The Fickleness of Faith

David Orendorff · Mark 11:1-11 · April 9, 2006

Two cars were waiting at a stoplight. The light turned green, but the man didn’t notice it. A woman in the car behind him is watching traffic pass around them. The woman begins pounding on her steering wheel and yelling at the man to move. The man doesn’t move.

The woman is going ballistic inside her car, ranting and raving at the man, pounding on her steering wheel and dash. The light turns yellow and the woman begins to blow the car horn, flips him off, and screams profanity and curses at the man.

The man, looks up, sees the yellow light and accelerates through the intersection just as the light turns red.

The woman is beside herself, screaming in frustration as she misses her chance to get through the intersection. As she is still in mid-rant she hears a tap on her window and looks up into the barrel of a gun held by a very serious looking policeman.

The policeman tells her to shut off her car while keeping both hands in sight. She complies, speechless at what is happening. After she shuts off the engine, the policeman orders her to exit her car with her hands up. She gets out of the car and he orders her to turn and place her hands on her car then handcuffs her and takes her to the police station where she is fingerprinted, photographed, searched, booked and placed in a cell.

After a couple of hours, a policeman approaches the cell and opens the door for her. She is escorted back to the booking desk where the original officer is waiting with her personal effects and says,

“I’m really sorry for this mistake. But you see, I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn, flipping the guy off in front of you, and cussing a blue streak at him. I noticed the “Choose Life” license plate holder, the “What Would Jesus Do” bumper sticker, the “Follow Me to Sunday School” bumper sticker, and the chrome plated Christian fish emblem on the trunk. Naturally I assumed you had stolen the car.”1 Unknown source

We have all seen this and sometimes we are the woman. We have been so engrossed with our own agenda, our own cares and needs, our own selves that we have no patience with the person in front of us at the stoplight, or the grocery line, or the bank or where ever. And if it isn’t a line it is when we are doing what we want to do and someone asks us to do something they want done. Or maybe we are tired of hearing “mommy,” or perhaps it is the phone ringing that irks us, or a sudden report needed. There are thousands of things people can do to interrupt our lives and irritate us.

If God is love, compassionate and servant minded, then God never minds the interruption caused by our lives. When God has given us a clear indication that we have a “go” in life and in fear or stubbornness we fail to move, God does not honk at us, make rude hand gestures toward us and swear at us. God waits, gives the go sign again, and again, and if necessary seven times seventy hoping we will move to grace, to compassion and servant mindedness.

Take the man in the car in front of us that is slow to move when the light is green. He may have just left the hospital where his child is sick and perhaps dying. He may be in the midst of a divorce or lost his job. He may be ill himself. He may not need our impatience so much as he needs our compassion.

Perhaps by waiting, even through a second light, we might have an opportunity to witness our compassion by getting out of our car, our own small world, and simply asking, “Are you OK?” Stuck behind a man at a light may be our opportunity to let God work αγαπε through us.

I know this is a small example but for me it is an example of how we frequently in the smallest of ways fail God and fail Jesus while proclaiming ourselves Christian. Even though it is small it indicates how one minute we are waving the palms calling Jesus our savior and the next minute irritated because things are not going the way we want and acting from deadly self interest, acting without compassion, calling for the crucifixion of a failed savior.

What most strikes me about today’s scripture of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem is the fickleness of the faith of the crowd. On the entry they line the streets praising and saluting the messiah, shouting “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 heaven!” Only a little later in the week the same crowd cries, “Crucify him, crucify him.”

We have a tendency to be mystified by such behavior and to not see such a fickle faith in ourselves. But even a cursory look at what is happening with that crowd in Jerusalem must also certainly raise questions about the constancy of our faith.

The crowd in their hosannas is echoing the psalms which praise God’s presence with the people, particularly Psalm 118:26. The crowd is glad when God is with them. But like all crowds they want God to be with them in a particular way, in this case as the son of David. The messiah they want will form an army to

recapture the throne of David and once again establish Israel’s independence from Rome.

But the messiah they get is not David the King, but David the lover of God. The messiah they get forms no army but lets himself be captured, arrested and tried for heresy against God and treason against Caesar. This is not the messiah they want.

Let’s go back to the story of the impatient Christian woman waiting behind the man who is slow to respond to the traffic light. The woman wants what she wants and that is for the man to move his car out of her way. And she resorts to the violence of horn honking, hands signs and verbal abuse to get her way. For salvation from this simple situation she resorts to violence. And if it is so for such a small thing as a man at a traffic light what is her response likely to be to serious things like crime (lock up the SOBS – kill the murderers) or terrorism (lock any suspect away without telling their families where they are, without giving them any way of proving themselves innocent, or simpler, just bomb them and their families whenever you think you might know where they are, kill them before they kill us).

The crowd in Jerusalem and the woman at the traffic light when confronted by life’s little and big problems, share the same answer, violence. Their answer is a failure to compassion, a failure to understanding or forgiveness. When Jesus the messiah offers himself to torture and death rather than practice violence against his enemies he is not the messiah the crowd or the woman want.

And so it is with us. When we substitute violence for compassion, substitute angry and condemnation for understanding and forgiveness, when in our fear of inconvenience or death we practice violence and become the angels of death, then we fail the love of God revealed in Jesus. We become members of the crowd who wave palms branches in praise and the a little later shout, “Crucify him.”

I know that I am a member of that crowd. When my children were small and my superior reasoning ability, my gentle voice and my kind heart failed to get them to go to bed or quit fighting then I resorted to violent yelling and a threatening physical presence to get my wise parental way.

There is a better way. There is the way of Jesus compassion and servant love. I recommend the “Love and Logic” class when it comes around again not only for parents, but for all people who want to find a way to improve life with love rather than violence.

As a long time Christian I find I still betray Jesus. I still have moments of overt violence when I curse at an offending driver or subtly manipulate a child with guilt and shame (its own kind of violence).

To honestly know that in small and large ways we betray the love of God with fear and the resultant violence is to know that we are a part of the crowd for whom Jesus willingly gave his life. We are the crowd and the army for whom Jesus spoke from the cross, “Forgive them father for they do not know what they are doing.”

In this Holy week we have a chance to recognize how we fail to serve family, friend and enemy with compassion. On Thursday we will have a last supper with the one who loves us. On Friday we will celebrate that such love turned the cross from a sign of disgrace and failure to a sign of God’s conquering grace, and on Sunday we will celebrate that death and violence have been conquered for all time in the resurrection of Jesus who is now truly the Christ, the messiah for the whole of the world.

I pray you join in the holy time of this week and experience God’s mercy for our failed αγαπε, our failed compassion.

Shalom and Amen.