Luke 19:28-40
April 8, 2001
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church of San Francisco.
When I got my first computer, the first game that I played was Solitaire. Using my mouse, I can move the cards along the piles and begin to move them up on top according to the four suits. It’s a beautiful sight to see when the cards start to cascade down after I have won. But the little thing that I really like that come on when you are least expecting it, is the little happy face sun with sunglasses!
For awhile these yellow happy faces appeared everywhere! We tell each other, “Have a happy day.” And some of you may remember when Rev. Ronny Lanier spoke at Youth Camp some years ago that she loves happy faces. She even has a long dress covered with these happy faces. In fact, she signs all of her letters with one.
Recently, a number of sociologists have been measuring the level of happiness among the citizens of various nations. When asked to rate their happiness level, the Irish turn out to be just the happiest people in the world. It’s not Disneyland after all! The Republic of Ireland tops the happiness list, with the people of Northern Ireland (real surprise) a close second. They are followed by Britain, Norway, Denmark, and at number six, the United States.
The most unhappy people are the Spaniards, West Germans, the Japanese, and at the bottom, the reportedly miserable Italians. One factor it seems that contribute to happiness is whether or not the nation has recently lost a war. Thus we find the defeated Japanese, West Germans, and Italians at the bottom feeling bad.
Affluence seems to contribute to overall life satisfaction. When asked to rate their satisfaction with life as a whole, the Danes, Swedes, Swiss, and Norwegians topped the list. But money alone doesn’t produce happiness. Although the Irish earn only about a third of the per capita income of the United States, they manage to be a good deal happier.
The Irish are positively delirious when compared to the Germans, even though individual Germans are almost three times wealthier. The Japanese are tied for the last place with the Greeks, even though they earn over twice as much per capita.
Some people have theorized that the more religious a people are, the happier they are. So as we walk our final steps in the Lenten journey toward Golgotha, we might ask, “How much happiness could be produced among our citizens if we were a bit more Christian?”
Hosanna, Hosanna!
On this bright sunny day, Jesus sitting on a mule just like his mother did to prepare for the birth of a king, enters the holy city, Jerusalem as a king. They took palm branches and coats to spread on the road for Jesus to come by. The multitude of disciples and people praise God joyfully by shouting,
“Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes
in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!”
It was a happy time. You can imagine how the little kids were waving palm branches, laughing, excited to see what was going on. A parade going through town is a joyous and happy time.
But in the background during this happy occasion, we know something else is about to happen. “Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” Although today is Palm Sunday, it is also in the church calendar as “Passion Sunday.”
On this day, Jesus enters Jerusalem to the accompaniment of the joyous shouts of the crowds. He was hailed “king” by those who thought they knew who Jesus was. But before the week is over, he shall be handed over to the hands of cruel men who shall torture him and put him to death. In one moment, we have a parade. And in an another moment, Jesus is accused, betrayed, arrested, tried, whipped, and crucified. Our parade it seems will soon become a funeral procession. We thought being a Christian would make us happy.
Karl Marx once said the true happiness of a people is the abolition of religion. How much easier it would be without the stuffy old church and crabby old preachers like me around, particularly at times like Lent, reminding us of sin, death, suffering, and injustice. Being a Christian is not all happiness after all according to the world’s definition. It is full of unhappiness.
At some point in our modern world, Christian people stopped trying to be saved because they know about the pain, the suffering, the passion. What was once Palm Sunday suddenly turns to become Passion Sunday. So we began wanting only to feel a bit better. We forsake the quest for salvation and instead wanted simply to feel better. No wonder, then, that our age became plagued by drugs, sexual promiscuity, and consumerism—even if they solved none of our problems, at least they took away some of the pain. We want to put on a happy face.
Painful Journey
In the last few hours of Jesus life, he had his final meal trying to tell his disciples who he was and to prepare them for what lay ahead. While Jesus was thinking and wanting to teach the disciples the meaning of serving, the disciples were only thinking about which one of them would have the highest position in his new government. It was painful for Jesus to see this. At that point, Jesus washed their feet.
Jesus predicted that when trouble begins, they would desert him and scatter away. When Jesus went up to pray, the disciples fell asleep and left Jesus all alone. It was painful for Jesus to be left alone at such a time as this.
Then Judas came with a crowd carrying clubs and swords to arrest him. When Peter was spotted following Jesus while he was being tried by the Sanhedrins, Peter denied Jesus three times. It was painful for Jesus to hear Peter say that he never met him before.
Before Pilate and Herod, an innocent man took the place of a guilty man. Jesus was flogged with a whip that was made with pieces of metal, glass, and bone embedded into the leather cords causing large cuts. It was terribly painful—for Jesus was fully human just like us.
Barely able to walk after the flogging, Jesus was unable to carry the cross beam through the streets of the city that earlier praised him as king.
