Mark 11- Palm Sunday 25 March 2018

I am going to begin by recounting a personal experience from Thursday. After waiting seven months, we finally heard that we can proceed with the next stage of my permanent residency application! This requires a medical which has to be back to Ottawa within 30 days. So I called around the list of places which do these kind of medicals for

immigration purposes and I went first thing Thursday morning!

It reminded me afresh at what a curious business it is moving country. We know how life works don't we. How we get a doctor's appointment, where on the shelves we find our favourite food and what the packaging looks like. How to get the bus and how to order coffee.

All of those are different from England.. It was a period of my life where ‘passive’ best describes for me how it feels. Not ‘passive’ in the sense of doing nothing, but ‘passive’ in the sense of having to ‘receive’; receive the newness of the situation and experience, so that one gains information. One cannot ‘fight’ the situation! One is not in control. One just has to accept, receive, feel it and thus learn. Of course, one is still active. One can choose to hide or be actively and fully present and engaged! I learnt pretty quick that the only way to learn was to get out and do! Once again we see that ‘Right action leads onto right thinking’.

That’s relevant for two reasons:1. Throughout Mark’s gospel Mark uses active verbs to describe Jesus. He

goes here – he does this – he says this. But from the moment he is arrested Mark uses passive verbs. Jesus is now on the receiving end, a recipient of the actions of other people! He is ‘done-to’.

2. It’s Holy Week. Are we starting the week fully present and engaged. Do we see the week ahead as just one with lots of services? Or is it one in which we are actively reflecting on Jesus and all this week reminds us off of the Love God has for us, the relationship we are invited into and what it means to follow Jesus?

So our holy week starts now! We travel with Jesus and what I want to do is look at what Jesus is doing in Mark 11. There is too much here so we'll do what is always the best thing to do- look at Jesus!

Firstly then Jesus sets out from Bethany to Jerusalem via Bethage. This map:

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gives us an insight of what is an 18 mile journey. Jesus sends two in to get the donkey- I have often imagined that that the answer the disciples are to give if anyone asks what they are doing; “That the Lord needs it and will return it”, is perhaps to the owner? Perhaps another and better explanation is that Jesus knows where the donkey is because the owner is travelling with Jesus?

Remember Norman – the name we gave to the man lowered through the roof by Fred, Bill, Harry and Archie, in order that Jesus might heal him in Mark 2 which we looked at on February 18th?

Perhaps it's Norman's donkey! Or his mom’s? : ) Norman knows that if anyone goes near his donkey, Fred, Bill, Harry and Archie are going to say ‘oi! What are you doing?!?!’. The reply of ‘The master needs it and will return it’ will make sense to anyone who has been with Jesus. ‘Oh! Jesus! Of course. Say hi to him for us’ : ) might well be the response from Fred, Bill, Harry and Archie.

But why all the info of a donkey? Mark is keen we see something about Jesus- that although the waving of palms and laying of cloaks on the ground was fairly common for pilgrims coming into Jerusalem for the Passover, Mark records words from Psalm 118. 

“Blessed is he who comes in the name of Lord. Blessed is the coming Kingdom of our father David”.

Psalm 118 speaks & the future redemption from God.

Ps 118: 21-26. 

It’s a psalm of salvation coming from God.

Zec 9: 9 says this:

Jesus is giving a very clear signal to those present, his disciples and us! That he is the promised Messiah. That his reign includes humility and suffering. Jesus knows exactly what he is doing!

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So as he rides in, He is claiming and proclaiming the Reign & God is indeed present and about to be fulfilled! 

But no sign in this

chapter of anyone really realising that this is so. Remember, for Mark, we can’t see who Jesus really is until the cross. Then after a recon of the Temple, it is time to rest.

It’s late! Well it would be after an 18 mile journey on foot and donkey.

The next morning Jesus is on the way to the temple. Jesus is hungry and, seeing a fig tree, goes up to it. It has no fruit. Jesus says "may no one ever eat fruit from you again".

Seems harsh! More on this later. 

Then he gets to the temple and we know what happens, he clears it out.

He clears out the area called the ‘Courtyard of the Gentiles’.

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This was the place where people from all over the world could come, mingle and worship our Redeemer God. Jesus quotes from Isaiah:

Merchants on the Mount of Olives were traditionally those from whom one bought goods, such as the animals for sacrifice, to go and worship.

But recently to this event, in a highly controversial move, Caiaphas the high priest had tried to cash in and brought sellers into the grounds of the temple itself.

Jesus takes offence and reminds them the meaning of the temple. A place where God is praised and his name gloried and people pray. So, for Jesus, he is restoring to everyone the purpose for which the Temple was built.

Not a place where his people are ripped off. Imagined if we were charged $10 for a service bulletin at the Cathedral on Wednesday night, especially if it cost 10 cents to print and that was the case every time we went to worship there! You get the picture!

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Its not fit for purpose and holding that phrase in mind, let’s go back to the fig tree. It’s the next morning and it’s now withered. Peter is amazed.

In response to Peter’s amazement, Jesus starts to talk about faith and prayer. So we have gone from fig tree with no fruit, to Jesus clearing the temple because it was had become something else rather

than the place of prayer that God the Father had intended and now back to the fig tree that has now withered. What is the link between those three? Prayer!

Jesus, without a moment to lose, is preparing the disciples for when he is no longer with them. So he is teaching them: the temple was no longer the place of prayer. Indeed the temple will soon now longer be the focus of that redeeming relationship with God. It would shortly be Jesus himself. The sacred space in which prayer took place, the temple, would soon be

replaced by the sacred community, a community which prayed.

We have all prayed for something that really mattered to us that didn’t happen. At first glance these verses suggest that if only we had had proper faith, the one that could hurl a mountain into the sea, my prayer would have been answered. It wasn’t, therefore I am not a proper Christian with proper faith. When I can hurl mountains, I’ll have arrived.I do not think that is what Jesus means at all. We live in a world

where many think that belief in a deity is delusional and religion is not just

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stupid but actually bad and a cause of much ill in the world. It was the same in the world Jesus lived in. There were many Greek philosophers saying that the world was a closed system that could not be changed. Prayer was superstitious!

Do we believe God can intervene in our lives? Do we believe he listens to us? In the previous chapter Jesus has said, when told by Peter that something was impossible, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”

Jesus is helping the disciples and us see what a belief that God can intervene in our lives looks like. Faith expressed in believing prayer is not mountain-hurling but simply bringing prayer requests to God because of who God is and the relationship we have with our Heavenly Father through Jesus’ redeeming work.We pray, believing that it can happen. Whatever we are praying for may or may not happen, depending on God’s purposes, which we trust are good, even if we cannot see the sense of it, but if we don’t believe it, we won’t actually pray.So as we start Holy Week are we engaged or just passive observers? Is our attitude the same as that as Jesus who knows the Father loves him and can intervene in the world? Are we bold prayers believing God can act in any and every situation or do we believe instead that it won’t make any difference? That it shows I am not a proper Christian if my prayer is not answered. Are we including the forgiveness of others in our prayers? Are we trusting that God has good purposes for our lives, even if it includes suffering? Jesus rides in Jerusalem knowing that God’s good purpose for Him and us involves Him suffering. And by that suffering, we are redeemed and have access to God our Father.

And again, we as this sacred community can pray in faith and confidence, can love and grow in love, forgiving hurt done to us because of the means by which their prayers are heard – through Jesus’ redeeming work.Remember what happens the moment he dies, the temple curtain is torn is two. Now the way into the very presence of God is open for every single one of us.

This is our Jesus. We love and follow Him.

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