Friends: The first Palm Sunday was a celebration that didn’t last because too many people were blinded to the truth.  Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #905

March 19, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Missed Signals, Part 1

By Bob Walters

“…because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.” Jesus, Luke 19:44

I try to imagine the raucous, palm-waving, salvation-promising, hope-expressing, Messiah-worshipping, “Palm Sunday” arrival of Jesus in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago.

Wouldn’t a reception like that – a cheering, Sunday throng of “your own people” – be terrifically encouraging? Yeah, maybe.  But not if you already know what Friday promises. And not if you realize the cheers are empty of understanding.

That loving cheering Sunday throng would be a bloodthirsty jeering Friday mob.

While specific timing is difficult to pin down in Jesus’s last couple of weeks before the crucifixion, tradition and Bible savvy tell a highly emotional tale of a highly emotional Jesus in His final earthly days. Jesus weeps loudly and bitterly twice prior to Jerusalem.

Tradition tells us, I think with adequate biblical back-up, that it was the weekend prior to the Triumphal Entry when “Jesus wept” for his dead friend Lazarus outside Bethany. Jesus then called a very much alive Lazarus out of the grave.  This communicated two astonishing facts to two different groups in two different eras.

First, the raising of Lazarus is what triggered the Jewish leaders, namely Caiaphas, to call for Jesus’s death: “it is better for one man to die” etc. (John 11:50). That was in Jerusalem the week prior to Palm Sunday; Jesus was condemned to die.

Second was the astonishing message to the Greeks, years later, who read John’s Gospel that “God,” i.e. Jesus, the Son of God, fully God and fully man, was capable of emotion.  The Greeks saw God as incapable of being moved to joy or sorrow, because that would give a human being power – if only for a moment – over God. Assumed to have been written late in the first century, John’s Gospel totally re-set the Greek view of who God actually was … and is. Even most of the Jews missed it.

It was evidence that God could indeed be “love.” As Barclay writes, “The greatest thing that Jesus did for us was to bring us the news of a God who cares.” Jesus wept.

Then we have Jesus approaching Jerusalem on that Sunday morning, riding a donkey.  But the cacophony didn’t begin in Jerusalem.  It began back in Bethany and Bethpage, where the donkey came from and the disciples telling its owner, “The Lord needs it” (Luke 19:34). Even there, onlookers put their cloaks in Jesus’s path, and the disciples began to sing loudly and praise Jesus joyfully.

A pharisee in the traveling crowd told Jesus to stifle the blasphemy of his disciples, who were hailing him as “king” and “Lord” and “the highest” (Luke 19:38).  But Jesus said, “If they keep quiet, the stones will cry out” (Luke 19:40).

Then Jesus saw Jerusalem and wept a wailing scream of impending, devastating loss, but not for himself.  Jesus shrieked because he knew Jerusalem would fall, and its destruction would “not leave one stone upon another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.”  God’s chosen people … had chosen destruction.

Israel’s time to recognize the promised Messiah had come … and would be gone with Jesus’s crucifixion a few days later. Even his Easter resurrection would not convince many Jews that Jesus was the prophesied and true Son of God, the Messiah Christ, and the promised Savior of all mankind.  Jerusalem missed the signals.

The adoring crowds of greeting largely had no idea of what would happen, nor all that Jesus knew.  It was an entry that, ultimately, was anything but triumphant for Israel.

But it was a triumph of Jesus’s will and obedience that freed all who believe.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) missed most of God’s signals for most of his life.

P.S. See Bob’s March 17 E91 Traditional Service communion meditation at the 34:00 mark of this LINK – E91 Traditional. E91 Executive Pastor Adrian Fehl leads the service (he had earlier mentioned snakes in Ireland, St. Patrick’s Day, etc.).