Mark 11:1-11 The Invasion Sermon preached March 24, 2013 Opening June 6, 1944 - was the greatest

invasion of all time, as Allied Forces invaded Normandy to liberate Europe from Nazi Germany. Six million tons of supplies were stockpiled in England for the invasion. After a weather delay of 24 hours, Gen. Eisenhower gave the approval for the invasion of Normandy for the early hours of June 6th, 1944 Within hours an armada of 3,000 landing craft, 2,500 other ships, and 500 naval vesselsescorts and bombardment shipsbegan to leave English ports. That night 822 aircraft, carrying parachutists or towing gliders, roared overhead to the Normandy landing zones. All told, an armada of 13,000 aircraft would support D-Day. Thousand of airborne troops parachuted or went in by glider during the night and landed behind German lines to disrupt and harass defenses. As light dawned, German soldiers looked out at the English Channel and saw an incredible scene - thousands of ships, landing crafts, arrayed before them that disgorged American, British and Canadian troops - 120,000 landed that first day under intense fire and took high casualties - but kept pushing forward and got a foothold and began pushing the German army back towards Berlin. The greatest invasion of all time? Actually no. Jesus Christ entering Jerusalem on Palm Sunday was the greatest invasion of all time. The mission of God in Christ In Jesus Christ, God was invading a sin-blackened world to free people enslaved by sin, enslaved by religion, enslaved by the strong people with the money and the weapons. The first stage of the invasion - happened in Bethlehem -when Jesus was born during the reign of evil King Herod, who tried to kill him; during the reign of Caesar Augustus, the Roman emperor worshiped as a god. The second stage of the invasion - launched when Jesus began ministry - he confronted evil in the form of demons who held humans hostage - and they screamed at the sight of him and the Lord hurled them back to Hell.

And then the third and final stage of the invasion we remember today - like the Allies closing in on Berlin, Jesus rides into the heart of darkness - the city of Jerusalem. Irony of having to invade Jerusalem But there is a great irony here. Because Jerusalem should have been friendly territory, not occupied territory. It was the center of Israels worship - the city founded by King David, the man after Gods own heart. It was supposed to be the city on the hill to show the world how to live in a relationship of love and blessing with God. The city that had the temple of the one true God - where all the world could come and worship. But its a city occupied by the Roman - run with the help of the religious and political elites who were doing quite nicely working with the Romans - and thats part of the reason it is the heart of darkness - but another, bigger reason well see in a few minutes - is that Jerusalem was full of people like you and me - lost, broken and needing rescue. Jesus rides - and is recognized dimly for who he was Here he had been tromping around the dusty roads of Galilee for the last three years, preaching and teaching and healing and exorcizing, showing folks that here God had come among them. Three years of ups and downs - almost getting thrown off a cliff in his hometown after preaching his first sermon, feeding the 5,000, raising a child from the dead, confronting the religious establishment of the Pharisees and Scribes, dealing with the thick-headed, willful disciples - but finally, here he is, in Jerusalem - the capital, the center of Jewish life - and, and, they seem to get it! For the people cheering that day remembered the prophecy of Zechariah - "Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your King comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle, and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey." And so, in a city desperate for hope, here comes hope in the form of Jesus! The kill-joy Pharisees try to get Jesus to shut up the crowd - and he laughs them off, saying if the crowd doesnt do it, the very stones will shout out! The first battle - the Temple And Jesus begins his attack. First stop - the temple. An enormous structure and its jammed with people because of the Passover festival. Its like Times Square on New Years Eve. 2

