Mark 16:1-3 “When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body. Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb and they asked each other, ‘Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?’”

Maybe I’m just more aware of it now that I am more involved in our family’s shopping. Maybe it is something more cashiers have been trained to do at the checkout counter. I am unloading my grocery cart at the cash register, and the cashier asks me, “Did you find what you were looking for?” Every Sunday afternoon our family goes grocery shopping at ALDI, and without fail the person scanning my groceries asks me, “Did you find everything you were looking for?” But it’s not just ALDI. J.C. Penney, Lowes or Home Depot, CVS Pharmacy–they all ask the same question: “Did you find what you were looking for?”

The two Marys and Salome were looking for Jesus when they came to his tomb that Sunday morning. The body itself was usually anointed with perfumed oils. Notice that Mark says they were coming “to anoint Jesus’ body,” not merely add some potpourri to the tomb.

But something was missing. These women expected that Jesus was dead. They expected, then, that he had been just another mortal human teacher–a great prophet, an outstanding example and role model. They expected he was a man whose memory they should honor and celebrate, like we do with the Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson memorials on the mall in Washington D.C., but nothing more. They were looking for Jesus, but with the wrong expectations.

And notice how this had deformed and disfigured their Christian lives. For the past two days they had worried about a problem that didn’t exist. For the past twelve hours they had wasted time and lost sleep over solving it. They had spent large sums of money–the kinds of oils and fragrances used for this kind of thing were not cheap–to use in a tomb that had no body. It is interesting that we never hear again about the fate of these rather expensive deodorants they had purchased. In light of the truth they learned about Jesus, none of this mattered anymore.

You and I know better, I believe. We don’t think that we are following a dead hero, as though Easter was a spiritual version of President’s Day. We are looking for a risen Lord, our victorious God, the conqueror of sin and death, and Satan and hell, and every other evil with which our world has to contend.

But notice how, though we know this in our heads, and we believe it in our hearts, somehow it escapes us in our practice. We live like Jesus was dead. We worry about problems, that may not even exist, as though it all depended on us to solve them. We waste time and forfeit sleep over a future we don’t control: what’s going to happen at work, what’s going to happen at school, what’s going to happen in Washington D.C. or the state capitol, what’s going to happen at my next doctor’s appointment?

I am not saying we should do anything foolish or neglect our responsibilities. But Jesus is alive, still today, two thousand years later. He is victorious over sin and death. Doesn’t the living and victorious Jesus have the future covered for us?

Isaiah 53:10 “Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.”

Would it surprise us if God the Father found the day of Jesus’ crucifixion infuriating? Shouldn’t we expect it? Fathers naturally want to protect their children. They want what is best for them. Attend a youth soccer game sometime, or a baseball game. Listen to the way the dads get on the referees, or even their own coaches, if they think their boys aren’t being treated fairly. Several years ago a father became so angry at his son’s hockey coach during a practice that he beat the man to death. Do we think that the Father in heaven loves his Son less? Remember what Jesus once said about his Father’s regard for his children on earth? “Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”

But what does Isaiah say about the heavenly Father and Jesus’ suffering on this day? “Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer…” It was the Lord’s will. Literally, the Hebrew word Isaiah uses means “delight.” That’s hard to fathom, maybe even impossible for you and me. That the Lord would allow this to happen, even begrudgingly, is hard to get your head around. In his book The Problem of Suffering, Pastor Gregory Schulz describes a father’s agony at watching his children struggle with chronic disease and its pain. He had to tell his son he couldn’t have any food or water as he prepped for surgery. He had to restrain his son while nurses invaded his body with intravenous needles. And then, preparing a sermon on John 3:16, he reads the words, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son…” And aghast, looking at those words in light of his relationship with his own son, he could only ask, over and over again, “How could you?”

You see, we aren’t talking about a helpless father watching it happen from a hospital bedside, completely dependent on the doctors, nurses, and medical technology. We aren’t talking about some unfeeling father, too dull to know, too full of himself to care. This is the Father above all fathers, the God who is love, somehow finding delight in what his Son suffers on this day.

