Sunday, April 2, 2023 Palm Sunday
Scripture Readings: Matthew 21: 1-11
Isaiah 50: 4-9
Psalm 118: 1-2, 19-29
Philippians 2: 5-11
“A Gift, For You”
As we end Lent and begin Holy Week, or Passion Week, as it is also referred to, I’m glad we have this opportunity to celebrate Palm Sunday together in this way. From today we move forward to Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and what is sometimes called Black Saturday; we are in a very dark and painful remembrance of the suffering and death of our Lord Jesus Christ. We reflect on the cruelty and brutality of Jesus’ captors, the shame and humiliation of his passion that he suffered in isolation because of the abandonment of his closest friends, whom he had opened himself to and walked with, and put up with, for three years.
This is expressed prophetically in our reading from Isaiah this morning “I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting.” (Isaiah 50:6) This is an overwhelming time in our Church calendar, as it was a time of utter desolation for the disciples who saw all their hopes abandoned to the cross and a grave.
And so you might ask, “Why are we beginning this disheartening week by singing rousing songs and marching around with palm fronds as if this was a great celebration?” Possibly on Easter Morning, but not today. You might ask, “Hey, Gordon, have you lost your mind?” “Is the stress of training a four-month-old puppy getting to you? Do you need a little time off, or as we say to Hunter[1], a break?” But we could ask with the same bewilderment why Jesus, knowing what was about to happen to him, orchestrated this grand entry into Jerusalem. For he certainly did precipitate this event.
In a long slow trail from Galilee to Jerusalem, he sent his disciples out before him to every town and village to proclaim the Gospel; he healed all who came to him as he went. And just before coming to Jerusalem, when a great many Jews from Jerusalem were present, he raised Lazarus from the dead. By the time he was descending the Mount of Olives to come to Jerusalem, he had a crowd around him who were ready to proclaim him King and oust the Roman oppressors.
Many scholars speculate on these events - and many others, such as clearing out the Temple money changers and openly challenging the Temple authorities, as deliberately precipitous action to force them to act against Him at the Passover, something the Gospel tells us they had decided amongst themselves not to do as Matthew 26:4 & 5 tells us, “and they schemed to arrest Jesus secretly and kill him. “But not during the festival,” they said, “or there may be a riot among the people.”.
And truly, it is an argument difficult to deny. Jesus himself says, " I lay down my life … no one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.” as recorded in John 10:17-18. There is something about this triumphal entry into Jerusalem that I think is often missed, but to see it, we need to grasp a few truths.
First, Jesus’ followers saw this as fulfillment of the prophecy of the coming Messiah and very deliberate fulfillment. Matthew records, “This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet,” (Matt 21:4) meaning Zechariah 9:9, which proclaims, “Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” Jesus had sent two of his disciples into the town to acquire a donkey with her foal that he might enter Jerusalem exactly this way. And I hope you recognized the similarity between what Matthew says the crowds were shouting and Psalm 118 we read this morning, “Hosannah, Lord, hosannah! … Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” (BAS 866)
Think of how this would have affected his disciples, especially the twelve who had travelled with him for the past three years. Finally, all they had waited for and hoped for in Jesus was going to come to pass. They didn’t know how, and this is the second point, especially since Jesus had spoken to them in strange terms about his death and resurrection. As it says in Matthew 16:21, “From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.” And as much as that seems a straightforward declaration to us, we know from the Gospel accounts that the disciples just didn’t get it. All the words in the world could not prepare them for what was about to transpire this week.
And thirdly, this grand triumphal entry into Jerusalem was not one of the events that offended the Jewish rulers such that they would arrest Jesus and demand his death during the Passover Celebration. All we’re told is that in Jerusalem, people were asking, “Who is this?” The crowds answered, “This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.” (21:10-11) Later he drove out the merchants and money lenders from the Temple and was healing the blind and lame, and children were shouting “Hosanna to the Son of David” such that the Temple rulers were indignant, and they questioned Jesus’ authority to do what he was doing.
