Gloria Dei Lutheran Church | Urbandale, Iowa

Encounter Jesus: Hope Heightened

Pastor Kendall Meyer

Sunday, April 1, 2007

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

It seemed odd when I read it. According to the Associate Press, there was a little over 100 migrants from Haiti that reached the beach of southern Florida this past Wednesday after spending a little over three weeks out in the open sea on a partially deteriorated sailboat. Now, mind you, Haiti is about 700 miles southwest of Miami. Now one person died in the boat. Another person drowned and three people were in critical condition because of dehydration. Not only that but 11 people who had made it to the shore were in local hospitals in serious condition. And the reason why this is odd is because why would people do that? Why would someone go into a partially deteriorated sailboat, spend three weeks out in the open sea, subject themselves to the possibility of dying from dehydration or from starvation or from exposure to the sun or even drowning, I ask, why would someone do that? Because, you see, they had hope.

Haiti had been ravaged by hurricane damage and by flooding and by political turmoil. You see, Haiti is not a good place to live at this time and they had heard America is a good place to live. In America, you can have opportunities. And so these people who were in a broken boat had hope. They had hope for a better life, hope for a life they want.

Well, it seems odd when you read it. The reading for this morning from the book of John, can you picture it? The crowd had all come into Jerusalem. These people are from all over the countryside. They come to celebrate the Passover but they hear Jesus is coming and so they gather in the street. They take palm branches and they take their cloaks and they lay them out into the street and they shout praises to this man. They sing, “Hosanna. Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the king of Israel.” But when you look at this man, He is so simple. He wears simple clothes. He’s even on a simple mode of transportation, a young donkey, and it seems so odd. Why would they be singing praises to this man? After all, the praises they were singing were praises that were fit for a king, for someone who was royalty but this simple man, there was no hint, outward hint of royalty here. So I ask you why would they do that?

Again, because they had hope. You see, the Jewish people had been suppressed by the Romans for, up to this point, 93 years and with every year, the anger under the oppression had grown more and more. They had gotten to a point where some of their religious festivals were prohibited. They had to deal with rulers who were cruel and were stealing money from them to line their own pockets. Not only that, but they were also dealing with the political situation that was being influenced by the Romans where they would even say who their chief priests were. But these people had a hope and what was that hope? It’s in our reading for this morning. It says here, “Many people because they had heard He had given this miraculous sign, went out to meet Him.” Well, the question is what is this miraculous sign we’re talking about? We’re talking about when Jesus raised Lazarus, when He called Lazarus out of the tomb. That was one of the clues, one of the signs that pointed this person was the Messiah and so they believed Jesus was the Messiah. They had hope. They believed Jesus would restore the kingdom of Israel, that Jesus would take the kingdom of Israel out from under the oppression of the Romans, that He would restore the kingdom of Israel back to the time of King David and King Solomon, that they would be at a point to be influential and powerful, back to the glory days, if you will. These people had hope. They had hope for a better life. They had hope for the life they want.

Well, that doesn’t seem so odd, does it? That they had hope for a life they want. We can understand that, can’t we? We have hopes, too, don’t we? We have hope we can have a life we want. After all, isn’t that what Jesus wants for us? For us to have the life we want? And when life is difficult, we can just put our trust and our hopes in Jesus? After all, the saying said there is no hopeless situation, there are just people without hope around them.

And so if we’re having a difficult time in our job that’s making our lives very difficult, then we can put our hope in finding a new job. Because once we find that new job, our lives are going to be different. Or maybe our marriages are really having a hard time. We can see our relationship with our spouse growing even more distant. We’re growing apart and it’s because of the kids. You see, we never have time to be able to spend with each other and so we put our hope in the day our kids will leave the house, will move out because that’s when our marriage will be better.

