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I’m sure you are all familiar with the saying, “March comes in like a lion, and out like a lamb.” That means the weather at the beginning of March is usually pretty bad, and then by the end of March it’s nice out, right? And we definitely came in like a lion this year, didn’t we? The first couple of days of March weren’t too bad, but then that snow came. And it was even a blizzard in some parts of Ohio. There were a couple of counties I noticed that actually had a blizzard warning and a flood warning at the same time. It was just terrible. But then this last week, finally, things have started to look up, and hopefully this trend continues and we go out of March like a lamb, nice and peacefully.

These symbols of a lion and a lamb have been used to contrast, like a lion’s violence and destruction and force with being gentle and peaceful, or even sacrificial, like a lamb. And these symbols of the lion and lamb have been used for centuries, even millennia, back to the time of scripture. You can look through the old testament, at stories of, like Daniel in the lion’s den, or David killing a lion with a sling, or Samson killing a lion with his bare hands. Lions are a symbol of strength and ferocity. Lambs, on the other hand, were peaceful, watched over by a shepherd, and were also used as a sacrifice, for the forgiveness of sins. In John 1:29, John the Baptist sees Jesus coming towards him and he says to the crowd, “Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” And in Revelation 5:5-6, the writer used the term lion and lamb to describe Jesus. He says, “The lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed…then I looked and saw a lamb, looking as if it had been slain.”

So the symbols of the lion and the lamb have been used for years and years to contrast one another, but they have also been sued to kind of describe Jesus. There are sometimes that Jesus acted more like a lion, with a little more ferocity and a little more strength. But there were other times when he seemed really peaceful, and sacrificial.

And I think no event in all of scripture kind of captures these contrasting personalities of Jesus like the triumphal entry that we celebrate today as Palm Sunday. This was like the epitome of Jesus both as a lion and as a lamb.

It’s kind of fun to just take a step back and look at this from the perspective of the disciples. I mean, these guys believe he’s the Messiah, which they think means he’s going to take back political power over the Jews. So they’ve bought into his message, they believe that he’s going to take power at some point, and begin a revolution, uniting the Jews against the Romans. So, you know, they’re all ready for this. The book of John tells us at one point that Thomas the disciple said, when they were heading towards Jerusalem, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” It’s like, they thought he was the Messiah, but they were pretty sure they were going to get killed trying to take power.

So when we read in Mark 11 that Jesus tells them it’s time to enter Jerusalem, I’m betting they all kind of made their peace, wrote letters to their loved ones to leave in the robes for family members to find after they’re killed. I think they thought they were going in to battle, if not right away, at some point. They were going to have to fight. The Romans and the high priests and Pilate and Herod, they weren’t going to just say, “Oh, you’re the king now? OK, here you go.”

So you can imagine them on the Mount of Olives, waiting to enter the city and they say, so Jesus, how are we gonna do it? And he says, “All right…I want to send two of you ahead into town…and I want you to get a donkey.” And they probably looked at each other and said, “…Ok? Are you sure you don’t mean…like a horse or a chariot or something?” No, a donkey. You can just imagine, if Jesus had political advisors or something, they’d say, “You know, Jesus, a donkey doesn’t exactly say ‘royalty,’ you know? This could be a big deal! This could be our big shot to win everyone over!”

And Jesus said, “I’m riding a donkey.” Why? Why a donkey? Well, for one, it fulfilled prophecy from Zechariah 9:9, “Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey.” So that’s got to be part of the reason, fulfilling prophecy.

But I think really the main reason is to show his disciples, and the world, that he is no ordinary king. In fact, he does everything almost the exact opposite of how the kings of the world do it. They have servants, he serves. They gain great wealth, he gives all he has to others. They boast about their greatness, he humbles himself and rides on a donkey.

But Jesus gets a donkey and he rides towards Jerusalem. And people knew he was coming, and I’ll bet as people could see him approaching, the noise kind of started. The crowd started getting a little louder. And I’ll bet Jesus’ disciples could hear the crowd and they thought, “Well boys, this is it. It’s been fun, but I’m not sure we’ll even make it past the city gates.”

But as they come into the city, the crowd erupts in cheers. And they throw their coats and palm branches down before Jesus, which was a tradition, a way to celebrate a king entering a city. These crowds just kind of went nuts, praising God, shouting “Hosanna! Save us! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

A few things catch my attention about this cheer from the crowd. First, it is way too complicated. “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!” That doesn’t just roll off the tongue. Like you don’t go to a basketball game and yell, “We appreciate the solid play we have gotten from our point guard! Your accuracy in shooting a basketball is duly noted!” Or yell at the ref, like, “The calls you have made are insufficient. I am questioning the legitimacy of your certification or the possibility that the opposing team is providing you with money in order to have calls go in their favor!” No! You say, “Yay!” or “Boo!”

