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Our scripture reading of the evening is from the Gospel according to Luke, the 19th chapter. I begin the reading at the verse number 28. "And when he had said this, he went on ahead going up to Jerusalem. When he drew near to Bethpage and Bethany at the mount that is called Olivet, he sent two of the disciples

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saying, 'Go into the village opposite where on entering you will find a colt tithe on which no one has ever yet sat. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, 'Why are you untying it?' you shall say this, 'The Lord has need of it.' So those who were sent went away and found it as he had told them. And as they

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were untying the colt, its owners said to them, 'Why are you untying the colt?' And they said, 'The Lord has need of it.' And they brought it to Jesus and throwing their garments on the colt, they set Jesus upon it. And as he rode along, they spread their garments on the road. As he was now drawing near at the descent of

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the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, saying, 'Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest.' And some of the Pharisees in the multitude said to him,

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'Teacher, rebuke your disciples.' But he answered, 'I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.'" And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his word. Pray with me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

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I would like to think with you tonight about the Jerusalem Road. This morning some of the youngsters in the hall behind were talking about Palm Sunday, and one of them said, "Jesus rides again." And I rather like the phrase. The fact of the matter is, Jesus is riding again. Jesus is more popular today than he has

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ever been in history. More people bowed down to him as Lord than had ever bowed down to him before. There have never been so many on the Jerusalem Road waving their palms. As but a single example of this, I point to the growth in the things of Christ which one finds in American college young people. More and more of

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our young people are entering church vocation. More and more of our young people are considering or investing themselves in the mission field. More and more of our young people are attending classes on college and university campuses that are devoted to the study of the things of the faith. I remember

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meeting some years ago a fellow named Barry McGuire. Now Barry McGuire was a popular rock singer. He had the starring role in the rock opera Hair, the Aquarian musical which you will remember from quite some time ago. He sang a song in that show which was exceedingly negative. It was called the Eve of

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Destruction. Quite to the contrary of the sentiment of that song, Barry McGuire is today a radiant Christian and helps to proclaim the Word of Christ on the west coast of the United States. I asked him in our conversation how it was that there had occurred this complete reversal in his life from the Eve of

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Destruction to a Gospel of Hope. He told me that he had gone to a worship service with his uncle. He wasn't sure why he had gone. He found the thing to be as he described it, "Dollsville," and then he noticed some young adults who were part of the worship. He became fascinated with their enthusiasm in praise. He went and

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talked to them afterwards. They won him to Jesus Christ. He said, "I saw in them something which I didn't have, desperately needed, and so I felt I had to get on the ball." Now it is an easy thing to involve youth and young adults in the recreational activities of the church. It is quite another thing to get

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them to become so excited and vibrant with the things of Christ that they win others. We are seeing this in young people today, and I call this to your attention as but one expression of the fact that Jesus is riding again, that he is more popular than ever. Jesus Christ is the eternal contemporary. There is a

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medieval legend which says that when the Colosseum in Rome collapses, the world itself will come to an end. Well, the Colosseum is collapsing. If you go to see it today, you will find scaffolds about it holding it up. The pollution, the vibration, the fumes of the traffic that constantly goes about it, they're taking

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their toll, and the old structure is about to fall. It is, I think, interesting that even at the time when the Colosseum is in collapse, the faith which some tried to kill within its walls grows more rapidly, spreads more widely upon the face of the earth than ever in history. That old institution out of

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yesterday is crumbling to dust, but Jesus Christ comes riding out of yesterday more popular than ever. I say it again, there are more with palms on the Jerusalem road today than ever before. Why is this so? I would suggest it is so in the first place because Jesus Christ loves people, and people long to be loved.

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Never having lived in a major city before, within its very confines, I live just seven minutes from the front door of this church, a brisk walk gets you to my front door in that length of time, I'm asked by a lot of people what it's like, how do I feel about living in the city, and one of the things I say is that

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I have been aware of the impersonality in our time for many, many years, but I have experienced that impersonality here in the city to a degree that I had never known it before. I have become impressed with how concrete these times are. We live in concrete buildings, we drive to work or walk to work on concrete streets,

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our heels click on concrete sidewalks, or soon we will be riding in concrete subways, and we will enter concrete buildings, and we will go through all these concrete things as we leave for home later in the day. Even our schoolyards, I have noticed, are being covered with more and more concrete. I

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read a story about a youngster in the Midwest who was recently killed in a fall from a slide on a playground, hit his head against the concrete. We live in very hard and uninviting times, oft times very cold days, and I think this is an expression, a figurative one, of the hardness and the unloving spirit which