Nor is there any analogy or illustration strong enough to describe what happened to this Father’s Son on the cross. “It was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer.” Children have been slowly crushed to death by their parents backing out of the garage. We hear about children burned alive in house fires. All of that pales in comparison to Jesus’ suffering. He was crushed, not so much by Jewish fists, or Roman whips, or nails driven through his wrists and ankles. He was crushed by the combined weight of humanity’s sins, the guilt of all people and all history that he carried to the cross. He was crushed by the fury of hell, the price he paid for those sins in God-forsaken darkness and abandonment.

Still, this is the Father’s will, his delight. How could anyone, much less the Father in heaven, find anything about this “good”?

Our struggle to understand does not come because we are more moral than God. Any idea that we are better than the God who reveals himself to us on the pages of Scripture is a delusion. No, the problem is that we have never felt love for anyone else anything like the love this Father has for you and me. In our sin, our concept of love is wrapped up in affection for those who benefit us in some way. It has to do more with what we get than what we give. Isn’t that so? Don’t you love those who please you, and find excuses not to love those who cause you pain?

The reason our Father could so delight in crushing his Son is that he cannot separate the horrible event from its saving results: “…the Lord makes his life a guilt offering.” In the blood sacrifices of the Old Testament, the guilt was transferred from the worshiper to the sacrificial victim: the lamb, or the calf, or the goat that died in those ceremonies. In the death of the sacrifice the guilt was disposed. The Father made Jesus our guilt offering. The wall of sin that kept us from God is gone!

And so, “he will see his offspring.” Jesus’ death brings many sons and daughters to the Father, millions of them, maybe billions. When God first created man, he did so because he wanted someone to love. He desired a relationship with a creature he fashioned like himself: rational, self-conscious, capable of loving and being loved. Jesus’ death restores God’s dream. Now such a family is possible. Now God’s family is enlarged. This is how “the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.” What God always wanted finally becomes reality at the cross: holy sons and daughters he can claim as his very own. This is why the heavenly Father can also call this day “good.”

Exodus 12:15 “For seven days you are to eat bread made without yeast. On the first day remove the yeast from your houses, for whoever eats anything with yeast in it from the first day through the seventh must be cut off from Israel.”

God was deadly serious about Israel keeping the yeast out of their bread at Passover. Even more, he wanted the whole house purged. Why?

Yeast offers us a natural picture or symbol of sin. As it feeds on and spreads through whatever has become its host, it has a corrupting influence. Its spread is difficult, if not impossible, to stop. And once yeast is introduced into a place, traces of it are everywhere. Actually ridding your house of all yeast is a daunting task. Today, devout Jews go through a ritual of “nullifying” any yeast in their homes twice in the twenty-four hours before Passover. In the ritual they renounce ownership of what little might remain because it is so hard to get rid of.

Is it hard to see why God would choose this to teach us about the nature of our sin? Ever try to get sin out of your life on your own? You could work at it your whole life and you would never succeed. Some people may feel that they only “dabble” in certain sins, but there is no dabbling in sin, is there. When I was a boy I liked to collect things. I dabbled in collecting rocks, collecting coins, collecting Hardy Boys mystery stories, and building models. When the time came, it was easy enough to give those things up.

You can’t pick sin up like a hobby and then put it down again. Long before you took hold of any particular sin, sin took hold of you and me. You know how difficult it is to shake your taste for attitudes or activities you know are wrong. And when we look at the broad sweep of sin in our lives, all the different parts of me that it has corrupted, all the nooks and crannies in which it lives and grows, we know its presence is everywhere. As yeast lives in bread dough, sin lives in people, people just like you and me.

