On the next day much people that were come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, took branches of palm trees, and went forth to meet him, and cried, Hosanna: Blessed is the King of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord. And Jesus, when he had found a young donkey, sat thereon; as it is written, Fear not, daughter of Zion: behold, thy King cometh, sitting on a donkey’s colt. These things understood not his disciples at the first: but when Jesus was glorified, then remembered they that these things were written of him, and that they had done these things unto him”. (John 12:12-16)
Psalm Sunday was the day when the people got it right, and the people got it wrong. It was a day when the people were so close, yet so far. Roman oppression was heavy. The Roman occupation of Israel was a reality that the citizens of Jerusalem lived with day in and day out. Everywhere there were reminders that the Romans were in charge. There were Roman soldiers on horseback riding through the streets. There were Romans running the government. There were Romans demanding the payment of taxes. The Jews were allowed to have their own religion, for the most part, but how long would that last? Their religion, their traditions, their culture, their way of life were being slowly suffocated by the ever-present Romans and their boastful displays of power and glory. The man they were being coerced into recognizing as their king was no descendant of King David. To the contrary, King Herod had been appointed by Rome, not by God, and he did whatever Rome said, not whatever God said. The city of David was being ruled by people who knew nothing of David, let alone of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses. The Jews spoke Hebrew or Aramaic; the Romans spoke Latin. The Jews followed the Torah, but the Romans knew nothing of this Holy Book. The Jews worshipped the One True God who created the heavens and the earth. The Romans worshipped a pantheon of gods, and they even worshipped their own emperor. Godless Gentiles who knew nothing of the covenants that God had made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were the hot-headed rascals who were running the beautiful City of David and the once-glorious nation of Israel, and the people had had as much of this as they could take. They were frustrated enough to rebel, but they needed a strong son of Israel to come and take the lead. If only their promised Messiah would show up at such a time as this. The cries of a frustrated and oppressed people were rising up to the throne of a God who may have seemed, to them, to have been silent for far too long. Then the rumors begin to spread. Yeshua, the carpenter’s son from Nazareth, was coming to Jerusalem. Yeshua, the one who performs miracles, was coming toward the city. Yeshua, the one who raises people from death, was making his way toward the city gates. As the news spread through the throngs of the faithful who were visiting the city for Passover, the people, once hopeless, began to have a glimmer of newfound hope. They had not been forgotten! God had heard their cry! Perhaps the time had finally come to overthrow Roman rule. This Yeshua from Nazareth was an unlikely candidate for the position, though. He didn’t have the personality of a military general, and he didn’t have an army or even carry a weapon. He didn’t seem to be the type who would lead a rebellion, but the Jews knew enough about God to know that He often works in strange ways, and so the people gathered. What were they expecting to happen when Yeshua came into town? As the people began to line the streets, with palm branches in their hands, what exactly where they planning to do when Yeshua passed by? To celebrate? To protest? To rebel? Some odd mixture of all three? Perhaps they sensed that something momentous was about to happen. The atmosphere was pregnant with something God-sized that was about to be birthed in their city. They weren’t sure what it was, but they knew that something was stirring. They could feel it in their hearts… and they were right. The people were so right… but they were so wrong. They were right in recognizing Yeshua as their long-awaited Messiah. They were right in their sudden awareness that God had not forgotten them, that God had remembered the promises that He had made to them, and to their ancestors, and to their descendants. They were right in their joyful recognition that God had heard their cries and that God was about to move on behalf of Israel, for His glory and for their good. The people were right to be hopeful. They were right to celebrate. They were right to recognize the fingerprints of God all over this man, and so they lined the streets, and they began to sing the only song that could possibly fit the occasion, the song of Zechariah 9:9: “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 a donkey, and upon a colt the foal of a donkey”. They were right to recognize him as their rightful king. They were right to recognize that they were seeing, right before their eyes, the fulfillment of what had been spoken centuries earlier by the prophet Zechariah. They were right to celebrate. They were right to sing. They were right to have joy. They were right to have hope. The people were so right—- but they were so wrong. They were wrong to think that God would accomplish his purposes through