The Triumph of the Meek                                                     4/6/41

 

Scripture:  Matthew 21: 1-11.

 

Text:  Matthew 21: 5;  “.... Behold thy king cometh unto thee, meek......”

 

Palm Sunday is a day of expectant joy.  It is the beginning of a week of great spiritual meaning for hosts of Christian people.  Prepared through their personal devotions and their church attendance and worship throughout the Lenten season each year, the followers of the Nazarene enter the Passion week (or Holy week) with a sense of gladness.

 

After all, the most noticeable feature of that day on which Jesus entered the capital city, Jerusalem, was its triumph.  For once, Jesus permitted some show of pomp and splendor, modest though it was.  Fulfilling and old prophecy, perhaps in order to impress the people the more surely with what was about to happen, Jesus made arrangements to ride into the city on a donkey.  Some of his disciples had thrown their coats over the beast for a saddle.  Other friends threw their cloaks in the road way for a carpet.  “Others cut branches from the trees, and spread them in the way.”

 

The Bible does not say “Palm branches.”  Perhaps it is inferred that they were branches of palm trees because only flat branches would readily be ridden over.  Or perhaps the palm is chosen as the most likely because it is a tropical, or semi-tropical tree and doubtless grew all about the Jerusalem neighborhood.  At any rate the Palm branch tradition has grown until the anniversary day of Jesus’ triumphal entry is popularly called “Palm Sunday.”  Protestant churches are decorated with beautiful flowers and sometimes palms.  Catholic churches, or churches of catholic leanings, have small individual palms blessed and distributed to the worshippers.  And there is something so intrinsically lovely in a palm as to make it an altogether appropriate accompaniment to the mood of joy.

 

There must have been a wild and eager joy in the hearts of those who shouted their “hosanna” during Jesus Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem.  Those people had suffered so long, so bitterly and so unwillingly under a foreign rule.  Any hope of deliverance and freedom always met with a certain amount of fanatical enthusiasm.  And of course there were many in that cheering crowd, with their strewn and waving branches, who believed that a revolutionary leader had at last appeared.  Even his own disciples were so excited that they would probably have sprung to the sword if Jesus had given the word.  Their minds were so set on their own objectives that it took all of the heartbreak and tragedy of the following week to bring them to their senses.

 

How like them we are yet in this day!  A few years ago we laid plans for an N.R.A. to assure fair practices and decent relationships in business.  Or we laid plans for the defeat of the N.R.A. if we didn’t believe in it.  Whole nations of people look to dictators who promise them the things they want, and believe they should have, through military power.  And we have encouraged such dictatorships when we have refused of neglected to do anything constructive about the needs of depressed peoples.  We waver in our sense of values and toy with the feeling that perhaps, after all, the only way to get justice or protect justice is with a club.  A club is sometimes necessary, but it is not the only way nor the best way.

 

Jesus could easily have organized and led a rebellion if he had chosen to do so.  It might have been short-lived in the face of the might of Rome’s armies.  But there were those who were zealous enough to try.

 

But Jesus had no such intention.  He came not to kill, but to bring life abundant to all sorts of men.  He put no reliance on physical force or violence.  He had no interest in clubbing men into submission.  His methods and spirit work from within a human heart.  What good would their freedom do his people unless they were ready to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with Jehovah in very practice as well as in theory?  What about their leaders who tithed mint and anise and cumin and left untouched the weightier matters of the law?  What about the men who in their daily dealings had forgotten mercy and true charity so far as to “do” widows out of their possessions and to leave fatherless children hungry?  What about people who wasted their spiritual energies in hatred - even of the cruel Romans?  One of the worst tragedies of war is that, when it is all over, it is difficult, if not impossible, to conclude a just peace.  How can a whole nation of people hate and kill the people of another nation right up to the moment an armistice is signed and then suddenly be filled with justice and mercy for the defeated?  it is almost impossible to expect!  And yet, by the grace of God it must be expected and attempted!

 

Jesus’ triumphal entry was not the sort of conquest the people understood.  It was not even the beginning of a rebellion.  His triumph was that of the meek.  There was no arrogance, no sword-rattling, no rabble-rousing speech.  King he was, and is; not on a throne or upon a chariot, but upon a lowly donkey, upon a cross, within human hearts yielded voluntarily, willingly to his reign.