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we encounter in much of the world, and over against this stands Jesus, who is the greatest lover of history. The first church I served, I had a youngster say to me on one occasion, "Why is it that Jesus never smiles?" And I said, "How do you know Jesus never smiles?" And the youngster said, "Well, because every Sunday morning when I

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see him, he's never smiling." And I said, "Where do you see Jesus every Sunday morning?" And he said, "When he comes in to take our pennies out of the basket." Now the church school teacher in that Sunday school class said to the children each week when she passed the basket, "Give your pennies to Jesus." They put them in

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the basket. A little bit later the church treasurer came in, a very dour Scots gentleman who never smiled, and he walked over and emptied the basket. The child made the obvious transition, "Why is it that Jesus never smiles?" Interesting, I think, that this child, like us, never having seen a picture of Jesus, still

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had such an impression of him that to see him without a look of love, that to see him without a smile of greeting for little children, seemed even to this youngster to be grossly inconsistent with his nature. The fact of the matter is, he is the quintessence of love. About two years ago in Brooklyn, New York, a

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street gang was meeting. One of the members of the gang, named Lou, wanted out of the gang. He said he had mugged too many, stolen too many hubcaps, saw the whole thing getting worse and worse, and knew that more serious crimes were ahead and he wanted out. The leader of the gang said he couldn't get out. He got up to go

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and the other members of the gang grabbed him. They took him to a rather remote area in Brooklyn. There they tied him to a chair, stripped him to the waist, and each and every one of them carved their initials into his living flesh. He awakened in a hospital wrapped in a blanket of pain. He was filled with a

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deep hatred for them. He vowed again and again that he would have vengeance on every one of them and that he would not rest until that vengeance was his. And then he was visited by a Christian, a man named Ben Mooring. And Ben Mooring spoke to him of the love of Christ and he mirrored the love of Jesus so

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effectively to this young man that this Lou, who had never really known love in his own life, opened himself to Christ and Christ entered in and loved him with such tenderness and grace that Lou has become an agent of reconciliation in gang ministry in Brooklyn and in New York. Now I don't care how hard the heart

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is, unless of course the person is pathologically ill. There is in every one of us a desire to be loved, a desire to be held, to be valued, to be encouraged, to be uplifted, to be tenderly but graciously rebuked when we need it. There is in all of us this hole that isn't filled until we are loved. No

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one fills that hole like Jesus. There are two things that can open the way to a heart. One is an act of extreme cruelty. You can break a heart if you're cruel enough. The other is an act of extreme love. You can open a heart if you're loving enough. Jesus rides on and one of the reasons that he rides on is because

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he loves people and people love to be loved. Another reason why Jesus rides on is this, he changes people. A few months ago I was having dinner in a restaurant here in Pittsburgh. I was by myself. When it came time for me to leave I asked for the check and the waiter said the check had already been paid and he handed me a

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little note. Written on the note were these words, "Dinner is on me. You led me to Jesus and my life has been changed." No signature. I don't know who the woman or man was. I don't know where our lives touched, perhaps over the radio, maybe in this sanctuary, perhaps in some other context on the campus. I don't know where

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but someplace he met Jesus and what made him grateful was the fact that his life was changed. Jesus Christ still changes, transforms, illumines lives. Across all the years, across the dust of 20 centuries, across lengths of time almost unimaginable to us, at least in terms of our own experience, he still reaches out

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and changes lives. I think of a young man tonight named Paul. When Paul was five years old he contracted polio. Now those of you youngsters who are in this congregation, to you polio, infantile paralysis, is a word or two words. But to those of us who are older, we remember how those two words filled us with fear.

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When I was growing up as a boy in this city, three of my friends who lived within two blocks of where I lived died of polio before they were 15 years old. This young man got polio and he was put in what they called an iron lung, great big iron cylinder which breathed for him. His lungs you see didn't move of

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themselves anymore and this machine breathed for him. He had to stay in that lung, he was in that lung for five years, couldn't get out. Day and night in that iron pipe. Eventually he progressed enough and scientific advance was such that he could get out of the lung. But he still has to think to breathe and at night

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when he goes to sleep even now he has to wear a smaller lung which they put about him to breathe for him. He had eight operations, he stands about four and a half feet tall, he's 32 years old. He has no use of his right hand, hangs lifeless at his side. In his left hand he

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can move these two fingers and that's all. Now when you hear about someone like that you think to yourself what could a person so small and so bent and so crippled and helpless do? Well I'll tell you what Paul does. Paul is a PhD graduate of Claremont University. He typed his PhD in history on an electric

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typewriter by holding the pencil between his teeth and he teaches history and has published a fine book on one of our greatest presidents. A marvelously productive life, there's no retreat in him at all. He's an expert on films, he's married, he has a son, and he lives a vital and exciting life in every way. And

