Reverend Jonathan Waits
Sermon: Jesus Clears the Way (Mark 11)
Date: February 25, 2024
Have you ever had someone clear the way for you to do something? Maybe someone who was an advocate for you? I had a guy do that for me several years ago. He took me under his wing and created a number of opportunities for me that I would not have otherwise enjoyed. Having someone like this can be a real blessing. Well, what if I told you that everyone has access to an asset like this who can give us the greatest opportunity imaginable? This person not only can do this for us, He wants to. It probably won’t surprise you to learn that this person’s name is Jesus, and today we are going to take a look at how His efforts to give us the opportunity to have a real relationship with God got started.
All journeys eventually come to an end. Those endings take all kinds of different forms, but that they exist doesn’t change. Jesus’ journey on earth lasted about 30 years. During that time, but especially the final three years of His journey, He accomplished an incredible amount. He literally changed the course of human history by His teachings alone. But eventually His journey through this life came to an end. If His journey through life was impactful, though, how His journey ended would become the point on which all of history swings. We may divide human history by His journey’s start, but His end made the world irrevocably different than it was before.
For the next few weeks, we are going to go with Jesus on this final journey that came to its conclusion on a Roman cross. Far from being the end of His story, though, this only marked the beginning of the next phase. That’s where we’ll land as we proclaim this new beginning together. We are going to take this journey with the Gospels of Mark. Each week from now until Easter, we are going to take another step forward with Mark as he tells us the story of Jesus’ final week on Earth. This is likely a story many of you have heard before. Yet this is the greatest story ever told. It is worth our time to take a fresh look at it to see what we can discover with the Spirit’s help. You will not want to miss a single part of this as we take a journey to the cross with Mark.
Now, to take a journey like this can be a little tricky because it’s not totally clear where we should start. We don’t have nearly enough time to go all the way back to the beginning of Mark’s Gospel, but Jesus’ journey toward Jerusalem started a little ways before He rolled up into town on a donkey. Still, though, Jesus’ actual arrival into the city marks a pretty clean place to start. In Mark’s Gospel, which was written with Peter’s eyewitness testimony as its major source, we find this triumphal entry in chapter 11. If you have a copy of the Scriptures with you this morning, find your way to Mark 11 with me and let’s get started with a celebration that rattled the religious leaders of the people of Israel.
Mark starts us out here with Jesus’ preparing the disciples for their trip into town. They had been to Jerusalem before. Other than when He was little and going with family, this is the first time Matthew, Mark, or Luke talk about Jesus’ going to Jerusalem, but we know from John’s Gospel that this was the third trip Jesus made during His ministry. This trip, though, was different from all the rest. Those were generally intended to be pretty low-key and incognito. This one was anything but that. Jesus wanted to make a statement with this final trip into town. Look with me right at the beginning of the chapter here to see how this unfolded.
“When they approached Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples and told them, ‘Go into the village ahead of you. As soon as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it. If anyone says to you, “Why are you doing this?” say, “The Lord needs it and will send it back here right away.”’ So they went and found a colt outside in the street, tied by a door. They untied it, and some of those standing there said to them, ‘What are you doing, untying the colt?’ They answered them just as Jesus had said; so they let them go.”
This whole episode starts out weird. Jesus gave these two disciples some odd instructions. I’m sure they were wondering themselves about what Jesus was doing. We certainly do. The truth is that Jesus was making a statement by this entrance into the city. He was making His most public claim to be the Messiah of prophecy He had yet made in His ministry. In doing so, He was claiming a kind of authority for Himself that went way, way beyond what anyone else in town might have had. And this claim had everything to do with the donkey He sent His disciples ahead to untie and bring to Him.
You see, there was a prophecy everyone then knew about from the prophet Zechariah. It was about the coming of the Messiah. “Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout in triumph, Daughter Jerusalem! Look, your King is coming to you; he is righteous and victorious, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” When the Messiah came to Jerusalem, He was going to come in riding on a donkey. That sounds really weird to us because donkeys aren’t exactly glorious animals, but in the day, kings would ride on donkeys. This was a sign of a king arriving in peace because the battle had already been won. So, when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on this final trip, He rode on a donkey; on a colt, the foal of a donkey. And as He rode into town, Mark tells us that “many people spread their clothes on the road, and others spread leafy branches cut from the fields. Those who went ahead and those who followed shouted: ‘Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!’”
