The Right Side of Praise

Luke 19:28, 37-40, John 19:1-16, John 19:17-30

We are a people of praise. Praise is who we are. We have met God in Jesus Christ. We have tasted his bounty. We have been surrounded by his love. We have seen his glory. Praise is a natural consequence of knowing God, because when we experience something wonderful, we want to share and express that wonder. Worship is a way that we acknowledge, experience and share the truth of God’s glorious presence.

Worship is a purposeful acknowledgment of God. If God is present, as we know he is, worship is those moments where we actually recognize the grandeur of that presence. If God is love, justice, goodness and mercy itself - in their greatest and fullest realization - just seeing him would lead us to praise, because we would be experiencing the greatest kindness, the greatest sacrifice, the greatest beauty, and the greatest setting right the world has ever known. Think about it, if you want to be filled with joy at any moment, simply recognize the joy that is inherent in meeting the greatness of God's immense presence and intimacy. I have only grown in the joy of this encounter.

Have you ever seen something so wonderful that you almost can’t help but share it? I think about those thousands of people that crowd the street after the raptor’s win, or climbing a mountain and looking out on God’s pristine creation, or hiking into the Australian outback and being blown away by the magnitude of the stars, or that act of kindness that surprises you. This wanting to share the good and wonderful is natural, it is what we are meant for. We can find greater joy as we share the glory. As Christians this joy in sharing goodness grows and deepens because ultimately we dwell in a community of worship.

A natural part of worship, of meeting a God that deserves all worship is that we want to invite others to experience that wonder too. Why wouldn’t we want to share such joy, healing and life? We are so willing to talk about that beautiful song, or that action packed movie, or that losing team, or that wonderful moment in our life, but these are fickle things. If you knew a cure for someone that was sick, wouldn’t you want to at least tell them about the medicine? If you knew the way when someone was lost, wouldn’t you at least want to point the way? If you knew of a lasting joy that could never be taken away from someone, wouldn’t you want people to have it? Well, guess what? That is exactly what we have and what we have met. Worship and praise is the way that the truth spurs our hearts to live in and share the wonderful hope that God is working into this world. We want people to see this love, we want people to live in this goodness and we want people to follow Jesus to what is far better than what this world offers.

Now we might not be there yet. We might not be able to recognize the fullness of God.. Praise is still essential to us, because in praise we reach up to God and invite God to come close. Let's say we are praising God's loving sacrifice, we might not understand or yet see why the cross is so mind bogglingly good, but in praise we open our eyes and mind up to the search and the truth of it. We acknowledge it in faith, even while our hearts and minds are struggling over the answer. At the same time we invite God to show us the truth, to enter in the space and openness of our hearts. In praise we reach up and God reaches down.

When we think about all of this we should realize that praise needs to be a big part of our prayer and our personal life. If prayer is our conversation with God, it needs to have moments of acknowledging the person in our midst. Have you ever been in a conversation where you don’t feel like the other person even acknowledges you? That’s what God experiences if our prayer doesn’t have praise. If our prayer doesn’t have praise in it, can we actually say that we are taking time to even notice the one we are speaking to who is the way, the truth and the life?

I remember a conversation with a prayer warrior early in my ministry and she told me how praise transformed her prayer life. If she was praying for 10 minutes she would spend 8 minutes praising God and as a result the other two minutes would be all the richer. I can tell you that sometimes all my prayers are praise and my life has become all the richer for it too. I still need to ask questions, I still need help, I still need forgiveness, but praise transforms all of these things too. If praise is acknowledging and inviting God to come close, of course it is going to change things, because the powerful loving God has come close. On top of that, If we are purposefully acknowledging and recognizing God in our private times, it makes it so much easier to see him and experience him in every other moment. And we want this because praise is the acknowledgment of something good and we all want to see the good. A prayer life filled with praise, will lead to a life filled with praise and that will transform your life as you see God’s goodness all around you.

Today we come to two important but strangely contrary moments in Jesus' life that expand our perspective of praise. Jesus’ triumphant entry in Jerusalem where people can’t help but praise Jesus and Jesus’ unjust trial and execution where people can’t help but praise Jesus.

So first, Jesus' triumphant entry into Jerusalem. It's interesting that John calls all those present disciples, because the other gospels don't but they tell us of a great multitude that come out to worship Jesus. This tells us that part of what makes a follower of Jesus is the quality of their worship. Worship is a part of how we follow as it is an acknowledgement of why we follow. We follow because of the goodness and authority of the one who leads us.

