Palm Branches and Red Carpets

Luke 19:28-40   |   4/4/2004

Jerusalem Jesus was greeted by massive crowds and Oscarlike enthusiasm. But it remained to be seen whether this celebrity Christ would be praised … or picked apart.

Glitter. Glamour. Gossip.

The Three G’s of the Hollywood red carpet treatment.

If you tuned in February 29th to the 76th Annual Academy Awards®, you got your fill of these “three G’s” as celebrities walked the Red Carpet on their way into the Kodak Theatre to be entertained by emcee Billy Crystal. The E! Network began its coverage of the Oscars at noon, offering six hours of buildup to the arrival of the stars for the awards ceremony. Thousands of fans, for whom following the lives of others is important, sat in specially constructed stands to catch all the action. Thus, gawking and gossiping in the presence of glitter and glamour has now become an all-day event.

Why they did this is a mystery of interest only to tweedy professors of sociology and anthropology in the musty halls of the academy. It’s likely that there is no more profound explanation than that these fans wanted to see whether Selma Hayek’s neckline plunged all the way to Tierra Del Fuego, or whether Russell Crowe is really a “hunk in a funk” as sometimes described, or whether anyone would dress up as a swan, or an armadillo. And after Annette Benning in 2001, and Catherine Zeta-Jones in 2002, they may have wondered who would be doing a pregnant duck-walk up to the podium this year.

Those watching on television stayed glued to the tube for a glimpse of Nicole Kidman, Colin Farrell, Kate Hudson, Elijah Wood, Reese Witherspoon and others.

Flashbulbs popped and the paparazzi shot pics for the covers of People, Us and The National Enquirer. Interviewers stuck microphones into celebrity faces and asked stupid questions, to which they received mostly stupid answers. Some members of the media got downright nasty — if not perceptive — as Joan Rivers did when she called one rock star’s wife an “idiot.”

People actually enjoy this stuff?

Fact is, tons of fans get a thrill from watching their favorite stars on the Red Carpet, and the Academy Awards show has become the most-watched television event in the world, drawing nearly a billion viewers. A billion. About one in every six members of the human race is glued to the TV on Oscar night.

Glitter, glamour, gossip. Seems we just can’t get enough.

Not that this is anything new. Think of today, Palm Sunday, as a sort of pre-show for Holy Week. A superstar was coming to town, so the people of Jerusalem spread their cloaks on the road (Luke 19:36). The crowds waved branches of palm trees (John 12:13). A major event was under way, a Passover Festival that drew about 2.5 million pilgrims to Jerusalem; you could say without too much exaggeration that the city was electrified with Oscar-night enthusiasm.

Jesus was aware of this, and knew exactly what he was getting into. He expected a hero’s welcome on Palm Sunday, but he also knew how this was all going to turn out. He had been alluding to it for weeks, to the dismay of his disciples. What they say about Hollywood was probably true in Jerusalem as well: “People in Hollywood are always touching you — not because they like you, but because they want to see how soft you are before they eat you alive.”

Tough town.

The gospel of Luke also tells us that Jesus and his disciples did all their own advance work. He sent two disciples ahead of him to acquire a colt, and said to them, “If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it’” (19:31). Just as Jesus predicted, the owners of the colt asked that very question, but they were silenced when the disciples explained, “The Lord needs it.”

The point of Palm Sunday is that the Celebrity Christ is given the celebrity treatment as he enters Jerusalem. All the expected elements are in place: He makes a royal entrance, in a procession associated with powerful kings and conquering generals. He is escorted by the citizens of Jerusalem and “the whole multitude of the disciples” (v. 37). They wave palm branches, praise him for his deeds of power, and sing hymns of acclamation, crying out, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven” (v. 38). He rides on a colt, on the foal of a donkey, just as King Solomon did before his coronation — although Jesus’ choice of a donkey could also mean that he is a bringer of peace. If Jesus wanted a fight, he would have charged in on a stallion, a war horse, the first-century equivalent of a Hummer H2.

So Jesus is a superstar, complete with the “three G’s” of glitter, glamour and gossip. He’s got the glitter of a royal entrance, the glamour of waving palm branches and even the gossip associated with his disciples and the borrowed colt. There is a lot of buzz about this celebrity superstar as he enters the Holy City to pick up his prize.

But here’s the twist: His prize is a cross — and he knew it.

