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The Man of Her Dreams
A Sermon by Dr. Jim
Somerville
Pastor, Richmond’s First Baptist Church
Richmond, Virginia
April 9, 2006
Palm Sunday
Mark 11:1-11
When people find out that I used to be Presbyterian they often ask me why I made
the switch. It’s not so complicated, really. I met a girl, a pretty girl, a
pretty Baptist girl who sent me an application to her college. On a whim I
filled it out, and on a whim they accepted me, and before I knew what I was
doing I had transferred from St. Andrews Presbyterian, in North Carolina, to
Georgetown College in Kentucky, a Baptist school. Two weeks after I got there
my new girlfriend and I had a fight and broke up, and I went back to my
dormitory room and sat on the edge of my bed thinking, “This is the dumbest
thing you have ever done, Jim Somerville: transferred to another school because
of a girl!” But then, a few days later, she brought me a plate of
chocolate chip cookies and we made up and then broke up and then made up again
and that’s how it was for almost a year-and-a-half. It was during that first
year, at a time when things were going well for us, that I got the idea of
starting my own fraternity.
I wanted to call it Omicron Zeta, so that when you wrote the initials side by
side they would make a big “O-Z.” To anyone who didn’t know they were Greek
letters, they would just look like the word “OZ,” as in “The Wizard of.” I
liked that. So, I got a few of the guys in my dorm together and said, “Hey,
let’s start our own fraternity!” and since the other fraternities on campus
weren’t exactly knocking down their doors they said yes. Because it was my idea
I got to be the Wizard, but the rest of the fraternity nicknames were handed out
in short order: the “Scarecrow,” the “Tin Man,” the “Cowardly Lion,” and “Toto”
too. We talked about having jerseys made up with the names on the back. We
talked about using, as our pledge pin, a three-and-a-half pound bowling pin that
our pledges would have to carry around. We talked until midnight, coming up
with big ideas, and then, two days later, I found the ambulance.
There was this big flea
market that used to be held every Saturday at the edge of town, and when I went
out there that next Saturday I saw this big, ugly ambulance with a sign that
read, "$500 Firm." It didn't look like an ambulance, really. It looked like a
hearse. It was long and dark with tail fins, and enough room in the back for a
full-sized casket. I asked the owner about it and he said it wasn't a hearse,
it was an ambulance, and he proved it by showing me the lockers inside that were
meant for medical supplies. "You see," he said, "you wouldn't need medical
supplies in a hearse." He made a good point. He also showed me the place on
the top where the flashing red light used to be, and swore that the ambulance
used to be white before it had been painted from stem to stern In a kind of
dull, gray primer. "Best of all," he said, "it's a Cadillac." And it
was. I admired the Cadillac emblem on the front grill and took a look at the
powerful engine beneath the hood.
I had this vision of this
old ambulance, with a fresh coat of glossy white paint and the Omicron Zeta
insignia stenciled on both sides in gold letters. We would call it the "Ozmobile,"
and all of us would pile into it together to drive down to Lexington for pizza
at Joe Bologna's. It would be great. "Does it run?" I asked. "Oh, yeah," he
answered. "It runs good." "Could I give it a try?" I asked, and he looked
around warily. "Maybe not right now," he said. "But if you come back this
afternoon, with the money, we could take it out for a spin." "Well," I
answered, "I don't have the money right now, but I think I could get it." "Why
don't you do that," he said, grinning. "I'll hold it for you." And so, I
hurried back toward the campus, to talk to my fraternity brothers and see if,
among the five of us, we could come up with a hundred dollars apiece. Somewhere
along the way, I made the mistake of telling my girlfriend.
"You're buying a what?"
she asked.
"An ambulance!" I said.
"This cool, old ambulance that looks like a hearse. It's only five hundred
dollars, and, best of all, it's a Cadillac."
"You're buying a what?"
she asked, again.
"A Cadillac," I
said. "I'm buying a beautiful old Cadillac ambulance for my fraternity. We're
going to call it the Ozmobile."
There was a long silence
before she spoke again.
"You have to understand
something, Jim," she said. "When I think of you, I think of you as my future
husband. And when you do something like this, it worries me. I wonder what
kind of husband you're going to be, somebody who buys old broken-down,
hearse-looking ambulances at the drop of a hat. I mean, that's not very
responsible, is it?"
And I looked at her for a
long moment, stunned. What kind of girl had I fallen in love with, a girl who
couldn't rejoice in the good fortune of a man who had found an old, broken down,
hearse-looking ambulance (at a really good price!) that could be used to
transport his rowdy fraternity brothers from one cheap pizza place to another?
It just didn't make sense at all. I said to her, "Look, you may think of me as
your future husband and I may be your future husband (though it's not looking
likely), but right now I'm a junior in college. We're supposed to be
irresponsible!" But you know what? I didn't buy that ambulance, and it wasn't
only because I couldn't get the money together, it was because of her. It was
because she wanted me to be someone other than who I was, and I—because I
thought she was so pretty, because she looked so good on my arm, because I
enjoyed carrying her picture around in my wallet so much—I gave in.
In some ways I have been
ashamed ever since because I don't think it was what Jesus would have done.
