Would You Recognize Him?

Adapted from a sermon preached April 2, 2023 at First Presbyterian Church-Memphis.

Today is Palm Sunday, where with the waving of our own palms or “palm-like” things, we recreate the celebration of the Triumphal Entry, when Jesus arrives in Jerusalem with his followers for the celebration of Passover. Today marks the beginning of Holy Week, the start of the passion narrative, our entry into what will once again be our commemoration of the final days, the death and the resurrection of Jesus. And an important fact to note is that the Triumphal Entry is one of the very few accounts of Jesus that actually appears and is very similar in all four Gospel books – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

When I was a kid, I always thought of Palm Sunday as one of the “fun” days at the church. There was lots of dancing, singing and waving things around. And then in high school, I saw Jesus Christ Superstar at a theatre on London’s West End, and now I can’t separate the waving of palms from loudly singing, “Hosanna, hey sanna, sanna sanna, ho sanna hey, sanna Hosanna!”

Hosanna – which literally means “save us.” I love imagining this heroic Jesus figure riding into the city with crowds adoring him, welcoming him, cheering for him!

However…. Like far too many beloved and cherished Bible narratives, a deep dive into history and contextual analysis tells us that the Triumphal Entry we celebrate and commemorate as we did this morning, probably didn’t happen the way it is described in the Bible - the way we have passed the story down over generations. As Biblical scholar Bart Ehrman describes, Jesus probably did arrive in Jerusalem among crowds, and while by this point in his ministry, we do know that Jesus had some people following him around, the crowds were probably more due to the fact that thousands traveled to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover.

We can believe that those people who were his followers were probably cheering and announcing him, and we can imagine that this did create a scene that the larger crowd paid some attention to. In the early 90s I was in the Nashville airport and heard a few people start making some loud noise and clapping. I joined the gathering crowd long enough to see Dolly Parton being whisked by on the back of a motorized cart. Or another time, I saw a crowd of children excitedly running to surround a golf cart at a local golf course. I didn’t know why, but I took off running in the same direction to surround that golf cart, and my reward for following the crowd that day was a handshake from Michael Jordan, which for Chicago kids in the 90s was a HUGE deal.

If you’ve ever found yourself in a crowded place where a few people start cheering or shouting, everyone does kind of gather around to see what’s going on, so it is possible to believe that what started with Jesus and his group of followers did become a larger group watching his entry and asking questions about who he was.

But what Ehrman and other biblical scholars note is that the accounts of the Triumphal Entry that we read in the Gospel texts, which were written in the first 100 years or so after Jesus’ life, probably contain some added embellishment by those who already knew the whole story of what we term “Holy Week,” and how it would all play out. Remember that at this point in the text, Jesus had not yet even told his disciples about his upcoming death. So they would not have understood what we know now about the significance of his arrival in the Holy City.

But let’s not let that burst our celebratory bubble completely. Let’s not linger too long on the precise accuracy of each historical account. For one thing, we simply don’t and can’t know for sure what the arrival of Jesus in Jerusalem looked like. For another, I find it far more fruitful to focus on what the account in the Bible is teaching us about the nature of God and our relationship to God.

So when I think about the Triumphal Entry, I find myself asking, “What was the significance of this event for us – the arrival, the cheering crowds?” We know writers of the gospels probably added that post-Easter embellishment as they had the understanding of the events that would follow, but what about the crowds who were said to be cheering?

The text makes it sound like they recognized Jesus? Even though for Jewish folks, the image of the arrival of the Messiah would not necessarily have been a man in normal clothes riding on a donkey, Hebrew Bible poetic quotations aside. They probably would have been expecting a warrior hero, a liberating military leader riding on a huge horse. Did they really recognize Jesus as the messiah? I don’t really think they did. Remember that the individuals in this crowd who were said to be yelling and cheering for Jesus as the messiah would be some of the same individuals in the crowd calling for his crucifixion just a few days later. So did they really recognize him?

Maybe a few of them did, but I agree with many biblical scholars who note that the Triumphal Entry is many things, but one of things is a misremembered and embellished version of Christ’s arrival in Jerusalem. The crowd may have cheered, in the same way that I took off running toward that golf cart containing Michael Jordan, but I don’t think most of them really knew who he was or recognized him as the one God had sent to save us. 

So, on that note, I want to ask you if you would recognize Jesus if he arrived here today. If a small group of folks started yelling, “That’s the messiah!” – would you be able to tell?

According to a Pew Research Study in 2010, over 40% of Americans believe that Jesus will return by the year 2050 – not 40% of Christians, 40% of Americans surveyed. That’s a lot of people! I have to wonder, would they know what they are looking for?  

Since the time of his death a lot of people have claimed to be the second coming of Jesus. Like, a lot. I looked it up. While many of them were or are profoundly mentally ill and/or famous for some pretty heinous things, there’s also a lot of others who were and are just living their lives, leading religious followers and claiming to be the new incarnation of Jesus in various corners of the world. So, how do we know?

It’s not exactly fair for us to cast our understandings back on the crowds that Jesus met in Jerusalem those many years ago. They didn’t know what we know. They hadn’t heard or seen the most compelling evidence yet. Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday had not yet taken place. So do we think that we would better recognize Jesus if we were to meet him walking down Beale street?

I’m going to nerd out for a minute and just talk a little bit about the science of recognition. I’m married to a doctor so I take every occasion I can to point out when science and faith connect! So, recognizing people is a cognitive function that involves multiple processing stages and parallel routes of information in our brains. For most people, recognition is achieved through taking in multiple data points – the visual of a face, the sound of a voice, the name of a person, body shape, biographical facts, and much more. We don’t always require all of the possible data points to identify someone but in our brains, all of these data points comprise how we recognize another.

I bring up the science of recognition, because, as usual, I think that science and faith can and do speak to one another so beautifully. Science tells us that to recognize is a complex process, using many of our senses, multiple pathways in our brains, and usually only occurs through taking in several pieces of information before confidently affirming recognition.

I like that fact – that our process of recognition will involve many parts our being – how we see, how we hear, how we touch, how we feel, how we know. The act of recognizing Christ should be, and perhaps will be, a process of taking in information with all of our being.

Think about times when you have felt the presence of God – whether that was in an encounter with another who saw you in the way that God sees us, or standing out on an edge marveling at the wonder of God’s creation, or in an act of self-sacrificial care for a child or an aging loved one. All of these moments where we have sensed the closeness of God show us how our different senses can help us to recognize when we are encountering the divine.

So would you recognize Jesus if he were walking in Memphis? Maybe. In the crowds in Jerusalem some 2000 years ago, I think some of them did. But a lot of them didn’t. There’s quite a few imposters out there, claiming to be God incarnate. But I think when and if you do have a divine encounter, you will know it. When and if you meet God incarnate, that recognition will be a process of taking in. You will know with all of your senses, with all of your being that you are recognizing God.

In the meantime, let’s keep searching. Let’s open our senses and continue to seek the return of Jesus in this world – this very, very broken world. Because even if we don’t find him, we will recognize traces of him left behind and scattered among us. Even if only through one or two senses, we will find ourselves recognizing God’s unmistakable imprint on this world. And even finding those hints, those traces, will be more than worth all of our searching.

Hosannah! God save us! Hosannah!

Amen.