Palm/Passion Sunday
ISAIAH 50:4-9a: Dr. James Muilenberg, in the 1957 edition of The Interpreter's Bible, linked this passage in Isaiah with other so-called "Servant passages" in Isaiah. Mention of these "servant passages" leads us to discuss the makeup of our present Prophecy of Isaiah.
The finished book of Isaiah contains an "Assyrian" part (1-35) and a "Babylonian" part (40-66). Chapters 1 to 39 were written from about 740 BC to about 700 BC, and these chapters contain the work of a prophet known as Isaiah of Jerusalem. These four decades were difficult times for both Israel, the northern kingdom, and Judah, the kingdom that traced its lineage to King David. In 722, the Assyrians conquered Israel, the northern kingdom, and threatened Judah. Isaiah of Jerusalem saw the cause of these events as social injustice, which he condemned, and against which he fought valiantly. He tried to warn his kingdom of Judah that they should not follow policies like those that had brought disaster on Israel. The prophecies credited to him are contained in the first 39 chapters of the book.
Chapters 40 to 66 were written during and after the exile in Babylon, when Jerusalem had been destroyed by Babylonian armies and its king and people taken to live in Babylon. These chapters, from the mind and voice of Isaiah of Babylon, are filled with a message of trust and of confident hope that God will soon end the exile and return the people to their homeland.
All the passages to be considered for this Sunday and the Holy Week that follows are from Isaiah of Babylon, and we need to consider in more detail the message that he brought to a people bogged down in hopelessness after a generation and more of living in exile in a foreign land.
When the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem in 586 B.C. they took the leading citizens of the city in captivity to Babylon. Separated from their land; their Temple, homes and livelihood destroyed; even their God defeated, they had no hope upon which to rebuild their lives. Then, beginning near the year 539 B.C. Isaiah of Babylon rose up to provide hope for his people.
He did so in response to an event that occurred in 540 B.C. In that year Persia, under King Cyrus, replaced Babylon as ruler of the world, and hope surged anew through the oppressed peoples of the decaying Babylonian empire. Cyrus, instead of crushing national sentiment by brutality and deportation as the Assyrians and Babylonians had done, made it his policy to respect the customs of his subjects, to protect and foster their religions, and, where possible, to entrust responsibilities for governing to native princes. So, in the first year of his reign in Babylon, in 538, Cyrus issued a decree ordering the restoration of the Jewish community back into Judah; copies of this decree are still extant. Isaiah of Babylon's prophecies can be dated between these two events. He seemed to know of the rise of Cyrus as emperor, but he had not yet witnessed the beginning of the return of the people of Judah to their homeland.
His prophecies are distinctive from those of Isaiah of Jerusalem in important particulars. There are considerable stylistic differences between the two writers. Isaiah of Babylon is the finest stylist in the Old Testament. His use of parallelism, imagery, rhythm and meter mark him as it finest poet. There is a different historical context also. Isaiah of Jerusalem directed his message to the king of Judah whose land was under attack by Assyrians. Isaiah of Babylon was speaking to people who no longer had a king, who lived in exile, and who were waiting to be restored to their homeland. Furthermore, there is a unity to the latter Isaiah's prophecies that is lacking in most other prophetic utterances. The published work of the earlier prophets seem to be anthologies of their messages; a prophecy delivered at one time would be linked to another delivered years later. The writings of Isaiah of Babylon, however, have unity and continuity. His prophecy has a beginning, a development, and a conclusion. He weaves themes so inextricably together that anything excised from his work causes a noticeable loss. He wrote for a particular time, a particular place, a particular situation, and from a discernible theological point of view.
Isaiah began by emphasizing that God is the Creator. "Have you not heard, have you not known? The Lord is the Everlasting God, Creator of the ends of the earth." (Isaiah 40:26) What an amazing article of faith for his own desperate situation. This chief spokesman for a tiny group of exiles in an alien empire was proclaiming that it was their God who created the ends of the earth, who therefore owned it, the whole earth. Creation as Isaiah stated it was no speculative belief of scientific doctrine; it was a theological and ethical statement. To be the creator was to be the owner, and for Isaiah to assert that the God of Israel was the creator of the ends of the earth was to insist that this God owned it, the lands, seas, skies, the nations, all people.
Israel's creator is also her redeemer, and Isaiah talked about Judah's redemption as coming through a new exodus. Said Isaiah: "In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up and every mountain made low; the uneven ground will be made level and the rougb places a plain." (Isaiah 40:3-4) His imagery was drawn from the construction of a road. God was building a royal road from Babylon to Judah, said Isaiah, just as the kings of Assyria and Babylon had done beforehand in moving their armies to the west. Along this road God would lead this exiled people in triumphal return to their homeland, where they would be restored to their covenant relationship with Yahweh.
