Passion Week: Palm Sunday

Luke 19:38b "Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!"

Today marks the beginning of the most exciting week in Christian history, Passion Week. During this week in history, Jesus suffered, bled, died, and rose again for the very salvation of his people. As we walk through every day of Passion Week in the upcoming days, let us consider how it ought to convict our hearts. This morning, we are going to look at Palm Sunday in order to find out how we ought to hope in God's Messiah.

In Luke 19:28-40, we find the story of Palm Sunday. The story starts out in a rather odd fashion with Jesus requesting that two of his disciples go to a neighboring village and get a young donkey for Jesus to ride on. Now, what's this all about? Why does Jesus want to ride on a donkey? We must notice here that this event is what theologians call a Messianic action. A Messianic action is something that Jesus does to prove that he is the Messiah, that is, the Promised King of Israel that would come to save Israel once and for all. This donkey-riding was prophesied on the Old Testament as the happenstance of the one who was this Messiah. Thus, when Jesus started riding on a donkey, the Israelites (who were very familiar with the Old Testament scriptures) knew exactly what was going on. Thus, many of Christ's disciples in response to this laid their garments down on the ground, waved palm branches, and proclaimed: "Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!"* So often we read the story of Palm Sunday with no clue of what is truly going on. But what is truly going on is this: the Messiah that was promised throughout the entirety of the Old Testament is finally here. From Genesis 3 until the 400th year of the 400 years of silence in between the Old Testament and the New Testament, the the people of God had been waiting for this very moment, and it had now come. The promised Messiah King is finally here, and the Israelites are ecstatic.

The question for us this morning is this: do we hope in Jesus as the Messiah? As we approach the season of Easter, are we placing our hope in this Messiah who has come? Although the disciples of Jesus who were praising him in the streets were looking for him to fulfill a different role than what Jesus had come to do (we'll get there), they still present us with a right and true proclomation of the Messiah. The question for us is this: will we place our hope in that Messiah? The promised King of the Old Testament has come. There is peace on earth (Luke 2:14, 19:38)! Praise the Lord! But have we taken advantage of that peace that Jesus had to offer?

*Other Gospels add the common title for Jesus "Hosanna" as part of the Israelites' praise here.