Palm Sunday

Palm Sunday – Today is Palm Sunday. It is a day we think about children. We think happy thoughts. Many churches have as a part of their worship service this morning some sort of processional, frequently involving children waving the palm branches. We tend to like those Holy Days that focus on the bright and upbeat, and we tend to try and transform those days that are darker into something a little more bright and cheery.

Palm Sunday is actually a mixture of both. Certainly, it is the arrival of Jesus in Jerusalem to the cheers of the crowds, including the children. Palm Sunday could be a political activist’s day as well. When Jesus arrived at the temple, one of the very first things he did was to upset the established order. He kicked out all those who were using the worship tradition at the temple to line their own pockets and only allowed the contrite of heart in to worship. The Gospel of Mark goes on to tell us that Jesus stood in the temple with his whip and would not permit anyone to use the temple court as a shortcut to get from one side to the other. Imagine, walking along, deciding to take a shortcut through the temple complex so you didn’t have to work around the massive set of buildings and coming face-to-face with a crazed looking man with a whip who threatened to use it if you put one foot in the temple!

Palm Sunday, viewed in the entirety of Holy Week, also reminds us how unfaithful we can be. You see, it was these same people who proclaimed Jesus as the Messiah on Sunday who called for his execution, or, at best, stood by and did nothing to stop it on Friday. We are a fickle lot, aren’t we? We do tend to look for the best deal. We tend to have the same mob mentality that crucified Jesus. Yes, it is quite easy to say that we wouldn’t have been part of that vile mob. Even Peter vowed to lay down his life to follow Christ, only to run away and hide when called upon to confirm that he even knew who Jesus was.

The truth of the matter is that we get an opportunity to stand up for Jesus each and every day. Many of those days we choose, me included, to remain another face in the crowd. We remember the adage of sticking one’s neck out and tend to force our necks well down into our shoulders. The Scripture is clear that to live for Jesus is to set ourselves against the world and all that it holds dear. Now, that may not get us killed, but it will, often, put us at the center of the storm instead of just one of a mob.

However, there is good news in this message as well. It is not all doom and gloom and you as a worthless, God-hater. The Jesus that road into Jerusalem on that Sunday over 2000 years ago knew he would be betrayed, knew he would be denied, knew that he would die alone on that awful hill, and he knew he had to make it to that hill on that day in order to claim you as a brother or sister of his Heavenly Father. What wondrous love!

Pastor Craig