Matthew 21:46 says of them, “They looked for a way to arrest him, but they were afraid of the crowd because the people held that he was a prophet.” Jesus also told many parables and did many acts that offended the Pharisees and Rulers of the Temple over the next few days, as recorded in the following five chapters of Matthew.
So why this spectacular and so uncharacteristic show of bombastic audacity entering Jerusalem? Certainly, Jesus could have fulfilled the prophecy by quietly riding in with just his twelve disciples close to dusk so as not to garner all this attention.
I think there is an answer we don’t have to stretch too far to grasp. It's right in front of us, but often we march so fast into the darkness of Holy Week that we don’t linger for long on Palm Sunday. We’re so anxious to get to the good stuff, the meat of the cross and resurrection, we’ve made the Palm Sunday Celebration a brief introduction to Palm-Passion Sunday. But Jesus, who knew better than we ever will what was looming before him in the next few days, deliberately took the time and made the effort to prepare the way for this grand celebration of his arrival into Jerusalem, the city that “kill[s] the prophets and stone[s] those sent to [it].” (23:37)
This act, this entry into Jerusalem, was important and significant, not for the attention it drew but for the encouragement and blessing it imparted to his disciples. I think we often gloss over it because it doesn’t have a huge purpose. The Temple authorities and the Romans didn’t react to it. It didn’t make some grand theological statement like the healings and teachings and acts of Jesus that followed, the things we focus on during Holy Week. This was a purely gratuitous extravagance. And I think Jesus did it just for his disciples.
Jesus knew what they were going to face. He knew they didn’t understand anything of what was about to transpire. He knew their fear and frailty that they would not stay awake to pray with him. That they would abandon him at his arrest and that Peter would deny even knowing him, three times.
Jesus knew they would be crushed, disheartened, lost, and feel as abandoned, as they would abandon him. Jesus knew they needed this. They desperately needed to believe and have something to hang on to. The triumphal entry fulfilling the prophecy was the temporary counterbalance to the empty darkness of calvary ahead of them.
I think, even in the face of Jesus’ resurrection, some may not have made it, may not have found faith to believe, if they had not begun with this ‘shot in the arm’ at the beginning of this week to carry them through what was to follow.
And what I find most incredible, and comforting, and encouraging about this, is that Jesus, at this most horrific time of his human existence, when he would take on the weight and shame of the sins of the whole world, the sins of his disciples, our sins; thought first of them. His first concern was for their welfare. What did he need to do to ensure they would be equipped to get through this and come out the other side, victors with him?
Jesus was not looking to his followers to comfort, support and help him. He was looking to do everything needed to support and help their frailties. I sometimes feel, thinking about this, like I’m visiting a friend dying in terrible pain, and they look up at me and say, “What can I do for you? How can I help you?”
Jesus went in obedience to his Father’s will to the cross so that we might have a relationship with him and eternal life. And this affirms for us that “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” But Palm Sunday affirms for me how much Jesus loves me. If ever anyone says that the Father loved the world and Jesus just obeyed his Father, don’t you believe it! Palm Sunday tells me Jesus loves me more than I could ever hope to imagine.
Sometimes we may be inclined to think that our little corner of life isn’t really in the grand scope of what God is doing. Jesus has bigger fish to fry. There are bishops and presidents to occupy his attention. Priests and Ministers and Missionaries. Maybe we feel we haven’t done everything we could or should or what we think Jesus might have expected of us. Perhaps we’re just happy we can at least come to church and hope for forgiveness. But I assure you that you couldn’t in all your days have done worse than the group of followers Jesus had around him when he went to the cross. And he loved and provided for them, ensuring they would have everything they needed to follow him and do everything he asked them to do. And Jesus loves you just as much. He will provide you everything you need to travel the road set before you till that glorious day of resurrection with him.
May that assurance be what we take away with us on this Palm Sunday today.
Amen