And the temple was not just for Jews. It had an evangelistic mission too, that goes all the way back to Gods promise to Abraham - that all the peoples of the world would be blessed through him, and his descendants, the Israelites. And so the temple was built with a special place for the Gentiles - the court of the Gentiles - where non-Jews who wanted to encounter and know and worship God could go. But in Jesus time, the court of the Gentiles had been turned into a marketplace. Now, the temple needed a market - people coming to the temple to worship needed services - to change money for offerings and to buy animals for sacrifice And for centuries the market was set up outside the temple - but then the high priest Caiaphas wanted a taste of the action so set up a rival market in the court of the Gentiles - a shocking desecration of the temple. Now imagine you are a Gentile in the first century Youve gone to synagogue in a city a couple of hundred miles away. You read the Hebrew bible. Youre intrigued, feel a stirring in your soul, the beginnings of belief in God. You think, what better place to learn more about the God who is creator of heaven and earth than Jerusalem, and what place in Jerusalem could be better than the temple, and what time better than Passover. So you make the trip, walk the dusty roads, get to the temple, go the court of the Gentiles, and what do you find? Thousands of people milling about a market ..add to this livestock - bleating sheep and goats, caged birds, the stink of urine and manure. The people whom God chose to be a witness to his love and mercy and law - have taken your part of the temple - and turned it into a manure-carpeted, shouting, shoving, crowded bazaar. And Jesus saw this -and made himself a whip - a cat-o-nine-tails - and went to battle. Maybe youve heard of Audie Murphy - one guy who fought a hundred Germans - and won the Medal of Honor - and here is Jesus - one guy - against dozens or hundreds - hes overturning tables - chasing merchants who are grabbing their money-boxes and running for cover. What was he fighting against? Corrupt, institutionalized, greedy religion that kept people from knowing God Maybe that has some continuing relevance. 3

Lots of people are attracted to Jesus - but repelled by the church. Maybe some of you here have had that experience - been in a church that was oppressive, legalistic, conflicted, cliquish, soul-crushing... Or maybe youve been repelled by what youve seen done by people who claim to be Christians. Theres a line in Woody Allens movie Hannah and her Sisters where a character says, - If Jesus could see what is being done in his name, he would never stop throwing up... If thats you, look instead to the Jesus here Who hasnt stopped doing what he did in the temple - because he wants you and me to know the love of God too - Jesus still fights against the kind of religion that abuses people, that keeps people away from God...because Jesus wants you to know God. Jesus Christ pursues you. I am reminded - kind of - of the story about a mother who was preparing for guests one evening and her four year old son, caught up in the excitement of it all, became rambunctious. He was into everything. She had the dining room table perfectly set, the tablecloth pressed, the napkins and the silver all in place. The boy came dashing by and ran into the corner of the table, and knocked everything over. Furious, the mother came after him to spank him and chased him out of the house. Down the front porch stairs he ran and then he crawled under the porch, his mother in hot pursuit. She dropped down to crawl in behind him and then decided, "This is ridiculous. I've got too much to do. I'll wait for his father to come home and have him take care of it." Dad came home and when he walked in the mother said, "Do you know where your son is?" He said, "No." She said, "He's been acting up all day, and I want you to handle it. He's hiding under the front porch; go out and get him." So the father went out, dropped to his knees and crawled under the porch and there back in a dark corner he saw two little eyes and then a little voice said, Is she after you, too? Jesus Christ is after you - to rescue you from corrupt religion, from anything and everything that would keep you from knowing God. Like he did in the temple, Jesus seeks you and will fight for you. So you can know the love of God. Darkness within the soldiers and the darkness within us Back to the story. After the battle in the temple, Jesus has been arrested and the Jewish authorities sent him to the Roman governor Pontius Pilate. Pilate goes along with the 4

religious authorities in Jerusalem who want Jesus dead and gone. And that leads to the next battle in the invasion - deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness - Jesus is handed over to a squad of Roman soldiers who prepare him for execution. And they prepare him for crucifixion by beating him half-dead. By twisting together a crown of thorns and jamming it down on his head.. By putting a purple robe on him - the color of royalty, and kneeling down and mocking him as a king. And Jesus - takes it. The one who could command ten divisions of angels to dive down from heaven and wipe out every last Roman soldier, wipe out every last man of the religious authorities, just took it. What kind of battle was that? He took it in order to expose the darkness within us. Jesus fought the darkness outside us - in the way it takes root in religion, in government, in economics, in power - but he also fights the darkness inside us - by exposing it to the light. You see the darkness in the casual cruelty of the Roman soldiers who deal with their boredom by torturing Jesus for fun...but that same darkness is within us, too. Were not bad, rotten, evil people....and we want and try to be a better man, or woman.... but theres this temper and you lash out at your spouse or children... theres this addiction - you squirm free for a while but it reaches its bony hand out to you and you go right back to it... there is this ceaseless inner murmur of self-hatred that plays background in your mind and you believe it...and sabotage yourself... there is this nuclear furnace of resentment inside you over what someone did to you or over opportunities lost, and it is dissolving you from the inside out like acid... there is an enormous emptiness inside you that you try to fill with overwork or the approval of other people or chasing love and sex...but it doesnt work... or there is just a great sadness...an abiding sense of defeat...that you carry around in your spirit like a low-grade virus. Our hearts...are the real heart of darkness. 5

