Then the anger of the LORD was kindled against his people,
and he abhorred his heritage;
he gave them into the hand of the nations,
so that those who hated them ruled over them.
Their enemies oppressed them,
and they were brought into subjection under their power.
Many times he delivered them,
but they were rebellious in their purposes
and were brought low through their iniquity.
Nevertheless, he looked upon their distress,
when he heard their cry.
For their sake he remembered his covenant,
and relented according to the abundance of his steadfast love.
He caused them to be pitied
by all those who held them captive. Psalm 106.40-46
There is nothing simple about Jesus. As He enters into Jerusalem, we see His complexity on display. He is a challenging peacemaker. He is a humble king. He calls us to follow without giving us all the details of where it will lead. In all of this, He calls us, not to perfection, but to dependence.
We don’t want to have to rely on God. We would rather do it our own way OR create a system that convinces us that we are doing it His way (while we still actually do it our own way). What either of these solutions does is simplifies God down into a diluted form of His actual self. It makes God digestible, but to do that, it makes Him predictable and simplistic. It creates for us a housebroken God.
The problem with believing in a housebroken God is not just that it is wrong (though that is a problem). The bigger issue is that it keeps us from engaging with God as He is. A housebroken God works when life is going fairly well and suffering is manageable; it offers us no hope when the real, deep problems of life strike. There is no easy answer for sex-trafficking, abortion, kids with cancer, or transgenderism. To answer the questions of a complex world requires a complex God
What we find in the Triumphal entry, and in the Bible as a whole, is that God is the answer to chaos. As we see in Israel’s history (recorded in Psalm 106 above), both the issues of the world and the solutions to them point us back to the hand of the Creator. We may not always understand or be comfortable with Him, but we can always trust Him. For that, I am gladly dependent.