LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1992, Page 85

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LIFELIGHT BIBLE STUDY . 85

at one another and many an old feud was forgotten. The
Galilean was taking over, God be praised. They jostled one
another back and forth good naturedly. Somewhere some
children began to sing and the crowd took it up with a roar.
Somebody threw his jacket on the ground; then another
and another, until they lay like a carpet; and branches of
palms. So the multitude spilled into the city until it broke
like a tide against the temple wall where the money chan-
gers looked up startled and afraid. Until, at last, silence
came back to the streets.

Now the glory of it all, it seems to me, lay i in the lack
of restraint. It looked as if everybody, finally, was giving
up the prim tradition of being correct and self-controlled.
They meant to cut loose and be themselves, once, with a
generous shrug for accountants and people who keep rec-
ords and read books on etiquette. Here was a great soul,
this Jesus, and they meant to go all out for him. It was
altogether this time, top to bottom, utterly, and don’t worry
about the cost.

That brings me to something right away I want to call
“the peril of being cautious.” There is a sense, of course,
in which a person has got to watch his or her step. You
have to take certain precautions about budget, about
health, about freeway driving, to prevent your own un-
expected absence tomorrow morning. On the other hand,
while being careful and cautious may result in your living
_ long, it will never bring you to the point of living fully or
well. The thing that appeals about the three musketeers,
the Count of Monte Christo and Michael Jordan of the
Chicago Bulls is a knight errantry, a careless rapture, a
swashbuckling foolhardiness.

Sometimes we talk in the church about using our heads
and being guided by reason. We carefully measure just how
far we can go before the trouble will start. Our Christian’
ity, which ought to be a free sweep of the spirit, doesn’t do
anything because it’s, afraid of the trouble it may get into
if it moves at all. We try to keep our balance by standing
still. But being a Christian is like riding a bicycle. The only
safety there is is to keep going. If you stand still, you'll fall
off. Momentum is the secret. You'll never know what it
means to be a Christian until you take such faith as you
have and live to the very hilt of it.

“A very great multitude spread their garments in the
way; others cut down branches from the trees, and strawed

them in the way.” Any token of favor, of confidence would
do as they threw caution to the winds for Jesus.

The secret of Christianity is not a matter of following
the rules, or obedience, or even loyalty. The secret of true
Christianity is in the freedom of high and unbridled de-
votion. The kind that starts on its knees whispering, “God
be merciful to me a sinner,” but ends up on its feet shout-
ing, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” and spreads its gar-
ments in the way and cuts down branches and straws them
in the way.

Long ago that kind of freedom and lack of restraint was
in God Himself as He poured out His abundance across
the world and into the hills and over the fields. It stretched
out a hand over the twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah,
10 times beyond anything Abraham dared even to pray for,
until it found a man by the name of Lot and covered him
with protection. It settled down in the heart of the man
from Nazareth who passed it along so casually toa woman
at the well of Samaria. It poured out of Him into the lives
of a few disciples who shook themselves free with it until
we see them here in the book of Acts acting delightfully
reckless, too. They had learned that life with Christ was
not something to be hoarded and saved. It was something
to be thrown incautiously away. They looked at Jesus in
utter amazement when He first told them that. But they
soon discovered He meant it, discovered He meant it when
He stooped to pick up their burdens and their loneliness
and their sins even, and with a prayer on His lips took
them off to the cross. Now that was living, full, fresh, and
free, the way life was meant to be lived. And they hurried
off to try it themselves. Till we find them here in earnest
and eager prayer: “Enable your servants to speak your
word with great boldness.” It was the mood, once more, of
that crowd on the Sunday of the Palms. Every one of the
evangelists remembered it and set it down. “A very great
multitude spread their garments in the way; others cut
down branches from the trees and strawed them in the
way.” Any token of devotion and loyalty would do.

: wonder if we haven't fallen victim to the peril of being
cautious, with none of the full-hearted stateliness, the
open-hearted, open-handed chivalry that one unguarded
moment brought to a gang of Galilean peasants. And I
wonder if we couldn’t get it back again, with the cross of
Jesus showing us the way.

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