Faithful Answers: Bad Things Coming—Isaiah 50: 4-9; Mark 11: 1-11
Several years ago, while I was still working as a lawyer in Macon, I was headed into the Municipal Courtroom with my co-counsel. It was raining hard that day, and the morning had been awful. It was like all the evil portents were lining up to warn me at once. As I stepped down the stairs and into that historic courtroom and hallway, my shoe slid on the old tile like I was on smooth ice. I slid into a full front to back split, ripping my pants in the process. I was, thankfully, not injured. But all I remember was my co-counsel covering her face and yelling, “Bad things are happening; bad things are happening!”
It does not always take a fortune teller or signs in the sky to tell us when bad things may be coming our way. Every student in school knows what’s coming when he or she wakes up the morning of the test and hasn’t studied. Every adult knows what’s going to happen if they’re going for blood work at the doctor and ate 2 pieces of tres leches cake and a block of cheese the day before. Some troubles are a bit predictable. Others really aren’t. But the faithful answer to both surprise and predictable trouble is always looking beyond the bad thing happening.
The Triumphant Entry is always one of the hardest parts of the gospel narrative for me. There are so many aspects of it which are intriguing. Why did they love Jesus in Bethany and Bethphage but turn on him in Jerusalem? How did all this happen with taking the donkey, and why were folks so okay with it basically being stolen? Who were these people that cheered for Jesus then called for him to die? What can we learn from the fact that Jesus’s entry challenged and mimicked the Roman pageantry and seemed like an actual protest to the leaders? The nuances of this gospel story are indeed many.
But it’s the personal aspect that hits home the most. Jesus looked at a crowd of people who praised him, and said, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessings on the coming Kingdom of our ancestor David! Praise God in the highest heaven!” Jesus processes all they to the Temple among this adoring throng of people. And yet, in his heart, he knew they would turn on him in a few short days. They would call for him to be executed by the state as an innocent man. And one of those closest to him, Judas, would be the betrayer, selling Jesus out for a paltry sum of money. For Jesus, this wasn’t a celebration, it was a funeral march.
The sitting and knowing that such things were coming had to be overwhelming for Jesus. At the end of the day, he turns and goes back to Bethany. The celebration ends, and he goes back to where he is staying. The excitement, the thrill, whatever bit of magic this should have held for Jesus along with his disciples and followers, it was all hollow and empty. Jesus knew that behind it all, bad things were coming and lurking in the shadows. It was like being haunted by the future.
As people of God, we live too much in that space of shadows, haunting, and fear about the bad things which may come. I remember this older woman at a church I worked at. She always had this look of worry and dread on her face. Finally, I asked her one day what she was so worried about. She replied, “I don’t know…it’s not happened yet, but it’s coming…I just know it.” What a miserable and unfaithful place that is to stay our whole lives!
I heard an old preacher who was very anti-seminary once say that sometimes we educate our “young-uns” (as he called them) right out of their salvation. Now I don’t believe that, but I think we can talk ourselves out of hope. I believe we can overthink ourselves out of joy. And I believe we can find ourselves too self-conscious to love. In Isaiah we are told, “Morning by morning [God] awakens me to understand [God’s] will…Because the Sovereign Lord helps me, I will not be disgraced.” Bad things may come our way, but God’s Word is steadfast in peace, in love, and in “strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow,” as the hymn says.
So, what is the faithful answer? We must look through the bad things which happen. Jesus rode into Jerusalem with the shadow of a cross looming on the horizon for him. He came to town knowing that pain, abandonment, and suffering awaited him. He was fully aware and awake to how bad this journey would be. And yet he knew there was a purpose. For in death, there is life. Suffering gives way to mercy. The dark night gives way to tomorrow’s bright hope. And all that Jesus endured was a way to love and redemption for us. A friend of mine used to say, “Don’t look for meaning or purpose in your struggles and rough places. You have to make meaning and purpose in the midst of it, and cling to God to help you and carry you through.”
I think sometimes, when we hear God’s strength will bear us through, we think that God is going to float us past the struggle on a little cloud, like Bob Ross might have painted years ago. But the truth is God’s strength is more like the rope, the boots, and ax pick used to climb the sheer side of a mountain. We still have to summon up our strength and fortitude to do it, but God’s strength gives us the tools we need to make it through the fight.
One of the more traumatic areas of my life was when my long-time mentor and organ teacher, Vickie passed away in 2020. She had been diagnosed with cancer, but she did not fully reveal the truth to her friends and family, choosing instead to say home and not seek treatment. She told us she had been sick with some issues, but the whole truth was never revealed. At over 75 years of age, that was her right as hard a pill as it was to swallow.
But in not telling anyone, she did not get the help she needed to support herself, and she was removed from a truly horrible situation of self-neglect at her house to go to the hospital. And I mean a truly horrible. We could all see bad things were coming as she casually mentioned that she was a bit sick or that the house was in need of a good cleaning, but we didn’t realize the magnitude at all.
When she died, there was no shortage of anger…at her, at God, and probably at some point or another at one another who all failed to realize what was going on, or who were convinced to keep it secret that she “wasn’t feeling well.” And in those moments of asking why to God, asking how God could get this so wrong, asking how this could happen in a world where one of her closest friends is an expert in elder law, there came a moment of clarity.
Jesus looked down the road of praise and hosannas to the lurking shadows of Golgotha’s hill. I am sure those same questions entered the minds of those with him. How could those praises become calls for death? How could they yell for the release of Barabbas—a rioter and murderer—instead of Jesus? How could they crucify Jesus, who was by Pilate’s own words, innocent? How could this travesty of death, suffering, and brutality occur? Honestly, there’s sometimes no way around.
You cannot understand the hope of resurrection without knowing the tragedy of death. You cannot have Easter without the cross. You cannot have the cross without the deceit and betrayal of Palm Sunday. But we also cannot stop at the cross. Too often in faith, we turn all our focus to the death and suffering and misery of the crucifixion. But that’s not the point of the Gospel story. The whole point, meaning, and purpose is the resurrection—life, hope, redemption, and love for humankind.
In death there is resurrection, in the end is a beginning. We are not called to sit and dwell forever on Jesus’s suffering, on the bad things that come our way, on the fear of every struggle and disappointment the immediate future might bring. The whole of the Gospels, and that is all four of them, is a story of hope for humanity. And we are called to respond exactly how our next hymn finishes up, “Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.” Are bad things going to happen to us? Probably. But in the end, the pen dipped in Christ’s love writes a story of hope on every one of our lives. Period. The End. Amen.
Worship Video: https://www.facebook.com/fccmacon/videos/771461578287159