407 First-generation Christians

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “First-generation Christians”, originally shared on April 3, 2026. It was the 407^th  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   What possible meaning can life have in the face of the inevitability of death? Today, we’re going to find out.

   I saw a sign advertising for a church in North Carolina last year that said, “Drive Thru Crucifixion. Weather permitting. No Charge. Come share the joy of Easter with us!”

   I don’t even know where to start with that, except to say that everything about it is wrong, and it would be even more wrong this year with our rising gas prices! 😊

   Maybe it’s just my age.

   When I was a younger man, I wondered why the Bible’s book of Ecclesiastes was even in the Bible. It just seemed to be the rantings of a bitter, old man.

   But, the older I get, the more it makes sense to me. 😊

   I’ve had the same experience watching the TV show, “Lost”.

   It ran on ABC from 2004-2010.

   It was a sort of science fiction drama about the survivors of a plane crash somewhere in the Pacific Ocean (or was it?), who may or may not be alive in our dimension, on an island that may have supernatural or spiritual powers, or not.

   It raised deeply important questions about time and space, reality and illusion, God and human beings, and I found something that I used in my sermon pretty much every week. I put a “Lost” promo side in our audio/visual system whenever I was about to quote from it, and after a while, whenever it appeared, I could hear a low groan from the congregation.

   It was funny.

   But then the show ended, suddenly, with most of the characters, major and minor, meeting in a church, getting on a plane and taking off, or maybe it was a metaphor for an afterlife. And that was it. It was over.

   It felt like the writers had just got tired of working on it and, instead of giving answers to the show’s mysteries, instead of tying up all the loose ends and explaining them, it just ended.

   I concluded that it was the best TV show in the history of television with the worst ending ever.

   And then I got a little older, and I changed my mind. I realized that it was the best TV show with the best ending ever, because it was real.

   We die, at least for this life, without getting all the answers. The loose ends don’t get tied up, goals go unmet, and mysteries go unexplained. By all appearances, we just end. We’re over. Cancelled.

   So, a new question is raised. What possible meaning can life have in the face of the inevitability of death?

   Today, we’re going to find out.

   Today is Good Friday.

   Good Friday is the day we mark as the day that Jesus was crucified. What’s so good about that?

   I have a T-shirt that says, “Body Piercing Saved my Soul”.

   It’s a reference to Isaiah 53:5, in Isaiah’s prophecy of the Messiah,

⁵ But he was wounded for our transgressions,
    crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
    and by his bruises we are healed.

   (Many translations replace “wounded” with “pierced”, i.e. “he was pierced for our transgressions”)

   Body piercing saved my soul.

   It refers to Jesus giving his life on the cross. There’s no mystery about who took Jesus’ life.

   No one took it from him. Jesus gave his life.

   Jesus said in John 10:14-18,

¹⁴ I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, ¹⁵ just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. ¹⁶ I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. ¹⁷ For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. ¹⁸ No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.”

   Good Friday is the main event. Over half of the entire gospel of John is about the last week of Jesus’ life. The resurrection validates that Jesus was who he said he was, that his death on the cross could reconcile God and humanity. There’s no Christianity without the resurrection of Jesus.

   But that in no way detracts from the fact that it is the crucifixion of Jesus that is the central event of all human history. His death is what brings life for all humankind.

   Here it is, near the end of the Gospel reading, John 18:1-19:42, that will be read in the vast majority of churches in the world on Good Friday, in John 19:28-30,

²⁸ After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said (in order to fulfill the scripture), “I am thirsty.” ²⁹ A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth. ³⁰ When Jesus had received the wine, he said, “It is finished.” Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

   I spent a summer when I was in seminary doing a quarter of Clinical Pastoral Education. CPE is a program training prospective pastors to do hospital visits and patient counseling. It’s very intense, is partially intended to desensitize seminarians to the things they will see in hospitals, and it  exposes them to a lot of different kinds of life experiences.

   The program I was part of was held at Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, Illinois.

   One night, there was a humongous thunderstorm, and a lightning bolt hit a transformer that knocked out power to the hospital. The emergency generators kicked in and all essential services like the operating carols, the Natal Intensive Care Units, respirators, and so on, received power.

   Almost immediately,  the switchboard was lit up with calls from very agitated air traffic controllers from the nearby O’Hare International Airport asking what had happened to the fluorescent cross on the top of the hospital.

