Our scripture reading today is Matthew 21 verses one through
11. As they approached Jerusalem and
came to Beth Phage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent 2
disciples saying to them, go to the village ahead of you and at
once you will find a donkey tied there with her colt by her.
Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you,
say that the Lord needs them and He will send them right away.
This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet.
Say to daughter Zion, See, your king comes to you gentle and
riding on a donkey and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
The disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed.
They brought the donkey in the colt and placed their clothes on
them for Jesus to sit on. A very large crowd spread their
cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and
spread them to the road. The crowds that went ahead of
him and those that followed shouted Hosanna to the Son of
David. Blessed is he who comes in the
name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest.
When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and
asked, Who is this? The crowds answered, This is
Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.
May the Lord add His blessing to the reading and hearing of His
word. I got good news and bad news
today. It depends on your perspective.
We are either going to be ascending to new heights of
nerddom together or descending to new depths of nerddom
together depending on your perspective. 2 words will
clarify what I'm talking about. Star Trek.
Any Star Trek fans out here? Got any you Star Trek fan?
OK, all right. Now, I, I have to confess, I am
not. There's a huge Star Trek
universe out there now. There's been lots of shows, lots
of movies, everything. I, I, I, I, I, I know way more
than anyone has a right to know about the series Star Trek the
Next Generation. So that's what I'm going to be
talking about here today. Star Trek The Next Generation
was a character in Star Trek The Next Generation who was on the
Enterprise, part of their crew, their chief of security named
Wharf. And Wharf was a Klingon and,
and, and his parents were killed when he was a baby.
And he was raised by humans and grew up within, within, within
within the Federation. That's way too much detail.
You didn't need all of that. But at any rate, it is important
that his parents died when he was a baby.
As an adult now, it has been reported that the reason Wolf's
parents died was because his father was a traitor to the
Klingon Empire and let their enemies in and was killed in the
process. And Wolf is going to go to the
capital of the Klingon Empire and appear before the ruling
council and, and try to defend his father's honor.
Defend his own honor, because as the son of a traitor, he would
be dishonored as well. He gets there, he discovers that
he can't. Not because it's true that his
father was a traitor, but because very powerful people
were actually the ones that were traitors, and they were using
Wharf's father as a scapegoat. And they want to execute Wharf
now for his father's crime since he showed up.
But Wharf wants to live because one's day, he wants to set the
record straight. So he offers to accept a fate
worse than death for a Klingon. Do you do you remember what?
You know this one. Remember Coy?
No. No.
OK. What?
You probably had original series guy or or.
Yeah. OK.
All right. That's a good.
That's that's a good one. That's a good one, too.
He accepts what they call in the Klingon Empire, discommodation.
And for a Klingon, it's a fate worse than death, because it is
the total dishonouring of a person and their family forever
for him and for any descendants that he may have are shamed
before the Klingon Empire forever.
And most Klingons would rather die than live shamed.
Shame can be a powerful tool for punishment and the Klingon
Empire, it was the ultimate tool of punishment.
It's not a whole lot different in some respects today in in our
culture where shaming is often used to punish you think about
cancel culture and those kinds of things where people will dig
through the interwebs and, and find a tweet or a post or a or,
or whatever from years, maybe decades ago.
And, and, and if it crosses one line or another, that person
might find them cut off from their friends, cut off from
their social group, might find them themselves fired from their
job, all to shame them for what they did.
Maybe recently, maybe years and years and years and years and
years ago. And even if you apologize under
the system of cancel culture doesn't make any difference.
You shouldn't have done it to be.
We're glad that you apologize. You still need to be ashamed and
you're still cut off and you're still cut out.
There's no coming back. Now, Let's be clear, canceling
and shaming happens from the right and from the left.
This isn't a, a left wing problem or a right wing problem.
This is a human problem that we do these kinds of things and,
and the left is guilty of it. Sometimes the right is guilty of
it, sometimes of using shame to punish and destroy.
And we've been working through and, and looking pretty closely
at the story of Tamar. And we're going to spend one
more Sunday talking about Tamar. Next Sunday, obviously, we'll be
talking about the resurrection, and then we're going to jump
back into Genesis after that. But Tamar gives us a very
different example than the example that that of what the
Klingons did to Wharf and what cancel culture does to people.
Now, Tamar's example is this. Remember just just briefly
reviewing the story in case you weren't here the past couple
weeks and may not know the story.
Tamar is Judas daughter-in-law, Judah, one of the sons of Jacob.
