Palm Sunday - King Corona and King Jesus

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These introductions and this brief sermon go with Psalm 31:9-18, Philippians 2:5-11 and Matthew 27:11-54




INTRODUCTION TO THE PSALM:



I said last week that one way to think about the Psalms is as the words of Jesus.

He would have said and sung and prayed this Psalm, I expect, so what would it mean on his lips?

Like so many of the Psalms, it is a Psalm of David.

It speaks ultimately of King Jesus, great king David’s greater son, another anointed one, the Messiah.

The speaker in the Psalm is a righteous man who suffers unjustly but who trust God to vindicate him.

The great pattern of the Psalms and of the Bible is so often suffering and glory, humiliation and exaltation.

We don’t have the be theological geniuses to see Good Friday and Easter Sunday here, if you ask me.

And maybe too we might dare to see ourselves in this Psalm, at least as we are in Jesus, by faith, in the power of the Holy Spirit.

In our own little way, Jesus’ story, his prayer, his song might increasingly become ours.

The great message of the Bible is that you would be foolish to exalt yourself in your pride.

Rather, humbly trust in God and seek to serve him faithfully in what he gives you to do, and he will lift you up in due time.

Cross and Resurrection – even hundreds of years before Jesus in the Psalms.



I don’t know if this strikes you, but it is just obvious to me that God must have written the Bible!

It is genius how 40 odd different writers over hundreds of years have written this book which is so clearly all centred on the good news about Jesus, without many of them even knowing his name.



Anyway, I ought to get on with the reading:



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INTRODUCTION TO PHILIPPIANS:



Again, we can see the cross and resurrection in our next reading, and not only so, but the incarnation and the ascension too.

God the Eternal and Omnipotent Son didn’t stand on his dignity.

He became a human being, a helpless embryo.

He was born in poverty and laid in a manger.

He was a refugee: hunted, despised, rejected.

He had no official position, no home, probably only the clothes on his back.

The God-man was tired and hungry and tempted.



But more: The Resurrection and the Life died.

And not only did he die:

He embraced the shame of the cross:

This was no heroic death on the battle field or in some great exploit, but the death of the worst sort of common criminal or traitor.

The All Glorious One willingly experienced a death so unspeakable, the scandal of it was reserved for foreigners and slaves and it couldn’t even be mentioned in polite society.

This was the sort of death that would put nice people off their breakfasts.  

Of course, the cross seemed weakness and foolishness, but here in fact was the wisdom and power of God – the super-human, world-transforming salvation of the crucified God.



And because of that, God the father was pleased, as he loves to do, to the exalt the humble, to raise up his beloved Son.

This should humble our pride.

The human-divine, crucified Jesus is now exalted to the highest place so that every knee should bow to him.



This pattern of the cross and resurrection is the paradigm for all Christian thinking and living.

Our attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus!

In the topsy-turvy kingdom of God, the way up is always down!

All glory to Jesus and to God the Father in the bond of the Holy Spirit!

Let us pray for grace to see and go the way of the cross, because it is the only way to glory and to resurrection.



There, if you like, is the sermon!

Now for the reading!



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INTRODUCTION TO MATTHEW’S GOSPEL:



In some churches there would be a dramatized reading of the Passion Narrative today.

Sometimes even in place of the sermon!

“Shame!”, I hear you cry!

Well, I’m not slacking off today.

I’m going to read you quite a long section of the account of the trial of Jesus before Pilate and the death of Christ, and then I’m going to say one thing about it.



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SERMON PROPER ON MATTHEW’S GOSPEL: KING CORONA & KING JESUS
(I am indebted to a friend on Facebook for this basic idea)



Do you know what the word Corona means?



It’s Latin for crown.



If you’ve seen a blown-up image of the corona virus, you’ll know that it has a series of crown-like spikes on its surface, and that’s what gives it its name:

The crown virus.  



