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This column represents the thoughts and opinions of The Rev. Carl Roth. This is not the opinion of the Elgin Courier.
One of people’s common fears in life is to appear foolish in the eyes of others; the prospect of facing public humiliation and ridicule scares us. No matter how wise and respectable we are, we are all susceptible to slipping up from time to time and acting like fools, and we certainly can’t always control what other people do to make us look foolish. This problem is particularly acute today because of smartphones and the internet. Many people’s reputations have been ruined by their getting caught in foolish and shameful situations while the cameras were rolling. Twenty years ago, or even 10, our foolish decisions and mistakes most often would be noticed by only a few; today our folly is potentially the next viral video on Youtube, whether we want the attention or not.
The church is now in Holy Week, and while our gathering for worship in the coming days won’t get any attention on Twitter, it will expose us to a different sort of ridicule: that taunting from the unbelieving world that says, “How foolish you must be to worship a manual laborer from Galilee who died on a cross 2,000 years ago. How could you claim that this man is the only way to know God when there are so many other religions around? Why would you waste your time, energy and money on a church that claims to follow this foolish Jesus? What sort of fools would make important decisions about their lives based on the teachings of someone they have never even seen with their own eyes? Who in their right minds would claim that the water of baptism washes away sins or that the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper is Christ’s true body and blood?”
The unbelieving world is hostile toward God in Christ, and the devil and our own sinful nature jump on the world’s bandwagon to attack our faith in Jesus and his Word. So in order for our faith to be defended and strengthened in the midst of these attacks, and so that we aren’t ashamed to look foolish in the eyes of the unbelieving world, today we will see that Jesus Christ is Lord no matter what the world may say, but you’ll only see this if you don’t get fooled by appearances.
The Palm Sunday Gospel reading presents Jesus as the king of God’s chosen people Israel, but outward appearances might fool you if you don’t know what to look for. What sort of king rides a donkey to his enthronement? As a matter of fact, another important king of Israel had ridden a mule to take his reign: king Solomon (1 Kings 1:38-40). The kings of Israel didn’t ride war horses when they entered Jerusalem, the City of Peace, but instead rode donkeys and mules. So it is not so strange that Jesus, the king of Peace, would do this when he rides a donkey into Jerusalem. In fact, this was the way it had to be, for God had predicted through the prophet Zechariah that the promised king of Israel would come to Jerusalem “humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.” St. Matthew quotes that very text in the Palm Sunday Gospel reading and says that Jesus was fulfilling that prophecy. By riding to Jerusalem, Jesus publicly signaled to his disciples that he was the king of the Jews and the promised Messiah, despite outward appearances that might fool the casual observer.
But kind of king is he? This is the point by which all of Christ’s disciples were fooled. The popular Jewish expectation was for a powerful military king who would come in and kick the Romans out to reestablish Israel as it had been under king David. But Jesus didn’t come to bring about a mere political regime change. God had already announced in Isaiah 53 that the Messiah would be a Suffering Servant sort of king. As we will hear on Good Friday, “he was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief… Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows…he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed.”
Jesus came to Jerusalem to endure scorn and reproach, to suffer for your sins. he came to Jerusalem with un-kingly appearances to be betrayed into the hands of sinful men, to be convicted of blasphemy by an unjust court, to be handed over to executioners by a cowardly Roman ruler, to be mocked and spit upon and lashed and crowned with thorns. You can see why Christ’s disciples were afraid of going down with such a fool. As Jesus stood trial, Peter denied even knowing him. They all scattered and fled, and on the third day after his death they were all huddled together in an upper room, fearful that their association with Jesus would lead to their demise as well. They were afraid to look foolish for the sake of Christ and wanted to save their own skin, as Jesus headed up to the cross.
And it is for this message of the cross that we in the Church of Christ will forever be considered foolish in the eyes of the unbelieving world. St. Paul offers the classic statement of this truth when he says in the thematic statement for the entire book of 1 Corinthians: “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” The word of the cross sounds stupid to unbelievers; they think they are too wise to receive such a foolish message; but to believers the word of the cross is the power of God.
