Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29; Mark 11:1-11
A crowd gathered around Jesus as he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey that first Palm Sunday. They greeted him by shouting out: “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” It’s possible that they sensed Jesus was enacting the 118th Psalm as he entered the gates of the city. Therefore, this must be the day the Lord had made, so the people rejoiced and were glad in it!
This Psalm provides an important foundation for our Palm Sunday celebration. It invites us to sing a song of victory as we join in the parade leading to the Temple so we can celebrate God’s gift of salvation. As we approach the gates of the Temple, we hear the Psalmist declare: “Open to me the gates of righteousness, that I may enter through them and give thanks to the Lord.”
We gather on this Palm Sunday while our world appears to be in disarray. There are wars in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan. Thousands are dying in these places while others are displaced. We’re also watching as a divisive political season gets underway here at home. When we look at what’s going on in the world, it’s easy to give up hope.
So as we gather this morning to celebrate Palm Sunday, does it offer us a word of hope or is the celebration a bit misleading? If we’re going to answer that question we need put ourselves in the shoes of the people who welcomed Jesus into the city. What were their expectations of Jesus? When we read the Gospel accounts, including Mark 11, it is clear that many people who joined in the festal procession hoped that Jesus was getting ready to gather the troops and run the Romans out of town. Of course, if we follow the story to the end, we discover that these hopes were quickly dashed when the Romans nailed Jesus to a cross on Good Friday. Nevertheless, this word we hear from the Psalmist does offer us a word of hope. We hear a hint of what is to come when the Psalmist declares that “the stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone” (Ps. 118:22). No matter what happens in the near term, God’s steadfast love will endure so that we might as the author of 1 Peter wrote, become living stones built upon the chief cornerstone, which is Jesus so that we might become spiritual houses or temples of God (1 Pet. 2:4-8).
This phrase “God’s steadfast love endures forever” appears regularly in the Psalms. These two words—steadfast love—translate the Hebrew word chesed. Although this is a powerful word of assurance, perhaps the translation could be even stronger. John Holbert translates chesed as “unbreakable love” or “unbreakable connection.” In other words, as Holbert puts it, “There is finally nothing you and I can do to stop YHWH from seeking connection with us.” [Patheos, 3/23/2015].
Chesed or “steadfast love,” is a word rooted in the covenants God made with God’s people. It starts with the covenant God made with Abraham, in which God promised that Abraham’s descendants would be a blessing to the nations (Gen. 12:1-4). Each of God’s covenants includes a promise that God will be present with God’s people through thick and thin. So, when the people of Israel experienced a crisis, they would call out, as the Psalmist does: “Salvation now, God. Salvation now! Oh yes, God—a free and full life!” (Ps. 118: 25 MSG).
When the Psalmist offers this prayer, he’s not asking for material prosperity. Instead, the Psalmist asks God to provide the resources needed to get through the crisis at hand. You might call this prayer an emergency declaration asking FEMA to come rescue the people. The people make this request trusting that God will stay true to the covenant promises that are rooted in God’s unbreakable love. Therefore, the people can give thanks to their savior.
According to Mark’s account, which draws on the words of the Psalmist, the people welcomed Jesus into the city by laying their cloaks and leafy branches on the road ahead of him (Mk 11:7-9). Not only did the people lay their cloaks and branches in front of Jesus, they drew upon the Psalm and declared: “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Mk. 11:9). They added to this blessing the words “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David.” It’s this word about David’s kingdom that lets us know that the people were expecting a warrior king who would chase the Romans out of the country.
This expectation that Jesus was about to launch a revolution might have been stirred up as the people remembered the words of the prophet Zechariah:
Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!
See, your king comes to you;
triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey. (Zech. 9:9).
You can see why the crowd might get the idea that Jesus was proclaiming himself David’s successor and therefore God’s means of salvation. By salvation, they envisioned liberation from Roman occupation, just like Simon Maccabeus delivered the nation from the tyranny of Antiochus IV a few centuries earlier. The people held a festal parade on that occasion as well (1 Mac. 13:51). You can see how the people misinterpreted Jesus’ entrance as a call to arms against the Romans. When they joined in the festal procession, they expected God to rescue them from Rome’s domination. They were wrong in their expectations but you can understand why they were mistaken. Surely Jesus knew that he took a provocative step by riding into the city on a donkey, just as Zechariah predicted.
Despite the expectations the people placed on Jesus, he ultimately took a different route in revealing God’s realm from the one the people expected. While he began with this parade, his path led him to the cross of Good Friday. While the people, and apparently Jesus’ own disciples, thought he would rescue the nation from the Romans, Jesus had other ideas. So, as Thomas Troeger’s hymn puts it: “Lest we be fooled because our hearts have surged with passing praise, remind us, God, as this week starts where Christ has fixed his gaze” [Glory to God, 199].
While the cross lay in Jesus’ future, it would prove to be an expression of God’s unbreakable love. We might not fully understand why Jesus took this path, but we can take comfort in knowing that even in challenging times Jesus is present with us, revealing to us God’s “unbreakable love.”
During Holy Week Jesus reveals to us that there is more than one form of power. There is worldly power, which even many Christians have embraced. This form of power seeks to achieve dominion over others. This desire to take dominion often leads to an embrace of authoritarianism. Some folks believe that if Christians can control the levers of political power, whether the school board or the presidency of the United States, they can impose a certain view of God’s kingdom on the community, nation, and the world. The folks who embrace this way of thinking often make it clear that they will not let anyone stand in their way. That’s because they believe this is God’s mandate. The sad truth is that history has demonstrated time and again that this way of thinking ends up corrupting the church and its mission. Then there is Godly power, the kind of power that Jesus embraced as he journeyed through the gates of righteousness toward the cross of Good Friday.
This Godly power that Jesus embodied is described in Philippians 2, where Paul writes that although Jesus “was in the form of God, [he] did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:6-8). In other words, Jesus chose the kind of power that is rooted in God’s steadfast and sacrificial love. It’s the kind of power that enables God to take risks on our behalf, even if that means death on a cross.
When it comes to experiencing the presence of Jesus in times like this, when the temptation to grab worldly power is so enticing, the words of theologian Grace Ji-Sun Kim might prove helpful:
The Christian faith is different from what the world teaches. The Christian faith is not “seeing is believing,” but rather, “believing is seeing.” We must open our eyes and hearts and see Jesus’ presence in our lives. We need to see him in the places that we dare not to look and dare not to think about. [Hope in Disarray (p. 42). Pilgrim Press. Kindle Edition].
On this Palm Sunday, as we step into Holy Week, we may find ourselves in places we didn’t expect. Therefore, as we ponder an uncertain future, may we pray that God would open our eyes and hearts so we can find hope in the promise that God’s steadfast love has been revealed to us not in a military victory over the Romans but through the cross of Good Friday and the resurrection of Jesus on Easter morning.
With this promise of God’s unbreakable love serving as the foundation of our faith, let us wave our palm branches and shout words of praise to Jesus. Let us welcome him anew into our lives because today is the day the Lord has made. Therefore, let us rejoice and be glad as we join with all the saints of God shouting “Hosanna, Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!”
Preached by:
Dr. Robert D. Cornwall
Supply Preacher
First Presbyterian Church (PCUSA)
Troy, Michigan
Palm Sunday
March 24, 2024
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