The One Who Comes

One could almost draw a parallel between Palm Sunday and Christmas Eve:  the long-expected Messiah makes a very public entrance, and the Crowd (angels, shepherds) goes wild!  “Now, at last, thing’s ll be made right!”  Cynics will mock our optimism–just LOOK at Washington/world hunger/poisoned air & water–yet year after year a few of us have the audacity to maintain that “God’s steadfast love endures forever.”

In the gloom of Lent, Psalm 118 breaks in as a breath of fresh air!  This reading is a marvelous intrusion into the sadness of a weary world.   God’s steadfast love (hesed) becomes a frame (vv. 1,29) not only for the movement of this Psalm, but also for the movement of the stories of Jesus intersecting with the Crowd in their excursions through life and death.  Somewhere on this roller-coaster of Holy Week is a continual opportunity for Believers to shout, “Hosanna!  Blessed is  one who comes in the name of the Lord!”

Matthew’s account of Palm Sunday (21:1-11) brings a wealth of detail, some of which can get in our way.  It really doesn’t matter how many donkeys were involved, since Matthew is trying to refer back to Zechariah.  What DOES matter is that the Crowd recognizes in Jesus the fulfillment of what they had hoped for in a Messiah…  Well…  At this point, most would have desired a hero who would lead the militia against the Romans, who would Make Israel Great Again, who would give Jewish individuals a pride of being world-citizens; that’s what they hoped.  What they got was an earthquake:  “The who city was in turmoil”.  The Messiah shakes all our foundations and overturns our well-told aphorisms:  there’s more here than meets the eye…

The challenge to Palm Sunday congregations is to be open and receptive to how God is announcing mighty works, shaking the foundations even in our daily same old-same old.  What’s our place in this Great Parade?   We need a few perceptive ones to be cheerleaders:  “Hosanna!  Blessed is the One who comes in the Name of the Lord!”

God Bless Us, Every One                              Horace Brown King

My thoughts about lectionary scripture for the upcoming weekend can be found every Tuesday at this spot on Facebook, or at horacebrownking.com