Thoughts on the story of Palm Sunday from Luke 19:28-40...
If you could have written this script, what would you have included? What would have been important? What would have been some of the “must haves” - the things that had to be present to communicate the story? And what was the story? What was this whole thing all about? What was happening...going on...taking place...some 2,000 years ago that was so important and so significant that it would be memorialized forever...and even have a day named after at?
Palm Sunday...this day...one week before Easter every year.
Why is it when it is? Why today? Why not let’s say the first Sunday in June, or August, or October?
In A.D. 325 at the Council of Nicaea, the date for Palm Sunday was set when the date for Easter was made the first Sunday following the paschal full moon, which is the full moon that falls on or after the vernal or spring equinox. Now I know what you’re thinking -- that really helps. Let me add a little more. In the Jewish Calendar -- which sets the Christian Calendar, Passover occurred on the paschal full moon. And since the Last Supper of Christ with His disciples occurred on the Passover, and Easter then happened on the Sunday following that Last Supper, then Palm Sunday falls one week earlier -- this year, today, next year on April 13 because the moon phase is kind of weird and moves around a little.
Anyway, let’s get back to those questions. How would you have written the script? I mean if you were the Grand Director and it was all up to you, how would you have Jesus enter into the Holy City? When would it have happened? What would He have done? What would have to have been included?
This really is an amazing event. Coming on the heels of a host of amazing miracles and parables, just after Jesus’ conversation with the rich man and His time with Zacchaeus...suddenly He sets His sight on Jerusalem and prepares to make what we call His triumphal entry.
But think about it. In that day the concept of a triumphal entry would have meant the possibilities of being delivered from the rule of Rome and the oppression of the Jewish authorities who had turned faith into a profitable business. A triumphal entry might have meant freedom and hope and promise and blessing. But in anticipation of this time, Jesus had said in Luke 18:31-33 that He would be handed over to the Romans and mocked and treated shamefully and spit upon and flogged and whipped and killed...and oh yeah, He also said He would also rise again to new life, but verse 34 says they didn’t understand any of it. Do we?
What would be triumphal about all of that? And then the manner in which He came? Riding on the foal of a donkey. In ancient days, that’s what a rival king did when he came for a visit. It symbolized peaceful intentions. But then they mixed the metaphors and added the palm branches. Those represented victory and triumph. How could you be peaceful and victorious in the same moment? What was really going on here?
It’s not so easy to think about writing this script is it? When you know the story and all that was about to happen -- what had been prophesied and told about for centuries that now was suddenly coming to light in total fulfillment...it really is an amazing moment. And today we join Christ’s Church in remembering what happened and reliving those events and thinking about that amazing story of how Jesus came to the shouts of the people and the songs of highest praise and the affirmation -- Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.
It really is an amazing day. It would be filled with the tears of Christ as He contemplated the failures of His own people to see the true meaning of His coming -- this visitation. Luke tells us that it would include the cleansing of the Temple -- something that Mark said actually happened the next morning after he cursed the fig tree. His authority would be challenged. His ministry would be ridiculed. His motives would be questioned. But He would come and over the next few days He would teach about sacrifice and death and resurrection and new life and new hope and a new day if people would believe. And then He would gather His disciples for the Passover and what we call the Last Supper and the betrayal and the Garden Prayer and His arrest and trial and beating and crucifixion -- all because He loved us too much to leave us where He found us -- sinners in need of a Savior, broken-world people who desperately needed the only hope that could lift them out of their misery and lostness and despair. And then that glorious morning -- when everyone thought it was over, when the ladies came to anoint the body of a dead man -- when the biggest question of the day was who would move the stone while the biggest concern on their hearts was really what was next -- to what do we turn now? But then it happened -- just as He said it would, just as He promised -- He was alive.
So how would you write this script? What would you include? What would you leave out? What would have to be there? What is this day supposed to be all about -- what is it supposed to say? Why are we here this morning?