They took Jesus outside of the city to a place known as Golgotha, which means “place of the skull,” either because it was shaped like a skull or because skulls could be found there from previous executions. His wrists were fastened to the cross since the hand would not have supported his weight. A nail was driven through both feet after he was lifted unto the pole. Two thieves were crucified beside him.
Jesus was crucified at about nine o’clock in the morning. Three hours later a storm arose, bringing darkness over the land. At three o’clock in the afternoon, Jesus cried,
“Father, into your hands, I commend my Spirit.”
Having said this, Jesus died a painful death.
Who said, “How much happiness could be produced if we were a bit more Christian?” To be a Christian is a painful and sad journey. We came into church this morning singing praises of “Hosanna, hosanna!” and now we are hearing, “Crucify him, crucify him!”
Confronting Our Sin
When we try to put a happy face on everything, to reassure ourselves that things are not as bad as they seem, that we are basically good people who are making progress on our own, we are practicing deception. Then we are led to the cross to see where our “goodness” has gotten us.
We find ourselves joining with the rest of the crowd shouting, “Crucify him, crucify him.” When we stand at the foot of the cross and realized the sad events leading up to it, we confront the depth of our sin, our rebellion, and our sad state of life. It is not a happy moment.
When Jesus was dragging himself to Golgotha, a great number of people followed him, and among them were women who were beating their breasts and wailing for him. Jesus turned to them and said,
“Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for
your children. For the days are surely coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are
the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.’
Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us,’ and to the hills,
‘Cover us.’ For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when
it is dry?”
Today we witness the act of baptism as a happy celebration. But it took courage born out of faith in the love and righteousness of God, for Cliff, Dana, and David to be honest about who they are. If we only think about being a Christian as a “feel good” religion then we have glossed over what Jesus went through for us.
The Scriptures forces us to look at ourselves and makes us see the deception that we have about what is happiness. We can’t save ourselves even if we want to. We can’t give or buy ourselves happiness. Only when we painfully move toward salvation by walking behind Jesus as he moves toward the cross will we be truly happy.
Remember the two thieves who were crucified beside him? Karl Barth while visiting and serving the Lord’s Supper in a prison said,
“Jesus died precisely for these two criminals who were crucified on his right and on his left and went to death with him. He did not die for the sake of a good world, he died for the sake of an evil world, not for the pious, but for the godless, not for the just, but for the unjust, for the deliverance, the victory and the joy of all, that they may have life.”
Then Barth took bread, and broke it, and gave it to the prisoners. And he said, “The body of Christ, given for you.”
The scandal of the gospel simply put is “Jesus saves.” That’s what, ‘Hosanna’ means ‘God, save us.’ Those who are saved are not the spiritually strong and morally superior, but those who are criminals, and those who find themselves in trouble, and those who are not deceiving themselves of what happiness is but is honest with the reality that we sin. And when we are honest with our situation, God will reach out to you with forgiveness and grace so that you might be healed, forgiven, and restored to faithfulness.
Sadness Leads to Unspeakable Joy
When people become Christian, can we increase happiness in the world? Yes, but it begins, not in happiness from having more money or winning wars or drawing more yellow happy faces. It begins when we realize that we are first in grief and sadness from being lost from God.
Grief is the first step toward rebirth, for what is grief but the realization that things aren’t right?
But our world resists being sad. It wants us to put on a happy face. And we want so badly to find happiness in our lives.
A few years ago, a pastor of a local church down the street placed an array of Lenten crosses out in the front of his little church, draped all in black for Good Friday. Soon the minister received an angry call from someone at the chamber of commerce: “Look preacher, we’re getting complaints about those crosses out in your churchyard. Now, inside the church, who cares? But out front, where everybody can see them, they are offensive. The retired people don’t like them; they find them depressing. The tourists will not like it either. It will be bad business. People come down here to get happy, not to get depressed.”
There’s no Easter Sunday without Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.
There’s no change of heart without denial, betrayal, doubt, and fear.
There’s no resurrection without crucifixion.
There would not have been any baptism this morning if there were no honest realization that we are sinners and are in need of God’s forgiveness and grace.
There are no true happy faces until we stop deceiving ourselves about how good we are and are led to the cross of Jesus to confront the depth of our sin, our rebellion, and our sad condition.
But there will be many happy faces here next Sunday because in humility, we believe that God saves us, “Hosanna! He is Risen!”
Let us pray.
Dear Lord, we pray for an honest understanding of our weaknesses and our sinfulness. We praise you and thank you for the suffering that you endured showing us that we too must be honest about our own lives. Forgive us, dear Lord for we ask for your love and acceptance. Help us to put on a happy face only when we have walked the journey to the cross. We pray in the name of Christ, our Savior. Amen.