 

This is one of the hardest things for us to understand.  Some governments have thrown it aside as contemptible.  Fighters in war, politics, or business call it “visionary” or “impractical,” or simply ignore it.  The meek of our day are in the same humble position they occupied in Jesus’ day.  Kagawa is left at home weeping as the armed forces of his country go forth to kill people whom he knows and loves and trusts in China.

 

But the way of the meek has a strange and timeless endurance.  The love of Kagawa will endure long after the bombs have ceased to fall in the Orient.  The name of Pilate is saved from oblivion only by the patient suffering of the Galilean at his unjust hands.  The spirit of the meek carpenter of Nazareth still shines brightly today in spite of the rise and fall of empires, and the waxing and waning of names great in their little day.

 

The word “meek” is often used in an unfavorable sense, to mean “tamely submissive,” “spiritless” or “cowardly.”  Of course this is an abuse of a good word.  The meek are submissive - to the will of God, but they are not cowardly or spiritless.  To be meek means to be humble, to be kind, to be gentle, but with all one’s strength to be bent on doing the righteous will of God!

 

This strength is shown in Jesus as he scattered the noisy, arguing money changers and their wares out of the court of the holy temple in Jerusalem.  It is shown in his determination to face a shameful death that the sins of people of the world made inevitable.  It is shown in his rebuke to the disciples who would have kept the children away, to avoid being annoyed.  It is found in his great magnetic power to attract and hold the loyalty of disciples who became devoted to him.

 

Matthew’s account of the Triumphal Entry calls attention to an old saying of the prophet Zechariah (9:9):

 

            “Tell ye the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy King cometh

            unto thee, meek, and riding upon an ass, and upon a

            colt the foal of an ass.”

 

It does not usually become a king to appear meek.  The movements of kings are usually attended with pomp and circumstance that make them appear anything but meek.  But the description fits Jesus, greater than any of them, accurately.

 

His race knew the high quality of meekness.  The psalmist has written “The meek will he guide,” [Psalm 25: 9] and “The meek shall inherit the earth.”  [Psalm 37:11].  And Jesus repeated the words of his spiritual ancestor when he himself assured his hearers in the beatitude; “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”  [Matthew 5:5].  The prophet Isaiah had written, “The meek shall increase their joy in the Lord.”  Isaiah 29: 19].  (And, after all, I fail to see how the arrogant could have much joy in the Lord!)

 

When Jesus calls us to personal discipleship, he invites us to take his yoke upon us and learn of him.  The yoke is a symbol of meekness and hard work.  It is laid, like a heavy wooden collar across the necks of oxen who do their master’s will and pull the loads he expects them to bear.  Jesus must have learned a great deal about yokes in Joseph’s carpenter shop while they were being shaped and smoothed and then adjusted to the necks of the farmer’s oxen.

 

After saying, “Take my yoke upon me and learn of me,” Jesus continues, “For I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls.”  [Matthew 11: 29].  The word “meek” appears often enough in scriptural song and prophecy and in the words of Jesus to become impressive.  God-loving people who are serious in their desire to follow Christ will do well to ponder this triumph of the meek.

 

It is true that Jesus proclaimed a Kingdom - but a Kingdom of God in the hearts of men.  It was not, as he assured the suspicious Pilate, and kingdom of this world.

 

Gaius Glenn Atkins, in preparing last year’s Lenten devotions for “The Fellowship of Prayer” (1940), sums up the meaning of the triumphal Entry of this meek and lowly Jesus who was nonetheless a king of kings.  Some of you read these words over a year ago, and have been led by him in your Lenten devotions this year.  I close with them:

 

“Today we join with an innumerable company to acclaim a king riding into his capital city.  As He rode down Olivet, He challenged the world order with the proclamation of the Kingdom of God and the banners of the future floated unseen above Him.

 

That Kingdom is a promise pitifully unfulfilled, but the King was - and is - rightful master of our loyalties, and the Kingdom, dream though it is, will not let us rest till we have established its boundaries in the souls of men and set its banner above all our standards.

 

Then, and now, it is opposed, in the whole superb range of it, to the pride and power of the world order.  But it possesses the true imperial forces; love and justice, and concern for men, and radiant faith, and the unconquerable power of sacrificial love.  The true glory of life is to seek and serve it, remembering that He Who rode to gain it, though a cross blocked His path, is undefeated and undefeatable.”

 

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Dates and places delivered:

            Pilgrim Church, Honolulu, March 17, 1940 AM (Palm Sunday)

            Wisconsin Rapids, April 6, 1941

            Marshfield, Union Service at Methodist Church, April 6, 1941