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FROM PARADE TO CROSS
Palm Sunday – Luke 21:1-11 & portions of Chapter 27
March 16, 2008
Betty Berghaus
I don’t know about you, but when I was growing up, this time of year was very happy at church. Palm Sunday was festive and fun, and then came Easter Sunday, with new dresses, Easter baskets, Easter eggs, and family gatherings with good food. I really don’t remember Maundy Thursday or Good Friday services, or anything “dark” about the week between these two happy occasions. And maybe that will be how our children remember this Holy Week as well, and maybe that is as it should be. It was not until I was a young adult that I really began to take in what Holy Week meant and what Jesus went through for our sakes. BUT, if I had but read the scripture we just heard from Matthew 21 more carefully, I might have sensed the tensions rising even on this parade day.
The passage starts with Jesus getting ready to enter Jerusalem. Jesus had already told His disciples twice that Jerusalem was where He would suffer and die. In chapters 16 and 20, we heard something like this: “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death, to be mocked and flogged and crucified; on the third day he will be raised” (Mt. 20:18; see also 16:21). So the disciples (and we) should have known that Jerusalem would not be a happy place for Jesus. And yet it started with a parade. Matthew’ account is a bit odd, with Jesus asking for the disciples to secure two animals on which to ride into the city. The other gospels only have him sending for one animal. This gives me a rather bizarre image of Jesus standing astride two animals, sort of like a circus performer astride two horses or elephants! But, this may simply show us that the author of Matthew was a very literal guy, and that he took the Zechariah text to read “a donkey and a colt.” Scholars of Hebrew writings see this more as parallelism, used commonly in Hebrew poetry. In parallelism, something is described, and then described again a little bit differently in parallel, for emphasis. But perhaps the author saw a more theological significance to two animals, with a donkey representing the royal ride of a king, and the colt a more humble ride, one befitting the servant role of Jesus. (T. Long, p. 224)
There was a crowd that honored Jesus as He rode in, spreading their cloaks and tree branches on the road, just as we might put out the red carpet for visiting royalty. They hailed Him as a king (the title by which he would be crucified). And these were the same crowds who turned on Jesus, and cried out for Him to be crucified. Even here, the crowds did not know who this man they were celebrating really was. When asked who He was, they replied, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.” So the crowds enjoyed a reason for a parade, but they saw this man as just another prophet among many (v.11). And even though “Hosanna’s” were sung in praise of this man, the text tells us that “the whole city was in a turmoil, asking ‘Who is this?’ (v.10). So if we read carefully, we can see the signs even here that trouble lay ahead for Jesus.
And so the text supports what we have tried to do each year at Westminster on this Palm Sunday. It has been traditionally called Palm Sunday because of the joyous parade with tree branches spread before Jesus. It has also been called Passion Sunday because it marks the beginning of the Passion of Christ in suffering and dying for us. And so, knowing that not all of you will experience Maundy Thursday or Good Friday observances, we try to convey on this Sunday a sense of the whole of Holy Week for our Lord. The most meaningful Easter I ever had personally was the year in graduate school when we immersed ourselves in the Scriptures each day of Holy Week to see what Jesus went through on this last week of His life on earth in human form. It was more meaningful than the movie a couple of years ago of “The Passion of Christ,” which depicted in great gore the beating Jesus underwent and his torturous walk to the cross and the impact of His being nailed onto the cross. The scriptures tell the story of Jesus’ betrayal and trial, but they do not go into detail about the beatings and the crucifixion. The scriptures do show us the fickleness of the crowd, who turned from parading with Jesus to crying for Him to be crucified. Pilate felt that Jesus was innocent, and tried to find someone else for them to execute. But the crowd would not hear this. They chose to free the criminal Barrabas, and to execute the prophet Jesus, accused of calling himself “King of the Jews,” when there could be no king other than the emperor.
Matthew does not even tell us how the crucifixion took place. The text skips over this act. At this point, Matthew concentrates more on the way the crowd and the Roman soldiers mocked Jesus. Of the crucifixion itself, the text says simply, “When they had crucified him,” and continues with the taunting of the crowd. Even the bandits between whom Jesus was crucified taunted Him. It was only in the Gospel of Luke that one bandit realized who Jesus was, and asked for salvation. But in Matthew the bandits taunted him. Perhaps all of this had to take place before the true glory of God’s acts in Jesus could be seen, in the resurrection of Easter morning. Perhaps people could not really realize who Jesus was until he died and rose. The transformation of the people may have begun to take place, though, even as He died. The text tells us that very strange things happened as Jesus breathed His last breath. The curtain of the temple tore in two, an earthquake shook the ground, splitting rocks, and tombs were opened to release saints who had died. The first to behold this and to be converted were the centurions guarding the tomb. They saw these wonders and were terrified, saying, “Truly, this man was God’s Son” (27:54)
And so we move on this Palm or Passion Sunday to walk with Jesus toward the agony of the cross, before we behold the glory of the Easter morning resurrection. Soon after His arrival in Jerusalem, Jesus showed perhaps the only act of anger that we have recorded about Him, when He overturned the tables of the moneychangers in the temple. He sat at table with His disciples and shared a last meal, and told them to use such a meal to remember Him. He prayed in a garden, where the disciples could not stay awake with Him. And the guards came to arrest Him. He was tried, unfairly convicted, and executed. And all the while He quietly accepted what happened to Him, as he knew that this fulfilled the will of God. Only once, in the garden, did His human side seem to waver just a bit: “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me…” But then in an instance, He submitted again to God: “Yet not what I want but what You want.”
Friends, follow Jesus this week. Read the scriptures of this last week of Jesus’ life in any of the gospels. All four of them deal with this aspect of Jesus’ life and ministry in remarkably similar fashion. In a world that is in great turmoil, with rising oil and gas prices and a receding economy, with violence coming way too close, with our loved ones at war in harm’s way, it is good for us to spend time meditating upon the sacrifice and the gentleness of our Savior’s acts on our behalf. Walk to the cross with Jesus. And then come back next Sunday ready to celebrate, perhaps with new eyes and heart, the glory of Easter, of God’s great love for you and for me, and for so many others.
Let us hear again the Word of God, from Matthew 27 (27:15-23, 27-44).