Palm Sunday (April 13 this year) marks the beginning of Holy Week.

 

It is the day the Church gathers to remember Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem. In many churches, congregants gather outside the building holding and waving palm branches, and shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” Singing together, everyone processes into the church to begin the service.

 

In this beginning of the Holy Week journey, we join Christ as he ascends into Jerusalem ready to die. As we process, we affirm our own willingness to “take up our cross and follow him.” 

 

There is a prototype story of Palm Sunday found in the apocryphal book of 1 Maccabees. About 170 years before the birth of Christ, Antiochus Epiphanes of the kingdom of Syria had taken over Jerusalem, desecrated the temple, outlawed Judaism, and brutally murdered thousands of Jewish people. Among the faithful there was an uprising (the Maccabean Revolts) wherein the Jews sought to take back their land, city, and temple.

 

Eventually, the revolution was victorious and as the victors rode through Jerusalem, the people waved palm branches in celebration, singing and shouting for joy! An image of a palm was stamped into their coins as a symbol of freedom from their oppressors.

 

Enter Jesus… the Jews are once again under the brutal thumb of a foreign empire, and rumors of Jesus being the promised Messiah are flying fast and furious. As he rides a donkey into town, the people believe that he is finally coming to liberate them from the Romans. They call on the stories of their ancestry, begin wildly waving palms and shouting “Hosanna!” – “Save us!”

 

Their hopes for freedom are riding high and Jesus… does nothing. He cleanses the temple (which has them excited for a hot minute!) and then goes back to teaching and healing. No armies. No rallies. No death to Romans. Nothing but gentle and lowly Jesus being gentle and lowly.

 

The cruel disappointment of the people fuels the anger that explodes into Good Friday cries of “Crucify him!” and it reminds us to ask ourselves: how do we expect Jesus to come to us? And when he comes, what do we expect him to do?

 

On Palm Sunday, as we wave our branches, we should do so with a little fear and trembling, remembering that Christ’s victory comes in the most unexpected way.

 

We celebrate a victorious king, yes, but one who asks us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.

 

One who says, “You will have trouble, but I have overcome the world.”

 

One who bids us to come and die that we may grab ahold of the victory he bought for us and march victoriously alongside him into his Kingdom.