Isaiah's next thought derived from the former two. God, creator and redeemer, is concerned not only with Judah but with all nations and peoples. God would be a light to the Gentiles: Isaiah of Babylon spoke of a redemption through which all peoples would witness the glory of God. Said the prophet: "All flesh shall see it together." (Isaiah 40:5)
This led to his further thought: if God is to redeem everyone, this God must be the one and only God. Israel had struggled with this question of the place of her God in the heavenly scheme of things. Even the first commandment admitted to more than one God: "I am the Lord your God: ... you shall have no other gods before me." (Exodus 20:3) With Isaiah of Babylon, this changed. The other gods were imposters. Made by pagan hands of clay, stone, wood, and metal, they were never more than the mere properties that went into their making. "They are nothing," said Isaiah of Babylon. "There is one God only. This God self-revealed through Moses and speaks righteousness to the people. This God rules both Jew and Gentile and brings divine redeeming purpose to the whole creation."
In describing the manner by which God performed this redemption, Isaiah made his most fundamental contribution to Jewish and Christian faith. Isaiah said that God redeems through a servant.
Behold, my servant whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him, says the Lord. He will bring forth justice to the nations. He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not fail or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth; and the coast lands wait for his law.
This first introduction to the servant comes in chapter 42; at the climax of his writing, in chapter 53, Isaiah offers a more complete description of the Servant of God:
Who has believed what we have heard? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or comeliness that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hid their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed.
Scholars have given at least seven possibilities as to the identity of the servant. Some say the nation of Judah was the sufferer in question. Others say it was an individual whom Isaiah knew but whom we can no longer identify; or a former prophet whose personal trauma fits the description; or Jeremiah who suffered appallingly for his people. Perhaps Isaiah was describing himself as the one despised and rejected of men. Others insist that this was a description of Moses, the great prophet, or the exiles in Babylon who through their own suffering had been purified and who were about to return to Jerusalem to bring God's redemption to all the land. Each theory has its own defenders, but we need not choose among them. The prophet's insight was sound: only through someone's suffering would God move to redeem the people.
In the present text, 50:4-9, the Servant continues his message. His first word is of God and not of himself. His "tongue is such as disciples have." The Servant knows he needs to learn from God as a disciple learns from a master, and he is humble enough to admit that. What he learned was not to run away nor rebel. Instead, he offers his back to the bullies. Are these a particular group of men who delight in assailing people who are weak or disadvantaged? Probably not. These are most likely the average person, the average man, who is not above taking advantage of a neighbor when the opportunity presents itself. Already, says Isaiah, because of what I am saying, I have been beaten, my beard has been pulled out (the ultimate insult for a Jewish man!), and I have been shamed and spat upon. But God declares me innocent, and God is near to me, the lord of my right hand. Therefore, despite my suffering, I can boldly stand to preach the message I have been given. It is given to me from the Lord.
How can he do this? "Because the Lord God helps me; that is how I have never been confounded. That is how I could set my face like flint and never be ashamed. My advocate is beside me. The Lord God is helping me." A new picture of the Servant is emerging. We have seen him throughout as God's completely willing Servant. Now we are told that his obedience is not merely passive. As God responds to evil in a positive and re-creative manner, the Servant does likewise. From his deep spring of joy and assurance that God is with him as advocate and helper, the Servant trusts God to be as reliable in the future as God is in the present and had been in the past.
PSALM 118:1-2, 19-29: In going through my notes, I came upon this tribute given to this psalm: "This is my psalm, my chosen psalm. I love them all; I love all Holy Scripture, which is my consolation and my life. But this psalm is nearest my heart, and I have a familiar right to call it mine. It has saved me from many a pressing danger, from which nor emperor, nor kings, nor sages, nor saints could have saved me. It is my friend; dearer to me than all the honors and power of earth." This psalm, I said, given this praise? Greater than the 23rd Psalm, or the 51st, or the 121st? But it is so. And the writer of this commendation is no less than Martin Luther himself.
This is a psalm of thanksgiving: "O give thanks to the Lord, for God is good, God's steadfast love endures for ever." "Steadfast love" was the last Old Testament phrase to be translated by the translators of the Revised Standard Version. They left it until last, because they could not find an English word or phrase that could properly translate this Hebrew word, chesed. Chesed means that God is faithful to the covenant that God has made with the people. God will do everything necessary in order to uphold that covenant and the people with whom God has entered into covenant - everything! "Everlasting love," is the phrased used in the King James Version. "Steadfast love" is used here. Neither catch the nuances of the original word, which we have to keep in mind whenever we come across it in the Old Testament.
