Sunday, April 13, 2025, Palm Sunday
“Loved to Death”
Psalm 47:1-9; Deuteronomy 32:36-39; Philippians 2:5-11; Luke 23:1-12
Hymns: #442 “All Glory, Laud, and Honor”; #441 “Ride On, Ride On in Majesty”; #444 “No Tramp of Soldier’s Marching Feet”; #443 “Hosanna, Loud Hosanna”
Dear Friends in Christ,
Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus. Amen.
The common complaint: “We don’t want to hear about politics on a Sunday morning!” Someone once told me, “I’m not supposed to talk about politics or religion; but one seeks to rule my body, and the other rules my heart.” We live in a world driven by politics. What the rulers and politicians of this world choose to do affects the wellbeing of all of us, physically, socially, and economically. For Christians, the politics of the world forms the context for our mission. We preach to the world that people have to live in. The same people who complain about “politics in the pulpit” also demand that our sermons be “relevant to everyday life.” I’d go so far as to say that the “separation of church and state” is an artificial construct, even a lie from hell. It’s the devil’s attempt to keep our message weak, shallow, and irrelevant to the world around us. Satan would love to have us always in fear of offending and “crossing the line” on a Sunday morning. (We wouldn’t want to endanger our tax-exempt status!)
But the message we have to proclaim as a Church is meant for just such a broken world. Jesus said the last days of this world would see “brother against brother, and father against child, and kingdom against kingdom.” Some people are so sad and disillusioned about what they see going on in the world that they’ve thrown up their hands, quit following the news, and given up. Some of us are angry about the things we see going on, and justifiably so; but some are expressing their anger in ways that do no one any good – like chanting slogans and carrying hateful signs, or burning a police car, or keying a Tesla.
The famous four horsemen in the Book of Revelation are a metaphor for the long, sad history of this world. First comes the white horseman of covetousness and ambition, the one who wants to rule the whole world. Then follows the red horseman of violence, bloodshed, and warfare. Then, as always happens in war, there follows the black horseman of sickness, hunger, and poverty. Then at last comes the pale horseman, the one the sickly green color of death. Over and over it’s happened that way, for as long as there’s been a world. “Blessed are the peacemakers,” Jesus said; but He never said being a peacemaker for Him would be safe or easy or trouble free. “You will be brought before governors and kings to testify to them,” Jesus said. We can’t do that by staying on the sidelines and pulling the covers over our heads.
Jesus was born into a politically tumultuous world, and political intrigue, conflict, and strife was the setting and context for His ministry. Our Lord didn’t preach in a vacuum; “He was in the world.” To understand what happens in the Passion story, we need to know at least some of what was going on in the world at the time. What kind of mess was Jesus riding into, when He came down from the Mount of Olives into Jerusalem?
What we know about the times, there in the first century A.D., is that most of the inhabited world was ruled by the Ceasars and the mighty Roman Empire. Octavian Augustus Ceasar, the first Roman Emperor, was the one who issued a decree for the whole Roman world to be taxed – a decree that brought Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem – so there’s a political context for Jesus’ birth. Tiberias Ceasar, Octavian’s successor, ruled at the time Jesus preached and was crucified.
The Roman system of government – the Pax Romana, “the Peace of Rome,” it was called – operated on the principle that the nations Rome had conquered and occupied - Israel and Judea among them - had some degree of independence. Keep order in your country, behave yourselves, and pay your taxes to the Empire, and your life can go on much as it did before. But if you rebel, we’ll send in the legions to destroy you. An enforced peace, was the Peace of Rome, if such an arrangement can really be called peace.
The “peace” between the Romans and the Jews was an uneasy one, to say the least. The Romans, depending on who the governor was, had a habit of displaying images of the Emperor in public places, to which most of the Jews objected, considering the image of Ceasar to be a “graven image.” The Romans also required taxes to be paid in the Roman “coin of the realm,” which bore the image and name of Ceasar, which was also a bone of contention for the Jews.
