God Loves - Like That!

God Loves (Palm Sunday, 2002)

"And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death - even death on a cross." Philippians 2:8

Every Passion/Palm Sunday the epistle reading is from the second chapter of Philippians, which is the earliest known hymn of the church. The apostle Paul is quoting it and it is clearly familiar enough to his readers in Philippi that he doesn't have to give attribution or say, "as people have said," or words to that effect. Palm Sunday is the day of Jesus' "coronation", but this is unlike any other coronation that ever was before or since.

Jesus comes riding into the holy city of Jerusalem in what one Palm Sunday hymn calls "lowly pomp", riding on a donkey, and the crowds who greeted him, and the little children, waved lulab or palm branches in the air and threw their cloaks before the donkey and shouted "hosanna", which is "save us, we beseech Thee." One might almost think it a mockery of a "real" coronation, like the coronation of Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. But there's no mockery here. The crowds are genuine and this is what they have to show their love - palm branches and cloaks and loud cheers. And their "king" comes in riding on a lowly beast of burden, his eyes straight forward, like flint, as the prophet Isaiah said. He is the promised Son of David, the Messiah.

Years ago when I lived in Iran I saw the Shah of Iran in a motorcade with Queen Elizabeth of England. One of the Shah's titles was "King of Kings" - Shahanshah - and it would never have occurred to the Shahanshah to go in a motorcade in anything but the longest and sleekest of limousines. Jesus, we know, is the true King of Kings and he enters the city on the back of a donkey.

What does it all mean? That's where the epistle to the Philippians comes in, and this great hymn. The eternal Son of God, who entered this world as a human being in Christ, born in our likeness, humbling himself by divesting himself of his divine glory, and then when all the forces of evil closed in on him he did not try to escape but went all the way, slowly but resolutely up to Jerusalem and then to the cross, because this was the only way to do something about the terrible gulf that existed between sinful humans and a holy God.

Jesus himself gave a clue: Those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

J. B. Phillips wrote a little book called "Plain Christianity". When we realize that from beginning to end this is God in action, God taking the rap, then, says J. B. Phillips, "everyone who stops trying to 'put up a case' or to justify themselves, and accepts this terrific Act of God finds the gulf is bridged!…The fear of God is replaced by a deep sense of gratitude."

"I can't explain it," says Phillips. "For nineteen centuries people in all parts of the world have found the love of God convincingly demonstrated in the death of Christ on the Cross. Think for a moment of God stripped of all His power and majesty, down in the sweat and dust and agony of human living. Think of him at the last refusing to accept a celestial rescue party so that He might demonstrate how far he would go to bring people to himself, to bring you and me to himself." The Scottish theologian James Denney used to hold up a cross and declare: "God Loves - Like That!"

You can get mad at a God who stays aloof and people who don't know the gospel often do, but you can't get mad at a God who gets so involved as to actually become one of us and then go all the way to the cross for us. "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself." It's difficult to avoid loving a God who acts like that. And it certainly makes you feel you want to do all you can for a God like that.

It this so hard to understand? I don't think so. Especially in 2002. Here in New York. Jesus said, "Greater love has no one than this than to lay down his life for his friends." It has been over six months but the many images of heroism and sacrifice from the great tragedy of the World Trade Center are still in our collective consciousness. About two weeks ago they recovered the body of John W. Perry at ground zero. When the new minister at First Presbyterian Church, Manhattan, came in September, the Rev. Jon Walton, one of his first responsibilities was to lead the congregation in the Memorial service for Mr. Perry, and the huge church was packed.

Mr. Perry was a member of the police department. He was also an actor, a lawyer, a political activist, a volunteer social worker, an athlete, and a linguist. One person at the service said he had "an unlimited future". He had gone that fateful day to file his retirement papers at Police Headquarters, when the first plane hit. He was dressed in civilian clothes but he bought a golf shirt with the NYPD logo and rushed to the scene where he helped people escape until he himself was caught in the collapse. His mother said after the Memorial service at the church: "It was just part of John's nature to be there. This big man standing there, directing people to safety. It was the culmination of a lifetime of wanting to help." At the service they read the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Something within us responds powerfully to these stories. There was another story just last week of the only policewoman to die in the tragedy, doing the same thing John Perry did, helping people to safety. We treasure these stories because they show how much good can come out of evil and we ourselves want to be better people because of them. We want to be purer, to live more nobly, to have a grander vision of the purpose of life, because we have seen people who have gone all the way, giving of their utmost, then dying not for greed or gain but out of their love for others. And we treasure these stories because, like the story of Palm Sunday, they show us how to live through adversity with eyes straight forward, trusting in God.

The Christian message, plain and simple, is this is what God in Christ is all about. How much more will we want to live pure and more nobly if we know it is God himself who in Christ is entering that holy but fear-filled city long ago, just as John Perry entered a towering inferno, only in the case of Christ he is going there because it is the only way to rescue us from the mess we have all gotten ourselves in. God will not let us go and will not let us perish by ourselves but must effect a rescue even it requires sacrifice. In Christ God helps us to safety, at the cost of himself.

Some would "counsel" God to leave well enough alone, stay out, don't take a risk, etc. But the God of Christian faith will not listen to such counsel, but rushes in - no, rides in, on the back of a donkey, with the lulab strewn in his path, and little children shouting hosannas, his eyes straight ahead, like flint.

Ride on, King Jesus, ride on.