   Pilots coming in for landings had used that cross as a visual reference point as they descended and, seeing no cross, had been thinking that they were coming in from the wrong side of the airport. They were pulling up and flying in stacks over O’Hare.

   From that night onward, the cross was included in the emergency power network.

   The cross is our reference point. We see the love of God on it, what God did to restore the living relationship with God for which we were created. We see where we stand in limitless eternity.   

   The Artemis II rocket lifted off last Wednesday on a 10-day manned trip around the moon, taking human beings to the deepest spot in space that we have ever been.

   It was even more exciting than normal as the pilot of the mission, Victor Glover, was born right here in Pomona and graduated from high school right here in Ontario.

   The launch reminded me of a quote, possibly apocryphal, from one of the early astronauts, Walter Shirra in 1962 who, when he was asked what he thought about while he sat in what he called the couch just before lift-off said, “Every time I climb up on the couch I say to myself—just think, Wally, everything that makes this thing go was supplied by the lowest bidder.” 😊

   When the get into space, they will see the great void that has humbled dozens of space explorers before them. The limitless space in which our planet was created, and to which Jesus came to die. How can we respond to that?

   Did you know that there is a local connection to the crucifixion?  If you know the whole story, you know that Jesus was crucified between two thieves. One taunted Jesus, and the other asked Jesus for mercy and received Jesus’ promise of salvation right there. The traditional name for the repentant thief on the cross is San Dimas. It’s never too late to turn to Jesus and repent and be forgiven. Jesus gave up his life to give you life.

   I remember reading a story about a congregation that asked people to donate easter lilies for its annual spectacular display to decorate the altar area and back wall for Easter Sunday. The flowers remained for weeks and drew visitors. One year, a woman decided that she wanted the lily that she had donated money for to take to a shut-in. She didn’t think that anybody would miss one lily.

   After the church had cleared out, she crept up to the altar and discovered that almost all the lilies were fake! She confronted the pastor who said that years earlier, the leadership had decided that it was not good stewardship to buy flowers and throw them away, that they could keep artificial flowers, use the donated money for good causes, and that artificial flowers were a better symbol of the resurrection anyway, because they never died.

   The thing is, though, is that they never died because they were never alive. Jesus lived among us, gave up his life for us, and then took it back again, but gave it up to bridge the gap of separation, to reconcile human beings with God.

   The night that Sally and I had learned that she was expecting our son was a happy night. We went to bed filled with joy. But then the next morning we found that the young man who lived across the street from us when we lived in another town had gone up the street and around the corner to buy cigarettes for his mom around midnight. On his way back, he encountered another young man whose car had a flat tire and stopped to help him.

   Meanwhile, a gang was out looking for the young man with the flat, angry over some offense and when they saw him, gunshots rang out. They missed the guy with the flat but hit the young man from across the street instead. He managed to stumble back to his front lawn and died there. Sally later said that she had felt that someone had died that night.

   In the midst of life, we were in death. But the message of the cross is that Jesus took the bullet for us, so that in the midst of death, we might be in life, eternal life in a living relationship with the one true living God.

    A pastor who served not far from us when I served in San Dimas told the story of having gone in to start his church’s Good Friday service, expecting the regular 30-40 people, but finding the place packed, wall to wall, standing room only.

   He said to an usher, “Wow! This is unbelievable!” The usher said, “What do you mean?” The pastor said, “Well, everybody’s here!”

   The usher said, “But you told us that we had to be here.” “What?” the pastor replied.

   “You said that we couldn’t come to church on Easter Sunday if we didn’t come to church on Good Friday.”, the usher said. “What?”, the pastor said.

   The pastor tried to think of what he could have said that the people interpreted in this way.

   And then he remembered that the theme of part of his sermon the previous Sunday was that you can’t know Easter without first knowing Good Friday! 😊

   The message of the cross is that God redeemed the world because God so loved the world.

   What’s good about Good Friday? It was terrible for Jesus, but it was really good for us.

   I’m not saying that you have to go to Good Friday worship before you can go to church on Easter Sunday, but Easter doesn’t make much sense without it.

   I encourage you to go to a Good Friday service to experience the depth of the riches of the love of God for you on the cross, because body piercing saved your soul.

   And invite someone to go with you.

   We are now about 2,000 years, or about 100 generations from the first Good Friday. It’s said that the Church is always one generation away from extinction. One. If you are a Christian, it’s because somebody, probably a friend or a relative, brought you to a church.