Or maybe you’re doing pretty good right now. Maybe you’re not worried about retirement at all because you’ve been squirreling your money aside and you’ve been doing pretty well with your portfolio. When you look at your portfolio, it’s pretty healthy and you know if you were to retire now, things will be pretty good for you. In fact, when you watch the latest James Bond movie, Casino Royale, you identify with the thug, the chief when asked what does he believe in and he says he believes “in a high return on my investment.” Sure, hope for a life we want. That doesn’t seem so odd, does it?

But when we encounter Jesus, we encounter reality. And the reality for the crowd that was lining the sides of the street with the palm branches and the cloaks, their reality was this Jesus was not what they had hoped for because later on in the week, they see the Pharisees and the Sadducees enact their plan to kill him. And Jesus, yes, He had a kingly purple robe on, but it’s splattered with His own blood and into the midst of a trial and He is put before the people as their king, but He is nailed on a tree with a sign above His head that says, “This is the King of the Jews.” And when they hear Jesus say, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit,” and they watch Him die on that cross, their hopes are dashed. To them, it seems like the end.

Have you ever been there? Have your hopes ever been dashed? Has it seemed like it was the end? Maybe it’s a year later and you’re still looking for that job. Maybe you’ve changed several jobs but the same problems keep creeping up and you just can’t find happiness or maybe you are still reeling from that letter you received in the mail. Because, you see, it’s the divorce papers. Your kids have moved out of the house alright but so has your spouse and you’re left here wondering, “What has just happened?” Or maybe the market hasn’t been doing very well the last six months and so your anxiety level continues to grow as the worth of your portfolio drops. Have your hopes ever been dashed? Has it ever seemed like it was the end? Have you ever found yourself saying, “This Jesus is not what I had hoped for.”

But when we encounter Jesus, we also encounter grace. And what the crowd may have thought was the end, what we in our lives may think is the end, to God it’s only the beginning. I’m reminded of a story about a man who went to see a Little League baseball game and the game had already started and so he went over to the dugout and he asked one of the boys, “What’s the score?” And the boy said, “It’s 18-0. We’re behind.” And the man says, “Wow. You must have lost hope.” And the boy said, “Why have we lost hope? We haven’t even batted yet.” What we see as the end, God sees as the beginning. Jesus is not in the business of giving us the life we want. No. Jesus is in the business of giving us the life we need. And for the crowd, there was a hope they didn’t even know about yet. In fact, Jesus was more than what they had hoped for because after seeing Jesus die on that cross, three days later, He walked out of that tomb victorious, making the words they had cried out the week before even more appropriate, “Hosanna, Hosanna, blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the King of Israel.” Jesus gives us the life we need and that is eternal life. Sure, God gives us the gifts of having a job, of having marriages, of having money but if we base our hopes on those, then Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, “If we put our hopes in this life, then we are to be pitied more than any other men.”

Sure, there are going to be times when we misplace our hopes. Sure, there are going to be times where things do not turn out the way we expect them to turn out, the way we had hoped for. That’s what happened to the crowds. Things didn’t turn out the way they had hoped but Jesus still walked out of that tomb. Things turned out the way they needed. And it’s the same for us. We may not be happy in the job we’re in. We may be having a difficult time in our relationships. We may also even not have a portfolio that is as strong as we’d like. But we don’t need to think of it as the end. We don’t need to lose hope. For to God, it’s the beginning. And how can we look at these situations? Well, Paul gives us a clue in Romans 8, “What then shall we say in response to that? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also along with Him graciously give us all things?”

What we might see as the end, God sees as the beginning. And when we encounter Jesus, we encounter a hope that saves us. God gives us this hope because in the words of Hebrew 6, “We are given this hope to serve as an anchor in our lives,” and so with God’s help, we can direct our hope from things that disappoint us to a hope that will never disappoint us, Jesus.

And so this week, as we walk with Jesus, as we go through Maundy Thursday, as we go through Good Friday, as we look toward Easter, we know Jesus is more than what we could ever have hoped for. And we can look forward to, with a heightened hope, Easter, for we have a better life. We have the life Jesus knows we need. We have eternal life. Amen.