Like modern celebrities, Jesus is not only idolized, he is also picked apart. He’s feelin’ the love on Sunday; feelin’ the disappointment on Monday and the rage on Friday. The machinery that kills him on Friday begins to operate on Sunday. As the disciples sing praises, the Pharisees begin to shout, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” But Jesus refuses to do this, replying, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out” (vv. 39-40).

>From this point on, the chatter about Jesus becomes increasingly negative. People sense that he is not interested in driving out the oppressive Romans. They notice that he travels with a band of unarmed disciples, not a cell of terrorist operatives, as did Barabbas, for example. They hear him speak of coming wars and persecutions, not of glorious victories and times of prosperity. The chief priests, scribes and leaders of the people start to look for a way to kill Jesus (19:47), and by the end of the week the people themselves are shouting, “Crucify, crucify him!” (23:21). Luke tells us that the Roman governor can find no ground for the sentence of death, but the crowd keeps demanding that Jesus should be crucified. In the end, the governor grants them their wish (23:22-25).

Jesus is killed on Friday because he fails to live up to human fantasies. He gets picked apart like Costner on a good day; savaged like a starlet in a swan suit.

And let’s face it: We tend to complain as well. We live in a “What-Have-You-Done-For-Me-Lately?” sort of ethos. We expect that even the slightest display of Christian religiosity gets us a pass to Easy Street. This is not the Jesus of the gospels who calls us to embrace our own cross, as he did his, and follow him.

Let’s let Jesus be Jesus – not the superstar we want him to be. The message of this day of Palm Branches and Red Carpets is that Jesus Christ is Lord, not a La-La Land celebrity.

If you’re ready to let Jesus step off the Red Carpet and simply be himself, be prepared for a life-changing lesson. Jesus is not interested in glitter, glamour and gossip, but he is interested in grace, giving and goodness.

We are saved “by grace” (Ephesians 2:8). It is his charis that makes it possible for us to live in a “state of grace.” We are children of grace, and but for that grace, only God knows where we’d be.

He was all about giving. He gave of himself. He who was rich became poor that we might be rich. He gave until there was no more to give.

He was all about goodness. The essential goodness of Jesus, unparalleled by anyone before him or after him, testifies to the life to which we are called. When he saw the crowds as sheep not having a shepherd, he was moved with compassion — he became almost physically sick, so great was his love.

Let’s give Jesus the palm branch treatment, but let’s not make this a one Sunday wonder. His grace, his giving and his goodness compel us to change our behavior, not just pat him on the back, or complain behind his back.

Commentary

Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, depicted here in Luke 19:28-40, is richly evocative of Old Testament passages related to kingship in ancient Israel. There are at least five separate images from the Old Testament echoed here which call to mind the coronation of Israelite kings and the divine covenant between God and the royal representative of the Israelite people.

As the scene opens, Jesus has just come from Jericho, up the Judean desert road that leads to Jerusalem from the east. He arrives in Bethphage and Bethany, two small towns just on the eastern slope of the Mount of Olives, and dispatches two of his disciples to locate a colt (Greek: pwloV). Both Mark 11:2 and Luke 19:30 refer to the animal in question simply as a “colt,” which sounds to the English ear like a young horse. The Greek term pwloV, however, has a broad application which includes the young of many large animals — similar to the English use of the word calf. Matthew 21:2, however, tells us that there is an adult animal with the colt which is specifically a donkey (Greek: onoV). In this way, and also by citing the verse itself, Matthew makes explicit that this episode in Christ’s life is a fulfillment of a prophecy found in Zechariah 9:9. This is the first of the five Old Testament allusions in the scene.

According to Zechariah 9:9, the promised savior and king of Jerusalem will be a humble monarch who enters the city riding on a donkey. Matthew’s use of both terms pwloV and onoV, is a literal counterpart to the parallelism in the Hebrew which uses the term hamor, “male donkey,” and then the term ‘ayir ben atonot, “male wild donkey, the offspring of female domestic donkeys.” Both Mark and Luke catch the Hebrew’s implication that this was an untrained animal by noting that the colt had never been ridden. The Septuagint of Zechariah 9:9 underscores the humility of the promised rider by describing the animal chosen as a upozugioV, a “beast of burden.”

