This Week’s Sermon

 

~ April 13, 2025, Palm Sunday~
(Contemporary) (Traditional)

“When Tables are Turned – From Palms to Protest”

Zechariah 9:9-10, Matthew 21:1-17
April 13, 2025, Palm Sunday!

I toyed around with the title of this sermon.  (And yes, I also always try to think about what it’s going to look like on the sign!)  At first, I thought about “An Unexpected Turn.”  Because I’ve always thought that the procession – the parade on Palm Sunday, did take an unexpected turn.  The crowds wanted Jesus to be king.  And if they had their way, he would have ridden to the palace of the governor.  But instead he rode to the Temple.

But I’ve been thinking lately, that maybe that wasn’t such an unexpected turn.  Remember that Israel was a “Theocracy.”  In other words, it was a country run by the religious leadership.  So maybe starting in the Temple, with the revolution they so desperately wanted, wasn’t an unexpected turn.  Maybe that was the place to start.  It was what happened when he got there that was the “unexpected turn” in his ministry!

Because of what happened that day, I also liked the idea of the title “When Tables are Turned.”  Of course, that’s reminiscent of Jesus turning the tables of the money changers.  And I was thinking this week that that maybe that was the origin of this expression we hear sometimes when a person “turns the tables” on someone.

I was curious about that, so I looked it up.  And according to Google, that expression actually originated with board games, games like backgammon or Chess.  It would happen when players would switch sides of the table, or turn the table around.  And when that happened, the person who was losing the game would all of a sudden be winning.  So the expression “turning the tables” came to mean someone who would gain the upper hand in something – unexpectedly.

That would happen here in this story… in a way.  Jesus did seem to gain the upper hand – at least for a time.  But I would think this has more to do with him turning the tables over and dumping everything on the floor.  So it turns out that it’s an expression that seems like it might have come from something like this story, but really didn’t!

I also liked the phrase “From Palms to Protest.”  That was actually suggested to me by an AI search!  (Or something very close to that!)  Because that’s what happened that day, and throughout the rest of the week.  They praised Jesus on Palm Sunday.  They hailed him the new King of Israel.  But by the end of the week, things turned bad for him.  And even in this story for today, the protest – the objection – took place in the Temple.  So in the end, I decided to use both of those ideas this morning.  This sermon is entitled, “When Tables are Turned – From Palms to Protest.

Jesus came riding into Jerusalem that day.  And I think the first thing to say is that there’s no doubt this event was planned.  Either Jesus made arrangements for it ahead of time, or the words he gave his disciples to say when they were obtaining the donkey, had a supernatural effect on its owners.  They just said “Ok.  Go ahead!”  Whatever the case, Jesus intended for this procession into the city to happen, and to happen this way!

Of course, he had been to Jerusalem before.  He had been in the Temple before.  He had taught the people there before.  And he had his “run-ins” with the authorities there before.  We know that.  But this time it was different.  This time there was the triumphal procession.  In fact, Bibles refer to this story as “The Triumphal entry into Jerusalem.”  And just calling it “Triumphal” indicates a victory of some kind.  And I believe that was intentional, too!

That’s what happened 150 years before this.  As I’ve said before, a man named Judas Maccabees had successfully led the Maccabean Revolt.  That was the revolt against the Seleucid Empire who had conquered Israel, under the reign of king Antiochus IV Epiphanes.  Judas celebrated that victory by entering the city in triumph, with a similar procession – including the palms, the Hosannas, and the garments strewn on the roadway!  (Except he was riding a war horse!)

In that revolution, Judas had cleansed Jerusalem and the temple of the defilement of King Antiochus.  And when they rededicated – reconsecrated – the Temple, that was the beginning of their celebration of Hannukah.  That was the story of them not having enough oil for the lamps, but they stayed burning anyway.  If your Bible has the Apocrypha, you can read about all that in the book of Maccabees.  And there are actually four books of Maccabees!

