Sermon – Lamb-basting Our Sin
Exodus 12:1-14; Matthew 21:1-11
3/29/26
Expectations are a pretty big thing and we all have them. Back at New Year’s, Anne and I celebrated 30 years of marriage with a trip to Hawaii. It was months and months of planning. Well in advance, we arranged for all of the travel needs: flights, lodging, and a rental car. There was one location we very much wanted to visit that required a 4×4 vehicle, and I made sure to find what we needed. In fact, in order to drive to this remote destination, rangers would check your fuel, also, to make sure you had enough for the trip. It was a big opportunity for once in a lifetime photos. When we got to the airport in Hawaii, I took the bus ride to the rental counter where I was utterly dismayed to learn that not only did they not have my reserved jeep, but they did not even have any cars at all. Still, we managed to have a lovely time, even if we had to walk everywhere that we went [wink].
Maybe you have had a similar experience in which expectations just did not work out. This is most painful in those situations that are especially important to us. Maybe you put your faith in a political leader who was supposed to be the catalyst for the kind of change that you were desperately counting on, and they ended up being like every other elected official and maybe even worse. It hurts to feel betrayed. Today is one of those days that was especially crushing for people who were starving for help 2000 years ago in ancient Israel. Imagine having travelled many miles at great expense and risk only to welcome someone who was your hope ….. and that person was a dud. It was like rubbing salt into the wound. When Jesus rode that donkey into town, he was setting up a crisis that drove the people mad with rage in a few days. He had set everything up to be the Messiah, the new David, the king who would restore the nation and send the Romans packing. He was supposed to be the king of reform and faith, righteous and mighty before all of their foes. Jesus was supposed to restore the throne of David and rule on God’s behalf to secure their nation, restore their fortunes, and provide for them a future. And they got it all wrong.
What baffles me is how we continue to get it all wrong even today. Today is what we grew up calling Palm Sunday. Even if you were not big into Lent as a church season, Palm Sunday was still there as a pleasant blessing to come the week before Easter. It was a bright time, a joy of parades and songs. I have heard stories of children singing and waving palm branches as they marched around their church. Palm Sunday was a beautiful time of spring and fun and opened the door to the coming Easter egg hunt and Easter itself. Any holiday that provided presents is a good one when you are young and have a sweet tooth. Easter was not quite Christmas, not even close, but it was up there with birthday and Christmas as times when presents were most likely to come, and Palm Sunday kicked all of that off. Palm Sunday was great.
In reality, Palm Sunday was a terrible tragedy. It feels like a horrific automobile accident happening in slow motion right in front of us as we read the verses – one at a time. Jesus enters the city riding the wave of hype. He is doing exactly as the people cheering him on might expect. He is fueling the anticipation and stepping up his radical behavior against the religious leadership. He goes toe to toe with the Jewish council, the Sanhedrin, and turns the Pharisees, Sadducees, Scribes, and Herodians on their heads. Their attacks fall away from him; he even turns their arguments back against them. Still, the people who waved those branches and welcomed Jesus as the promised Messiah missed something huge – a lamb.
The people lining the street that day were not really there for Jesus exactly. They were there in Jerusalem for Passover. Even today, the date of Easter is tied to Passover. Passover is at the heart of Easter and the resurrection of Christ. It was all about Passover. Passover is what was described there in Exodus 12. It is the Jewish Independence Day when the ancient Jews were freed from slavery to the Egyptians and Pharoah. The only way they were going to get out of bondage, though, was for the angel of death of sweep the land and take the life of every firstborn male child or livestock. That would have been me, also, if I had been born an Egyptian in that day. Only one thing would save them – the sign of lamb’s blood. They were to pick a perfect lamb, slaughter the lamb, use its blood to paint the doorway, and eat the lamb. That meal was Passover, and every year after that, they were ordered to commemorate. Every year, remember the lamb. Never forget what God did to free them. Every year, pick a new lamb – the best that you can find, to sacrifice and to eat in memory. The meal tells the story, and to this day, our Jewish sisters and brothers still share in Passover. It is a key moment in their history that lives on in meaning. And when possible, you are to do it in Jerusalem. That’s why they were there, and Jesus’ disciples – just like everyone else – assumed they were all there to celebrate Passover in Jerusalem.
So where is the lamb? Lambs are not the brightest or nicest of ancient animals. I have met sheep and even been present at the sheering of sheep. They were a very basic, necessary animal in Jewish culture. They gave food and clothing and other resources, and as with other animals, they were the object of the sacrifice. From the beginning of Scripture, the people of God had been using sheep for sacrifice. It was a bloody, nasty affair by any modern standard, and it was the main occupation of the temple priests who seem more like butchers than what we might imagine as priests. Lambs or sheep were essential to the ancient Hebrew’s ability to offer sacrifice to God, to show they were serious about their devotion and to ask for help. Perhaps the most notable example of this is when Abraham was asked to sacrifice his son Isaac, and when God saw Abraham’s resolve, God provided a sheep instead. Many years later, God instructed the Israelites in Egypt to use lambs for their escape. Many, many years later, John the Baptizer greeted Jesus by the river Jordan by calling him “the Lamb of God come to take away the sin of the world.”
What a strange weird thing to call someone. It is so easy to let that title slip by as cute and innocent and not terribly meaningful, but the lamb of God was for one purpose – a sacrifice. It was the death of a lamb and the offering of a lamb that took away the sin. It was giving something important to you and losing that something that showed God you were serious and wanted forgiveness. There was a cost to forgiveness and the lamb was that cost.
Guess what day the Jewish families were supposed to pick their lambs for Passover. Today. What we call Palm Sunday was lamb selection day. When Jesus was riding into Jerusalem, he was presenting himself as the lamb for the sacrifice, and without knowing it, the people picked him. Jesus arranged for all of this himself. He became the terrible but blessed sacrifice. As the Holy One, he offered himself on the altar of the cross.
It pains my heart to think that we were so off about love for God and love for each other that God had to show us what the depth of real love could do. God needed us to see love, to receive love, and to give love. We had to be freed from selfishness and brokenness and sin, and that meant a living sacrifice of Love. God the Father gave us his most precious thing, the life of the very Son of God, and made him the sacrifice. He gave up Jesus to show us life-changing love. The difference between this and the Abraham and Isaac story is that Jesus went through with it, by his own will, and he was the lamb. No one made Jesus do it. He is very clear in Scripture that his choice laid down his life, and he was also clear that no love is greater than the one who lays down his life for friends. We are his friends. He is our Lamb. Hold this Lamb in your hearts this week as we devote ourselves to the love of God that frees us from a life of weak, selfish, and sinful love.
To God be the glory. Amen.