Tamar is Judas daughter-in-law. She is Judah arranges her
marriage with his oldest son. Err.
The Bible tells us err did evil and God's sight, and so God
killed him. And then, by custom and
tradition, Tamar was then given as to the to be the wife of
Judah's next son, Onan. That way she would be provided
for. She would not have to spend the
rest of her life as a widow. She could still have children,
she could still have a family. She would still have people to
care for her and her old age still have the safety and
security of belonging to a family.
The Bible tells us that Onan did evil in God's eyes, so much evil
that God killed him, too. And then Judah, out of a
superstitious paranoia, says, well, the problem must be with
Tamar. Can't possibly be that my sons
are jerks, must be Tamar. So he says, I'm not.
I got one more son. If, if Tamar marries him, he's
going to end up dying too. So he told Tamar, you go back,
live with your family. When my youngest son's old
enough, then you can marry him. He has no intention of ever
having her marry his youngest son, Shayla.
That that not going to happen. And Tamar realizes this when
Shayla reaches marriage, marriage age, and then goes well
beyond marrying age. And she's still not brought back
to marry Shayla. So she, to protect herself and
secure her future, devises a plan.
She dresses a prostitute. She goes to a place out in the
country where she knows Judah's going to be passing by.
Judah passes by, sees her and hires her to provide her
services for him. Doesn't have any money or
anything to give her at that moment.
So she says, well, why don't you leave a pledge with me and you
can pay me later. He leaves his signet ring, his
staff and his cord, his identification and his spare car
keys. In modern terms, something that
would things that would only be tied to him.
So he takes his pleasure, he moves on, he tries to pay her
and get his pledge back, but she's already gone.
Tamar on them, but meanwhile goes back home, takes off the
prostitute clothing, goes back into her widows clothing and
waits. And time does its work and
Tamar's belly begins to show that she is pregnant.
And word goes back to Judah. Your daughter-in-law, Tamar has
been prostituting herself and is now pregnant.
And Judah says, bring her here, we're going to punish her,
Turner alive. Harsh punishment, harsh
punishment. And this is what Tamar does as
she's being brought out to be publicly shamed, humiliated.
And before being executed, she sends a private message to
Judah. As she was being brought out,
she sent a message to her father-in-law.
I am pregnant by the man who owns these, she said.
And she added, see if you recognize whose seal and cord
and staff these are. And Judah, of course, recognized
his own seal and cord and staff. And Judah is shamed now, so
shamed that he openly says Tamar's more righteous than I am
because I failed. And my covenant obligations to
her, the responsibilities God had given me to her, I failed in
those. And so Judah repented.
He brought Tamar into his household, not to be his wife,
but to provide shelter and protection for her and for her
and her and his sons that she was bearing.
She was pregnant with twins. Tamar called Judah out for the
wrong that he had done. There was no doubt about that.
She didn't roll over. She didn't play the victim.
She didn't make herself into a doormat.
She didn't say, oh, woe was me and there's nothing I can do.
She took action. She did what she needed to do.
And when Judah was, and it was very risky what she did.
That's why I say this. Tamar's courageous example, it
nearly cost her her life. Public shaming and then
execution nearly cost her her life.
But she took that risk. She took that chance.
And when she shamed Judah, she did for Judah what Judah never
did for her. See, Judah was not confronting
her privately. He was humiliating her publicly.
He was not shaming her to inspire repentance.
He was shaming her as a justification for punishing her,
for destroying her, executing her.
Tamar shamed Judah in a way that didn't destroy him, but instead
gave him space for repentance and restoration.
And that's exactly what happened.
Judah experienced that shame, rightfully so, because what he
had done was shameful. And in that shame, he repented.
And in that repentance, he was able to restore his relationship
with Tamar, Tamar's relationship with his family and his own
relationship with God. All of that because of the
manner in which Tamar called Judah out.
Now, there's no doubt that she shamed him and his open
repentance. It was a risk.
He could have covered a whole thing up.
He could have pretended he never received the message.
He could have gone ahead and had her executed.
But instead, he let everyone know, Baby's mine.
This. This is on me.
It's not on Tamar. She's more righteous than I am.
I'm going to take responsibility.
He was shamed into doing the right thing.
Shame gets a bad rap these days. I think they're authors and and
teachers out there, speakers, public, you know, intellectuals,
folks like Brené Brown, who's done a lot of great stuff.
I don't, I in general, I think Brené Brown has done a lot of
wonderful stuff. I disagree with her when she
says, and I've heard her say it, that shame is always toxic.