So God had his people eat bread without yeast at Passover, a picture of the kind of people without sin who could be considered his own. But how many people qualify? All by itself, this picture would not make us more sure of God’s love. It would create more doubt and uncertainty. It would lead us to despair. How can we become such sinless people? Only one man ever lived whose life was not infected by the yeast of sin. He is God’s solution for our sin. In fact, he used the unleavened bread sitting on the table at his last Passover supper to give his sinless body to his disciples. That is better understood from another part of the Passover meal.

The Passover also involved the sacrifice of a lamb. This sacrifice was roasted and eaten by the participants. The perfect, innocent lamb sacrificed at the Passover was a picture of sinless Jesus. The Apostle Paul tells: “Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed.” Just as the Passover lamb died instead of the sinful people who offered it, Jesus gave his life to spare us from our sins. John the Baptist cried out, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.”

But how can I be sure Jesus’ sacrifice counts for me? I don’t see my sins vaporized after God tells me I’m forgiven. I wasn’t at the sacrifice when Jesus died on the cross nearly 2000 years ago. I didn’t even exist yet. I’m still committing sins every day. How can I be sure?

Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 10, “Consider the people of Israel: Do not those who eat the sacrifices participate in the altar?” The Passover lamb was more than a sacrifice. It was a meal. The people at the meal knew that they were partakers in what that sacrifice accomplished. They received the benefits of the sacrifice, that they had a personal connection to the sacrifice and its blessings when they ate the lamb. This was a personal and individual way in which they were involved. How could they miss the point that this lamb died for them as they ate the very flesh of the animal that gave its life?

Jesus’ sacrifice took place long ago, and it doesn’t need repeating. We didn’t get to see it. But our sin was present and paid for. Jesus’ sacrifice does count for me. And just to make us sure, God miraculously takes that same body sacrificed so many years ago, and he gives it to us to eat in the supper he sets before us at the communion table. It’s a personal and individual way by which he applies the forgiveness, life, and salvation flowing from Jesus’ cross to each of us.

Analogies for this are hard to think of, but consider this: I have a box of high school mementos at home which still contains a boutonniere from a high school banquet my wife and I once attended. It was a real part of that event that I can touch and see.

As interesting and meaningful as such a keepsake might be–more than a picture, but an actual artifact from the past– all it can do is conjure up a memory. It doesn’t actually bring me anything. In the feast Jesus sets before us, he does more than display an artifact from the past. He gives more than fond memories. We receive the body of God’s own Son. With it come God’s own promise of forgiveness and love. Here we see God’s real solution for the problem of sin, the sin he pictured as yeast, the sin our Passover Lamb removes.

Zechariah 9:10 “I will take away the chariots from Ephraim and the war-horses from Jerusalem, and the battle bow will be broken. He will proclaim peace to the nations. His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth.”

If you know a little about Israelite history, you know that at the time of King David’s grandson Rehoboam, the nation was split in two. The northern kingdom, which took the name Israel, was sometimes referred to as “Ephraim” because that was the dominant tribe where the capitol city of Samaria was located. The southern kingdom was named Judah, and it was ruled from the city of Jerusalem. Sometimes the two nations had a peaceful coexistence, but they never liked each other much and often went to war.

The prophet Zechariah sees Jesus as the King who will put an end to the fighting between God’s own people. The weapons will be taken away from Ephraim in the north and Jerusalem in the south. They will live and act as one people once again.

Historically, the northern kingdom had pretty much disappeared from the face of the earth about 200 years before Zechariah. There was a little remnant of their people, but they never existed as a separate, identifiable state any more. What the prophet is giving us is rather a picture of the divisions among God’s people, internally–with each other, and the promise that Jesus will put an end to them.

Externally Christianity may still look very divided, with more flavors than Baskin Robbins. But spiritually, invisibly, we confess our faith in one holy Christian and Apostolic Church. Inwardly, faith in Jesus unites those who trust in him. We may not be able to see this yet, because faith is a hidden thing, a matter of the heart. We Christians may be forgiven, but we still struggle with sin and stubbornness and false beliefs that get in the way of our unity. Still, our King has given us his powerful word which attacks those divisive problems now, and the day is coming when “the battle bow will be broken.” All his true people will be gathered as one around his throne.