The answer is really pretty simple -- to get ready. To search our hearts, to prepare our lives, to contemplate our future, to consider our destiny. To answer that one big question that ultimately determines the answer to every other question -- what have we done with Jesus? Have we confessed our sins to Him? Have we received His forgiveness? Have we invited Him into our hearts to be our Savior and Lord? Have we welcomed Him in to be our everything and our all?
Palm Sunday celebrates His coming -- but its story only finds significance if we enter into what it communicates -- if we become a partaker of what it brings. You see, until He becomes our King that speaks peace into all of the chaos and the cataclysm caused by sin in our lives and until He is victorious and triumphal over raising us as a new creation -- sinners saved by grace, the dead now living, the blind now seeing, the deaf now hearing, the mute now speaking, the lame now running -- victors, victorious, a new people living a new day because Jesus has set us free -- until He becomes our King and His victory becomes our life and living -- this is just another day and this week will have no real special meaning.
But if...if we dare to write our lives into Christ’s story by believing in Him...then this Palm Sunday becomes the first day of a week that will ultimately lead us to new life -- to celebrating the joy of Easter, the promise of sins forgiven, the hope of an eternity in heaven -- and the certainty that we will have a story -- a story that celebrates our entrance into His story -- HISTORY -- if you will, of how God sent His one and only Son into the world as an expression of undeniable, all consuming love, so that everyone, anyone, you and even me -- by simply believing would not perish as people with no hope or help for eternity, but rather that by simply believing in Him we might have -- we might receive the gift of eternal life. You see, that very God who loved us so incredibly through His only Son did not send that Son into this broken world to judge us and condemn us a part of its brokenness, but rather that through that Son we might be saved. You see, that God loves people at their worst and through His Son offers them the possibility of experiencing the best that through Him they might know life eternal.
That’s how He wrote the script. Why would we change it? What could we change to add to its message or meaning? Absolutely nothing, except to say that “my name is in His story -- and that He came for me.”
This morning we celebrate His triumphal entry into a city and I pray into our lives -- and in His coming we are offered the opportunity to experience triumph and victory over sin and a peace that passes all understanding as He sets us free from sin and its dominion that we might live forever with Him in love.
But that introduces another question -- do we realize how deeply we really do need to experience that love? Do we understand that His hope and His help -- His grace is the only way we can be forgiven and the only way we will receive the gift of eternal life? Do we know this morning that Jesus is the only way to the Father’s heart, the only truth that communicates the essence of forgiveness and fullness of joy, and the only life that will ever be eternally experienced with Him and our Father in heaven? Do we know, do we realize that Jesus must be before everything else in us if we are to know all that this sacred week provided?
Today, this morning, right now -- Jesus is here -- and just as He came that day riding on the foal of a donkey with palm branches waving and cloaks marking His pathway so He comes to us asking but one thing -- “Do you have room for Me in your heart? Will you let Me be all that I came to be for you for life, forever, beginning right now during this season of love and passion?”
How will you answer? What do you say? What are you doing with His invitation this Palm Sunday, this Easter?
That’s what the first Palm Sunday was all about -- His coming and the people reflecting on what His coming would mean to them. We though see through a different set of lenses. We see what happened after He came -- His passion, His sacrifice, His death, His resurrection. We see that this day celebrated but a beginning of the giving of a gift He called eternal life. And today, He comes again -- to me and to you -- offering us exactly what He offered then -- eternal life...if we only believe.
Romans 3:23 tells us that all of us stand before Christ on a level playing field -- all of us are sinners and come short of His glory.
Romans 6:23 tells us that the wages of those sins -- what we get for what we’ve done is death -- eternally separated from God...BUT the free gift of God -- if we accept what He offers -- is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 10:9-10 tells us how we can receive what He longs to give -- all we have to do is confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord and believe in our hearts that God raised Him from the dead, and we will be saved -- we’ll receive the gift of eternal life from Him. Because it is by believing in your heart that your are made right with God and it is by confessing with your mouth that you are saved.
So the questions remain...How will you answer? What do you say? What are you doing with Jesus’ invitation this Palm Sunday, this Easter? He is here right now to give life to me and you. Will you receive His gift and this moment enter into His story?
