[Music]
And Jesus said, I must go to
Jerusalem. He said this while he
was still in the hill country to
the north in Galilee. It's not
the first time that he left
those parts. He did it some
years before when he shook the
shavings from his carpenter's
apron, folded it on the bench,
went into the house and said
goodbye to his mother and his
brothers and his sisters, and
went down into the Jordan Valley
to be baptized by John and to
join that marvelous and exciting
messianic movement. It's
different now. He says, I must
go to Jerusalem. The word has
been used in other places of
Jesus. John says that when he
was going from Judea to Galilee,
he must go through Samaria.
That's not a geographic
necessity. There's something
else at work. When he was 12
years old, when he was finally
found by Mary and Joseph, they
said, your father and I, your
father and I have worried
ourselves sick about you. And he
said, didn't you know that I
must be in my father's house? I
must go to Jerusalem. I hope you
won't think less of Jesus
because he said that. I know as
well as you, the cultural
estimate of anyone who does what
they have to do. It is a very
poor virtue to embrace
necessity. The highest level of
motivation in our culture is to
follow your feelings. Do you
want to or not? You're going to
get any pleasure out of it? If
not, don't do it. You're free.
That's the point of freedom. Do
you really want to do it?
Beneath that several notches is
a lower motivation. We call
commitment. Commitment. Well, I
made a commitment, so I suppose
I will. I talked with a young
man here in Atlanta some time
ago, and he said, I hate that
word. How many people continue
in boring jobs in lifeless
marriages because they made a
commitment? Commitment is what
people do when they're afraid to
make decisions and make choices.
He said, every time I hear the
expression, till death do us
part, I hear doors slamming all
over the world.
We're not talking about
commitment. We're talking about
something else. I must go. I
must go. And on the scale in our
culture, that's at the very,
very bottom, because you don't
want to do it if you have to do
it. Well, if you have to do it,
there's no value in it. I don't
know why the church has bought
into that notion. It is
absolutely paralyzing for the
Christian mission, for people to
say, well, if you don't really
feel it in your heart, if you
really don't feel like you want
to, and the traffic is backed up
to Chicago, even though the
light is green. While people
tinker with their little
carburetors and say, well, when
we all feel it in our hearts, we
said that with the civil
injustice and the racial
prejudice. Well, when we all
feel right in our hearts, we're
not going to have this problem.
I don't know why we think that's
so wrong. How many houses are
cleaned because the person said,
I have to clean it? I don't know
many people who say, my heart
leaps up when I see the broom.
How many go down and open the
neighborhood grocery on Monday
morning, cold, sweeping up
leaves, and Dixie cups out of
the front door, and it's cold,
and there are no customers, and
you crank up the green awning.
Why? I'm thrilled to do this.
No. How many papers are graded
by professors who look at a
stack of papers and say at two o
'clock in the morning, I'm so
deeply moved by that stack of
papers. It's not the way the
world works, and yet in our
culture, for anyone to say, I
must. Sounds rather negative.
May I suggest to you, there is
no harm motive. There is no harm
motive for any life. Then to
say, I have to do it. I have to
do it. If you feel the burden of
that word, blessed are you among
many. You're not going to get a
lot of favorable attention now,
but someday people will applaud
your achievements, but now
they'll just look at you as
rather strange, unwilling to
pursue that carefree,
uncommitted, casual, follow-your
-feelings attitude, unwilling to
stretch yourself toward that
lengthy leisure that everybody
wants while they improvise their
days until they have no more
days left. But Jesus said, I
must go to Jerusalem.
11:36.680 -->  16:01.000
[Music]
And Jesus said, I will suffer
many things at the hands of the
authorities, and be killed.
Call it what you will. The entry
of Jesus into Jerusalem was a
funeral procession. He knew it.
His friends knew it. He had told
them several times, and Thomas
had said, Let's go and die with
him. They knew. But they knew it
from a distance. They knew it
from the distance of the bright
Galilean spring, with all the
success of the mission of Jesus.
They knew it. But from a
distance, death is different.
It's like a painting. You take
it home, you hang it over the
couch, and you invite your
friends in, and you serve tea,
and you discuss it. It's
beautiful. But up close, it's
not a painting. It's a
photograph, jagged lines, gaunt
face, glassy eyes, drawn mouth.