   I once heard a story about the development of the Christian Church in Indonesia. The seeds of the Church were planted by missionaries, but it had grown into an independent church, with its own schools and seminaries. It was financially independent and had developed its own cultural identity.

   During the pre-Christian era, Indonesians were pre-supposed to have the religion of their parents by birth, not by faith. God stood above the parents and the children stood below the parents.

   But when the Indonesian church composed its statement of faith, they included the words, “We believe that God has no grandchildren.” That is, that we are not Christians because our parents are Christians. We are Christians because we have received the gift of reconciliation through faith.

   We have been reconciled to God through Jesus’ death on the cross. Each of us. Each of us has had the relationship with God for which we were Created, restored. All we “do” is to receive that gift in faith. Our attitudes and actions are the fruit produced from that relationship with the one true living God. God has only children.

   Who will make them, if not us?

   My grandmother on my father’s side came from Norway with her parents when she was a small child. They settled in Wisconsin among other Norwegians and did what they knew: farming. She said that they came speaking Norwegian, but when she was in 8^th grade, they switched to English, the language of their new country.

   But she said that her mother always prayed in Norwegian. Because she wasn’t sure that God understood the new language as well as he knew Norwegian! 😊

   Norwegian was her heart language. But what becomes of the heart when we are no longer in a familiar culture?

   It’s a common pattern among immigrants to the United States that the third generation tries to remember what the second generation tries to forget.

   That can be true of Christian families as well.

   Worship can become performative. Faith can become whatever serves our needs.

   Sometimes, we inherit not the content but the language and the mannerisms, even the social values of our own tribe and clan. We become a social service agency using religious language, or a social justice organization with a Christian tradition,

   We are imitative in language, behavior, customs, and culture, having the form of the Gospel but not the substance of it.

   Make these few remaining hours of Lent mean something. Remake your heart language.

   What’s the meaning of life in the face of the inevitability of death? Sharing the good news of what Jesus Christ did on the cross.

   Be a first-generation Christian again. Imitate no one but Christ. Be a child of God, because God has no grandchildren.

   And teach all who come after you to do the same. 

406 From M.T. to Empty

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “From M.T. to Empty”, originally shared on April 1, 2026. It was the 406^th  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

    The Gospel of John in the Bible spends over 50% of his gospel on the last week of Jesus’ life. Today, we’re going to find out why.

   I saw a meme online a few years ago in which what looked like a granddaughter was escorting what looked like her grandmother toward her home.

   The grandmother said, “Netflix used to come in the mail!”

   The granddaughter replied, “Sure grandma. Let’s get you to bed.” 😊

   When people say to me, “Age is just a number,” I just say, “Yes, but I’m getting to a big number!” I’m not bothered by that number, but every once in a while something happens that drives it home.

   Sally and I took my car to the dealership for maintenance last week. While we were talking with the service agent, I mentioned that we had bought Sally’s car from the same dealership.

   I said that we had traded-in my milk caramel-colored Ford Explorer, but that it was hard to let it go. I had driven that car for so long that the steering wheel was worn to the shape of my hands!

   We keep our cars until they are falling apart, and that one had a cracked engine block and was burning so much coolant that I had to top it off after every time we used the car. 

   Still, I said, when we took the Explorer in for the trade-in, I felt like I was taking Old Yeller back behind the barn.

   She stared blankly and smiled politely. I realized that she had no idea what I was talking about. Age comes, and death. But, for Jesus, death came at a small number. He was 33 years old.

   This week is Holy Week, marking the last week of Jesus life on earth. It’s a big deal. It’s about a death. And the life that it brings.

   Maundy Thursday is the day in Holy Week in which we see the Last Supper, Jesus last meal with his disciples with the Institution of Holy Communion, Jesus washing the feet of his disciples, Jesus’ commandment to love each other has he has loved them, and Jesus being betrayed by one of his disciples to his death.

   There’s a lot going on this Thursday! 😊

   Though, some churches have given up on foot washing, when the pastor removes his or her robe and members of the congregation who wish come forward and the pastor washes their feet, which I did for my 41 years of parish ministry before my retirement.

   I understand that it’s not being done in some places. It might seem too personal to some. I mean, when Isaiah writes, in Isaiah 52:7a, “⁷ How beautiful upon the mountains

are the feet of the messenger who announces peace,

who brings good news,” he certainly never saw my feet. 😊

   Maundy Thursday ends with Jesus’ praying so intensely in the Garden of Gethsemane that he literally sweats blood. He prays for a way out, for another way other than being tortured and crucified to restore the living relationship with God for which humanity was created.