And if you’ll allow the personification, you can see why King Corona might be rather confident and proud.

He might well strut around in his deadly crown.  

He has transformed the world.

He has shut down whole societies.

And brough havoc to economies.

He has done what the Blitz could not, closing down churches and schools.

Many are terrified of him.

His legacy and place in the history books is certainly assured.

Like The Black Death, he will always be remembered.



Where does his power come from?

Surely it is from his alliance with death.

That’s the thing, isn’t it?

We’re not really afraid of a cough or a high temperature or a shortage of loo roll.

The thing is that many people, some of them young and healthy, have died, are dying or will die from King Corona.

And what could be more fearful than death – especially when many in society claim that death is the end.

If you think this life is all there is, you might cling on to it with a dreadful desperation.

You might bow down and worship King Corona and do whatever he commands in the hope that he might not afflict you.

Though sadly, King Corona is unseen and unpredictable.

He cannot be trusted even by those most devoted to his service.

Whatever precautions you seek to take, he might still strike.  



But in out Bible reading we meet a different king with a different crown.



King Jesus comes to his people humble and meek, riding on a donkey, not a war horse.  

And like King Corona, he is crowned, but his crown is a crown of thorns.

This crown, if you like, is a bit like the donkey.

Both of them are substitutes or parodies of the real thing.

No war horse but a donkey.

No crown of gold and jewels but of thorns.  



What does this crown of thorns mean?

Of course the soldiers do it to hurt and mock him.

But what does God mean by it?

Yes, it spoke of the suffering and humiliation of this king.

But I think for the Bible reader there’s something else?



Where have we heard of thorns and brows and heads and death before in the Bible?

Isn’t it all there in Genesis Chapter 3?



Just as in Matthew 27 we find one man, Jesus, so in Genesis 3, we find one man, Adam, the father of all fallen race.



And God said to Adam:

“Cursed is the ground because of you;

Through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.

It will produce thorns and thistles for you…

By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food

Until you return to the ground,

Since from it you were taken;

For dust you are and to dust you shall return.”

Curse, thorns, brow, death.

It’s all there, isn’t it?

It could have been written with the crucifixion scene in mind.

Surely in the mind of God it was.



What do thorns mean for the Bible reader?



They mean the curse of God on sin and all the painful consequences of sin and ultimately, death.

All throughout the Bible we’ve been waiting for the problem of the thorns to be resolved and now at the cross of Christ, it is:

The prick of the thorns is visited on the head of Jesus, our Federal Head.



Now the God-man, the Second Adam, takes the thorn, the pain of sin, on his own brow.

Jesus bares the curse of sin in his body on the tree – in our place, for us, so that we might be forgiven.

For him, death.

For us, life.

Curse for him.

Blessing for us.



That crown of thorns, it will be he victory laurel.

The sign above him says, “King of the Jews.”

That cross is his throne.

There the humble one is exalted and lifted up.



Jesus is the king.

His the glory and the crown – the crown of thorns, which was agony for him but which is life and peace and joy and liberation for us!



With Jesus we can say to the corona virus, O, be not proud!

You are no true King, Mr Corona.

You’re a tin pot little tyrant.

You have made your alliance with death, but death is our defeated enemy.

For us, death is nothing to fear!

The ogre death is tamed.

He has lost his sting.

He has no power to harm us.

He is a servant, who brings us into the nearer presence of Jesus.



The real king of the world is not the corona virus or his grisly henchman, death, but King Jesus on his donkey, on his cross, with his crown of thorns, on his glory throne.

He is a humble, good and kind and gentle king.

Surely, he was the Son of God, the Saviour of the World, whose death breaks open the tomb.



Here is confidence even in the face of death for all you will trust in the crucified, risen and exalted Jesus.

May we embrace the crucified and risen Saviour.

And humble ourselves to trust him in the way of cross and resurrection.

Therefore, to the Almighty God, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit be all honour and power and glory now and for ever.

Amen.