Palm Sunday -- A Day of Hope

John 12:12-19 (NIV)

12 The next day the great crowd that had come for the Feast heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem.

13 They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting, "Hosanna!" "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!" "Blessed is the King of Israel!"

14 Jesus found a young donkey and sat upon it, as it is written,

15 "Do not be afraid, O Daughter of Zion; see, your king is coming, seated on a donkey's colt."

16 At first his disciples did not understand all this. Only after Jesus was glorified did they realize that these things had been written about him and that they had done these things to him.

17 Now the crowd that was with him when he called Lazarus from the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to spread the word.

18 Many people, because they had heard that he had given this miraculous sign, went out to meet him.

19 So the Pharisees said to one another, "See, this is getting us nowhere. Look how the whole world has gone after him!"

Today is Palm Sunday, the first day of Holy Week, arguably, the holiest and most important week of worship in the Christian church. 

Holy Week is such a momentous week, and so much is happening, that it’s sometimes hard to really understand the significance of it all and how it would have been experienced by the people in Jerusalem who lived through those events.  To truly understand how they would have experienced these events -- how they would have interpreted them -- you need to put yourself in their place and understand how the Jews viewed themselves during that time.

The Israelites recognized themselves as God’s chosen people.  Out of all the people in the world, God had chosen the Israelites to be His special people. He had established a covenant with their ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and promised to be their God and to bless them and all the world through them.

But their lives were anything but easy.  They spent 400 years in captivity in Egypt as slaves in bondage to Pharaoh and the Egyptians until the Lord delivered them from the Egyptians by parting the Red Sea.  After 40 years of wandering they finally made it to the Promised Land, but were eventually exiled to Assyria and Babylon because of their disobedience to God and their habit of worshiping idols and foreign gods.  Eventually, God led them back into the Israel, but it was different this time.  No longer free to rule themselves, no longer free to live in the land as they wished, but under the dominion of other nations. 

The people of Israel had enjoyed their special relationship with God for a long time, but now it seemed like God had abandoned them.  They were still in the land.  They still had the temple and were allowed to worship there, but it was more lip-service to a distant God of memories rather than a living God they knew personally.  Their lives were difficult and hope of liberation, hope of freedom, hope of restoration, was but a distant dream.

Until one day when an itinerant Rabbi came to town, riding a donkey down from the Mount of Olives, just as the prophecies foretold.  A man who was more than a man. A man who spoke with power and authority that the priests were lacking.  A man who touched the blind and the lame and the sick and they were healed.  A man who knew God and who spoke with God and who even seemed to be God.  And the people wondered at this sight in their midst.

Jesus became a light for the nation of Israel, a beacon of hope to a people who had been bound in captivity for all too long.  So, the people came to Him.  They surrounded Him wherever He went.  Some came for the healings, some came for the bread from heaven, some came to watch the show, but others came seeking that which they had lost.  They came looking for God and hoping to hear His voice again.

The people began to whisper that God was back. They began to hope and believe that God had returned.  There were rumors of a revival going on in Israel through the ministry of Jesus as the hearts of the people were turned towards God once again.

This is what Palm Sunday meant to the people who lined the path and waved their palm fronds and shouted, “Hosanna! Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!”  As Jesus rode into Jerusalem on that Palm Sunday, He brought with Him hope.  A misplaced hope, perhaps, as the people longed for freedom from their bondage to the Romans, but hope none-the-less. 

Palm Sunday is the day we celebrate the hope of liberation, of freedom from our sins and guilt and the judgment to come.  Palm Sunday is the day we look to the hills and see our help in a Savior coming to die for our sins and to offer His own body and blood that we might live with Him forever.  Palm Sunday is the day of hope.

This is something we need to grasp and to understand on this Palm Sunday of 2020.  For we find ourselves once again bound and held captive.  Not by the Egyptians or the Babylonians or the Romans.  Not even by our sins and our guilt, but bound by fear and doubt and anxiety because of the pandemic we face.  We face as uncertain times as the Israelites did on that first Palm Sunday, but we share the same hope they held in their hearts, the hope of Jesus. 

So, today, let us put aside our doubts and fears and anxieties, let us look to the hills from where our help comes.  Let us look to Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.  And let us find hope and faith today, as we join the joyful throng and cry out, “Hosanna! Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!”