Life is different in the south. For starters, it’s rarely 20 degrees outside
in March. I’ll be honest—I miss
that. I was away on spring break last
week and returned late last Sunday night.
I was standing outside waiting for an airport shuttle at 11 pm in shorts
while it was 30 degrees spending my time questioning the life choices I had
made.
There’s another important
distinction, though, one that you don’t fully understand until you live in the
south. It’s called kudzu, and it’s
everywhere. I can’t overestimate this-
it’s everywhere. They don’t call it ‘the
vine that ate the south’ without reason.
Most of the hillsides in the south are blanketed by this fast-growing
invasive species that devours trees, power lines, hills, houses, and whatever
gets in the way. Kudzu is estimated to
cover 7 million acres, an area roughly the size of New Mexico. Most southern cities dedicate substantial
resources to stopping it, but the best methods I heard about, involving
gasoline and matches, were still not guaranteed to be successful. Out of 12 known herbicides, 10 have no effect
while the other 2 make it grow faster. Chattanooga
hired some goats to work on a hillside by a vital tunnel, but their chances of
success were minimal, considering that kudzu can grow up to a foot in a day.
The amazing part of all of this is
that kudzu was actually planted by the US government in the 1930s in the hopes
of preventing soil erosion. Farmers were
paid to plant kudzu in the hopes that such a program would save the soil. The good news is that we still have the
soil. The bad news is that we can’t find
it under the kudzu.
It’s not terribly uncommon for us
to commit to something without understanding the full implications of it.
Don’t tell my wife I said this, but
it’s somewhat like having children.
Before kids, you think you have a pretty good handle on what it’s like
to have children, as you imagine playing ball or encouraging your kid to try
something new at school. Later, as you
read Go Dog Go for the10th straight time
through bleary eyes and hearing damaged from constant screaming, you wonder at
the fact that you were so wrong in what you imagined parenting would be like.
When we arrive at Palm Sunday, I
can’t help but think of this celebration in the same light. For centuries, Jews have waited for the
Messiah to arrive. When he arrived, he
was to liberate Jerusalem and the Jewish people from under the rule of their
oppressors. He was to establish his
kingdom in Jerusalem and rule from there.
The people had definite opinions about what this would be like, and when
Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a colt, they are certain that the kingdom they
expect is about to begin. Rome is soon
to be defeated, and the earthly kingdom will begin momentarily. All their expectations will be fulfilled.
Except, well, it didn’t work out
quite like they had imagined. Jesus didn’t
defeat the Roman army. Jerusalem was
still occupied. Jesus’ rule was very
different than they had imagined it might be.
As a result, they turned on Jesus.
The crowd that was shouting Hosanna on Sunday was soon to be shouting ‘Crucify
Him’. The ones welcoming him with joy
were condemning him in spite. Because
Jesus didn’t live up to their expectations, the crowds turned against him and
rejected his very presence. If he was
not to be the Messiah they expected, they had no use for him.
The question for us, then, is why
is there such a disconnect between reality and expectations? And does such a disconnect still exist today? If so, what can we do about it?
The answer to the first question is
immensely complicated. It’s rooted in
the pages of the Old Testament, the history of the Israelites and how they came
to Jerusalem. The journey makes its way
through Egypt and 40 years of wandering in the Promised Land, and soon the
people take hold of the land, and they make their homes there.
Unfortunately, they are not
alone. They are buffeted by the forces
at work around their kingdom, and pretty soon they notice that they are the
only kingdom without a king. Now, they
have the all-powerful God as their king, but this is not enough—they want a
king they can see, a king they can touch, a king they can follow into battle. So God agrees, and they get a king.
As you may know, human kings aren’t
perfect. They make mistakes, sometimes
small and sometimes grievous. The kingdom is soon rocked and rolled from the
inside as much as the outside, and turmoil chases the people through the
centuries, until they find themselves as subjects of the Roman Empire,
desperately waiting for the day when God will defeat the Romans and establish
an earthly kingdom. This is how they
understand the promise—they read the Old Testament prophecies through the lens
of what their hearts desire, which is an earthly kingdom. The problem is that our hearts can deceive
us. Our hearts can be tricked, and the
Father of Lies spends a lot of time leading our hearts astray, letting our eyes
focus on worldly things, and when we base our desires here and read Scripture
from that place, we make Scripture say whatever we want, and pretty soon our
hopes are set on promises that are understood differently than how God intended
them to be.
Thus, when God lives into the
promises he made, we have invested such time and energy misunderstanding them
and building a false theology around our wrong understandings that we see the
promise and reject it, preferring something we can wrap our minds and hearts
around instead. We trade in the eternal
for the mortal, and think we are happier.
In welcoming the Messiah on Palm
Sunday, the first century Jews thought they were welcoming a conquering
hero. When he conquered the wrong
kingdom, death instead of Rome, they rejected him, preferring instead to keep
looking for someone who could deliver them from Rome, not recognizing the
riches they were forgoing by opting out of deliverance from sin and death.
Does this still happen today? Are people ever led into Christianity
thinking one thing, then discovering that the faithful life is actually very
different? You can certainly decide on
your own. I’d certainly say yes.
I’d say there are churches who
proclaim that belief in God will deliver earthly riches, when in fact God
promises to deliver riches that far surpass whatever gold and silver can
buy. I’d say there are churches who
promise health and healing, when in fact sometimes prayers go unanswered, and
sometimes healing only happens on the other side of death. I’d say there are churches who promise that
happiness will overwhelm them every day of their life, when the Bible portrays
an early church that struggled with conflict and oppression despite their faithful
witness. I’d say there are churches who
proclaim that Christianity is easy, when in fact our Savior asks that
everything be given over to him, each and every day, and that faithful
discipleship takes discipline and endurance.
I’d say there are churches who promise peace, but in fact our churches
are often filled with discord and strife as we wrestle with big questions and
difficult decisions.
If we try and sell the church as a
place where everything is easy and we don’t ask much, then inevitably we will
disappoint people when they recognize how challenging the faithful life is.
So I believe that we, in the
church, have two primary responsibilities.
The first is to read the Scriptures
on our own. If we do this, then we gain
knowledge of how God has worked in the past for ourselves. We aren’t simply being spoonfed, and our
knowledge of the faithful life is not dependent on someone else. When we are reading for ourselves, we can recognize
the common distortions of Christianity and work to help non-believers have a
more accurate understanding of how the faithful life of discipleship isn’t an
easy path to riches but a long, slow call to endurance that traverses peaks and
valleys and reaches fullness only upon passing through the veil of death. By knowing this for ourselves and
communicating it to others, we lessen the chances of disappointing those with
distorted understandings of what Christianity means.
Secondly, we have a responsibility
to wait patiently on God. God has always
done unexpected things, from the moment he freely created the universe from
nothing to the time he entered into creation and took the punishment of death for
guilty mankind. God’s grace is
unexpected and cannot be grasped by our minds.
When we live in a place of permanent dependence on God, we haven’t made
up our minds beforehand, but we live with open minds and hearts about what God
might be doing. We wake each day with a
renewed sense of amazement at what God might accomplish, and when we haven’t
decided beforehand what God should do, we’re free to be amazed at all the ways
God is at work around us, and our feet aren’t chained to a preset path—we can
follow wherever God might lead, and worship as we go. We won’t be disappointed when God calls us
into something new. We can only be
amazed that the God who faithfully has lived up to every promise will continue
to walk with us in the light of grace and renew us each and every day.
Let us pray
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