The fact that the animal was a donkey and not a horse, however, is not necessarily what would have made its royal rider appear humble in the eyes of Zechariah’s contemporaries. It is the attitude of the rider and not the animal he is riding on that makes his humility apparent. Why? Because the ancient kings of Judah were not originally horse riders. The nation lived mostly in the hill country where they would be safe from the chariots driven by their warring neighbors, the Egyptians and Assyrians. Thus the Israelite army and her kings preferred mules and donkeys as mounts because of their sure-footedness on hilly mountain terrain. The fact that the donkey or the mule was, actually, the preferred royal animal of the Judean kings is made clear in the second Old Testament allusion in this passage, namely 1 Kings 1:32-35, the coronation of the literal son of David, King Solomon.

In 1 Kings 1:32-35, David instructs Nathan the prophet, and Zadok the priest, and Benaiah the commander of his army to take Solomon, lead him down to the base of the Mount of Olives, and place him on David’s own mule. They are to anoint him king, blow the trumpet and shout “Long live King Solomon,” lead him into the city, and set him on David’s throne. In this passage it is clear to see that what happens to Jesus on Palm Sunday is a direct parallel to Solomon’s enthronement ceremony.

A third royal image in this passage is that of the crowd throwing garments on the road before Jesus. This calls to mind 2 Kings 9:6-13, the inauguration of Jehu, destroyer of Ahab’s dynasty and claimant to the throne of the Northern Kingdom. In this passage, Jehu is anointed by a prophet but does not seem to take the prophet’s declaration of his royal destiny seriously. When he is questioned about what the prophet said to him in private before he fled the scene, Jehu almost offhandedly says, “He said ‘I anoint you king over Israel,’” at which point everyone standing around takes their cloaks off and spreads them under Jehu’s feet.

The fourth Old Testament allusion in this passage is one that only Luke makes. As the disciples come down from the Mount of Olives, they begin to praise God “for all the deeds of power they had seen.” Testifying to the great acts of God is something that Israel traditionally did as part of their covenant renewal ceremonies. Moses, before he begins to give the law in Deuteronomy, spends several chapters describing what great deeds God has done for the nation. Similarly, Joshua, Samuel and Solomon also list God’s deeds of power prior to charging the nation to renew their covenant with Yahweh (Joshua 23-24; 1 Samuel 12; 1 Kings 8). The covenant which God established with David’s house, however, was an eternal promise of adoption, whereby the king of the covenant people would be considered the adopted son of God (2 Samuel 7:14). Thus, the relationship between the people and the Davidic royal house involved renewal of three covenants, those between God and the people, between God and the king and between the people and the king.

Finally, the fifth Old Testament reference in this passage is an allusion to Psalm 118:26. In the Hebrew version of the Psalm, the verse reads, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the LORD. We bless you from the house of the LORD.” Perhaps because the crowd cheering Jesus is waiting near the house of the Lord, on the Temple Mount, or perhaps because of the royal imagery elsewhere in the occasion, Luke supplies the word “king” in the quotation of the psalm. Mark, Matthew and John all also make the royal reference explicit, but they do so by adding other phrases with slightly different wordings.

It is clear that none of this royal imagery was lost on those in the crowd. The Pharisees obviously know what is being implied because they urge Jesus to silence the crowd. Should the Romans come to understand the symbolism of the occasion, the whole crowd could be in danger, in addition to Jesus himself. On this rare occasion, however, Jesus does not prevent the crowd from hailing him as they would a king — as a rightful Davidic heir to the throne. However, in the days to come he would once again refuse any claim to earthly kingship, and follow instead, the peculiar path of his own destiny that led, not to the throne, but to the cross.

Animating Illustrations

A contemporary temptation in popular theology — and the rage in Christian publishing — is to put Jesus into a coat and tie to teach a leadership seminar. The Sermon on the Mount may be replaced by the Sermon from the Top Floor Corner Office. Jesus’ disciples become his management team. The Bible becomes the strategic plan. Jesus the Savior remains, to be sure. But now, meet Jesus the Mentor.

It’s very easy to reclothe Jesus in contemporary images to meet current needs rather than to let Jesus be Jesus .… The temptation is to impose our own agenda on the biblical text instead of being challenged by it.

—John Throop, “Jesus and his management team,” Christianity Today,
October 6, 1997, Ctlibrary.com.