It's different up close. And of
course, the crowd, the singing
crowd didn't know, the chanting
crowd didn't know, the eating
too much, the dancing, the
waving of branches. They didn't
know. We can't blame them for
their behavior. But it is so in
congruent with a funeral
procession. Surely they could
have thought about it just a
little bit, and given some favor
to that possibility. You don't
expect them to know, I suppose.
But I know. I know it's a
funeral procession, and I can't
help it. I feel a little
irritation toward the crowd. I
had a student years ago, who was
my student in Oklahoma, and he
went to the University of
Arkansas to do PhD work in
biochemistry. And he didn't make
the final, the prelim exams he
didn't pass. He went to the
bulletin board. He didn't find
his name. He walked the streets
that night. He looked into the
houses. It was summertime. The
doors and windows were open, and
he saw people sitting in there
laughing and eating popcorn and
watching television. And it was
just so infuriating, he picked
up a rock and threw it through
one of the windows. The police
asked him, what in the world do
you think you were doing? And he
said, well, it just made me mad.
I was dying out there, and
they're watching television. It
makes no sense, really. How are
they to know? The crowd doesn't
know. Why am I irritated with
them? I don't know. I don't
really know. I do know I saw on
television a scene from the
state prison house, and someone
official came out and read a
statement to the gathered
people. The state's medical
examiner pronounced Charles
Yates dead at 12.07 this
morning, and people cheered and
grabbed each other's arms and
swirled around and applauded.
Who are they? Isn't there
anything? Just some sensibility
here. You don't see a funeral
procession and just sit down on
your horn and honk your way all
the way around as you pass. No,
you don't step over the velvet
rope. I know they didn't know.
What I'm saying to you doesn't
make any sense, but it just
doesn't fit. They're laughing
and singing. It's a funeral
procession for goodness sake.
Just on the bare possibility
that that's what it is. Couldn't
they just step over to the side
of the street and bow their
heads and put their hats over
their hearts? Just for a moment.
[Music]
And Jesus entered the temple,
and He drove out those who
bought and sold, and He turned
over the tables of the money
changers, and He said, It is
written, my house shall be
called a house of prayer for all
people, and you have made it a
din of thieves. You may call it
what you will. The entry of
Jesus into Jerusalem was a
protest march. Now please
understand, Jesus was not anti
-institution, anti-liturgy. What
was going on at the temple was a
service, really. The people who
had to have animals for
sacrifice, they found them there
corralled and in the barns. They
needed to change their money
from those with pagan symbols to
money acceptable to their faith.
It was a service rendered to the
people, and there is no
evidence, no evidence at all
that there was price gouging, as
we sometimes claim. We don't
know that. Well then, what's
wrong?
Institutions, all institutions,
have a tendency over a period of
time to become heavy with their
own weight, and to require
greater and greater amounts of
their own time and resources
just to maintain themselves.
More and more time and more and
more money spent in maintaining
the institution that was born
out of an enterprise of great
importance and benevolent
purpose. But now, what's
happened? Of course, of course,
somebody has to attend to the
candles, somebody has to attend
to the tapestries, somebody has
to take care of the building.
These things have their place
and a percentage of time and a
percentage of resource should be
used for that. But there are
things that are true when
whispered, become false when
shouted. And so, what began
right turned sour, and power
became the misuse of power, and
the possession of knowledge of
God became the withholding of
knowledge of God. They didn't
one day say, let's mistreat
everybody, it creeps up. But
when it happens, lilies that
fester smell worse than weeds,
it has happened here. And so
Jesus cleanses the temple, and
Matthew and Mark say, he then
brought in the cripples, and the
children, and the others not
welcome. Those who were
ostracized, those who had been
expelled, he brought them in, he
brought them in. These that had
spent a lifetime saying, if only
once before I die, I can be
inside. Those who wanted so
desperately to hear and to see,
instead of standing outside the
velvet rope, stay back, please,
stay back. Of course, there has
to be quality control. You can't
just let the patients write the
prescriptions. You can't turn
every institution over to the
inmates. There has to be some
quality control. Otherwise, you
have people come in who don't
know an introit from a banana,
and the whole thing goes down.
Stay back, please, stay back
behind the rope, the barricades,
guards. And so there they stand,
every year, catching the
worshipers as they exit. What
did they sing? What were they
wearing? What was it like? Who
was there looking through the
cracks of the fence? Back of the
velvet rope, please. And then
here came Jesus, and he took
them by the hand and said, come
in. Why? Because I'm going to
read the will. I'm going to read
God's will. And every one of you
mentioned in the will, this is
my father's house.