The benefits of living under this King are not limited to people living in one country or descended from one race. Part of the good news is that his reign is universal. “He will proclaim peace to the nations. His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth.”

Some people criticize Christians for spreading their faith and trying to change people who already have a religion. That’s because people on the outside of the Christian faith don’t understand what our King has to offer. If we were trying to provide clean drinking water or a cure for malaria in some other part of the world, no one would complain about lack of respect for other cultures and faiths.

Jesus brings something far better and far more important, and he is the only source for what he has to give. No one else, no other belief system, can provide free forgiveness of sins, peace with God, and life that never ends. That’s why this King is spreading his kingdom “from sea to sea,” and “to the ends of the earth.” Wherever the gospel is preached, and people are coming to faith, people of every color and nationality are getting the same King we have, and the same blessings he brings.

There is no greater peace people can share. There is no greater unity we can know.

Zechariah 9:9 “See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

Candidates for office make a lot of promises about what they are going to do for you. Sometimes they would have to be king to be able to do all the things they say they are going to do. Mostly their term begins, and then it ends, and things stay about the same, at least in my experience.

When Jesus comes as King, he comes with no small promise in hand. He has salvation. He isn’t promising to rescue us from a bad economy, stagnant job growth, low wages, high taxes, global warming, Islamic terrorists, or a crazy dictator in North Korea. He brings salvation from our own sins. Have you slept with someone you shouldn’t? He forgives that. Ever lied to stay out of trouble? He pardons that, too. Have your actions ever broken up a family, cost someone their job, contributed to someone’s delinquency, shattered someone’s faith, separated close friends, or gravely disappointed your parents? Forgiven, forgiven, forgiven, forgiven, forgiven, forgiven.

You realize that this isn’t some insignificant political trick like preventing thermonuclear war or keeping the polar ice caps from melting. This is huge. By bringing salvation from sin, Jesus has just presented us with the cure for death, not just until the next time we get sick, but forever.

Put that on your average politician’s resume–the salvation of the world–and his head would swell as big as a small planet. But is that the kind of person we see riding into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday? The prophet says he is “righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey.” The Hebrew says something more like “lowly” or “humble” and riding on a donkey. Maybe “humility” is such an unbelievable trait after everything we have read about this King that even the translators have trouble translating it that way.

But it all fits the picture. Jesus was infinitely better than the prostitutes, the tax collectors, the lepers, and the other outcasts of his day. But he was not too high and mighty to attend their dinners, spend time teaching them, or heal their sick. Jesus was more than the rightful King of Israel. He was Lord and Master of the Universe, the most powerful man in the world. He had the ability to control the weather and modify the laws of physics. But he doesn’t enter Jerusalem on a white horse or in a golden chariot, the First Century equivalent of a limousine in a motorcade. He rides a donkey, the average man’s vehicle, the First Century Ford or Chevy compact sedan. This is not a King who is full of himself.

This makes him a King we can approach with confidence. Have you ever met someone famous and felt a little awkward, or intimidated, to be in the presence of such an important person? You’ve seen people become speechless when they met a favorite sports star, entertainer, or politician. You won’t find anyone any higher than Jesus, but you won’t find anyone easier to approach. Bring your requests, your sin and guilt, your desperate situations and deepest needs, and give it to him. He’s happy to hear you for as long as you want to talk, happy to help you with whatever issues you have, because he is humble and gentle even though he is truly a King.

Zechariah 9:9 “Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your King comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

Jesus did not come to be a political king. “My kingdom is not of this world,” he told Pilate. Yet it almost sounds like the prophet Zechariah is trying to whip up the crowd at the political rally. When he wrote these words, Israel had been without a king for about 80 years. They weren’t going to get one for another 500 years. This was largely because the kings of the past had failed God and his people. They acted out of self-interest. They neglected their own faith and the faith of their people. They turned a blind eye to injustice. They promoted immorality. After about 400 years of this, the Lord was done. He took away Judah’s independence and let them be ruled by other world powers. He was not going to give them a king again until he could give them a king who would get it right.