The Jews themselves were divided between those who thought it was wise to be silent and pay the tax, for the sake of peace; and those who were for open rebellion. The Jews had tried to trap Jesus with this very question: “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?” Judea in Jesus’ time was full of Zealots and rebels, who committed acts of terrorism and murdered Roman soldiers and tried to stir up rebellion. Barabbas was one of those, and likely also the thieves who hung beside Jesus on the cross.
And in the middle of all that, there were the Pharisees and Sadducees and Herodians and a few other groups among the Jews, who were embroiled in church politics, which is possibly the ugliest kind of politics of all. The Sadducees were the high priests and rulers of the temple, who didn’t believe in a coming resurrection, or in much of God’s Word at all. The Pharisees were the keepers of the Law, the ones who wanted it kept to the letter. There was no love lost between those two groups of men.
Pontius Pilate had been appointed Governor of Judea, which was not exactly a plum assignment. Judea was known as a backwater, home of those rebellious, cantankerous Jews. The Emperor may well have sent Pilate there to punish him. Pilate didn’t like the Jews, and they didn’t like him.
King Herod, Herod Antipas, had been made ruler, or “tetrarch,” over Galilee, after the death of his father Herod the Great. He was given only one fourth of his father’s kingdom. (“Ruler of a fourth” is what “tetrarch” means). His brothers received the other three pieces, which Herod wasn’t happy about. He wanted more, he wanted the whole kingdom, including the part Pilate was in charge of – which explains a bit about why they were enemies and at odds with each other. And that’s just part of the tangled, mixed-up, sinful political mess Jesus rode into, while the crowds were waving palm branches and singing “Hosanna!”
As the part of the passion story we have in our Gospel picks up, the Jews had finally decided it was time for this man Jesus to be gone. They’d paid Judas thirty pieces of silver to betray Him, and had Him arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, and they’d spent the night throwing false accusations at Him. Now it was early morning, and they’d ruled He was worthy of death. “Then the whole assembly rose and led him off to Pilate,” Luke’s Gospel says.
Why were the Jewish leaders compelled to take Jesus to Governor Pilate, instead taking Him out and stoning Him and executing Him themselves? Politics again. One of the rights the Romans reserved for themselves was that only the Roman government had the power of capital punishment. “I have the power to set You free, or the power to crucify You,” Pilate told Jesus. The Jews had to somehow convince Governor Pilate to carry out a sentence they couldn’t legally carry out themselves.
So when they brought Jesus to Pilate, they came with a legal and political argument. “They began to accuse Him, saying, ‘We have found this man subverting our nation.’ ” Subverting (or subversion) means to turn, twist, or distort something away from what it properly ought to be. What were they accusing Jesus of turning and twisting? Nothing to do with God or religion or worship, but with keeping the people from paying their taxes. Pilate’s ears should have perked up at that one. Collecting those taxes, sending revenue back to his superiors in Rome, was the main point of his job, the main thing as a government official he was charged to do; there’d be big trouble for him if the revenue dried up.
The Jews went on: “He opposes payment of taxes to Caesar and claims to be Christ, a king.” There’s another dire political charge, one totally untrue. What would be the consequence of declaring one’s self to be a king, given the political climate? If they could convince Pilate that Jesus intended to be a King, and put Himself over Ceasar, that would constitute treason, and the penalty would be death.
Pilate, hearing about that supposed claim to kingship, immediately sought to find out if the accusation had any basis in fact. So Pilate asked Jesus, “Are you the king of the Jews?” In our NIV, Jesus answers, “Yes, it is as you say;” but literally all He says in the Greek is, “You say.” He’s not giving Pilate anything legal or definitive to latch on to.
He’s saying, “If you say so, Governor.”
“Then Pilate announced to the chief priests and the crowd, ‘I find no basis for a charge against this man.’” Pilate evidently didn’t believe that Jesus was making a claim of kingship. His reply to the Jews, “I find no guilt in this man,” was proper and legal in the Roman system of jurisprudence, an official and formal way of saying, “Case dismissed.”