   But, he says, he would follow God’s will. He would empty himself. He would become a servant.

   The word “maundy” is an Old English word from the Latin word “mandatum”, in modern English word “commandment”, as in the “new commandment” that Jesus gives to his disciples.

   But hold on! Can love be commanded? Jesus thought so. But how can that be?

   Jewish people will be celebrating a seder meal during their season of Passover, which lasts from April 1^st to April 9^th this year. It will overlap Holy Week this year, as it usually does. The seder meal at its center commemorates their liberation from slavery in Egypt.

   That seder supper was not celebrated in its current form until many years after Jesus’ death and resurrection. But the Last Supper of Jesus and his disciples was held during Passover in Jesus’ time, and it had many references to liberation from slavery, including the bread and wine presented as Jesus body and blood.

   As well as to the last plague, the blood of the spotless lamb that was painted over the doors of all the households of the people of God in slavery in Egypt. The angel of death visited every home at night, and the first-born son died, except in those homes where the blood of the lamb was painted over the entryway. Those homes were passed over. Hence, Passover.

   Only, Jesus is the Lamb of God, and we are freed from sin, death, and the forces of the devil by his blood freely given on the cross. Those references make the Last Supper the first celebration of Holy Communion, on the night in which Jesus was betrayed. The washing of the feet of the disciples by Jesus was a witness to serve one another as we have been served by Jesus Christ. The giving of a new commandment by Jesus is an expression of what the Christian life is: we love sacrificially because God first loved us.

   “Maundy” is an Old English word rooted in the Latin word “mandatum”, which means “commandment”, or “mandate”. That new commandment comes from who we are, and who we are comes from whose we are.

   The whole text is in John 13:1-17, 31b-35, but Jesus gives the new commandment at the end, in verses 34-35,

³⁴ I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. ³⁵ By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

   We cannot be commanded to love. That love would be meaningless. It would be like those Chatty Cathy dolls you might remember from years ago that were programmed to speak to you, like with a primitive artificial intelligence, I suppose.

   My sister had one. She’d pull the ring attached to a string on the back of the doll’s neck and it would say things like, “I love you.”

   But did it love you?

   No. It had no choice. It had no agency.  

   Fun fact: that’s why God gave Adam and Eve the ability to say “no” to God. And they did. And we do. And that’s why evil entered and continues to enter the world.

   We think that the world revolves around us, and it gets us every time.

   Years ago, there was a restaurant/drive-through in San Dimas called “Bravo Burgers”. There’s still one in Pomona, but I still miss it being close-by.

   Most of their food packaging had “Phil 4:13” written on it. Philippians 4:13 says,

I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

   The owner said that he put that verse on his packaging out of gratitude to God.

   But, he said, “There isn’t a day that goes by when someone doesn’t come in and ask, ‘Who’s Phil?”

   Philippians 4:13 is often seen and quoted as meaning that, in anything I want to do or don’t want to do, God strengthens me. But that’s not what it says at all.

   Here’s the context of that verse, in Philippians 4:11-13,

¹¹ Not that I am referring to being in need; for I have learned to be content with whatever I have. ¹² I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. ¹³ I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

   Paul is writing to the Church at Philippi to answer their concern for him by saying that serving Jesus Christ is all that matters. Our personal need or lack of need is not relevant to our service in Jesus Christ.

   How can that be?

   It’s because Christian behavior is not rooted in the requirements of the law, but in the new Creation we have been made to be in Jesus Christ. Our new selves are rooted in the love for one another that comes from our love for God. Our love for one another is an expression of our new selves.

   The mandate of which we are reminded on Maundy Thursday is that we live in love to serve one another, as Jesus came to serve us.  

   It’s at the very core of what it means to be a Christian. Paul nailed this down in an earlier part of his letter to the church at Philippi in Philippians 2:2-8, from a passage we read last Sunday, 

⁴ Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. ⁵ Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

⁶ who, though he was in the form of God,
    did not regard equality with God
    as something to be exploited,
⁷ but emptied himself,
    taking the form of a slave,
    being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
⁸     he humbled himself
    and became obedient to the point of death—
    even death on a cross.

   Can love be commanded? Yes, not in our behavior alone, but because we have been fundamentally transformed by the love of God in Jesus Christ demonstrated on the cross, the love that shapes us in the Holy Spirit, the streams of living water within us, and the love of the Church, the Body of Christ, expressed through us.

