Knowing you, Jesus, knowing you
there is no better thing!
You're my all, you're the best!
You're my joy, my righteousness!
And I love you, Lord.
So come on! Sing out!
Let our anthem grow loud!
There is one, great love!
Jesus
I think so many people skip over the significance of Palm Sunday. In the midst of all our spring fever, the beginnings of our panic about the ending of the school term, our trips to the beach for Spring Break. Though nothing can top the ecstasy of Easter, the celebration of Palm Sunday, only a week before, should catch our attention.
Palm Sunday starts Holy Week, or Passion Week. The week before the resurrection of Christ. In the Bible, this is called the "Triumphal Entry." The story says that Jesus came into the city of Jerusalem, and the people shouted, "Hosanna! Hosanna, Son of David! Glory to God in the Highest!" And the people took off their own coats and laid them along the path that Jesus' donkey would walk. And when the coats were spent, people tore palm branches from the trees, and lied them on the ground with the coats or waved them in celebration, shouting "Hosanna!" which means, "Save!"We tell this story with excitement in our eyes and flush to our cheeks, don't we? We sing hymns of praise, we sing Hosanna, we tell the story of the donkey, the coats, the palm branches, and we smile, say Amen, and go home.
But immediately following this passage of the Bible (in Matthew 21) comes one that we approach with much more caution: Jesus driving out the moneychangers in the temple. This event probably occurred on the same day, if not directly after the Triumphal Entry. In a fit of righteous fury, Jesus accosted those men buying and selling, overthrowing their tables and casting them out of the tables, shouting, "My house is a house of prayer, but you have turned into a house of theives!"
How often do we want to approach this side Jesus, particularly on Palm Sunday? We want to see the gentle Christ, riding in on a donkey, serenity in his countenance, smiling at the children calling "Hosanna!" Not the indignant Jesus, throwing over tables, shouting, turning red with righteous anger.
How odd must that day have been for Jesus? Palm Sunday. He is coming into Jerusalem, the city he wept over, saying, "Oh, Jerusalem! How often I've ached to embrace your children, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you wouldn't let me." Jesus is coming into this city to be murdered, to meet a prolonged and violent death, but people are celebrating, smiling, wavings palms, and crying "Glory to God!" I wonder, how must that have felt? Did their praise give him comfort, give him hope that his death would not be in vain? Or was the irony a dagger to his heart? The same smiling people lying down their cloaks on a dusty road to keep his colt's feet from getting too dirty would soon come in a mob to seize him from his prayer for arrest. The same joyous voices crying "Hosanna!" in the space of just a few days would cry "Crucify!"
The cruel burden of omniscience, the harsh irony might have weighed down on his shoulders, pushing him down like the cross soon would. Why then are we shocked to see him soon after this Triumphal Entry, on a furious rampage through a corrupted temple? Why do we skip over the passage where he commands curses the fig tree for being barren?
After all, Jesus was fully human, as well as fully God. As God, he knew what his fate would be, and as a human, he was frightened of it. The stress of knowing you are being welcomed into a city that will soon turn on you must have been massive.
Thanks to God-given quirks in the English language, Palm Sunday has a strange aura of foreshadowing. The word Palm, for the tree branches being waved in celebration, also means the underside of the hand, only centimeters from where Jesus's wrists would be impaled with stakes, nailing him to a cross in the ultimate sacrifice.
So, forgive me. Forgive me, because even though today is usually a day of celebration, the sky is bright blue without a single cloud obstructing the light and warmth of the sun, a cool breeze blows, and spring smiles all around me, I can't completely bring myself to be joyful on this Palm Sunday, not after really studying this passage of the Bible and really considering what this day must have been like for Christ.