Think about it. In our Gospel lesson for today he comes toward the city of
Jerusalem with a huge crowd of followers. The people had been waiting for the
Messiah to come for hundreds of years, and with the coming of Jesus Messianic
expectation was running high. Hopefulness had reached hurricane force. And
into the teeth of that storm Jesus sent his disciples to fetch a donkey. A
donkey! Now, it's possible that he was only trying to fulfill the prophecy
of Zechariah 9:9, the one that says, "Behold, daughter of Zion, your king is
coming to you, humble and riding on a donkey." It's possible that Jesus was, in
fact, trying to present himself as the Messiah, so that the people would have to
reckon with the kind of Messiah he wanted to be. But isn't it also possible
that he wanted to put an end to those Messianic expectations, that he wanted to
present himself as something entirely other than what they were looking for so
that they would have to deal with him on his own terms?
As I was looking over this
passage last week I noticed something I had never seen before. The people shout
"Hosanna!" and "Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord." But
right there in verse 10 they say, "Blessed is the coming Kingdom of our ancestor
David!" Did you hear that? "The Kingdom…of our ancestor…David." I hadn't
noticed that before, but suddenly it all made sense. This is why people had
trouble with Jesus: not because he wasn't the Messiah, but because he wasn't a
Messiah like David. David, as you recall, was the king who presided over
the Golden Age of Israel. He was the one who fought off Israel's enemies, the
Philistines, and extended the borders of the nation in every direction. He
ushered in an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity. Other nations feared
him; foreign kings brought him tribute. He was, in every earthly sense of the
word, a success. Who wouldn't want a king like that?
But here was Jesus,
traipsing all over Galilee, healing the sick, cleansing the lepers, raising the
dead, casting out demons, talking about loving your enemies and turning the
other cheek--in short, preaching the good news of the coming Kingdom of God
while these people were looking for the coming Kingdom of David. They kept
hoping that he would come around, that he would get all this other stuff out of
his system and get on with the business of routing the Roman army and restoring
the nation of Israel, but he didn't seem to have any interest in that. So, when
he and his crowd of followers came up the hill from Jericho and topped the rise
and looked out over the Kidron valley toward the capital city of Jerusalem I'm
sure there were those who suggested that he make his entrance in a chariot,
pulled by white horses, with fifty men running in front. And that's when Jesus
asked his disciples to go fetch a donkey. It would be a little bit like riding
into the city in an old, broken-down ambulance rather than a shiny new
limousine, wouldn't it? And can't you imagine that among all those shouts of
Hosanna there were, also, the cries of confusion? What kind of Messiah was
this, anyway?
So, maybe this whole
business with the donkey is Jesus' way of saying, "I'm not David, OK? And I'm
not the Son of David. If you're going to deal with me, you're going to have to
deal with me on my own terms. I'm not bringing in David's kingdom: I'm bringing
in the Kingdom of God!" It would be a little bit like buying that ambulance In
spite of what my girlfriend thought and driving it past her dorm. I might have
honked the horn (if it still worked) and called out her name. I might have
wanted her roommate to look out the window and say, "Hey, isn't that your
boyfriend, driving some old wreck of an ambulance?" All of which is to say, I
might have wanted her to have to deal with who I really was instead of who she
wanted me to be. Maybe that's what's going on here. Maybe it is an act of
rebellion on Jesus' part. "You want a king like David? You want someone who
rides around in a fancy chariot? Well, that's not the kind of king I want to
be. Somebody go get me a donkey." It could have happened like that. I
wouldn't put it past Jesus. But you know what? I don't picture Jesus with a
look of rebellion on his face. And I don't really picture him with a look of
triumph on his face, even though this is often called the "triumphal entry."
No, most of the time when I think about Jesus entering Jerusalem I picture him
as so many artists have, with a kind of sad look on his face.
The paintings I have seen
of Palm Sunday always show these exuberant crowds surrounding a very somber
Jesus. Maybe it's because he knows this is not a victory parade so much as it
is a funeral procession (as Fred Craddock once suggested). Or maybe it's
because he feels what I felt on the day my girlfriend talked me out of buying an
ambulance. She told me she thought of me as her future husband, which might
only mean that she saw in me the sort of raw material that might, with a good
bit of effort, be shaped up into the man of her dreams. But that would also
mean I wasn't the man of her dreams yet, and that's kind of sad. I know that I
still had a lot of growing up to do. I know that buying an old ambulance is
not, necessarily, a mark of maturity. But I also know that I wanted her to love
me for who I was, and not for who I might someday be. And that's why I didn't
marry that girl. I was tired of having her walk around me like a sculptor
walking around a block of granite, holding a hammer and chisel, wondering which
unsightly chunk to knock off next.
Was it like that for
Jesus? Did he ride into Jerusalem on that donkey hoping that people would love
him for who he was and not for who they wanted him to be? When they shouted,
"Blessed is the coming Kingdom of our ancestor David" did it break his heart in
some way? To think that they wanted David more than they wanted him? I don't
know, but I do know this: Jesus was not the man of their dreams, but he was the
man of God's dreams for them. Some things are clearer in hindsight. Paul, who
used to persecute Christians for claiming that this carpenter from Nazareth,
this pretender to the throne, this broken-down donkey rider was the Messiah,
later came to the place where he could say In Philippians 2:5-1 that Jesus,
"though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God as something
to be exploited. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being
born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and
became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross. Therefore, God
also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that
at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under
the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the
Glory of God the Father."
Hosanna!
—Jim Somerville © 2009
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