This is the scene you have perhaps seen in film or on stage. Jesus rides into Jerusalem in triumph to officially kick off His final, climactic week on earth. We usually imagine this unfolding with all of Jerusalem gathered and celebrating the arrival of the Messiah. Such portrayals naturally leave us wondering how the whole city could turn on Him just a few days later and condemn Him to die by crucifixion. The truth, though, is that Jesus’ ride into town probably attracted way less attention than we imagine it did. Lots of people went in and out of Jerusalem each day. Lots and lots of people were coming in and out of Jerusalem this close to the Passover. If a small handful of this crowd decided to put on a show as they entered, that was fine, but lots of people coming into Jerusalem put on shows as they did. Most people just ignored it. Most people would have ignored this. Jerusalem was a big place. Jesus was not the only guy to walk into town claiming to be the Messiah. Sure, there was perhaps a little extra buzz about Him—enough that Luke tells us the Pharisees who were traveling around with Him to keep an eye on Him fussed at Him to tell His followers to pipe down—but not all that much more. He may have been a big fish in Galilee, but Jerusalem was a much bigger pond.
As evidence of this, when Jesus rode into town with this maybe not so big of a celebration as we once imagined, He went straight to the temple. If Hollywood were writing this script, this would have been the moment when He did something dramatic to further prove His claim. Yet look what Mark says: “He went into Jerusalem and into the temple. After looking around at everything, since it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the Twelve.” In other words, He came…He saw…and He went home to bed. He’d worry about conquering tomorrow. But even though this wasn’t perhaps quite such a big deal as we imagined, Jesus made a claim to authority here that couldn’t be ignored. He was a king. He was claiming His kingdom. And He was going to begin the process of making His kingdom right.
This process started the following morning. As Jesus and the gang were heading back into Jerusalem for the day—but this time without all the pomp and circumstance—He passed a fig tree. Apparently Jesus hadn’t eaten breakfast that morning and so Mark tells us that He was hungry. On their way into town, He saw this fig tree. Since He was hungry, He went over to it hoping to get a snack to tide Him over until they could get something else in town. His hopes were dashed when the tree was empty. But the tree was empty because it wasn’t fig season. Seeing the empty tree, though, Jesus looked at it and said where the disciples could hear Him, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again!” Now, if you’re keeping score, that’s two weird things Jesus has done. And this one seems pretty un-Jesus-like. So there was no fruit on the tree. Did that really require a temper tantrum?
In any event, the first place the group went once they arrived in Jerusalem was to the temple complex. The temple complex was enormous almost beyond description. I spent the first part of this week down in Atlanta at a conference (an all-expenses-paid conference at that). We stayed in the Signia Hilton hotel that sits about a hundred yards from the Atlanta Falcons’ football stadium. On the other side of the hotel is the Atlanta Convention Center. The complex is enormous. It would take you maybe ten minutes to walk from one side to the other. This is the kind of scale that should frame our thinking on the temple complex in Jerusalem. It was the heartbeat of Jerusalem. Everything important that happened in the city happened there.
Well, because the temple complex was the center of worship for the Jews, and because it was almost Passover, it would have likely been even busier than usual. People came from all over the region at Passover to offer their sacrifices. Making a sacrifice, though, wasn’t something that just anyone could do. The various legal regulations surrounding the kind of sacrifices the people could make in Leviticus had been formalized over the years into a system that was designed by the priests to benefit the temple complex financially. The way this worked out practically was that if you brought your own animal, it probably wasn’t going to be pronounced acceptable. You needed to exchange it for a temple-approved animal. It was easier, though, to just bring money to purchase an animal there. But, you had to use temple coinage to do that which meant exchanging whatever currency you had for the approved currency. The whole process was handled by a bunch of temple-approved, third party money changers and animal sellers who likely paid their temple dues generously. .