Jesus is that king. The prophet wrote words to assure his people a king was coming, someone they could trust. Here is how they could be sure:

The king is righteous. He is just. This doesn’t apply merely to the way he governs publicly. It applies to his private, personal conduct as well. In this, he is an exception of history. Even by watered-down human standards this is exceedingly rare.

Look at Israel’s kings, for example. The king who set the standard by which every other king would be judged, and even the Lord himself called him a man after his own heart, was David. But was David “righteous”? His personal life became a mess. Sexual scandals surrounding people in power isn’t a modern problem. David had his famous affair with Bathsheba. His children were out of control, like so many royal families who make the news today. Later in his reign his conceit got him tangled up in a self-promotion campaign that cost 70,000 people their lives. It cost them their lives! Yet David was considered the model, the sentimental favorite of the nation. After him they really see no one better.

We complain about the people who govern us. Most people I know complain about it a lot. Do you know why we can’t find better leaders, and historically that has been a problem? It is because those who rule are a reflection of the people they govern. The sex, the scandals, the schemes, the deceit, the greed, the self-interest–that’s not just a Washington problem, or a government problem. It describes what the human race has become. We are all about ourselves.

In a democratic system you can’t tell people that and still hope to get elected. But the Lord can say it. There’s a passage in Isaiah in which the Lord says, “Israel’s watchmen (that is, their leaders) are blind…they are dogs with mighty appetites; they never have enough… ‘Come,’ each one cries, ‘let me get wine! Let us drink our fill of beer! And tomorrow will be like today, or even far better.” That was their leaders.

Then Micah, who wrote at the same time, says, “If a liar and deceiver comes and says, ‘I will prophesy for you plenty of wine and beer,’ he would be just the prophet for this people!” That’s the people (and their clergy). In other words, like ruler like people. It hurts to admit, but looking at the seedier side of those who govern is a lot like looking in a mirror.

So Zechariah gives us good news! We are getting a king, and he is righteous. He isn’t just relatively good, or better than most. “He was tempted in every way just as we are, yet was without sin,” the writer of Hebrew says. He is “the lamb without blemish or defect,” is the way the Apostle Peter put it. In John chapter 8 Jesus challenged his opponents, “Can any of you prove me guilty of sin?” not because he was arrogant, but because he was actually pure. Right up to the day they condemned him to death, no one could answer his challenge, even when they paid false witnesses to lie about him, because the King we are getting is righteous.

Isn’t that the kind of king we need, the kind of leadership for which we have been looking?

Matthew 26:1-5 “When Jesus had finished saying all these things, he said to his disciples, ‘As you know, the Passover is two days away–and the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified.’ Then the chief priests and the elders of the people assembled in the palace of the high priest, whose name was Caiaphas, and they plotted to arrest Jesus in some sly way and kill him. ‘But not during the Feast,’ they said, ‘or there might be a riot among the people.’”

Jesus and his enemies seemed to agree on one thing as they got ready for the end of this week: “…the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified.” The chief priests and elders were plotting to kill him. Jesus intended to give up his life to save us. But neither understood the meaning of this in the same way.

Those against Jesus were convinced that a real Messiah would save his people by raising an army, restoring Israel to power, and leading the nation to victory. Even Jesus’ disciples couldn’t shake themselves free of the idea that salvation should include a free and secure Israel, and a great improvement in the national standard of living. The leaders were going to kill Jesus, but not to complete God’s saving work. This was their attempt to put a stop to the man they considered an imposter, and not a very convincing one at that.

