Lent 1, 10:30 am, Sun, Feb 18, 2024 ~ FBCA

(Isaiah 62:1-4, 10-12; Ps 22:27-31; Mark 11:1-11) J G White

I attended a wake yesterday. You know what a wake is? An old term for a reception, a gathering before the funeral of a loved one. This was a wake not for a person, but for a business. A store that went belly-up. My brother, and his brother-in-law, had good plans and probably some great expectations, when they planned this small business, four years ago. A game store, where you could not only buy Risk, Axis & Allies, Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer, or Wingspan, but you could also gather there for hours and play the games.

As I say, they had a wake for their store, yesterday. After three years and a bit, they could not sustain it, could not inject any more money into it to make a go of it. Goodbye, Carl G Wargaming store!

Many of us have great expectations, at moments in life. Some of those hopes and plans get dashed. What happens is rather different. Sometimes bad, sometimes OK, sometimes better than what we’d expected.

I see some great expectations in our Bible readings today. I chose the scriptures for this Church season we call Lent, from Mark, Isaiah, a Psalm. Bible words, yes, but do they sound unrealistic?

Isaiah 62 speaks to Israelites of long before Jesus, telling them their holy city shall be vindicated, and her salvation be like a burning torch. I love the bits about them getting new names. They shall be called, “the Holy People, The Redeemed of the Lord… Sought Out, A City Not Forsaken.” Not-Forsaken-Town: sounds like a nice name. But was it unrealistic? Three thousand years later, Jerusalem is troubled again.

With a modern wording we read from Psalm 22, the end of it. From the four corners of the earth people are coming to their senses, are running back to God. Are they? Some. Sometimes. Lots of people? - no.

Then Mark’s Gospel. We will take six weeks to look at six days in a row, what gets called ‘Holy Week.’ Today it is Sunday, the day after Jewish Sabbath; Jesus and his disciples enter Jerusalem for the Passover, to great applause - or, branch waving and rejoicing.

We see this exciting moment of great expectations about Jesus. The followers of this Man obviously have some hope that good things will happen now - maybe even the real attack on the powers that be: the Roman Empire who is ruling the region, and perhaps too the strict religious & powerful Jews.

But most of us know the rest of the story. We know that so many who rejoice when their Leader rides into town on a donkey will reject Jesus, by the end of the week, and join in calling for His execution, while His closest followers simply flee and hide.

Writer, Virginia Stem Owens, says it well: I have always felt pretty ambivalent about Palm Sunday… It’s hard to put your whole heart into the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem when you’re dreading the ignominious part you’re to play next.

But she writes: At its best, the rest of our earthly life is going to be one long Palm Sunday, a procession of praise and great expectations in the face of certain failure–or it’s going to be nothing… Our excitement is always going to be slightly out of focus, through a glass darkly.

Nevertheless, despite this, maybe even because of this, we must take our place in the parade… Aware of our own wavering natures, we must declare this is it! Heaven is passing by at this moment! (Eugene Peterson, ed., Stories for the Christian Year, Collier, 1992, pp. 105, 108)

For the promised Kingdom of God is not arriving like all the other empires of history. Not like the ones those people hoped for again, who shouted ‘hosanna.’ What did an old hymn we recently sang say? But not with swords loud-clashing,

nor roll of stirring drums,

but deeds of love and mercy,

the heavenly kingdom comes. (Ernest W Shurtleff)

Still today, our expectations of God, and of our lives, can be a bit off. They will be. We will be off-kilter. We learn; we have much to learn.

Nova Scotian spiritual writer, Sara Jewell, has said The kingdom of God is not a physical place. It’s neither heaven nor the church. It’s Jesus, and it’s us. It’s among us and within us.

It looks like people taking care of each other.

It looks like people linking arms with each other.

It looks like people treating neighbours as extended family.

It looks like a close-knit, functioning body where each member is affected by what happens to the other members.

(Alphabet of Faith, 2021, Wood Lake, p. 117)

Beautifully written. Yet even this can seem like too-great expectations. Idealistic. But it is the core, the basis of what’s real. There is a place for big hopes and great expectations. We must then be ready for our expectations to be tweaked or maybe changed in big ways. In our life paths. In our faith, our discipleship to Jesus.

Life happens, and our plans got fouled up. How will Christ use us to encourage one another? When a business plan fails. When disease strikes hard. When a relationship breaks. When the world goes to pot around us.

I still trust God and Christ to be about what’s good and right in people’s lives, amid the terrible things of the world. I have not suffered greatly in any way, personally, in half a century, but I can see in the lives of many who have suffered, how faith and confidence in our good God lives in them. They have strong, new expectations.

And I see this so clearly in the Saviour, who entered the Holy City to the shouts of hosanna and waving of branches, who headed straight to His rejection, betrayal, injustice, torture, and execution.

So, on these Sundays before Easter, let us walk through the days of that holy week, long ago. (Next Sunday we will look at Monday, when Jesus enters the Temple, and clears it out the merchants.)

As an old hymn puts it, we shall

Learn of Jesus Christ to pray. (James Montgomery, 1771-1854)

Learn of Him to bear the cross.

Learn of Jesus Christ to die.

Saviour, teach us so to rise.