   On Maundy Thursday, Jesus removed his outer robe and washed the feet of his disciples, the job of the lowest servant in the household, the job that nobody could mess up.

   He modeled who he is and what his disciples are to be to one another, and Judas went out to betray Jesus to the authorities.

   The only way to go where Jesus is going is obedience to God in response to and through Jesus Christ. That is the work of the Holy Spirit within us, it is not our wisdom.

   Every religion has its wisdom and its wisdom traditions. They are everything in some other religions. They are the least important thing in Christianity.

   C.S. Lewis wrote, in his book “Mere Christianity”, “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

   The way of Jesus is the way of the cross. Selfless and sacrificial love. It is lived in us as an outcome of a living relationship with the one true living God. It is the relationship for which we were created.

   It is our worldview:

   God made us for a living relationship but without making us to be simple robots. We needed to be able to say “no” to that relationship in order for our “yes” to mean something. The first people disobeyed God. They said “no”, and evil entered the world.

   People only came back to God when they needed something. So, God set them free by coming to them, in the form of Jesus Christ, fully God and fully human being, to show His love by suffering and dying for us on the cross, so that we might know the abundant eternal life for which we were created in the beginning.

   What does that life as the disciples of Christ look like? How do we make sense of what we believe to the world? How do we love one another in obedience to the command of Jesus? How do we serve one another sacrificially as Jesus did on the cross?

   Paul says, in Galatians 5:6b,

“the only thing that counts is faith working through love.”

   That’s the message of Maundy Thursday.

   Maundy Thursday reminds us of Jesus’ mandate, Jesus’ command, “that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”

   The world thinks that it’s impossible to compel someone to love you, or to compel someone to love someone else, because we first and primarily think of love as something romantic, or maybe patriotic, or directed toward our family or friends, or, most commonly, about us.

   But the love that Jesus commands is something entirely different: it’s selfless, it’s a kind of love that can only come from God.

   And it does come, and it is who we are because it comes as the result of whose we are. We are saints and sinners, and we are God’s new creation!

   We are not the people we want to be. But, by God’s grace, we are not the people we were.

   On Maundy Thursday we see how we can be commanded to love by becoming who we were always created to be.

   On Maundy Thursday Jesus is both preparing us for his death on the cross and showing us how to live in response to it. Our power comes from his love.

   Gas is unbelievably expensive today. It’s around $6.00 a gallon for regular where I live.

   I remember in the 70’s, though, when there were gas shortages twice in that decade, both also stemming from conflicts in the Middle East! There were long lines of cars at the gas stations, and some cars would run out of gas waiting in line and drivers would get out of their cars to help the driver with the empty tank up to the pump.

   We are running on fumes ourselves, more or less, today.

   The last week of Jesus’ life, Holy Week, is the climax of the story of our salvation. That’s why it takes so much of John’s gospel.

   Jesus emptied himself. He was fully human being and fully God, and he washed feet, he commanded us to love as he loves, and he demonstrated that he came as our servant and our friend from M.T. (Maundy Thursday) to empty.

   On this Good Friday, we will see the fullness of that selfless love poured out. For us.

405 Three Parades

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Three Parades”, originally shared on March 25, 2026. It was the 405^th  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

    Parades were once an expression of community identity. That they have become fewer in number and less substantial is not surprising. Today, we’re going to look at three that create Christian identity.

   This coming Sunday was once a big deal. It was Palm Sunday in mainline protestant and Catholic churches. Then it became either Palm/Passion Sunday or, in the Lutheran denomination of which I am a member, Passion/Palm Sunday. Palms don’t even get first billing anymore.

   Why? Because people weren’t coming to Good Friday services (crucifixion) much less Maundy Thursday services (foot washing, beginning of Holy Communion, giving of the new commandment to love one another as God loves us, and the stripping of the altar).

   Palm Sunday has followed the downward trend that parades have, and for the same reason: the loss of our identity.

   Do you like parades? There are two parades that have shaped our lives forever. And a third one that will. And all three are all about our identity as children of God.

   I’m sure you have seen parades. Have you ever seen one live? Have you ever been in a parade?

   Have you ever seen a parade that started because people were so excited that the whole community was in turmoil? That’s the one we’re going to focus on today.

   I love a parade! Especially one with marching bands. They are why I started playing drums.