All of this was unfolding on a daily basis in what was called the Court of the Gentiles which was as far as non-Jews could go. The whole system had transformed what was intended to be a space of worship and prayerful reflection into a marketplace. It was noisy. It was smelly. It was crowded. And there was very little worship going on out there. Of course, the Jews mostly didn’t care because when they went further inside the complex where the Gentiles weren’t allowed, it was much quieter and peaceful. At the same time, though, the Gentiles who were perhaps interested in worshiping God couldn’t do that very easily and were being given the wrong impression about Him anyway. And, the chaotic environment in what amounted to the vestibule of the temple didn’t really lend itself to the average Jew’s heart being prepared for worship when he got closer to the sanctuary.
Jesus had no doubt seen all of this before. He knew it was going on. But for some reason, on this particular morning, it really got to Him. Mark tells us that “they came to Jerusalem, and he went into the temple and began to throw out those buying and selling. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the chairs of those selling doves, and would not permit anyone to carry goods through the temple. He was teaching them: ‘Is it not written, “My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations”? But you have made it a den of thieves!’” Not unsurprisingly, the folks who were the ones pulling the strings on this whole scene—the chief priests and scribes—weren’t thrilled with Jesus’ little display. “The chief priests and the scribes heard it and started looking for a way to kill him. For they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was astonished [in a good way] by his teaching.”
Now, this is another of those scenes we often imagine to have been a whole lot bigger than it probably actually was. Notice that the chief priests and scribes merely “heard it.” They didn’t see it. And they probably really just heard about it. They wouldn’t have been out in this part of the temple complex anyway. Plus, as big as the whole place is, a little bit of commotion happening on one side of the place likely wouldn’t have been noticed by folks on the other side. But you can bet word spread about what Jesus did. That’s why the chief priests and scribes were so incensed. This was a shot across the bow of their precious system. He was challenging something they all held dear. They had almost assuredly heard about the kinds of trouble this Jesus character had stirred up in Galilee. They weren’t in the least bit interested in having Him start any of His nonsense here in their house…I mean God’s house, of course.
The next scene Mark presents us with takes place the following morning as the group was heading back into Jerusalem for the second full day in the city. As they went, the disciples noticed the fig tree Jesus had cursed the previous morning. It was dead. Completely dead. And from the roots up. They were shocked (which is a little silly considering some of the other things they had seen Him do at this point). Jesus’ response to their surprise, though, is really interesting. It’s another of those places that we have to be pretty careful with in our understanding lest we come away thinking things that most definitely aren’t true.
“Jesus replied to them, ‘Have faith in God. Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, “Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,” and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, everything you pray and ask for—believe that you have received it and it will be yours. And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven will also forgive you your wrongdoing.’”
This is a lot like what we saw back in Matthew 18, isn’t it? That was when Jesus told the disciples that whenever two or three of His followers agree on something in prayer, they can count on getting it. What we saw then was that the context restricted us from seeing that as a blank check. He was talking about matters of church discipline. The context here similarly restricts us from receiving this as a blank check from God to ask for anything we want. There’s no name-it-and-claim-it theology to be found here.
Okay, but what is the context? Well, think about what’s going on here. When did this happen? Jesus is in His final week and from what Mark has shared with us so far, His focus in these first couple of days has been on establishing His authority and passion to get people to God. Most scholars think that when Jesus talked about the mountain here, He wasn’t talking about a generic mountain. From the road where this tree was standing there dead, you could look up and see the temple mount looming on the horizon; the same temple mount where Jesus went seeking spiritual fruit the day before and came up empty. He’s not talking about our being able to ask God for a new car or a bigger bank account or even that our sick loved one will get better and our being able to get it if we just believe hard enough. He’s saying all of this in the context of wanting people to be able to get to God and exercising judgment against those who were preventing that.
We are pushed further in the direction of this conclusion by v. 25 which takes us right back to the foundational importance of forgiveness we were talking about a couple of weeks ago. He is even more uncomfortably explicit here than He was there. If we don’t forgive other people, God’s not going to forgive us. We talked a couple of weeks ago about why that is. That unforgiveness stands in the way of our being rightly related to God. Jesus wants that out of the way. He wants everything that might get in the way of our being in a right relationship with God out of the way. He has incredible passion for achieving this goal.