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if you ask him why he will answer instantly, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." Now there was a time when he did not know Christ but Jesus Christ came into his life and that coming was so transforming, so changed the experience of this young man that one who many would describe as a

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hopeless, and I dare to use the word, as a useless cripple, has become instead a vital and important contributing member of society who teaches history and who brings back impacting Christ into every history lecture that he gives. That's the way Jesus changes people. He is the only person in history who has the ability

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not only to transform the present and the future, but also to change the past. And he can change the past in this sense. What has been ugly can be changed in terms of its result. An ugly event oft times has an ugly result, but if someone can change the result so that the result becomes a beautiful and a powerful and

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a positive and an affirmative thing, then the whole meaning of that which occurred in the first place has been transformed. If you speak to Paul about the crippling infirmities which are his, he will tell you that he thinks it was because of these things that he has come to the vital and vibrant and positive

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life which is his own. The whole impact of them has been transformed. Why is Jesus still so popular? Why is he riding on? Because he changes lives. And I have just one last thought I'd like to share with you, and that is that Christ and his followers are the only ones who do these things. No one loves like Christ and no

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one changes like Christ. And no people on the face of the earth love and change history, as do those who bear his name. I was flying once from Nairobi to Cairo and sitting next to me was a young black man, a member of the Olongo tribe. I had done a series of television broadcasts in the preceding week on VOK, the Voice

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of Kenya television network, and this young man had recognized me and began a conversation. And in the course of the conversation he told me how he had grown up amongst the Olongo people, that's a very small tribe in Kenya, formerly British East Africa, and he had grown up amongst these people and had been taken

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to a mission hospital when he was ill once, and had been healed there, and had been introduced to Jesus Christ, had gone to a mission school, had won scholarships, and was now on his way to Cairo to study in a special institute there. And he pointed out to me that all of this that had happened to him, the

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tremendous possibilities and the potentials that had opened to him, were his because he said, because of Jesus and Jesus' people. Christ, he said, and Christ's people are still leavening the world's lump. And that is so. And that's the reason that every pulpit that is worthy of the name pulpit must be principally

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dedicated to the announcement of the person and the introduction of the person of Jesus. This pulpit is not principally for the proclamation of theology. Now, theology is very important. It is what brings both order and ardor into our lives. A good theology has about it both that which enkindles the heart

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and excites the mind. But this pulpit is not principally for the preaching of theology, nor is it for the preaching of church history. Now, no institution has influenced the course of Western civilization as has the church. The greatest art, the greatest music, the greatest literature, the greatest drama,

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the greatest, well, you name it. It has come out of the nurturing womb of the church. All of the products of Western civilization in terms of education have come out of our educational system which had its nativity within the church. So if there's any place in the world where you can talk about the impact of the faith

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on history, that's the place. But if that is what is principally done in that place, then it's quite wrong. And that pulpit is not for the proclamation of philosophy. Now, we live in a time of great philosophical confusion. To take just one area of philosophical thought, we do not know today, at least many do

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not know, how they know. They don't know how they know, and they don't know how they know that what they know is true. There is a great, and here's a big word for you young people, but there's a great epistemological confusion, a lack of certainty. But within the Christian faith, that confusion does not exist. For the

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certainty of the Christian faith rests on a faith experience like every other epistemology, and we believe as we believe because we are told by God. What God says we depend upon as being absolutely foundational, and on that we build everything else that we believe. It all has its roots, it all has its

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foundations, it all is finally based on our conviction that when God weighed the world and said it was good, so it was. So we have a philosophy, but if this pulpit is given over principally to the announcement of philosophy, then it is not what it ought to be, and it's not a place for ethical proclamation

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principally either. There are 35 million different laws in this country today, yet those 35 million laws are eclipsed and encompassed within the Ten Commandments If there is any tradition that can boast of its law, it is ours. But the point of the pulpit is not the proclamation of the law. The point and purpose of the

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pulpit is to introduce Jesus Christ, this one who still rides on, who loves, who changes, and whose people love and change. So on the last evenings together, we thought of ancient roads for modern feet. We thought of the conversion experience which happens on the Damascus Road, of

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how to deal with temptation as we encounter it on the wilderness road, of the principles of Christian witness as they were demonstrated by Philip on the Gaza Road, we've talked of Christian service as expressed by the Good Samaritan on the Jericho Road, we've talked of how to deal with our

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frustrations and our hopes on the Spanish Road. We close our thinking about these ancient roads with the Jerusalem Road, and the message of the Jerusalem Road is this, that no matter what road we walk or ride, we do not travel alone. For Jesus walks all the world's roads. Jesus rides again.

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Let us pray. O gracious God, may some word of these words be acceptable in thy sight for his sake. Amen. Yeah.

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