Well, the people on Palm Sunday knew that story!  And they were well aware of what was happening that day in Jerusalem.  Because that’s what they wanted to happen, again!  They were duplicating everything about Judas Maccabees’ triumphal entry into the city.  And of course, this time they were hoping Jesus would cleanse the country of the defilement of the Romans.  And by the way!  I’m sure they – the Romans – were well aware of all of that, too!  We can only imagine how tense they were that day, or how close they were to stepping in and shutting this whole thing down!  They could be brutal in quelling rebellions!

But they didn’t have to.  Because Jesus didn’t cleanse the Temple of the Romans that day.  He cleansed the Temple of the corruption brought upon the people by their own religious leaders!  The money changers and those who sold, they were part of the scandal of their own Temple leadership!  And Jesus was upsetting their business!

But it was more than that.  Jesus was also challenging their authority.  He was calling them out on their corruption of the Temple and on defrauding the people!  “Your sacrifice must be pure.  But we see that yours is not.  However, you can buy one of ours over here.”  “Your offering must be given in the Temple currency.  Oh you don’t have that?  Well, we can change your money for you over here – for a fee, of course!”

I heard it years ago, and I’ve said this before, that throughout the Bible, God’s greatest condemnation was brought on those who used their positions of religious authority for personal gain.  And that was what was happening in the Temple.  And those who Jesus condemned that day, knew it!  His words were directed at them.  “My Temple shall called be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves!”

I was thinking that there were some opposites happening here.  150 years prior, things went from Protest to Palms.  In other words, things went from Revolution – the protest of the people – to the palms of Victory.  This day it was the opposite, things went from the Palms to Protest.  For the Maccabeans, the conflict had come before the palms.  For Jesus, the conflict came after.  For Judas, the procession was the end of the revolution.  For Jesus, it was the beginning.

Here in Matthew’s account, Jesus entered the Temple, turned the tables, and drove out those who sold sacrifices.  But then he did what he always had done in the Temple.  He healed the blind and the lame who came to him.  But that day there was still the images of the Triumphal procession hanging in the air.  In fact, the children were still chanting the words they heard during that procession.  “Hosanna to the Son of David!”

So this was different.  And you have to love this one line here.  “When the Chief Priests and Scribes saw the wonderful things he did in the Temple, and heard the children crying out… they were indignant!” “And they said to him, ‘Do you hear what these children are saying?’”  They were in full protest mode.  But like other times, they could do nothing about it, because of the people.  So for now, they could just protest.  And protest they did!  But, by the week’s end, they had done a lot more.  They had won.  Or so they thought.

So, there truly was a lot going on that day!  But what does it mean to us, 2,000 years later?  For the people of Jerusalem that day, this was the victory – the revolution they longed for, ever since the last revolution.  Or at least they thought it was!  For us this is a celebration!  Because we know the true victory it represented!  But we also know that it’s a celebration that did not come without the conflict.  And a terrible conflict it was!  The palms did turn to protest!  And the persecution, the arrest, the trial, all the things Jesus told them about in our story from last week, happened just as he said it would – in great detail!

So here for us, 2,000 years later, we can know that this is a victory!  We can know that this is a triumph!  But as we approach Easter, we want to be sure we know the true victory.  This was more than just a revolution.  If this had been like the Maccabean Revolt, it would have been just a page in a history book somewhere.  But instead, it was the greatest victory of all times!  It all pointed to Jesus’ victory over sin and death.

So do celebrate this day!  This is Palm Sunday!  Hail Jesus as king!  But understand our perspective on his kingship.  That was a perspective those people couldn’t fully grasp that day.  Jesus did turn the tables on sin and death.  Things went from palms to protest, but then to praise!

Prayer

Eternal God, help us to truly see your victory in Jesus, which you accomplished for us so long ago.  Fill our minds with the sacred story this Holy Week.  Help us to hail Jesus as king, and to know what he did for us in the cross and the empty tomb.  Help us to know what it means to rejoice in his kingdom.  For we pray in his name, Amen.