The Promise of Holy Week: Mark 11:1-11 - Palm Sunday

How does love become hate? How does someone praise Jesus one day and curse him the next? How does worship turn into murder?

When the people welcome Jesus into Jerusalem, they welcome him as their Messiah. They were confident that Jesus would liberate them from their Roman oppressors and reign as king over a restored Israel.

Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash

But Jesus does not do that. Instead of attacking Rome, Jesus attacks the abuses and corruption inside the temple. He overturns the money changers’ tables. He speaks parables against the scribes and chief priests. He even prophesies the temple’s destruction. 

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Unsurprisingly, this enrages the religious leaders, so much that they want to kill him. But they cannot—because the crowds adored him. But they were determined. They catch their lucky break when Judas Iscariot comes to them and agrees to hand Jesus over to them in exchange for money. 

From that point on, everything goes according to plan. They arrest Jesus late at night, while he’s away from the crowds, praying in the Garden of Olives. They know they can’t put Jesus to death, so they manipulate Pontius Pilate into doing it for them. 

Yesterday, the religious leaders didn’t dare touch Jesus for fear of the crowds. By Friday, Pontius Pilate didn’t dare set Jesus free, for fear that the crowds.

It would be easy for us to lay blame for Jesus’s death on Rome, on the religious leaders and the crowds they manipulated. For centuries, Jews have been blamed for Jesus’s death, which is so wrong as to rise to the level of blasphemy. But to do that would be to miss a pivotal truth. Jesus’s crucifixion is not something we can blame on “those people.” Blaming others for Jesus’s death means denying our own sinfulness.

The story of Jesus’s death is, like it or not, a story about us—and the lengths we will go to get our way. We don’t want a Messiah who tells us we’re wrong when we’re certain we’re right. We don’t want a Messiah claiming authority over all aspects of our lives. 

This all begs the question: what do we want a Messiah for? What do we want Jesus to save us from?

We think of idolatry as the worship of false gods, but idolatry can also consist of turning Jesus into the Messiah and Savior he’s not: one we remake in our own image, who thinks like us, looks like us, acts like us, believes like us, votes like us; who loves the people we love and hates the people we hate; and one we hope will reward us for our faith with health and prosperity. In that frame of mind, Jesus is not so much a savior as he is your own personal “Superman.” But what about a Jesus who exposes your unrighteousness? A Jesus whose ways are not your ways? A Jesus who demands that you love your enemies, pray for your persecutors, and forgive others their trespasses / debts? A Jesus who not only loves “those people,” but actually comes to you as one of “those people”?

The agonizing truth of Good Friday is that sinners crucified Jesus, of which you and I are one. We are the ones calling out for his death when he refuses to satisfy our demands. Our sins are the nails in his hands and feet. 

But the promise of Holy Week is that the body we broke and the blood we shed liberates us from sin. The truth of Holy Week is the love Jesus has for you and all the world. Jesus showed us what love truly is by coming to earth and loving us when we do not love him back. Jesus showed us what love truly is by becoming so vulnerable as to be rejected and killed by us and loving us all the while we did it.

When Jesus cried out, “Father, forgive them,” he cried out for you. Jesus died because we die. And Jesus descended into hell and rose again from the dead so that sin and death would not separate you from him. Jesus’s nail-scarred hands are open to embrace you as his own.

From heaven to earth, to the cross to the grave, to hell and to Easter morning. For you.

And when you are in helplessness and humiliation as he was, when you cry out to God in agony, he is with you then and there. He will save you from it or deliver you through it. 

This is the Messiah we wave our palm branches for: who saves us from our sin, who saves us in our suffering, who saves us in death, who saves us from ourselves. Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!