Palm Sunday

Dear friends:  This Sunday is Palm Sunday, and we all remember the pageantry and pomp of the celebrations for this the start of Holy Week.  The cheering crowds, the branches laid upon the road before Jesus' procession as it enters Jerusalem, the excitement of the coming Messiah!!  So many times this is captured in the Church today by the distribution of palm fronds, either in branches or looped into crosses.  Did you know that palm branches are only mentioned once in the Gospels, and that is in John, even though the triumphant entrance into Jerusalem is mentioned in all four Gospels!

 

It is in celebration and eager anticipation that we start Holy Week.  But it doesn't last.  For instead of raising up an army to defeat the Romans, this Messiah goes into the Temple and starts teaching!!  Soon the crowds become disillusioned.  They thought they had followed the new King David.  But this Messiah does not ride into town on a warhorse, but on a donkey.  This Messiah' s coronation in on a Cross.  This King conquers the world through the power of the Holy Spirit, not the power of armies.

 

It may seem funny that the shouts of "Hosanna" by the crowds on Palm Sunday turn so quickly into shouts of "Crucify Him" by Good Friday.  But they are one and the same, because both are correct.  Jesus is the King.  But Jesus is also the Crucified One.  And that is how God planned it all along, for the salvation of all people.

 

There are really three reasons why the crowds turned against Jesus, and it is these three reasons that we are going to discuss this Sunday:  1) Jesus talked more and more about commitment.  2) Jesus dared to suggest that all people are worth loving, and 3) Jesus said that the way to relationship to God is through the Cross.  None of these can be very welcome to modern ears, either.  But they are essential.  And we're going to talk about this on Sunday.  See you at 10 am this Sunday morning!!