And this is a hard word...its not the way of the world - a while back there was a full-page ad in the NY Times for a new book - John Grays How to Get What you Want and Want What You Get. Havent read it, may have some good stuff in it - but heres what the ad said: John Gray offers the ultimate guide to personal success. Combining insights from Western psychology and Eastern meditation, he presents a brilliantly innovative program that points the way to joy, confidence and contentment in just four easy-to-follow steps. Youll release your emotional blocks and realize your souls desire... Wouldnt it be great if it were that simple. But there are no easy steps - I cant even keep the same 20 pounds off that I keep losing and gaining...no book, no philosophy, no set of resolutions is going to heal and change us. The cross - the last battle So after they whipped and mocked him, they led Jesus outside the walls of the city of Jerusalem - he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, and he stumbled out with a cross on his back - cast out of the city he came to save - and he was condemned to die by both church and state, condemned for crimes against religion, against government. And here the last battle was fought - the battle narrows down and down in the story until it comes to a point, right here, on the cross... and when he rasped out his last breath and his head fell to his chest and he died, something happened - something cosmic... you can see it in what happened to the centurion in charge of the crucifixion detail...Mark says that this Roman sergeant, seeing how Jesus died, said, Surely this was the Son of God! Seeing how he died? How do you die to win a battle - unless something is going on here that we could never have imagined... The Son of God fighting his battle against our darkness and sin not by calling down his divisions of angels to wipe out the bad guys - because if he did that wed get wiped out too - instead, Jesus just took it - all the hatred and meanness and cruelty and brutality and blindness, took it all, took it all into his great heart - and forgave it...their sin and darkness - and ours too. And we are set free.

They say the only thing that can really change a person, is love. And on the cross, thats what we see - suffering love - the love of God in the person of Jesus taking into himself the whole weight of our rage and pain and brokenness - where he absorbed it like a sponge and it went no further. And looking on Jesus, dying for us on the cross, taking our worst into his heart - if we really see that - something happens in us - the light invades the darkness in our hearts and we are set free - freed by love - freed to be new people. Closing In the Pacific theater during World War II, the Japanese held thousands of Allied prisoners in brutal conditions. Prisoners were given enough food to keep them alive but the food was so meager that many died; those who survived became walking skeletons who managed to supplement their diets by eating rats, insects, whatever they could find. Brutal treatment by guards was common - since they were taught that non-Japanese were sub-human enemies of the empire. And as the war continued and the American bombers began systematically flattening Japanese industry and then cities, the abuse got worse. In March 1942, General Douglas MacArthur was ordered by President Roosevelt to evacuate his staff from the Philippines, and he left famously declaring I shall return. And he did, in 1945. Allied forces were fighting for control of the Philippines when they learned of a POW camp near the town of Cabanatuan, far behind enemy lines. MacArthur authorized a rescue of the POWs, and a force of Army Rangers and local guerillas crept across enemy lines and made their way to the camp. They quickly subdued the soldiers guarding the camp and found inside hundreds of American, British and Australian solders, many near death. The Rangers got them ready to move. Some had to be carried, and some Rangers carried two emaciated prisoners on their backs. There were over 500 prisoners to move and some were so weak they would collapse after a few steps. The Rangers found local people with carts to help and they loaded some of the prisoners into the carts. Despite this the group was only able to travel about 2 mph. Slowly they made their way back, losing only 2 prisoners along the way and the POWs were fed and given medical treatment and were shipped back to American -they were free. One officer who helped lead the raid said, "People everywhere try to thank us. I think the thanks should go the other way. I'll be grateful for the rest of my life that I had a chance to do something in this war that was not destructive. Nothing for me can ever compare with the satisfaction I got from helping to free our prisoners."1 Jesus Christ invaded Jerusalem on Palm Sunday to free you and me from the darkness of this world, from the darkness within our hearts. Whatever is keeping you in chains - you 7

can be free. Free to be a new person, free to love and make a difference in the lives of others. Free from all the crud and mess that drags you down. Free to be the person you were always meant to be. Will you let Jesus break your chains? Amen. Endnotes 1. Pullen, Randy (August 18, 2005). "Great Raid on Cabanatuan depicts Warrior Ethos". The Fort Bliss Monitor. Archived from the original on June 3, 2008

Capt. Prince, reflecting on the public reaction to the mission .