   I remember watching the Memorial Day Parade in my hometown, Manitowoc, Wisconsin, as a child. I remember standing at the curb, hearing the rumble of the percussion coming closer and closer, and my excitement growing.

   I remember feeling the thumps on my chest as it drew nearer, the staccato pulse of the snare drums, the crash of the cymbals, and the massive thud of the big bass drums.

   I wanted to do that!

   I tapped out rhythms on every surface I found in front of me for years. Actually, I still do that. 😊

   I made my own drums out of empty cardboard boxes, Quaker Oats containers, my legs, whatever I could find. I destroyed the child’s drum set my parents bought me for Christmas when I was in 5^th Grade playing “Rock Around the Clock”.

   I played a violin for a year because our school system started its orchestra program a year before its band program, and I thought it would help me learn to read music.

   When I couldn’t play drums because I didn’t own a concert snare drum, I played mellophone (a French horn with trumpet valves) for a summer until my dad talked with the high school band director, who sold him a surplus used drum from the high school band.

   I started practicing on a practice pad and played that snare drum. I moved immediately into first chair and stayed there for four years, all the way through high school. I still have that drum.

   I became that guy who played the drums, marching down the same street where I had been a spectator, but now I was in the parade.

   When I chipped my left wrist vaulting over a “horse” in gym class, I wore a groove into my cast and played in the parade anyway.

   I saved up and bought a Ludwig “Super Classic” drum set with the silver sparkle finish, just like Joe Morello’s, the drummer with The Dave Brubeck quartet.

   I took it to college and played in jazz bands through college and seminary and beyond. Playing drums had become a part of who I was, my identity.

   And it all started with a parade. Today, we’re going to see the Christian message in three of them.

   Parades bring people together, whether they are in the parade or watching it. They create a sense of focus, an expression of identity, and a common experience, even a common cause.

   That brings us to today’s first parade: Jesus entered Jerusalem at the head of a parade. He would be dead in just a few days, but for that shining moment he brought people together, at least some of the people anyway. He knew that he would die there, but he rode into town like a champ.

   Here’s what happened, in Matthew 21:1-11

¹When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, ²saying to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. ³If anyone says anything to you, just say this, ‘The Lord needs them.’ And he will send them immediately.” ⁴This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying, ⁵“Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” ⁶The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; ⁷they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them. ⁸A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. ⁹The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!” ¹⁰When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?” ¹¹The crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”

   I don’t know if there were any bands in that parade, but I imagine small children watching, running along with it on the sides. Caught up in the excitement, finding branches to throw in his donkey’s path. Asking their parents if they could throw their outer clothing onto the path for Jesus’s donkey, like they saw that some of the adults were doing, and hearing a firm, “No”.

   I imagine that it was exciting, but that it was also kind of scary. Who were these people? Crowds can become mobs, and mobs can go out of control, they can get destructive.

   But here he came, Jesus. The Messiah? The one they had been waiting for for 1,000 years? A deliverer, but from what? Deliverance from the Roman empire’s army of occupation (the empire threw palm branches to greet successful military leaders)? Something else?

   Was the excitement contagious, or did many look at it with horror, or indifference? Did they think that the Messiah was coming as a military leader to organize a violent resistance against the Roman occupation: one quick surprise attack to knock them on their heels and get rid of them?

   How did Jesus feel, riding into Jerusalem like that? What did he think about the cheers of the crowds?

   Was it big news in the big city?

   Today, “Breaking News!” barely registers. It’s usually a new twist on old news. Unless it’s something truly life-changing, it will be forgotten after the 24-hour news cycle. He did seem to draw a crowd, though.

   But Jesus knew that crowds are fickle.

   Jesus knew what was about to happen. He knew about the deadly violence that he was about to experience.

   Jesus knew that much of that crowd that was shouting “Hosanna!” on Sunday would be shouting “Crucify him!” on Friday.

   I wonder if Jesus felt a momentary urge to just end the chain of events that he knew was coming, right there. To just stop with the cheers, and spend the rest of his life as a popular rabbi, a miracle worker.

   But he didn’t.

   Someone posted a poem on a Facebook page for Lutheran pastors a while back that began,

“We want the war horse

Jesus rides a donkey”

   In Jesus’ physical time on earth kings rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, not a war horse, to show that they came in peace. Palm branches were waved as a sign of goodness and victory.