Shame is always bad. There is no good use for shame
in the world. And I know that's filtering down
but I've cause I've heard counselors say that too on a on
a on a local personal level. Shame is always toxic.
If you're feeling shame, you just need to let go of that.
Work on that because there is no good reason to feel shame.
Shame is always destructive. I have to disagree.
There are cultures, large ancient cultures throughout the
world whose entire ethical and social system is built on the
balancing of honor and shame or the pursuing of honor and the
how you respond to shame and the use of shame.
And I'm not prepared to say that all of those folks now and
throughout history have just been toxic and how they've done
things. And I got a little bit of, I got
a lot of backing on my side. There are people that smarter
and more knowledgeable than me about these things.
One of them is theologian and scholar by the name of Tay Li
Lau, a Chinese American who has written a book called Defending
Shame. If you're really interested in
honor and shame stuff, it's a wonderful book.
It's a wonderful book. And he talks about two primary
uses of shame, two ways that we can use shame as people and as
cultures. And and he says that the first
way one, well, one way is to punish and destroy shame used
punitively. That's what cancel culture is.
The purpose of cancel culture is to punish and destroy.
We used to call it boycotting. Now we call it canceling.
It's you know, there's a lot of it's been around for a while.
It's not a new thing. The name changes and the formats
change because, you know, social media is different and didn't
used to be there, but it's the same thing.
You shame, you publicly humiliate someone to cut them
off, to cut them out, to cut them off at their knees.
There have been presidential candidates who have been been
cut out of politics because of shameful things they've done.
There have been Supreme Court justices and, and the idea and,
and many, many others, business people, private people, and that
the point is always in this use of shame to punish and destroy,
if not to destroy their life than to destroy their career,
destroy their reputation, destroy their social influence.
Period. Get them out.
You've crossed the line. You can apologize.
We'd like you to apologize. It's good for you to apologize,
but don't you believe for a second that apologizing will
will remove your shame? You are still done.
Not going to go to your movies anymore, not going to listen to
your music anymore. You've crossed that line.
That's one way to use shame. Kids use shame a lot that way,
right? Yeah.
I mean, when kids, when adults too, we make fun of people for
certain things. We shame them, we humiliate
them. We find an enemy.
We find ways to talk about them behind their back and make them
look stupid or look foolish. And, and, and so that we can
reduce or minimize their impact on our lives or we can control
them. We can bully them, whatever.
It's this is not a new thing and it's not an uncommon thing.
But Tayli Lau points out that there is a deep, rich and
ancient history going back, you know, to the ancient Israelite
culture, ancient Greek culture, ancient Chinese culture.
Lots of cultures have used this for years.
And that is to use shame to invite people to repentance,
redemption and restoration. And this is what Tamar did.
Judah was going to use shame to punish and destroy Shame Tamar
publicly. That gives me an excuse, a
justification for destroying her physically.
So now I'm free to have my youngest son marry someone else
instead of her. But Tamar's example is
repentance and redemption. Oops, I thought I had one more
slide about Tamar in there. Tamar uses Tamar uses shame as
an opportunity to bring Judah to repentance.
She leaves the door open. She could have done it publicly.
She could have humiliated him publicly, just like he could
have waited. She could have waited till the
crowd was gathered around and held up the staff in the cord
and the ring in front of everybody and made Judah into a
fool and a laughingstock. She might not have been able to
have him executed, but she could have undermined him, you know,
thoroughly and completely. But she didn't do that.
She sent the message privately. She called him out, She shamed
him. But she wasn't doing it to
destroy him. She was doing it to invite him
to repent, to change what he was doing.
And that's exactly what he did. It's exactly what he did.
That's Tamar's courageous example.
Jesus is a courageous example of this as well.
On on Palm Sunday, we see a lot well before Palm Sunday
throughout Jesus's life and ministry.
You read the Gospels, go through and read them carefully.
Jesus employs shame repeatedly with people, not just once or
twice. It's an it's, it's, it's, it's a
regular. Part of how Jesus deals with
people when they get off track is with shame.
When Peter said to him, hey, hey, Jesus, don't talk about
this cross and dying stuff. You're too important for that.
You're too good for that. And Jesus in front of the other
disciples, turns to Peter and says, get behind me, Satan.
That was shaming him. If you don't think so, imagine
him, you know, if your friend called you Satan in front of
your other friends. It's a shaming kind of thing and
and Jesus did that multiple times, but he did it in the same
way that Tamar did it. And we conceived his attitude in
this whole process of what happened on what we now call
Palm Sunday. Jesus was arriving in Jerusalem
as a king, not as a doormat for people to walk all over, not as
a genie that people can get there who will fulfill people's
wishes, not as a Santa Claus who will just give people what they
want and make them feel good. He was coming as a king.