Plenty of sexy outfits, expensive jewels and anti-anxiety drugs roll across the Oscar Red Carpet every year. It takes time and money to appear relaxed and glamorous at what Hollywood fashion king Bob Mackie calls “the most terrifying, neurosis-making event of the year.” The dress and demeanor of movie stars are often more talked about by Oscar’s TV viewers than the awards themselves.

To cope with this reality without having heart palpitations, many stars walk the Red Carpet armed with an array of prescription drugs in pockets and evening bags to ease their nerves, celebrity physicians told Reuters News Service on March 20, 2002.

Celebrity biographer and former monk Donald Spoto (author of Diana: The Last Year) applies his impressive research skills to the life of Jesus [in his book The Hidden Jesus]. From the get-go, Spoto makes it clear that he’s willing to upend many of the dominant beliefs about Jesus. For example, Spoto asserts that Jesus was born in Nazareth, not the little town of Bethlehem. (Matthew and Luke apparently placed their accounts of the birth in Bethlehem, the home of King David, in order to substantiate the belief that Jesus descended from the line of David.) And so it goes, with Spoto stating that the virginal conception should not be literally interpreted, that there is no evidence of an unusually bright star around the time of Jesus’ birth, and that Jesus was not an only child, but in fact the eldest of seven.

Fortunately, Spoto maintains a respectful and pensive tone throughout — a welcome departure from the tawdry details of some of his celebrity biographies.

—Gail Hudson, review of The Hidden Jesus, Amazon.com. Retrieved
October 17, 2003.

Gina Gershon plays the character Jacki in the movie Prey for Rock & Roll (2003), a cynical rocker determined to make it on the L.A. punk scene. Having grown up in a musical family, Gershon is convinced that rock stars have more fun than movie stars. “The thing about musicians is that you can do something really wild and the press is all over it, and people are like ‘Yeah, man, awesome!’” she tells Maxim magazine (October 2003). “If an actor does that, it’s the end of your career. I mean, actors have all kinds of rules they have to abide by, rules of behavior and all that. So, yeah, I think it’s true. Musicians definitely have more fun.”

Jesus enters Jerusalem, cleanses the temple — and it’s the end of his career.

Television, early in its flickering life … broadcast the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings. For 36 days the camera mercilessly deconstructed Sen. Joseph McCarthy — who, ironically, had first achieved celebrity (or “well-knownness”) by manipulating the media. Day after day, television broadcast McCarthy’s slow dissolve. One housewife told a reporter that, as the days of televised hearings wore on, “I just started to know more about him ... and I became afraid of such a man, that the power he had was terrible.” Here was more than political spectacle: Here was the media showing that it could create or destroy with equanimity.

—Amy Henderson, “Media and the rise of celebrity culture,” Organization of American Historians Magazine of History 6, Spring 1992, Oah.org.

Few of us would want to go back to the days of three networks dictating what we see, but within that universe, millions of people were introduced to the civilizing forces of history (Alistair Cooke’s America), culture (Arturo Toscanini’s concerts) and politics (the 1960 political conventions). Entertainment programs charted the shifting moral center of the country, from Lucille Ball trying everything in her power to escape drudgery to Mary Tyler Moore blazing a successful career path.

But once we lost those common dreams, television had to go to the extremes rather than to the center, appealing to our worse selves rather than our better selves to get us to pay attention. The Sopranos is an excellent television series, but, let’s face it, we’re not watching for those psychological breakthroughs between Tony and his shrink or moments of tenderness between him and his family. We watch for the Gladiator moments — to see who’s killing whom and how.

Hence Survivor. Isn’t it ironic that the most communal show in years, in the sense of bringing the country back to the national television hearth, is an out-and-out celebration of the social Darwinism and I’m-only-in-it-for-myself values that have replaced the we’re-all-in-this-together values that pertained to liberal democracies before the 1980s, when the West turned to Reagan-Kohl-Thatcherism.

—Ed Siegel, “Apocalypse not,” Boston Globe Magazine, October 22, 2000, Boston.com/globe/magazine.

Jeff Powell is the pastor of a new inner city church called Destiny Place. According to Christian Single magazine (January 2003), he is convinced that the stripper who’s a single mom isn’t going to visit a Sunday school class, so the church is going to have to reach out and go to her. Powell is not interested in a building, but in connecting people through a shared vision, through Web-based structures and through gatherings throughout the area.

This is the kind of community that Jesus knew.

