Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

When I was in high school, I was a member of a small mission start congregation in Dallas where my parents were both pastors. One of our church council members, Don, was a very talented man. He played the piano, wrote some amazing poetry, and was just an all-around nice man to all of the teens. One week Don disappeared. He missed several meetings that he normally attended. None of us knew, until that time, that Don had a mental disease for which he needed medicine daily. Don had stopped taking his medicine and was roaming the streets of Dallas in a hellish, psychotic nightmare from which he could not awaken.

One night he called our house and said a lot of things that just didn’t make sense, but in the midst of the conversation he mentioned where he was. My dad quickly drove to the place named, but when he arrived, Don ran from him. My dad chased after him in the car and on foot for several hours until he finally got Don in the car and took him to the hospital. One of the symptoms of Don’s disease was that he believed he did not need any medication. And when he was not on his medication, he didn’t think that he needed any help and resisted any assistance. Don did not think he needed any help, but clearly he did.

We all live with similar illusions even though they may not be clinically diagnosed. We wander aimlessly in a world that often seems like a bad nightmare. We declare that we are self sufficient and that we don’t need help from anyone. We tell ourselves: We can manage! We can get through this on our own!

Today we hear the message some of you might recognize from Star Trek: “Resistance is futile.” God comes to us and enters our lives whether we like it or not. On Palm Sunday we celebrate, remember and reenact Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. We wave palm branches, we process, we sing songs, and we begin Holy Week. In all of this we hear, once again, about a God who does not stay away, but comes to us where we are. This is not a God who sets things in motion and then stands at a distance. This God comes riding into the city, into the Temple, and into our lives. Hymn 121 in the Lutheran Book of Worship is “Ride On, Ride On in Majesty.”

Ride on ride on in majesty!
Hear all the tribes hosanna cry;
O Savior meek, your road pursue,
with palms and scattered garments strewed.

Jesus rides on, right into our lives even when we don’t think we need him, in ways we might not expect, in the midst of all our pain, giving us new life.

The Jews of Jesus’ day thought they had found their new champion, the new national hero to lead them out from under Roman authority like the Maccabee family had done less than 200 years earlier. In the book of 1 Maccabees, we hear about Simon regaining control of the Jerusalem citadel from the Romans and how the Jews “entered it with praise and palm branches...because a great enemy had been crushed and removed from Israel.” In 2 Maccabees we hear about palm branches being waved after the temple had been recaptured by Judas Maccabeus and his troops. In both instances, the celebration and waving of palm branches followed military victories. With Jesus they waved palms branches as well, and yelled Hosanna, save us, as he entered Jerusalem. Surely they thought they had found their new Judas Maccabeus warrior who had come to help them lead a powerful revolt. Yes, Jesus had come to help and save them, but not in the way they were expecting. The saving they received came in a very different form and it challenged their understanding of how God was acting in the world.

Later the crowds who had been cheering for Jesus changed their tone and yelled, “Crucify him, Crucify him!” And Peter, one of Jesus’ closest disciples, denied ever knowing him. In spite of the change in tone and the outright rejection, however, Jesus rode on, right into their lives and into their hardened hearts.

Ride on, ride on in majesty!
In lowly pomp ride on to die.
O Christ, your triumphs now begin,
O’er captive death and conquered sin.

No, Jesus does not stay away. He doesn’t stay on the outskirts of town. He doesn’t keep his distance. He comes right into the heart of the city, the Temple, and looks around at everything. Jesus enters into the heart of our lives and sees all of the muck, the pain and shame. We live in a world, however, where proper appearance is everything. You turn to the section of the paper so-called “Health and Wellness” and there are ads upon ads for plastic surgery, liposuction. We focus on the slick superficial images and rarely see the reality beneath the surface of one anothers’ lives.

Whenever I hear about Jesus riding on a donkey or a colt (as it is told in Mark’s gospel), I think of a story my mother told me about her childhood. She would often look through the pages of the Sears and Roebuck catalog and her eye would always stop on a donkey pulling a cute red cart behind it. (Yes, evidently you could buy livestock through the Sears catalog in those days–go figure.) Well, my mom loved the idea of having a cute little donkey to help her haul things around on the farm especially using that cute little red cart. She begged and begged my grandfather to buy her that cute little donkey in the catalog, and finally he did. When the donkey arrived though, it was not cute or little. It did not have a cart attached to it, it was very dirty, and it smelled just awful. And as hard as she tried, my mom could not get that donkey to move. No matter what she did, it would just stand there fixed and stubborn.

Such is the parable of humanity. We are comfortable getting to know others when they fit into our expectations, our cultural norms, and ideas of appropriateness, but when we scratch the surface and see the messiness and smell the stench, we become frozen and stubborn unable to move deeper into the pain. I once heard a mother whose young daughter had died say that she did not blame others for not coming to visit her. She said that she would not have wanted to experience that kind of pain if she didn’t have to. Today we hear about Jesus riding on, into our lives, seeing us for who we truly are, and dwelling with us in all of our terribly painful places.

Ride on, ride on in majesty!
The winged squadrons of the sky
Look down with sad and wondering eyes,
to see the approaching sacrifice.

Jesus does not stop and remain there only. Jesus rides on before us, as well, giving us hope beyond the pain and grief. After the resurrection, in the Gospel of Mark, we hear that Jesus goes ahead of the disciples to Galilee. Jesus is present with us in all of the shadowy and secret places in our lives, but crosses the valley before us calling out to us and giving us a vision of new life beyond death. We are reminded in Romans 6 that “just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” Jesus experienced death first so that we might know new life on the other side of the grave. Jesus rides on before us, giving us hope and new life.

Ride on ride on in majesty!
Your last and fiercest strife is nigh.
The Father on his sapphire throne.
Awaits his own anointed Son.

This week we too take our spiritual journey to Jerusalem. Will we travel through this week and the weeks ahead suffering alone and resisting the good news of Christ coming into our lives? Or will we be open to the healing our God offers to us? Will we open our arms outstretched like Christ’s, open in our vulnerability and walking through pain with our sisters and brothers? Will we be open to the unexpected saving that comes to us from this unlikely king who rides on to die? Will we see beyond the valley of death and hear his voice of hope echoing to us from beyond?

Ride on, ride on in majesty!
In lowly pomp ride on to die,
Bow your meek head to mortal pain,
Then take, O Christ, your power and reign! Amen.