He was coming and saying I am in charge.
You owe me your allegiance, your faith, and your obedience.
But the manner in which Jesus came was completely different
than how kings typically came into a town to claim their
Kingdom and their kingship. Jesus came as a king, but with
humility. Most kings, when they came into
a town to claim their kingship, arrived on a War Horse.
Jesus came in on the donkey. There's not a proud way to ride
a donkey. You can find out on TV once in a
while. You see people riding Don.
There is not a proud way to ride a donkey.
You just look silly riding a donkey.
You don't intimidate anyone riding a donkey.
You certainly don't threaten anyone riding a donkey.
But that's how Jesus came. He didn't come on a War Horse.
There are kings, there are religions who have advanced
their causes and expanded their territory at the point of the
sword. Throughout the history of
humanity, sadly, at times Christianity has done that.
But every time Christianity has done that, we have done that in
contrary to the example and the call of our King, and in
violation of his example and his call.
Jesus didn't come on a War Horse to force people to submit to
him. Jesus came in humility on a
donkey to invite people to surrender to him.
Jesus was heralded by children, not by soldiers.
The King's going to come into a country and they want everyone
to know I'm your king. Now I'm in charge.
And, and part of the way you make sure they know you're the
king and you're in charge is you have soldiers there.
You've got your, your, your hench men.
You've got your strong men, you've got your people there
that always have that threat of violence right there insight.
So you don't even have to say it.
They just know it because there are soldiers lining the streets
with their swords and their Spears saying hail to the king
and everyone else. Of course, hail to the king
because I don't want your sword in my stomach.
That was the wrong gesture to make.
Sorry about that, Don't know what I'm thinking.
That's certainly how that leader came.
Conquering Jesus did not come that way.
Jesus, You know, we're, we're told in the Scripture, Jesus,
Jesus could have called 10,000 angels at the time of his
crucifixion to set him free. He could have called 10,000
angels and had them lining the road to Jerusalem saying hail to
the King. And everyone would have been
shouting then because even folks who didn't believe it would have
been afraid not to. But that's not how Jesus came.
Jesus had children hailing him as King.
Rick talking with the children a few weeks ago about some of the
reasons why we can have confidence that Jesus really was
here. And one of those I'll talk a
little bit about next week with women being the first
missionaries, the first evangelist sharing the good news
of Jesus's resurrection. This is another example of that
because like, like women were not considered credible
witnesses in Jesus's day. Children weren't either.
Children had no credibility. No one was going to believe
something just because a kid said it.
That's who Jesus had heralding him as king.
He didn't have soldiers. He didn't have angels.
He didn't even have adults. Little kids, hail to the son of
David Hosanna. Hallelujah to the King.
Jesus's enemies say and tell those kids to shut up.
He's like Nah, Nah. And you know, if they don't say
it, the rocks will say it. So I'm going to let the kids say
it. Let the kids say it.
Jesus was heralded in humility. He allowed children to be his
heralds as he was riding on his donkey into the city as the
King. Now, we didn't read this part,
but it's in the verses immediately following what we
read. Sometimes it's easy to forget
that that Jesus rode in to town on a donkey.
He got off his donkey, He went into the temple and he took a
whip and he drove people out of the temple with a whip.
That happened on Palm Sunday, comes into the temple, turns
over the tables, drives people out.
Now that feels a little bit more like punishment, right?
That feels a little bit more like shaming for the purpose of
punishing and destroying rather than shaming as a call to
repentance. But it is, it's remember, God is
always as gentle as possible and as forceful as necessary.
And that was the level of force that Jesus saw was necessary for
that situation. And he went in, he did the
scenario right. The the money changers were
there to RIP people off the temple.
Part of cultural differences. We have to remind ourselves of
these things sometimes. For you and I, we've been raised
and taught and we know to be true the simple reality that God
is everywhere and that there's no ground that's any really more
holy than other ground. God can meet a person anywhere.
And we can talk to God and encounter God and pray to God.
And we can, we can do that in the church building.
We can do that at home. We can do that at work.
We can do that at school. We can do that for a hike in the
woods. We can do that when we're
driving in the car. We can do that in Jesus's day
and age. For the Israelite culture to get
closer to God, you had to go to the temple.
That was God's physical house on earth.
