Jesus Saves Us From More Than We Know
Palm Sunday – April 1, 2012
Fairy tales seem to be making a comeback in the media these days. There are two different movies about the Snow White story coming out in the next few months, and two TV shows debuted this past fall that revolve around fairy tale characters with a modern twist. One of them is the show Once Upon a Time, which tells the tale of the people of Storybrook, Maine. It's a sleepy little town. People from there tend to stay there, and not too many strangers ever come through. Except for Emma.
Emma is drawn to this town by an encounter with a boy, Henry, who says he's the son she gave up for adoption, and ultimately, Emma drives him back to Storybrook, because he has no money for the bus and is only something like 12 years old, and of course she is curious.
Not surprisingly, one thing leads to another, and Emma ends up staying in town, and ultimately becoming the sheriff, because she has learned that Regina, Henry's adoptive mother, and also the mayor of the town, isn't someone to be trusted. Regina seems nice enough on the surface, but she has a way of manipulating people and circumstances to get what she wants, and she doesn't much care who gets hurt in the process.
But underneath all of this, there's another layer to the story, a layer that only Henry seems to know... the people of Storybrook are not really from this world. It turns out that Regina is really the Evil Queen from the Snow White story, who, in a fit of rage had put the entire world of fairy tales under a curse, a curse that brought them to Storybrook and left them with no memory of who they were and where they had come from. All of their relationships, their loves, their families from before – everyone is in Storybrook, but they don't remember the history they share. Henry goes to find Emma because he believes she is the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming, the only one rescued from the curse, the one foretold who would break the curse and save everyone from the Evil Queen Regina... it's just that no one in town knows that they need to be saved. They're happy enough to have Emma become sheriff, at least the ones who realize Regina has a dark side, but they have no wish or desire for her to break the curse. No one realizes they are under a curse in the first place.
The people of Jerusalem who come out to meet Jesus and cheer his entry into town remind me of the people of Storybrook. They come laying cloaks before Jesus and waving leafy branches they had cut in the fields to welcome him, and as they see him approaching, they begin to shout: “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!”
Hosanna – which means “Save us!”
“Save us, Jesus,” they cry, but their next words give us a clue about what kind of saving they are looking for. They bless the coming kingdom of their ancestor David – David who was Israel's greatest king, the one who brought peace from their enemies and unity among their own tribes, at least while he lived. King David's days were the glory days for the people of Israel. A time of freedom, when they weren't threatened or oppressed by any outside countries, when they ruled over themselves in prosperity and peace. It didn't last too long after he died, and by now, they are, of course, under Roman rule, and chafing to be free. In these words, they show that they hope and expect that Jesus will be the one to restore the kingdom, that this powerful and charismatic leader whose words and deeds have preceded him will rally the people to rise up and rebel against Rome, overthrowing their rule and making the way for them to be a sovereign nation once more.
No one can blame them for wanting this of course. No people wants to be occupied by a foreign military power. But they're so focused on the temporary that they cannot see who Jesus is and what he has really come to do. They don't see the depth of their need, how far their captivity and oppression go. They don't realize that they are under a curse.
This is often the way for us too. We read the stories of Jesus in the Bible. We come and hear them in church, and we are inspired and encouraged. When we find ourselves weighed down and stressed out, we cry out with the ancient people of Israel, “Hosanna! Save us, Lord!” But I don't know if we always know what it is we are asking to be saved from, and who it is we are asking. So we see and read and hear so often people who talk about following Jesus as though he is our fairy godmother who comes and waves a magic wand and makes all of our troubles disappear, as though Jesus has come solely to save us from our money problems or our health problems or our relationship problems or personality problems or our addictions. We cry to Jesus to save us from these things – and he can – and he does! - but what we miss is the underlying problem, the root thing that we need to be saved from in the first place. We're looking for solutions to temporary problems, not knowing that we are living our lives under a curse, that there is far more going on here than meets the eye! What we will see and experience in the coming week, as we travel with Jesus to Good Friday and the cross will reveal the depth of our captivity.
Back in Storybrook, Emma doesn't really know what she's up against, even though Henry has told her she is the one who has to break the curse. She doesn't really believe him. Who knows where the story will take her, but already, she's taken some licks for standing up to Regina, just on the surface problems of this dimension of existence, let alone breaking the curse once and for all.
But Emma is not Jesus. And Jesus does know what he's up against. He knows he's come to do more than overthrow a government, because governments and their leaders come and go. He's come to fight against the powers and principalities, the powers of sin and death and the devil that are always at work beneath the surface of our lives and in the world around us. What Jesus came to do goes beyond our individual concerns, even though he cares about those concerns and about us. But he's come to get to the heart of our curse once and for all, the sin that corrupts and touches each of us and our whole creation, the situations and systems that are bigger than any one person, the things that we can't even see or recognize that hold us captive and oppressed.
“Hosanna!” we cry with the people of Jerusalem on this day. “Lord, save us!” And save us he will, but it won't look like what they or we were expecting. Jesus comes to set us free, to give us the freedom that lasts forever, freedom that before the week is out, will cost him his life. Come see and experience the love that dies so we may live.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
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