“But they insisted,” says Luke’s Gospel. "He stirs up the people all over Judea by his teaching. He started in Galilee and has come all the way here." The word for “stir up” means literally “to incite.” The Jews were accusing Him of inciting the people to revolt, of sedition, which is another very serious political charge. When they mentioned that Jesus was a Galilean, though, Pilate saw an opportunity not only to get back to his breakfast, but to take a jab at Herod, his political rival.
Again the politics comes in, and the question between Pilate and Herod of whose jurisdiction was whose and who the Emperor loved best. Pilate was a career politician, a member of the ruling, bureaucrat class of Roman society, where assignments to important posts in the empire, and the pleasant places to live, depended on being in the good graces of the Emperor – on what was called being “a friend of Ceasar.” The Jews used that to finally get Pilate to give in and crucify Jesus, when they called out, “If you release Him, you’re no friend of Ceasar!” An accusation like that could cost him his job, or even his head, if word of it got back to Rome. Herod Antipas also sought to be a “friend of Ceasar.” It’s no surprise that Herod and Pilate were rivals and enemies, jealous and suspicious of one another’s motives, trying to undermine one another, vying for favor and influence in the power circles of Rome.
Herod, according to our Gospel, was “exceedingly glad” to see Jesus. He’s heard about Jesus, and hoped to see Him perform some miracle or sign. But when Herod attempted to interrogate Him, Jesus wouldn’t answer any of his questions. There was no convincing that stubborn, foolish man of anything anyway, so no point in talking to him. The chief priests and the teachers of the law were there again to level their accusations, but Herod was no more interested than Pilate had been. Even Herod recognized a trumped-up charge when he saw one.
“Then Herod and his soldiers ridiculed and mocked him,” our Gospel says. The literal Greek there is, “They set Him at naught.” They disregarded Him, they treated Him with contempt, they regarded Him as a nothing. Who is this guy, that Pilate would send Him to me? He’s no King, He has no power, He’s a nothing; He can’t even conjure up a miracle for me. (Yet “He made Himself nothing,” our Epistle reading says). So denied his chance to see a miracle, Herod found his entertainment elsewhere. He and his soldiers had their fun with Jesus. Then Herod had Him dressed in “bright, shining, splendid apparel” (such as a king would wear) and sent Him back to Pilate.
“That day,” says our Gospel, “Herod and Pilate became friends--before this they had been enemies.” Herod and Pilate became friends that day, they “put away the enmity between themselves,” over what amounts to a shared political joke. The idea that this dirt-poor Galilean preacher, this nothing, this nobody, could King of the Jews, or king of anything, was just ridiculous and hilarious to them. The practical and political world they inhabited would have found the idea absurd as well.
Does the world still see Jesus’ claim to kingship in that way? The notion that that preacher from Nazareth, who walked in the Holy Land all those years ago, was truly a King - and not just the King of Israel, but the King of all creation - is still laughed at and mocked and opposed in this world; especially by those who want kingship and power for themselves and refuse to bend their knees to God.
The idea that God, the King of heaven, the Lord of the universe, would love sinful creatures like us so much, that He’d send His only Son to this place to die for us - that He’d wash our souls in Baptismal water, that He’d feed our souls with His own body and blood - is so hard for many to accept. To humble yourself, and put aside your pride and your ambition and your politics, and confess that Jesus Christ is Lord of all – and that He’s YOUR Lord - is something so many people have a hard time getting over. Jesus is “the stone that makes men stumble and the Rock that makes them fall,” the Scripture says. Please pray for everyone who hasn’t confessed Him yet. Time is short.
This torn up, politically broken world we live in needs to know: “Greater love has no one than this, than that He lay down His life for His friends.” The God of love, the Lord of grace, forgiveness, and mercy, rode down into that awful mess in Jerusalem for our sakes, knowing what they’d do to Him there. He humbled Himself and became obedient to death, even death on cross, to give everlasting life to everyone who’ll bend their knees to Him and confess His name.
It’s not about politics; it never has been. God forbid that that should ever become our purpose as a Church. It’s about letting a broken world know what we have a Savior who literally loved us to death, so we could live. Tell the Good News! Hosanna to the Son of David! Glory to God in the highest, and thanks be to Him forever! In Jesus’ name; Amen.