This weekend, churches of every stripe will be celebrating Palm
Sunday, remembering the day Jesus strode into Jerusalem to face his
executioners over two-thousand years ago. Artists have depicted the event
countless times, and almost always with throngs of admirers lining the dirt
roads, waving palm branches, and screaming “Hosanna, Hosanna.” Like so many
things about Jesus’ life and death, religion has whitewashed the scene for us
and made it suitable for flannel-boards and Sunday school, because, far from
worshiping Jesus that day with any notion of sacrifice, the small mob was
actually declaring war on the government.
In our modern world many of us have watched, wincingly, and with
appropriate shame, when religious leaders have waded into the dark waters of
politics. Jesus, we often like to assure ourselves, could not have cared less. We
tell ourselves this, I am concerned, because we would like to care less about
politics ourselves, and about the government, about Kings and Kingdoms, and make Jesus just a
personal savior, rather than savior of the world.
But far from some novelty item to keep the kids quiet during
the service, the palm branches that emerged from the crowd that day serve as the
national symbol for Israel and their waving was akin to the presence of the
stars-n-stripes at a 4th of July parade, or an icon of a bald eagle.
And Jesus sitting atop a donkey was not due to the absence of a more appropriate
beast, it was a grand fulfillment of Zechariah’s prophecy centuries before that
promised the long awaited Messiah would come riding atop a donkey (Zech. 9:9). And the word “Hosanna,” now set to tunes in
gentle hymns accompanied by pianos, was not a particularly holy word. Literally,
it means “save us” or perhaps more like “SAVE US” much in the same way someone
would scream if they were drowning and in need of rescue. As Tim Stafford once wrote,
“As political theatre, this is on the level with a
presidential candidate riding into Washington, D.C., on a tank. It was
deliberately provocative. Jesus was offering himself – no, asserting himself –
as king. And not only king but emperor of the earth.”
Because of this, the problem with the crowd is the same problem
that plagues each of us. They are worshiping the right king, but the wrong kingdom. With
branches waving the adoring throngs of worshipers see Jesus as their long
awaited revolutionary, the one who will crush the oppressive powers of Rome and
usher in another golden age for Israel. When the people cried out “save us”
they looked to Jesus as a Jewish Buddha whose belly needed to be rubbed in
order to conjure up the desired outcomes. They thought Jesus was THEIR king, instead of their KING.
Jesus’ proclamation on that Jerusalem hillside was inflammatory,
and it is inflammatory today, flying in the face of every ruler of the age, and
every ruler throughout every age. It was, in fact, a public declaration that a
new kingdom has come, a kingdom governed by different rules. A kingdom that
declares the last to be first, founded on the principle that whoever
loses their life will find it. A kingdom whose primary symbol is an ancient
tool of capital punishment and whose leader let his blood spill over the face
of the earth in order to bring every tribe, nation and tongue under his
authority.
Palm Sunday is an important opportunity to repent from the
constant temptation to make Jesus in our own image and to confess our frequent
attempts to make him conform to our personal ambitions and expectations, rather than the other way around.
Jesus did not come to establish our kingdom; he came to
invite us into his.