And as the last story of the chapter helps us see once again, He has the authority to achieve it as well. When Jesus and the gang arrived in the temple on this second morning, a group of religious leaders were waiting to greet Him. They were still pretty hot about His little display yesterday. Verse 27 now: “They came again to Jerusalem. As he was walking in the temple, the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders came and asked him, ‘By what authority are you doing these things? Who gave you this authority to do these things?’”
The question was designed to be a trap. They were going to dispute whatever He said. Jesus knew this too, so He responded with a trap of His own. “Jesus said to them, ‘I will ask you one question; then answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. Was John’s baptism from heaven or of human origin? Answer me.’” The group turned and huddled up to discuss their answer to Jesus’ question. They had to come up with a good one because they wanted to pounce on Him, but they couldn’t ignore His question without losing face. Somehow Mark found out what they were saying in their huddle. “They discussed it among themselves: ‘If we say, “From heaven,” then he will say, “Then why didn’t you believe him?” [Apparently their opposition to John’s incredibly popular ministry was widely known.] But if we say, “Of human origin”’—they were afraid of the crowd, because everyone thought that John was truly a prophet [and weren’t going to be too keen on the religious leaders’ declaring he wasn’t]. So they answered Jesus, ‘We don’t know.’ And Jesus said to them, ‘Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.’” Mic drop. Once again, Jesus outsmarted His enemies. He was always the smartest guy in the room. On occasions like this He actually demonstrated it.
So, that’s Mark 11, the first part of our journey with him to the cross. What are we supposed to do with this? What is going on here from a big picture standpoint that actually matters for our lives? Well, keep in mind that this is just the first part of a journey that is going to last us a few weeks. We don’t have the whole big picture in place yet. That being said, I think we can see something here about Jesus that’s pretty important. It doesn’t necessarily jump off the page at us, but when we do a little closer inspection of the text like we have done this morning, it starts to rise to the surface.
This whole chapter forms what is called a chiasm. That’s just a kind of repetitive literary form common in the first century the various authors of the New Testament used to help emphasize certain ideas. When you didn’t have things like illustrations or bold typeface, you had to find other ways to help people see what you considered most important. In this case, Mark opens and closes the chapter with demonstrations of Jesus’ authority. Tucked just inside of those are the two parts of the story of Jesus and the fig tree, demonstrating His passion. Right in the middle of the chapter we find both Jesus’ authority and passion combined as Jesus disrupts the temple market and declares that God’s temple is to be a place where everybody can connect with Him.
Putting all of this together, what Mark is trying to help us see is just how much getting people connected to God matters to Jesus. When there are obstacles to that, He’s willing to pull out all the stops to get those out of the way. He’s really passionate about this. But He’s not just passionate. He also has the authority He needs to do something productive with that passion. He has the authority to actually remove those obstacles. This was always the direction His ministry was headed. What we are going to see as we walk through Jesus’ final week on earth on this journey to the cross with Mark is this passion and authority coming to fruition to make our way to God clear. Jesus has the authority and the passion to make a way for us to get to God.
Everything we are going to see from right here in Mark 11 on forward to the cross itself where Jesus removes the last obstacle—sin—by the sacrifice of His own life is pointing us toward this truth. Jesus has the authority and the passion to make a way for us to get to God. The question I want to invite you to wrestle with this morning is whether or not you have taken this way that Jesus cleared for you. Have you accepted the right relationship with God Jesus made possible by His death and resurrection? If you have, fantastic, your job now is to help others do the same. If you haven’t, or if you aren’t sure that you have, now is a perfect time to change that. Make today the day that you place your faith in Jesus, invite Him to be your Lord, and receive the grace He won for you on the cross that makes you able to be in a right relationship with your heavenly Father. Jesus has the authority and the passion to make a way for us to get to God. If we’ll follow Him, He’ll take us there every single time. Jesus has the authority and the passion to make a way for you to get to God. Don’t wait another day to join Him on this journey. Let this coming Easter be the one when you celebrate it as you were always meant to celebrate it: as someone who has received the grace of the risen Christ. Jesus has the authority and the passion to make a way for us to get to God. Let’s go to Him together.