It is easy to see how verses 19 and 20 fit with the Palm Sunday story: "Open to me the gates of righteousness, that I may enter through them and give thanks to the Lord. This is the gate of the Lord; the righteous shall enter through it." In our minds we can see Jesus entering the gates of Jerusalem on that day as one entering the gates of the righteous and giving thanks as he entered them.
"The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone." This passage is used in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, in Acts, and in First Peter. As builders build an arch, they select one stone to go in the height of the arch to hold both sides upright. They choose this stone carefully. Some stones are considered, then placed aside as not the right size, or strength, or shape to do the job. One such stone one day was laid aside, and then the builders found that no other stone could do the job. So they went back to that one and positioned it into the most crucial spot on the arch. So with Jesus, said the New Testament writers. He was carelessly cast aside and put on a cross. But God had chosen him to be at the heart of the most crucial place in human life and has set him there, a stone rejected that is now the chief cornerstone.
"This is the day which the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it." Many a martyr has sung these words as the skies lightened and the sun rose on the day of their execution. Jesus sang these words on the last night of his life. These lines are from the song prescribed for everyone who has eaten a passover meal. These were the words sung after Jesus' last meal with his disciples, as they left the room of the supper and set out for the Garden of Gethsemane.
"Blessed be he who enters in the name of the Lord." As Jesus entered Jerusalem for the last time, these were the words that the pilgrims to Jerusalem were singing, and the song seemed to fit what was happening in his life. "The Lord is God, and he has given us light. Bind the festal procession with branches." The psalm closes as it began: "O give thanks to the Lord, for God is good, God's steadfast love endures for ever."
PHILIPPIANS 2:5-11: The church in Philippi was Paul's favorite church. It was the first congregation Paul established after he left Asia Minor and went into Macedonia. It was a church largely made up of Gentiles rather than Jews, so Paul did not face the struggles with Jewish leaders in Philippi as he did elsewhere. Women had a full part in its leadership, and he was proud of that. The Philippian congregation supported Paul in his mission work in other cities. No wonder he said at the beginning of his letter: "I thank my God in all my remembrance of you."
In the midst of this letter, Paul embedded a passage that speaks to us yet today about Jesus Christ. It may have been a hymn used in the worship of the church. It was more likely a creedal statement. It probably came from the group of Greek-speaking Christians who had gathered first around Stephen and later around Philip. It speaks of Jesus' pre-earthly life, his earthly life, and his post-earthly life. It tells of his resurrection, his exaltation, and his installation as Lord. Jesus had "emptied himself" in leaving the divine sphere to come to earth. It declares that in his ministry Christ continued to "empty himself," until to the casual bystander he looked like a lowly slave who had died a criminal's death on the cross. Because of his selfless submission to God, God gave him "the name" by which he is acclaimed divine Lord. The exalted Jesus is the universal Lord.
The creed begins by declaring that Jesus is in the "form" of God. Oscar Cullmann thought that this Greek word refers to humanity being made in the "image of God" of Gen 1:26. It has to be contrasted to Adam's arrogance. Adam was not satisfied with being a mere mortal. Adam wanted to grasp "equality with God." Jesus, on the other hand, "did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself."
As such, he was born in the likeness of humanity. Karl Barth read this to say that Christ "put off the form of God." He did not merely conceal it, said Barth. He put it off. He was no mere phantom, no incomplete copy of humanity. What people saw was a man like themselves, subject to human frailty and suffering, and they treated him with scorn and hatred. The mystery of his being was totally hidden from them.
In his life on earth, Jesus continued to "empty" himself. He gave up his home to become an itinerant preacher. He gave us his reputation to associate himself with sinners. He gave up his intimacy with God when he cried from the cross, "Why has thou forsaken me?" Finally, having nothing else to give, he gave up his life. Christ refused to seize for his own the glory that belonged only to God.
Then an unexpected thing occurred. God exalted him. God lifted Jesus up from the grave and gave him the name that is above every name. A peculiar value attaches to the "name." In uttering it, one brought oneself under someone else's influence. A soldier took his oath in the name of Caesar, and he became Caesar's man. A Christian was baptized into the name of Christ and yielded himself to Christ's will and protection. This name of Jesus becomes so powerful that every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess, that Jesus is the Lord, to the glory of God the Father. God's salvation embraces the whole cosmos, and Jesus is enthroned as the King of all God's creation.
What is the reason Paul gives for Jesus doing this? It is an ethical reason. Look at the verses that immediately precede this creed. "Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others better than yourself. Let each of you look not only to your own interests but also to the interests of others." Christ emptied himself of all pretense. Christ's people can do no less. So have this mind in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus. . . .
