Palm Sunday

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be always acceptable to thee, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer, and Lord, give us here today, eyes to see and ears to hear so we can learn your word together as a family. We offer you all the praise, honor, and Glory for it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Good morning, my fellow encouragers!

At the beginning of our service today, in the Liturgy of the Palms, we read St. Luke’s Gospel describing Jesus’ Triumphal entry into Jerusalem. This happened in AD 29, beginning one of the most momentous weeks in Antiquity. Jesus decided to go into Jerusalem, even though He knew it was dangerous for Him to do so.

In St. Matthew’s Gospel, speaking about the same event, he wrote that Jesus came to Jerusalem to fulfil Zechariah’s Old Testament prophecy, written about four centuries earlier. Zechariah foretold that the true King would come one day, not on a magnificent war stallion, but on a young donkey.

We read this prediction in our OT lesson today. Verse 9 says, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.”

Both Gospel accounts tell us that as Jesus and His disciples came to Bethphage, a town just outside of Jerusalem, Jesus sent two disciples to get a donkey and her colt. He further says, “If anyone says anything to you, tell them, ‘The Lord hath need of them.’”

Well, someone did say something to them. St. Luke writes, “And as they were loosing the colt, the owners thereof said unto them, Why loose ye the colt? And they said, The Lord hath need of him.” (Luke 19:33-34)

Why do I reference this? It’s because I don’t believe that the Triumphal Entry was simply happenstance. I think it was a well-planned and thought-out event.

Notice that the donkey had owners (plural), so they were most likely poor. And given that they were poor, the donkey would have had to be a sizeable investment for each owner.

As such a significant investment, why would the owners part with the donkey to these two disciples, especially since they would have been complete strangers? If they knew the owners, Jesus would have simply said, “Go and get the donkey from John Doe.” Not only that, but the owners would also have to agree – one dissenting vote and there would be no donkey for Jesus to ride on.

So, why? Why would they just let the disciples have the donkey? I think there is a clue in what was said to the owners: “The Lord needs it.” The most likely explanation is that it was a pre-arranged code word, and if this is the case, Jesus has meticulously planned this event.

So, if Jesus had planned the event, what would have been His point about riding into Jerusalem on a donkey? He was making a visual statement, challenging the messianic concept of His day.

The popular Jewish belief of Jesus’ day was that when the Messiah arrived, he would be an all-conquering hero, throwing the Romans out of Israel and re-establishing Jewish sovereignty. That was probably one of the reasons the crowds turned out.

If truth be told, this might well have been part of Judas Iscariot’s motivation when he betrayed Jesus. He might have been trying to force Jesus’ hand and make Jesus the leader of a Maccabean-style revolt. See, we know that Judas Iscariot was most likely a Zealot – a member of the terrorist organization of its day, dedicated to driving the occupying forces out any way they could – a bit like HAMAS in the Holy Land today.

But Jesus did not fulfil the wishes of Judas or the crowds in Jerusalem. Instead of leading an armed revolt against the Romans, he turned on the Temple and overthrew the moneychangers.

For Jesus, the image of Messiahship was to be found in Isaiah 53. The Amplified version puts it this way:

4 But [in fact] He has borne our griefs, And He has carried our sorrows and pains; Yet we [ignorantly] assumed that He was stricken, struck down by God and degraded and humiliated [by Him].

5 But He was wounded for our transgressions. He was crushed for our wickedness [our sin, our injustice, our wrongdoing]; The punishment [required] for our well-being fell on Him, and by His stripes, His wounds, we are healed.

6 All of us like sheep have gone astray. We have turned, each one, to his own way; But the Lord has caused the wickedness of us all [our sin, our injustice, our wrongdoing] to fall on Him [instead of us].

7 He was oppressed and He was afflicted. Yet He did not open His mouth [to complain or defend Himself]; Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that is silent before her shearers, so He did not open His mouth.

8 Due to oppression and judgment, He was taken away; And as for His generation [His contemporaries], who [among them] concerned himself that He was cut off from the land of the living [by His death], for the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke [of death] was due?

9 His grave was assigned with the wicked, but He was with a rich man in His death, because He had done no violence, nor was there any deceit in His mouth.

That’s how Jesus thought of the Messiah, just as Isaiah foretold.

For many, the scandal of Holy Week is this: Jesus, God in human form, didn’t come as a King in the way we would expect a king to come. He came as a servant, a suffering servant. He came to take away the sins of His people. His death on the Cross was, in the words of the Book of Common Prayer, a “propitiation for our sin,” which means to make atonement for.

The unpretentiousness of the Gospel is that we don’t have to jump through hoops to please God. St. John puts the simplicity of the Gospel like this: (John 1:12-13)

“But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”

It was one big, well-thought-out plan for our salvation. Even going all the way back to the Garden of Eden. In Genesis 3:15, God is speaking to Satan and says, “He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” Who’s the “he”?

Who could have imagined that God was talking about himself here? Who could have imagined God would deal death its deathblow through the death and resurrection of his Son?

Let us use our time in Holy Week to reflect on what it cost Jesus to go to the Cross for our sakes. He didn’t go to the Cross for his own sake because he was sinless and did not need to be justified before God. As we think about that, let us celebrate and give thanks that we are children born of God.