But I’m glad those people had a complicated cheer, because it tells us a lot about how they viewed Jesus. He was coming into the city to save them. They thought from the Romans. The king was coming in. The revolution was going to begin.

These people knew what Jesus was capable of. John tells us that this is the crowd that had seen Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead. They had seen him perform miracles. That had heard of the wonders he had done. They had been told that his teaching was with authority, unlike anything they had ever heard. They liked this guy. Well, most of them.

Surprisingly, even though they seemed to think he was going to try to overthrow the Romans, they are nowhere to be found. They don’t seem too worried about a guy on a donkey with twelve guys following him. The group that seems most worried are the priests. They’re worried that this guy is going to change everything, that he’s going to overthrow their religious authority. That they will lose power. They’re also worried that he might in fact pick a fight with the Romans, and that they will come in and destroy the temple. In fact, they say in John 11, “What are we to do? This man is performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.” It’s like, you know, they say they have faith in God. They say they want the Messiah to come. But they want the Messiah to come on their own terms, and by that, they mean they want the Messiah to be a huge military leader that even the Romans are afraid of. Because this guy on a donkey isn’t going to be able to do anything against the mighty Roman army.

There’s a great line in the song, El Shaddai, it says, “The people couldn’t see what Messiah ought to be.” And again, I think that’s what Jesus is doing here. He not only defies what the world thinks a king should be, he defies what the Jews think their Messiah should be. They don’t want a lamb, they want a lion! They want a warrior.

And Jesus is saying, “Look, I am a warrior, you just don’t understand who the real enemy is. I’m not here to fight the Romans, or the Samaritans, or any of those. I’m here to fight death. I’m here to fight sin. I’m here to fight evil. Those are the ones who have been oppressing the Jews, not the Romans. The Romans are the least of your worries. I’m coming in here as a lion, as a warrior, and I’m here to save you from death, from the destruction of your souls.”

Don’t we do this all the time? We try to fight the wrong enemy? I mean, it’s especially bad around this time of year, especially every 4 years, when it comes time for the elections. And some people are saying, “I’m we get a Democrat, we’re doomed.” And others are saying, “If a Republican is elected, I’m moving to Canada.” And people are praying that the person from the party they support will get elected. And we get all worried about who is going to be the next president, and all the while, we are continuing to live less-than-moral lives, we are failing to share the love of Jesus with those around us, we ignore the poor and the widowed, and we cheat to get ahead in life. And we’re worried about the political party of the next president? That’s our big concern? The political party of the president of the United States isn’t the cause of the majority of the problems of the people of this country, the people of this country are the cause of the majority of the problems of the people of this country. But we focus all of our attention on someone else so that we can blame them when things go wrong and we don’t have to look at our own lives, our own shortcomings, our own sins as the cause of our problems.
And I think that’s what Jesus was doing in his triumphal entry and in his ministry. That’s why he had way more run-ins with the Pharisees than with the Romans. Because the Romans weren’t his enemy, sin was his enemy. And he didn’t have to go to the Romans to find sin, he could just look at the religious leaders of the own people. So after his entry into Jerusalem, he looked around, and he said, “Alright, lets go home.” And he left. The battle would begin the next day. And it would begin in the temple. And man, did he come in like a lion. Overturning the tables of the people who were making a profit selling animals to be sacrificed for the forgiveness of sin. It was just wrong. You can’t sell the forgiveness of sin. And it went on like this the rest of the week. He’d leave town at night, come back in the next day, and attack the sin of the Pharisees.

Jesus had come in like a lion, a warrior, he just wasn’t fighting the battle they thought he would fight. In fact, many of them found themselves on the defensive against his teachings and accusations. Needless to say, that didn’t win him a lot of brownie points with the Pharisees and other priests. The Romans, incidentally, probably got a kick out of it. He wasn’t much of a threat, even though he did gain a large following.

The rest of this week, you’ll hear the rest of the story, on Thursday and Friday, and then on Sunday. And you’ll see that just like the month of March, as Jesus comes in like a lion, he goes out like a lamb. That doesn’t mean he went peacefully, but he went sacrificially. He fulfills the words of John the Baptist who said, “Look, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” Throughout this week, Jesus fought his battle, his battle against sin and against death. And just when it seems like death and sin finally win out, Jesus pulls out the most amazing victory of all time.

I invite you to take this week as a time to reflect on this battle Jesus fought, on what it really means for him to be the Messiah, and on how his victory over death really affects you. Because he did it for you. He came in like a lion, he went out as a sacrificial lamb, for you.

Pastor Dan Metzger

Van Buren United Methodist Church

Van Buren, Ohio