military might. They were wrong to think that God would fix their problems on a political and military level while leaving their hearts untouched. They were wrong in thinking that God was interested in manifesting only his power, but not also his love. They wanted a conquering king, but into the city came a servant, one who came to teach the them how to love God and how to love each other, and even how to love their enemies and to forgive those who were oppressing them. Into the city came one who was all about displaying the character of God who is not only very powerful but also very wise, and very good, and very loving. Into the city came one who came not to kill but to die, to give up his life for his friends. Yes, he would eventually come in power to set up his kingdom on the earth, but oh so much had to happen before that that day. There had to be a cross, there had to be a resurrection, there had to be a Gospel preached, their had to be much suffering and hardship and persecution and loyalty and courage, there had to be a glorious return before that long-expected kingdom could be established upon the earth. God has an appointed way and an appointed time, and His ways are based upon His own character, not upon human ingenuity coupled with human power. The people were so right— but they were so wrong. So here we are at a different time, in a different place, 2020 years later, in the midst of a global pandemic, trying to make sense of it all. And maybe we, too, are getting it right, but we are also getting it wrong. We are getting it right because the pandemic is stripping away all that is unnecessary in our lives— all of our distractions and diversions— and we are coming to see that the only necessary things are not things at all, but people. We are rediscovering the value of family, of friends, of relationships. We are rediscovering the value of solidarity. Every person who stays indoors is doing his or her own part to save the lives of others. This is a demonstration of the fact that we value not only our own lives but also the lives of each other. We are coming to realize that our well-being is tied up with the well-being of others, and that their well-being is tied up with our well-being. We’re coming to understand, in greater ways than before, that “we’re all in this together”. We’re discovering our willingness to sacrifice our own rights for the common good. Whoever thought that a virus that prevents people from getting together could actually become a vehicle for bringing people together by showing us the value of community? The streets are empty because people from all walks of life are coming to recognize the value of the common good, and that’s a beautiful thing. Identity politics is taking a back seat. Suddenly we are realizing that it’s not about the rights of my group vs. the rights of your group, but it’s about our common needs as human beings. We are getting it right. We are getting it right… but we are also getting it wrong. We’re getting it wrong for the same reasons that the citizens of Jerusalem were getting wrong on that first “Palm Sunday”. We are trying to fix the problems of the world on our own. Some of us leave God out of the picture and rely only on human ingenuity to solve our deepest problems. It’s the same old formula: Human ingenuity plus human power equals the solution of all problems. If the pandemic teaches us nothing about human limitations, then nothing ever will. Others bring God into the picture, but they try to use God as a means to an end, as though God were like a genie in a bottle. If we say and do all the right things, then maybe God will help us out of this mess we’re all in. But I think God is after something different, something much deeper. God wants us to seek Him because He is God, rather than using Him for what we are trying to get Him to do for us and then forgetting about Him when we no longer have a need. Seeking God means acknowledging God’s way of doing things, and that has to do with a man who is also God dying on a cross, and rising from the dead, and a Gospel that is preached, and much suffering and persecution and loyalty and courage, and a glorious return, and eventually the establishment of God’s kingdom on the earth— and that’s not all about us. It’s all about God. So here we are in 2020, stuck in our homes, in the middle of a pandemic. We’d love to be outside, lining our streets, waving our palm branches in the sunshine, celebrating the joy of being alive, celebrating our hope that the pandemic will end and that everything will be good. We want to trade in our face masks for palm branches. Those are all good desires, but there is an appointed way and an appointed time. We need to recognize the limits of human ingenuity, glorious as it is. We need to turn to God, not as a means toward the end of building a better life or building a better world, but simply because He is God. We need to learn the meaning of the cross and the resurrection, for this is how God has chosen to save the world; this is how God has chosen to redeem those who believe. That’s the lesson of Palm Sunday. We need to remember that sunny day in the beautiful City of David when the people were lining the streets, singing and waving their palm branches. They got it right, and they got it wrong. We need to get it right.
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