Matthew 21:1-11 & Matthew 27:33-54

Today is Palm Sunday. It’s the church’s way of remembering and celebrating Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. But, why does Jesus go into Jerusalem? He goes into Jerusalem to do God’s will. And God’s will for the Lord Jesus was to drink a cup of suffering. And the cup of suffering that Jesus drank was crucifixion, death on a cross. The strange news of the gospel, the Christian message, is that Christ died for us – you and me – and for our salvation.

You’ve probably heard that said hundreds of times. But what is the meaning of Jesus’ death? Put another way, why is Jesus’ death on the cross important to you and me, maybe even the most important thing about our faith, almost 2,000 years after it took place? 

We’re going to go about answering this question in a roundabout way using something we all have and use. First, think about all of the electronic devices that you own (or if you don’t own many, that your kids or grandkids own) – iPhone, tablet, computer, smart thermostat, smart oven, a modern car, a refrigerator that wants to talk to you, etc. Now, here is a question – do you really own them? Anthony Robinson, who is a retired UCC minister, makes a point that “we don’t really own our many devices (phones, watches, computers, TV’s, thermostats, cars). Actually, we rent them. We rent them from some corporation somewhere that has its fingers on them and in them via internet connections, frequent “updates,” and other forms of required maintenance and interaction on our part.”

Now think about a simple wristwatch. In an essay by Terry Godier titled “The Last Quiet Thing”, Godier begins his essay with a picture of his humble wristwatch and these words (whom Anthony Robinson quotes):

“This watch cost twelve dollars. It weighs twenty-one grams. It has an alarm that sounds like a microwave in another room. It has told time the same way since 1989. It doesn’t know my heart rate. It has no opinions about whether I’ve stood up enough today. It will never need a firmware update. When the battery dies in seven years, I’ll press in a new one with a paperclip. That will be the entirety of my obligation to it.”

Maybe you own a wristwatch like this or some other piece of ‘dumb’ technology? One of our cars is a 2008 Nissan Versa. It’s a small little car that on the outside looks like it’s going to fall apart soon. It has no bells and whistles except for automatic windows. It’s like driving a lawnmower. I say a prayer every time I need to drive it up a mountain as the RPM’s rev. But, here’s the thing. It works. It does what I need it to – mainly, take me to and from Harrisburg for work when I need to go. What it doesn’t do is talk to me, sing to me, or alert me about one of the thousands of things that can go wrong.

Anthony Robinson quotes Godier about how technology seems to have changed since 2008.

“Sometime in the last twenty years…our possessions came alive. Not all at once. Not dramatically. One by one, the objects in our lives opened their eyes, found our faces, and began to need us.”

“Your thermostat has opinions now. Your television requires a login. Your car updates itself overnight, and sometimes when you start it in the morning, the interface has rearranged itself, as if someone broke in and reorganized your dashboard while you slept. Your earbuds won’t play music until they’ve updated their firmware. Your refrigerator wants to be on your Wi-Fi.

“None of this is broken. This is the product functioning as designed.”

He contrasts this to how possessions, like an old wrist watch and car, used to work.

“For most of human history, you bought a thing, and it was yours, and it was finished. Nothing you own is finished. Everything exists in a state of permanent incompletion, permanently needing. Your phone needs updates, needs charging, needs storage cleared, needs passwords rotated. Your apps need permissions reviewed, terms accepted, preferences re-configured after every update.

“Your subscriptions need evaluating, need renewing, need canceling, need justifying to yourself every month when the charge appears. The purchase isn’t the end of anything. It’s the first day of a relationship you didn’t agree to, with no clean way out.”

Technology can be wonderful. I for one would much rather have a surgery done today with all of the advances in laparoscopic technology and imaging than 100 years ago when the surgeon would give you a shot of whisky and tell you to say a prayer. And yet, as wonderful as all of our technology is, it is also exhausting. You can’t really escape it – even some of the gas pumps now have TV’s in them trying to sell you things – short of never interacting with society.

What’s the solution? Well, here’s the bad news, there really isn’t one. 

“If you read all of Godier’s piece he comes to a point, as he acknowledges, where you expect him to tell you some way to manage, to simplify your life and make it all better. He doesn’t do that. Instead, he says that if you are frazzled, confused, overwhelmed and exhausted by it all, “It’s not your fault.”

In the article, Anthony Robinson says “on reading this, my mind went to the New Testament’s Letter to the Hebrews.” It’s a strange thing to connect – the Bible and an article on technology, but here is where the Lord led him. 