LUKE 19:28-40: This is the story of Jesus entering Jerusalem as its messiah and king. Each verse in the story needs to be attended to with great care.
19:29 When they were approaching Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives,
This verse fixes the geographical setting of the story. The Mount of Olives is the large hill immediately to the east of Jerusalem. Persons approaching Jerusalem from the Jordan Valley and the city of Jericho would come up the far side of the mount and see Jerusalem west of them when they came to the peak of the mountain. It was a marvelous sight: to see the grand temple of all Judaism gleaming atop Mount Zion and the city gathered around it. Pilgrims came from all over the Mediterranean world to see this sight.
From Bethany one could not see the city of Jerusalem. Bethany was a small village almost at the top of the mountain but on its Jericho/Jordan side. It was the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. Jesus stayed with this family when he visited in Jerusalem. Their home also appears to be the center of the small group of Judeans who had become followers of Jesus during the various times that he visited Jerusalem after Jesus had separated his ministry from that of John the Baptist. It was the place to which he brought the twelve as he was about to enter Jerusalem for the feast they had come to celebrate.
Bethpage was a small village just over the mountain from Bethany on the Jerusalem side. Its significance to the story is that Bethpage, unlike Bethany, was considered to be a part of the city of Jerusalem. According to Jewish law, a Jew may not work on the Sabbath. According to the Talmud, this forbade a Jew from carrying anything into the city on the Sabbath from outside the enclosed area of a city. Since Bethpage was inside the closed area of Jerusalem, Jesus could legally go there to pick up the animal that he rode into the city.
Jesus sent two of his disciples 30 saying, "Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden; untie it and bring it here. 31 If anyone says to you, 'Why are you doing this?' just say this, 'The Lord needs it.'" 32 So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them.
Luke, and the twelve, considered this one of the special insights that Jesus had during the season of this feast. Jesus, reported Luke, knew that an animal would be tethered in the street of the village, and it all happened as Jesus said it would. On the other hand, perhaps Jesus, through his connections in Bethany, had previously made arrangements with its owner for Jesus to use it to ride into the city. The signal for the pickup seems to have been the words Luke quotes: 'The Lord needs it.' Matthew assumes the animal was the colt of a donkey; in Luke the word means "colt of a horse." Taking the animal in this way was not an unusual act. Roman soldiers routinely requisitioned animal and human labor from the Jewish populace. Luke understands the matter differently. Luke sees this as an expression of the deeds of power that were inherent in the ministry of Jesus.
The colt had never been sat upon, said Luke. This note tells us a great deal about Jesus' purpose in borrowing it. Unbroken animals were used in sacred functions. Asking for a colt upon which no one had ever before ridden confirms that Jesus was acting out a plan to show the populace that his entrance into Jerusalem was a sacred act. It was also a kingly act. Because of the possibility of contamination and disease, a true king would not choose an animal that had been ridden on, and Jesus was "a true king." Lightfoot, in his Commentary on Mark, points out a further significance of the event. By sending for the colt, said Lightfoot (44), Jesus was indicating his own acceptance of the office of messiah. Jesus was entering the city of Jerusalem as its messiah and its king.
33 As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, "Why are you untying the colt?" 34 They said, "The Lord needs it." 35 Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. 37 As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. 37 As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, 38 saying,
Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!
Peace in heaven, and glories in the highest heaven!
Jesus rode into the city on the colt. This was contrary to law and custom. Pilgrims were expected to enter the city on foot. Jesus' action was a deliberate gesture intended to draw attention to himself (Harvey 170). Pilgrims who were coming into the city at the same time recognized that something unusual was occurring as Jesus entered. They spread their cloaks out before him. This had happened before to a king. When Jehu came to Jerusalem to be installed as king, people spread their cloaks before him so that he might walk on them (2 Kings 9:13).
39 Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, order your disciples to stop." 40 Jesus said, "I tell you, if these stones were silent, the stones would shout out."
So Jesus comes finally to Jerusalem. He had begun his journey at the moment of his Transfiguration. On the way he had taught, healed, and prayed. He had been warned that Herod and his enemies were conspiring against him. Tax collectors and sinners were coming to him, and the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled about it. Jesus had said that false messiahs would present themselves but that the disciples should not be distracted by them. He had told the disciples that the Son of Humankind would be handed over to the Gentiles. He would be mocked, spit upon, insulted and flogged. They will kill him. On the third day he will arise.
Now Jesus and the others stood at the brink of Jerusalem where all these things were to take place. There is an inevitability about this. It is as inevitable that all these things would occur as it would be for the stones to cry out if Jesus' human disciples were muzzled.