When God came to earth, he came to the temple, and if you wanted
to draw close to God, you came to the temple, and that's how
you drew close to God. And that was what the Scripture
taught, and it gave sacrifice specific ways.
This is how you worship God. This is how you offer these
kinds of sacrifices, animal sacrifices, grain sacrifices.
You were to give to support the temple financially and give to
the poor relief that was done out of the temple.
All of these different ways of worshiping and serving God.
But the temple required a specific type of money.
And so every, the, the Jews were scattered all throughout the
region, throughout the Roman Empire, all over the place.
They were coming, some of them from 100 miles away, different
countries with different currencies.
And they were all coming to the temple and to, to most of them
that were doing their, they didn't want to herd a bunch of
sheep and goats and Rams all of their journey with them.
They would come and they would buy them there, they would buy
the grain there, they would offer their money there.
But to do that, they had to exchange for the temple
currency. And the money changers had a
monopoly. Everyone was coming.
Everyone was coming needed to change their money, and they
were the only ones changing the money.
And they were ripping people off with terrible exchange rates,
making themselves rich by putting up false barriers
between people and God. You see, it wasn't just doing
business. They were putting up barrier
people coming to draw closer to God and worship and prayer and
in obedience. And these money changers were
getting in the way and making people pay extra to get to God.
And Jesus was as forceful as he needed to be when he flipped
over those table and drove those people out.
And he said, my house, quoting the prophet Isaiah is to be
House of prayer for all nations. And you've turned it into a den
of robbers. This temple is here to help
people draw closer to God and you've turned it into a means of
robbing them. And Jesus said no.
And when he, when he turned over the tables of the money changers
and drove them out, he wasn't just shaming them, he was
shaming the entire priestly class that was supporting and
implicitly endorsing that system.
And he shamed them all. But again, Jesus could have
called fire down from heaven. Jesus could have killed those
money changers. He could have killed those
priests in the same way that God killed her and God killed Onan,
but he didn't. And when he cleared out the
temple, he taught, he preached, he shared, he explained what he
was doing and why he was doing it.
Why? So he could clear the way for
people to truly come to God, including the people he had just
driven out of the temple, giving them space and room and
opportunity to repent. I just realized I'm really going
along here. I apologize.
I'm getting into this one today. This is what Jesus did for his
entire his entire ministry life. Jesus called, taught, and healed
rather than judging, condemning, and killing.
Always inviting people to restoration, always inviting
people to repentance, always inviting people to be reconciled
to God and to their neighbors and that covenant of love and
fellowship which God intends to be in his Kingdom.
And like his grandmother Tamar, Jesus humbled himself to invite
us to repent and live up to our covenant obligations.
Jesus humbled himself to the point of dying in shame on the
cross. Jesus took all of our shame upon
himself and said, I will shoulder this.
I will bear your shame so that you can be free of shame, so
that when you feel shame and there are time when we mess up,
there are times when it is appropriate and right and good
that we feel ashamed. The lie we have to ignore, the
lie we have to reject, is that in our shame we are hopeless.
We are cut off because Jesus took our shame upon us and he
killed it on the cross along with our sin, so that when we
feel that shame we can repent and we can be restored and we
can be free of it because of what He has done.
Everything Jesus did was an invitation to repentance,
redemption and restoration. Everything all along the way
from from the time of his conversing with the people, well
at the time of his birth, the time of his conception,
everything from all throughout history before Jesus was
incarnated, God was doing this, inviting redemption, providing
repentance, redemption and restoration.
Our King, by word and example, calls us to a triumphalism.
He came in Jerusalem triumphant, but a triumphalism marked by
grace, humility, and sacrifice not and never a triumphalism of
moral superiority, conquest, or domination.
We win by humbling ourselves. We we honor our King who has won
our salvation by humbling ourselves, not by dominating or
conquering others, by serving and sacrificing and joining with
Jesus and taking up our cross and shouldering at times other
people's shame so that they can receive repentance, redemption,
and restoration. Wharf would rather most Klingons
would rather have died then be shamed publicly like that and be
shamed for generations. Wharf took that shame upon
himself, and he did it again. This is Star Trek to prevent
civil war in the Klingon Empire. Jesus took our shame upon
himself. He wasn't guilty, just like
where's Father wasn't guilty. But Jesus took our shame upon
himself so that we could be restored to God.
Not as a lie, not as a deception, not as a scapegoat,
but as a willing sacrifice. A willing sacrifice so that we
can be brought closer to God and closer to each other and reach
out with that same spirit of love and sacrifice to our
neighbors in Jesus name. Amen.