“One of the principal themes of the Letter to the Hebrews is that Christ’s work of salvation on our behalf is not something that ever needs, nor requires, a redo, refreshment, or updates. This, for the author of Hebrews, is in contrast to priestly rites of the old order, which demand constant effort, attention and performance.”

“Every priest stands day after day at his service, offering again and again the same sacrifices that can never take away sin. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God . . . For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.” (Hebrews 10: 11 – 12).

In our gospel reading of Jesus’ crucifixion and death this morning, remember what happens to the curtain in the temple when Christ died? It was torn in two. The barrier between God and the world, God and human beings was torn down. Robinson continues:

Get it? His work of forgiveness and freedom has been done once and for all. The last three words hold a double meaning. Christ’s work has been done period. Full Stop. It need not be repeated. It is finished. Done. Complete. “He sat down.” And, second, it is for all people that this grace is accomplished and offered in Christ’s death and resurrection.

Where this connects to Godier and tech is that tech now is never done, never finished, never complete, always requiring — demanding — more of us, from us. It’s never enough! Which takes us again to a basic contrast, between law and grace.

In the Christian view of the things, the Law is what you must do to honor God and live a good life (think things like the 10 Commandments). The Law is a good thing. Honor God and don’t have other gods but the Lord, and don’t steal or commit adultery are really good ways to live. However, can anyone ever fully live the law perfectly? Can any one of us say we love God enough, or have never had an impure thought, or wanted something that wasn’t ours or guarantee we won’t in the future? The point is, the Law can show us what it means to love and honor God and live a good life. But it can’t make us do those things. The Law can’t save us. If we only look at the law, we will always feel the need to do more, be more, and try more. It’s like modern technology, it always wants to be updated. The contract in the Christian view of things is grace. Here Robinson continues:

Only the finished work of Christ, can offer us true rest. Of course, “law” in this sense isn’t limited to religion. There are lots of secular forms of law, as in “you must have the perfect family,” “you must have the perfect body,” “you (or your kids) must get into the right college.” The grammar of law is “if/then.” If you do this, you will get that. But it’s all on you. The grammar of the gospel is different. It is the language of promise, as in, “I am with you always.” “Nothing . . . can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” “I am the resurrection and the life.”

Grace and promise lead to “rest in the Lord.” Robinson tells of an older man who he knew who he often saw sitting on a bench in a nearby park. “I’d say, “Hey, what’s up?” He’d answer, “Just resting in the Lord, in what Jesus done for me.””

Our technology has become law-like. It requires of us always more, constant attention and “updating.” I put quotes around “update,” because it is a term deliberately chosen to suggest improving, getting better, climbing higher. We are keeping up to date! God help us if we don’t keep up! 

That may be one of the reasons modern life feels like everything moves so fast. We feel as if we always need to be updating something, improving something, making something better to be a successful person. And if we don’t do those things, we’re somehow falling behind and failing as a human being. Robinson continues:

The promise of the law — do this, do enough of this and you’ll be saved/ loved/ okay/ at peace — is a false promise. Now it comes at us in the disguise of modern technology. Get this device, this app, this hack and climb the ladder to perfection, peace, abundant life. But you never actually arrive. There’s the next new Iphone, which you must have. We become like the old order priests of Hebrews performing the same sacrificial rites day after day, even though it never really works, never frees people from the grip of Sin and Death.

Perhaps the most needed thing for us striving, updating, never-enough 21st century humans is the rest that comes from what Christ has done for us, once and for all, that which we cannot do for ourselves. 

Why do we come to church? It might be because it’s what we’ve always done, or we need to check-off getting some God in our life off of our to-do list, or because we want to get on God’s good side. Those are all reasons, but hopefully they are not the only or main reasons. I hope for us as a church, however imperfect that we are, that when we come to worship, we find rest and ourselves resting in the Lord. I hope that we hear the good of what God has done for you and me. To hear that ‘it is finished’ and that you and I and the world can be at peace and rest in the Lord.

We’ll close here: modern life is hard. It’s hard in a way that it wasn’t hard for our ancestors. It was hard for them in different ways. We have so much abundance that they didn’t have. But what we are lacking is a sense of rest, peace, and purpose. There are no magical answers here. No quick fixes. No apps or updates to your life that I can offer you to quickly make your life better. The gospel doesn’t work that way. Suffering is part of the Christian life. But what I can offer you is the good news that Christ died for you, that he forgives you, that he said ‘it is finished’, that he is bread from heaven for our souls, and that in him all of us who are weary, tired, and full of burdens, can find our rest and peace, and strength and courage for the day ahead.

Amen.