These disciples are praising God saying blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord. At this time, Jesus isn't a king in any way that the world can define him as king and yet, their praise is reaching higher. Just as they cant truly understand there is peace in heaven and glory in the highest due to this moment. Their praise is reaching higher than their minds can understand, but as a result of their praise they are experiencing it. And if through praise they are experiencing this heavenly King, then they are experiencing his kingdom. If they are experiencing this peace and this glory then they are experiencing heaven. Understanding will come, but praise leads them through the unknown as it leads them through Jesus.

Jesus tells the Pharisees that if he was to stop them from worshipping even the stones will cry out. There is something so natural, right and important about the praise of God that nature itself does it, it should be just as natural to us. Actually, it seems to say that when we don't praise, creation becomes supernatural in its praise and acknowledging God. This seems to go farther than just seeing God’s glory in nature, or feeling his presence. I wonder if we and our culture are missing some of the supernatural ways that nature is speaking to us in our lack of praise. When Jesus died there was earthquakes and darkness - what is there now?

You might not realize, but praise is so natural to humanity and creation that even the unjust trial of Jesus is full of praise. As the soldiers torture Jesus they put a crown of thorns on his head, a purple robe on his head and mockingly worship him. Even if their intent and actions are grotesque, they are actually acknowledging the truth of Jesus. He is our suffering king, the one who is anointed in blood to take our evil and sin.

As Jesus tells Pilate that Pilate’s authority has been given to him from above, Pilate ends up using his authority to lift up Jesus. He calls Jesus king many times, he pulls Jesus aside wanting to find reason to release him, he sets him up contrasting this innocent Jesus with a murderous rebel and Pilate labels Jesus’ cross with the label “the king of jews” in many languages, in a place where many would see. There is also a detail hidden in the Greek. When Pilate judges in the end, the Greek is open in that either Pilate or Jesus could be the one sitting on the judgement seat. There is this beautifully horrendous way that as we see Pilate sit Jesus on the judgment seat, we recognize that Jesus is the actual righteous judge as he looks down bleeding and broken from the judgement seat, and this is true even as Pilate does the judging.

Even the screaming and violent crowd is praising God in a weird way. They are acknowledging that the Son of God must die, that God is not their king, that they have given into a broken world, and that fear and manipulation is ruling their hearts. Even in all of that they are putting Jesus at their centre, they are lifting up a man's death to remove their hurt and wrong. In their lies and manipulations Jesus has such power that the truth is still painfully evident and even as they exert control, God is using it to lift himself up as their saviour.

The passage ends with Jesus, while he is dying making a new family. At the moment when Jesus seems to have no power. He literally bonds people beyond blood and possibility. He is even redeeming his own death and ascension for his mother.

Lastly, we see one of the greatest praiseworthy moments, where women cry, men bow in mocking, Jesus is labeled as king as Jesus takes his wooden throne above all those that look up into the clouds. That’s right, the cross of Jesus that stands over us in this sanctuary is the throne of our almighty king. It is not what we expect of a throne, but it is the throne that shows us the power, worthiness and glory of our God, because we see the depth of loving sacrifice, we see the willingness of the righteous God to come low, we see the immense power of God to have his way, even while taking on the lowest form and we see the glory of God as he takes on our wounds, bares our shame, and faces death with a willing and faithful heart. Yet, the people in their evil don't even realize what they are doing or what stands in front of them. They can’t imagine the glory that transcends them or this world.

I wanted to explore this with you because I think it begins to show us the nature of praise. Praise is natural, it is built into creation, as long as we live and have God’s life in us, we will praise God in one way or another. Yet, there is a great difference between the purposeful praise of Palm Sunday and the mocking and violent praise of Good Friday. In both we live in the reality of God and yet only in one do we experience the goodness of it. In both we see that God gives us freedom, God gives us authority, God gives us our desires (even when that is evil), and yet do we choose to use our freedom, authority and desire to seek after the one who can deliver us? God is worthy of praise. God is everything that is good. Do we seek him and his goodness? Do we put in the effort? Do we follow it? And ultimately do we want to live in it? Praise is our way of approaching a glory that is both present and beyond our understanding. AMEN

Notes:

The king who comes in the name of the Lord

Peace in heaven and Praise in the highest heaven

If they stopped even the stones would cry out

Disciples praised God

the soldiers praise

Purple robe and the crown of thorns

Plates praise

Here is your king

The king of the jews

Authority given by God

Caesar

Pilate

The son of God and King deserves death

A strange kind of praise that points to the kind of God and king we have

As a sheep goes silent to the slaughter

Gives authority

Gives freedom

Gives us to our sin

Delivers us through his sacrifice