The Lord Needs It

Sunday, November 21st, 2004
25th after Pentecost
Jerusalem Baptist Church
Luke 19:29-38

29 When he had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, 30 saying, "Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 31 If anyone asks you, 'Why are you untying it?' just say this, 'The Lord needs it.' “32 So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. 33 As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, "Why are you untying the colt?" 34 They said, "The Lord needs it." 35 Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. 36 As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. 37 As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, 38 saying "Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!"

Here it comes.

We’re sliding right into it, just like we do every year. We’re moving into the holiday season. The one where everything becomes a blur, and there’s too much to do, too much to eat, too much to buy, too much to plan, too many parties to go to, too many rehearsals to attend, and way way way too much to think about to actually STOP and THINK.

So here’s my proposal. Set aside an hour a week over the next six weeks to stop and think. If that hour happens to begin around 11 on Sunday mornings, so be it. I hope we can work together on the proposal.

We’ve been in Luke for the last couple of months. Next Sunday will be the first of the church year, and we’ll switch over to the Gospel of Matthew. For now, we’re still in Luke.

As would necessarily be the case, the readings have been leading up to this point in the gospel account – the conclusion of the story, or perhaps it might best be called the culmination of the story. We find Jesus preparing the disciples for the entry into Jerusalem. He has just come from Bethany, home of Mary, Martha and Lazarus, and is stepping into what HE understands to be the end game of his life here on earth.

While it is crucial to incorporate the Easter events into our faith walk, into our understanding of how God has worked in history and continues to work in our lives, for everything there is, as we find in the third chapter of the book of Ecclesiastes, a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.

We are approaching the time of year when we celebrate the coming of the Christ Child, a time that we generally characterize as full of joy, hope, peace, and love. That is, of course, as it should be. The seasons of our lives are reflected in the seasons of the year.

We cannot, however, enter into a full-blown celebration of the birth of Christ without recognizing, without acknowledging the shadowside of the Christmas story. When we read of Herod’s order to kill all the boys less than two years of age in Bethlehem, we can readily identify the brokenness of the world …breaking into what we would like to consider the happiest occasion of all.

Similar sorrow has been inflicted in our memory with the downing of Pan American flight 103 over Scotland on December 21st, 1988, or just last year, where landslides in the Philippines killed hundreds almost exactly 15 years later. Can any of us say whether or not we remember that coming across the news? There have been any number of disasters that have struck on or around Christmas, some far away and some very, very close to home. They have all tinged our celebrations with a sense that, while there is much to celebrate, there is likewise much to mourn.

How many of us have our own personal stories of events that conspired to do away with any joy to be felt in the middle of the yuletide season?

One of the reasons we have elected to hold a grief recognition service in the midst of the holidays is specifically for that reason. Events that are out of our control occur in the lives of those both inside and outside of our family of faith that make the approaching holidays anything but jovial. There is precious little to celebrate when one is so overwhelmed with grief that simply getting out of bed is a milestone to be reached and passed.

So we find ourselves at the triumphal entry. A passage that, just like the birth passage, begins with a foretelling, and ends with praises being sung to God not by a choir of angels, but of disciples and other, one would hope, in the crowd, who lifted their voices together to sing “Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!" Does that sound familiar? We could almost call them bookends to Jesus’ life.

Briefly this morning, I’d like us to stop on the foretelling. That part where Jesus tells the disciples to go into town, and find the colt that has never been ridden, that is tied up, and untie him, and bring it to him.

In an aside that makes the story that much more memorable, Jesus tells the disciples, “if anyone asks you why you’re untying the colt, just tell them ‘the Lord needs it’. So the disciples head off to town, and guess what happens? Exactly what Jesus told them would happen. Down to someone asking why they were untying the colt. It seems a little odd, coming from a 21st century reading of the text, that the writer of Luke notes nothing other than the almost word-for-word correspondence between what was foretold and what was said. I can imagine that the conversation may have gone for a little longer than that which is recorded in the Gospel, and I can just as easily imagine that there was more than just the one question asked, and the one answer given.

It’s kind of that way with us, isn’t it? We’d like to tell every detail of an encounter, but we don’t always have the time, or the energy, to describe in minute detail exactly what happened, and how someone looked, or what they wore, said, or did. We more often than not boil a story down to the most relevant details, or try to, anyway. J

So the writer sticks to the most relevant message: “The Lord needs it”. It is brief, to the point, and specific.

The question though, changes for us:

What is it that we have tied up?

Can we look at our lives and identify things we are keeping from the Lord and his use?

There’s an issue here that I’ll touch on briefly: Does the Lord really actually “NEED” anything from us? We believe in an omnipotent God – an all-powerful God who acts in history and through the majesty of nature … what would God need of us? The short and simple answer is: nothing. The longer and more accurate answer is: everything. God can indeed do as God pleases. God has chosen to allow us the freedom to choose to follow, to engage, to enter into relationship with God. So in a sense, the Lord does need each of us, and of each of us, our all.

A few minutes ago I mentioned all the things that we are involved in or are going to be involved in over the next several weeks … TIME, I think, is an easily identifiable … commodity that we can easily keep from the Lord’s use. We can kid ourselves into thinking that time spent here at church is time dedicated to the Lord, and that would be true to a point, but time dedicated to the Lord is not the same as time with the Lord. So be sure to spend time in prayer, in studying his word, in … communing with the Lord, not only during the holiday season, but throughout the year.

The next thing the Lord needs is our effort. Effort and time are both closely related, but I think slightly different. Again, effort expended and dedicated TO the Lord is not the same as effort expended in SEEKING the Lord. The word is to expend effort not only outwardly, but inwardly as well. WORK at the relationship you have with the Lord, just as you would any relationship here on earth. It takes time to get to know someone. Knowing the Lord is no different.

Lastly, we are getting ready to meet to approve our budget for the next year. Does the Lord need our money? Directly: no. Entering into relationship with God through Jesus is a free gift of grace. There is no monetary price tag on that. However, as we read in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, we are the body of Christ, made up of many members, and each member having different gifts. As that body we have decided to congregate and associate here, in this building, on a regular basis. While Christ is the head of this body of believers, and is at the heart of what we do, working as we do in this earthly realm, this … temporal environment, we have made commitments, and have entered into agreements, and have promised to do things in the name of Christ and for his sake that require us to operate on a mundane level – dealing with money both given and spent. So as we approach not only the business meeting in a couple of weeks, ask yourself this question: am I holding back – am I tying up – what the Lord needs of me?

And that becomes the question for Jerusalem Baptist Church for each of us, as we enter the holiday season: What do we have tied up that the Lord needs of us?

Let’s pray.