Rancho Bernardo Community Presbyterian Church

Palm Sunday is awesome. From here to Easter we deal with all the big, global elements of faith like salvation, sacrifice, atonement, resurrection. The expansive love of God celebrated by his people all around the world. Big celebrations remind us of an exciting event I was at with thousands of shouting, hand waving, worshiping Christians. Throughout the day we wept and prayed, renewed our faith and made commitments to go home and call friends and family we needed to reconcile. It was like a modern day Palm Sunday where “the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully saying,

”Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” That celebration ended with a last Halleluiah and AMEN!

Then, as if a curtain had come down, everyone turned to leave. People who had been hugging, now jostled past each other, not making eye contact. Popcorn boxes and Coke cups were kicked under foot. Brochures for how to get involved were left on chairs alongside now forgotten prayer guides and one man stood on stage with a bull horn. He was calling out for volunteers to help move chairs off the floor. “Can I get fifty people to help move chairs?” The handful who stopped to help got pushed around by thousands of renewed and revitalized, fully devoted followers of Jesus, who were rushing to get to their cars ahead of everyone else. I stayed to help for a couple minutes but the gentleman with the bullhorn never found fifty people.

Isn’t it odd how human nature works? We have good intentions for a moment but then the moment passes. Sure, church pews are friendly but how about church parking lots? What about our cars on the way home or our homes later this afternoon? Jesus knew this about human beings. Good intentions, poor follow-thru. Since he knew human nature so well, I just wonder if we have misunderstood something he said. It’s a famous phrase, “if these people were silent, the stones would shout out.”

Commentaries say He was testifying that if people didn’t worship, nature itself would give God glory. But, knowing human nature, and now knowing that within a few days this crowd would be gone and another crowd would be shouting, “Crucify Him!,” I wonder if Jesus didn’t mean, look, you can get rocks to do what these people are doing and have it mean just as much. Sure, shouting and waving palm fronds is great but, if you need chairs moved, good luck.

When we leave the love of God up in a big, global place and we don’t bring it down to earth to where you and I live, we risk being like that first Palm Sunday crowd praising our grand and glorious God in moments like these in church, but having that enthusiasm make no difference in our day to day lives. Maybe you are thinking, “If I were in that crowd, I’d have really meant it when I worshiped God. And, I’d have stayed and moved chairs at that celebration.” Let me ask you, what thought or feeling crosses your mind when you hear us repeatedly ask you to park off campus and ride a shuttle? There are legitimate reasons why someone might need to park on campus. My question is, what goes through your mind? I will. I’d love to. I can’t. I won’t. Somebody else will. It’s not fair. I don’t agree with that policy therefore I won’t comply.

We believe that encounters with Jesus transform lives. Transform them into… what? Into people like Jesus. People who love like God. If we don’t get the bigness of God’s love down to our day to day lives, then we are at risk of engaging in great religious entertainment that leaves us unchanged with bulletins and sermons forgotten like popcorn and Coke on our way out to the parking lot.

Love like God? That sounds like bowl 300, or bat a thousand, or score 2400 on the SAT. Maybe someone somewhere can do it but not me. One million students take the SAT each year. On average, twenty achieve a perfect score of 2400. Twenty out of a million. When it comes to loving like God, that sounds a bit high.

But, that is the hand we’ve been dealt as Christians. It’s transformation or this is just entertainment. And, most people aren’t being entertained by church anymore. The majority of college students identify themselves as noners. That is, on entrance surveys, in the religion box, they check none. I think their attitude might be, “if your religion can’t even motivate you to move chairs, why do I need it?”

Christian Entertainment may very well be an oxymoron. You know the word, oxymoron, two contradictory words used together. Like when there is a deafening silence or, when something is seriously funny. Someone could have a minor crisis over an exact estimate to replace a genuine imitation that’s been found missing by two people alone together eating jumbo shrimp.

The Bible doesn’t provide Christian entertainment. It offers transformation, making us people who Love Like God. Really? Love like God? Yep.

John, the beloved disciple wrote this in 1 John, Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. 1 John 3:18, 4:9-11

Hmmm, in order to Love like God, we need to be an Atoning Sacrifice? That’s going to need some unpacking. Let’s pray and ask God to guide our thoughts.

Let’s start with a definition. Loving like God means costly action that makes up for another’s shortcomings. I’ll say that again. Loving like God is costly action that makes up for another’s shortcomings. It may sound daunting but it takes on many forms, not all of them so challenging or hard.

How is buying clothes and a haircut an example of loving like God? First, I think it describes our definition very nicely. Loving like God means costly action that makes up for another’s shortcomings. The woman took action that cost her in time and money to make up for the dad’s natural shortcoming as a man in a woman’s world. Second, I like that clip because too often we put so lofty a value on anything having to do with God or church or love that we can’t possibly measure up. Oh but we can, in everyday life and situations.