   Why did Jesus ride into town on a donkey? Was it a conscious reference to the Old Testament prophecy, as we read in Zechariah 9:9?,

⁹ Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!
    Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!
Lo, your king comes to you;
    triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on a donkey,
    on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

   I think that he had a particular kind of triumph and victory in mind, just not what the crowds expected.

   He chose to ride a donkey as a symbol of humble service: death on the cross, because he resisted the temptation to take the easy way.

   He got that donkey when the disciples just went and untied it and, when the owners asked them to explain, they said “The Lord needs it”. And they said, “OK”!

   How did that happen?!

   Either I’m missing something, or it was another world back then.

   Did they know about Jesus? Was he that respected, that popular? Jesus had a lot of disciples outside of his inner circle of twelve and his second circle of seventy.

   The Bible says that a “multitude” of his disciples began to loudly praise God. Right there. In broad daylight. In public. It says that when Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil. What would it take to put a whole city in turmoil?

   Jerusalem at the time of Jesus had an estimated population of 55,000 under normal circumstances, and 180,000 (some estimates go much higher) during major festivals like Passover, which was going on when Jesus was crucified. That’s a lot of turmoil!

   But it’s easy to follow Jesus when he’s there at the head of the parade. Top of the charts.

   It’s harder when he’s headed to the top of the cross.

   That brings us to the second parade, the parade of Jesus to the cross.

   The governor’s soldiers humiliated and tortured Jesus. Then this happens in Matthew 27:31-37,

³¹ After mocking him, they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him away to crucify him.

³² As they went out, they came upon a man from Cyrene named Simon; they compelled this man to carry his cross. ³³ And when they came to a place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull), ³⁴ they offered him wine to drink, mixed with gall; but when he tasted it, he would not drink it. ³⁵ And when they had crucified him, they divided his clothes among themselves by casting lots; ³⁶ then they sat down there and kept watch over him. ³⁷ Over his head they put the charge against him, which read, “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.”

   Do you know how many of the “multitude” who were in or who watched the Palm Sunday parade followed Jesus all the way to the cross?

   Zero. That’s right. Zero. The power of that parade, the one we celebrate as “Palm Sunday”, was very temporary. Jesus knew that.

   His humble service would change everything. It would lead to the salvation of all who put their trust in Jesus to save them, to transform them, to produce a life of love for others in response to the sacrificial love of God in Jesus Christ for us. But that’s a story for next week, a week of love and shame. Holy Week.

   I don’t want to say much more than that today, I encourage you to go into the valley next week, the valley of Holy Week, with Jesus. Find a Maundy Thursday service and worship God there. Find a Good Friday Service and worship God there. Find your identity. Let the Holy Spirit restore you as a Christian. Steep in it. Feel it. It’s the only way to understand the glory of Easter!

   It’s also a story that doesn’t end with Holy Week. In fact, it doesn’t come to its end at all but to its beginning, a beginning that happens much later.

   That brings us to the third parade, the parade of those who are in the end being saved through faith by Jesus Christ for all eternity. The parade of the multitudes who believe and are baptized, who do not desert Jesus at the end, but the multitudes who are received into his perfect presence forever.

   We get a glimpse, in Revelation 7:9-10,

   9 After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. 10 They cried out in a loud voice, saying,

“Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

   Salvation belongs to God and God gives it to all who receive it in faith, in a living relationship with the one true living God that transforms lives.

   So, as community identity flounders and parades decline in number, participants, and crowds, we offer three parades. They form our identity as the children of God and, as long as our focus is on them and on what they tell us, we have something better to offer the world.

   We offer a way of living that is truly life. We offer what we have first received by the grace of God in Jesus Christ on the cross.

   We provide the communities we serve with the sense of connection and transcendence that our culture so desperately needs. We live by it, we offer it, we communicate it, and we grow by invitation to it. We serve others in response to it.

   We introduce Jesus for a second chance, a new life, for transformation through a living relationship with God for to all who will receive it!

   That is the gift of God in Jesus Christ shown to us in three parades: the one where Jesus triumphally enters Jerusalem, the one where Jesus goes to be the only acceptable sacrifice for the sins of humanity, and the big one, the big parade, the one where, having received the gift of God in faith and in trust in Jesus as our only savior, and are thereby drawn to him before the throne of God, forever.

   Three parades: Palms, Passion, and Perpetuity!

   This coming Sunday we will enter the valley.

   Holy Week will arrive, but Easter is coming!

   Share the good news.