The cross is so ingrained in the culture and life of the church that we may think we are on the same page as Jesus regarding his saving methods.  We nod our heads in agreement when Paul says in 1^st Corinthians, “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

But don’t we still become guilty of looking at Jesus as though he were some political hero, a secular Savior? Does our chief plea become, “Make us safe and prosperous?” It’s not just the prosperity preachers on television. In order to be relevant, more and more preachers preach him as the Savior of your marriage, your career, your retirement funds, our nation’s prominence on the world stage. The cross figures less and less in such concerns. I would like a better marriage, career, retirement, and country to live in. The Jesus who secures my earthly happiness sounds good to me, too.

“But what good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matthew 16:26). You and I wouldn’t try to get rid of the Jesus who dies on a cross to pay for our sins and save our souls. But would we be content if he and his cross just faded away so long as we still had a Jesus with relevant ideas about improving our present lives?

“The Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified.” The cross is an indispensable part of Jesus’ work, the key component in his saving plan. “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree.” “He forgave us all our sins,” Paul writes the Colossians, “having canceled the written code that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross.” Again: “God was pleased…to reconcile to himself all things…by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”

On the cross Jesus is forsaken by his heavenly Father so that we can be accepted by him. From the cross Jesus shouts, “It is finished,” his work complete, our salvation accomplished, our souls secure. The cross is why the Apostle Paul could lay aside his own life, and stop obsessing about his own accomplishments, and frankly tell the Galatians, “May I never boast except in the cross of my Lord Jesus Christ.” It still deserves first place in our faith.

Matthew 26:1-5 “When Jesus had finished saying all these things, he said to his disciples, ‘As you know, the Passover is two days away–and the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified.’ Then the chief priests and the elders of the people assembled in the palace of the high priest, whose name was Caiaphas, and they plotted to arrest Jesus in some sly way and kill him. ‘But not during the Feast,’ they said, ‘or there might be a riot among the people.’”

“If only I could get control…” On the one hand, Jesus had already announced, “the Son of Man will be handed over…” At the same time, we hear of his enemies, “they plotted to arrest Jesus in some sly way…” Who was really in control of what was going on here?

It is hard to do something on the sly, to accomplish your goals by deceit and trickery, when your victim knows what you are going to do even before you do. First, Jesus announces he will be handed over. Then the chief priests and elders plot to arrest him in some sly way. It speaks volumes about who was really in control of everything. Jesus could have left Jerusalem at this very moment. If he stayed, the One who knew his enemies’ plans before they did had the ability to know all their movements. He could make sure he was never available, never where they expected to find him. He had slipped through their fingers before.

Beyond that, there was an even greater power into which he could tap. With just a word or two he brought dangerous storms to a complete standstill. Certainly he had the power to overcome whatever force the Jewish leaders used to arrest him and hold him captive. The appearance of control by Jewish and Roman authorities throughout Jesus’ suffering and death was only an illusion.

Would it surprise you if I admitted that I want control–control over my own life? I not only want to keep control from people around me, people who have different plans than I do, people who might use their control to take advantage of me. I would also like to control Jesus’ involvement in my life. I plot and I plan. Sometimes I even think that I have control, or I am gaining control. But it is all just an illusion. You and I have to act responsibly, but with our cooperation or without it, Jesus still has ultimate control over all that happens to me.

Isn’t that a comfort when we look at his plans for this Passover? As we review all that he suffered, as we sit at the foot of the cross on Good Friday and look up at his bruised and blood-drenched body, it is easy for us to forget that he is there because he wants to be. He chooses this, not because he enjoys suffering. It filled his soul with such dread that he pleaded with his Father in Gethsemane to take it away if possible. But it wasn’t possible, and so he chooses to let these men arrest him and commit all their crimes against him because it saves and serves us.

“The punishment that brought us peace was upon him,” the prophet Isaiah says. This is not because of some accident, not because God lost it for a little while, but because this was Jesus’ plan. He was in control of the process from the start to the very end. He still is. Don’t be afraid to let him take the wheel.