Now, where do we get that definition. From the verses in 1 John. God sent his son. Sent is what part of speech, VERB. Verbs describe ACTION. God acted. God sent. What did he send? His son, the most precious, costly action he could take.

Is it possible for us to take costly action? Absolutely. Just like in the video. In the sports arena, a few people sacrificed their ability to get out of the parking lot quickly in order to help move chairs. At the time, that might have felt big but ultimately, not so much. Parking off campus means we have to get to church TEN MINUTES earlier! That might seem costly or hard, but, all of us seem to figure out how to get here an hour earlier after daylight savings time.

So, we see where the costly action comes from. Where do we get the part about making up for someone else’s shortcomings? Let me read the sentence again. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

What did God send his son to be? An atoning sacrifice. Wow. That’s overwhelming. I don’t care if it is Palm Sunday, or Easter or Christmas for that matter. Nobody is lining up to be an atoning sacrifice.

Atonement is one of those big, global religious concepts that kind of hurts our heads to think about. One definition says, Jesus of Nazareth died – intentionally and willingly – on the cross as a propitiation, or substitute, for sinners. If that is how God loves, how are we supposed to do that? It sounds ominous but really, to atone simply means to pay for, or make up for something.

Parents atone for their teenager’s lack of driving experience by paying higher insurance premiums. Teenagers make up for their technologically challenged parents by programming their computers TiVo’s and cell phones.

Loving like God means taking costly action to make up for something. Make up for what?

Jesus atones, pays for, makes up for our sins, for our wrongdoings, our mistakes, our shortcomings. Loving like God is costly action that makes up for another’s shortcomings.

Making up for our own shortcomings isn’t love. That’s justice.

And simply overlooking someone else’s shortcomings is grace or forgiveness.

But making up for someone else’s mistake or shortcomings and having it cost us something, now that is starting to get at what it means to Love like God.

Can this loving really be as simple as that? Yes. Remember the woman in the video clip. But, wait. It may be simple but that doesn’t make it easy.

Are there people in your family with shortcomings? In your office? In your church? What would taking costly action that makes up for their shortcomings look like with those people? At a restaurant with a waitress or waiter who gets your order wrong or a store clerk who is slow or makes change incorrectly or a grocery store bagger who puts the milk on top of the eggs or…? We can say it this way, Jesus had no sense of entitlement.

All this is well and good but doesn’t it bring the concept of God’s love down a little too low? After all, 2 Corinthians takes a high view of Jesus’ atoning work when it says, “God made Jesus, who knew no sin, to be sin on our behalf. Sure, it is safe to say that there is more to God’s love than the kinds of things we’ve been talking about.

A friend of mine once said, “When you decide to start loving people, begin with someone easy. Don’t start with the hardest person imaginable. Start slowly.” Try loving like God the next time someone you care about messes up, leaves clothes on the floor or dishes on the table. Or at work when they give you a cross look or don’t measure up to your standards.

Believe me God’s got more in store for those who take him seriously. Jesus is more than just our example. He is our leader. He went as far as a person can go in loving like God and then said, “Follow me.” Oh, it gets tougher than being nice to a waitress. That may be a place to start but there is a world out there that needs to be loved like God loves and God is waiting for us to do it. And, in God’s work, if his people stay quiet, the rocks aren’t going to be able to help. Are we ready to do more than worship? Can we be counted on for more than moving chairs?

In 1873, two men arrived at the leper colony on the island of Molokai, Hawaii. One was Jonathan Napela, a Hawaiian native. Over 800 Hawaiians were quarantined and moved to the isolated settlement colony after contracting leprosy. They faced the prospect of illness, starvation, pain, violence . . . and separation from family and friends, destined to die there. The other was Father Damien from Belgium. The Hawaiian government had no real plans for the colony and the Catholic Bishop in Hawaii wanted to establish a church but he couldn’t require a priest to go. Father Damien volunteered and went to live and minister among them. He ultimately contracted leprosy himself and never left the colony. Jonathan Napela and Father Damien were two very different men. Different nationalities, different faiths. They did have this in common. Neither of them ever left the colony. They both died there. And, they had this in common. Neither of them had leprosy when they arrived. They both contracted the disease while in the colony. Most of the people were forced to go to the colony because of their disease. But, these two men volunteered. Damien had been motivated to come to the colony because of the bigness of God’s love for all the people of the world and for the 800 in the colony. Jonathan had down to earth, day to day love for one person, his wife Kitty, a Hawaiian who did have leprosy and was sentenced to the colony, alone. But, he went with her.

Palm Sunday is about the big, global atoning love of God and sacrifice of Jesus for all of us. And it is about down to earth, day to day love that takes costly action to make up for the shortcomings of another. Palm Sunday challenges us to be more than those worshipers who waved palm fronds on Sunday but who may have shouted “crucify” on Friday. Palm Sunday invites us to celebrate the Son of God while we are here in worship, and to love like God once we leave.