  Church is for decent people who act correctly."

But is it?

The Bible throws us some pretty tough curves to handle.  Yaconelli reminds us; take Noah; everyone thought Noah was crazy.  There he was, building an ark, a clumsy big, old boat right out in the middle of the Mohave Desert, not too far from Palm Springs.

"Why?"  people asked.

"Because God told me it is going to rain," was his answer.

And it did rain and Noah was proud and happy, so he decided to celebrate, and he got drunk and naked.  Noah!  Good old spiritual Noah!

God uses people right in the middle of their messiness.

Listen to the list:

King David: adultery and an accomplice to murder.

Rahab: prostitution.

Jacob and his Mother, Rachael: misrepresentation.

Saul, seeking guidance from a witch and hurling a sword at David.

Gomer, the wife of Hosea who left him to go into prostitution, only to be bought back by her husband.

The list is endless.

So, we go on to the New Testament, and to Jesus.  "Maybe that will be better --" but it’s the same.

Twelve disciples who never quite got it -- one of them betrayed Jesus and another denied he’d ever known him.

Jesus healed sinners and foreigners; he didn’t ask them if they were believers or if they went to Church.  He was roundly criticized for eating with prostitutes, tax- collectors and ne’er-do-wells, who would never be allowed in the lovely, clean houses of worship of the Pharisees.

He came into Jerusalem, and a small, ragtag band of people (whom the populous thought were nuts) waved palm branches and threw their clothes on the ground -- and all Jesus did was weep, over the city which had missed the whole point of life with God.

They had to do something.  Either Jesus would ruin their spiritual neatness, upset their codified instructions of what it means to be a follower of God, or they would have to get rid of him.  And that is exactly what they did.

They killed him -- those good righteous religious people!

If there is one thing we have to grasp, it is that, right in the midst of our messiness, Jesus is with us.  

When we are not sure about much of anything, he’s there.  And that very fact bothers the religious folks most of all; that’s why Jesus was persecuted.

Look at the Churches of our day and age.  If they are effective, who is present?  Maybe even, "Who is present here today?"

Maybe there is a young woman who is too proud to admit that her marriage is a living hell, and she is here trying to figure out "why is this happening to me?" 

Maybe there is a person who is hiding the fact that he or she is gay, and he is afraid that if he tells anyone, he will lose their friendship -- and she is wondering, "Can I be honest about my sexuality and still be a Christian?"  They need to know thaty Jesus is with them, loving them just like he loves the rest of us.

Maybe there is a elderly couple who are masking the fact that their life is boring ... and they can’t stand each other anymore, but they can’t stand being alone either, so they are here.

And maybe there are parents who are at their wit’s end because their teenage kids are making their home life a battleground and they don’t know what to do.  

Messy lives seeking answers!

ISN’T THAT EXACTLY WHO SHOULD BE HERE?

I think so.  Because it is people just like that whom Jesus loved.  Right in the middle of their messiness, they found him and found that he loved them warts and all.  That is what it means to be spiritual.

The religious authorities could not stand the fact that, even as they sought to get rid of Jesus, he loved them and saw that they were wrong in their attempt to be right.  Thus it is Pilate; the governor of the territory, a political figure placed there by Rome, with the task of keeping the peace, who asks, “What am I to do with Jesus?”  Not the priests, not the Levites, not the proper churchgoers; they had already decided.  They wanted no part of this Jesus who loved them in their messiness. They wanted a leader who lived by their rules.

In my office, behind my desk, there is a set of praying hands.  They were carved by my Dad -- and they are his hands.  I can tell, because he even put in the slit nail and the scars that I knew about.  Even though I am a minister -- and I knew Dad was proud of that -- nonetheless, it was not in the theological stream that Dad would have wanted.

I am well aware of the fact that I worried him almost to death as a teen-ager.  I know he was heart broken when I rejected the Christian ultra-conservatism in which I was reared.  Still, he loved me; never wavered.

Dad is gone now; he died when he was 92.  But I never look at those hands without a message crashing through all of my liberal rationalism: "Father, forgive him; he doesn’t know what he is doing."

Love transcends differences.

There on a hill, outside a city wall, they hung him on a cross; condemned by those nice proper religious folks who didn’t want their nice, neat and proper ways disturbed.  That’s why he was persecuted.

Yet he continued to love them and he continues to love you and me.  He knows that we are people of mixed emotions and inconsistent thoughts and actions.

He knows that we hide behind our faith; that we love our religious ways more than we love him.  He knows, we hate to admit, that our spiritual lives are messy.  We keep saying, “When I do better," "When I start living right," then, I’ll become a Christian and come to Church”.

But Jesus loves people in their messiness.  He ate with them, talked with them and loved them.  That’s what this season is all about.  Right in the middle of our shortcomings, right in our guilt, right in the center of our messy living, he meets us.

Just when we say, "I just can’t seem to get it all together," God meets us and transforms us.

There is nothing pretty about his persecution.

Except that -- even then, he said, "Father forgive them."

Listen for his whisper to you.

It will come right in the midst of your messy life.