Surveys suggest the family is a major issue for the vast majority of Americans. The mention of “family values” often precedes a rehearsed list of hot-button social issues. And for many Americans, those family values are synonymous with Christian values. But are they really?

Check out America’s evangelical subculture. Hundreds of Christian-oriented books and magazines contain the word “family” in their titles. Hundreds of ministries and churches incorporate “family” into their names. Church gyms are now called family life centers.

Even professional sports teams get into the act. The St. Louis Cardinals periodically host Christian Family Day at the ballpark, when parents can bring their children to see sanctified sluggers like J.D. Drew play baseball on a day when no beer is sold at (note the irony) Busch Stadium.

What would Jesus say about all this?

Many people would be surprised to learn that the same Savior who condemned divorce and revered marriage nonetheless valued some things more than family.

—Rob Marus, “Jesus’ family values,” December 2001, Faith and Values Web Site, Faithandvalues.com.

Scarlett Johansson, identified as the “Hot Actress” for 2003 by Rolling Stone Magazine (October 2, 2003), describes herself as “Enthusiastic, a little selfish, compassionate, a New Yorker, very passionate … should I be saying, ‘Beautiful, luscious, sexy?’” She laughs with the confidence that comes from being, at age 18, one of her generation’s finest actresses.

Perhaps you saw her opposite Bill Murray in the movie Lost in Translation. An excellent performance. But what will happen to her after several years on the red carpet? Will she remain a well-adjusted young woman?

How often we destroy the celebrities who fail to live up to our fantasies.

Speaking of being servants: Six-tear-old Mary Jane was looking at photographs of her parents’ wedding. Her father described the ceremony and tried to explain its meaning.

Suddenly the light dawned. “Oh,” Mary Jane exclaimed, “is that when you got Mother to come work for us?”

Gracious God, you call us into the vineyard to labor.

You call us into schools and offices, into nursing homes and stores, into factories and onto the streets, to labor with you, gathering your harvest in all times and places.

You call us wherever there is need of your healing word.

You call us wherever people hunger and thirst for righteousness.

You call us wherever people mourn or bow beneath the yoke of oppression.

Grant us the faithfulness to answer your call whenever we hear it, not troubling to judge whether we were among the first called or the last; let us simply come to your side to work with our brothers and sisters to welcome all people into your commonwealth of peace. Amen.

—Wesley Taylor, Tualatin United Methodist Church, Tualatin, Oregon.

Definition of servanthood: Using your life to help others meet their goals.

The Power of Choice

Choose to love — rather than hate.
Choose to smile — rather than frown.
Choose to build — rather than destroy.
Choose to persevere — rather than quit.
Choose to praise — rather than gossip.
Choose to heal — rather than wound.
Choose to give — rather than grasp.
Choose to act — rather than delay.
Choose to pray — rather than despair.
Choose to forgive — rather than curse.

—Author unknown.

“We lead by serving and we serve by leading.”

We lead by serving. Servanthood and servitude are often confused, but they are not the same.

Servitude is imposed; Servanthood is embraced.

Servitude enslaves; Servanthood emancipates.

Servitude denigrates; Servanthood uplifts.

Servitude crushes; Servanthood fulfills.

Servitude despairs; Servanthood rejoices!

—A. Roy Medley, “As One Who serves,” American Baptists in Mission, Winter 2002, Abc-usa.org.

Children's Sermon

Roll out a red carpet in front of the children. Ask them what it means to “roll out the red carpet,” and then mention that red carpets are usually reserved for very important people. Ask if the people of Jerusalem rolled out the red carpet for Jesus when he entered the city on Palm Sunday. Let them know that they didn’t use red carpets, exactly, but they did something every bit as good — they “kept spreading their cloaks on the road” (Luke 19:36). Ask the children if they would put their own coats on the ground for just anybody, and, if not, what kind of special person would they allow to step on their coats. Remark that it would have to be someone VERY special! Point out that the people of Jerusalem believed that Jesus was a very important person: He was “the king who comes in the name of the Lord” (v. 38), the one they thought that God was sending to rule their country and drive out all the bad people who were in charge. Roll up your red carpet and put it away, and explain that the people of Jerusalem didn’t keep their cloaks on the road for long — they quickly turned against Jesus when he made it clear that his kingdom was not in this world. Encourage the children to follow Jesus even when other people turn away from him, because, if they do, then Jesus will roll out the red carpet for them, and welcome them into his kingdom in heaven.

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