Palm Sunday

There are two kinds of cheering at the Superbowl.  The first is the cheering of victory expected.  Each team comes running onto the field amid the cheers, paper cannons, fireworks, and musical introductions of their adoring fans.  They break through the paper barrier that introduces them with the power that their fans assume they will use on the opposing team.  And the television is careful to show us each team receiving such anticipatory accolades in turn.

When the final seconds finally wind down, there is the other kind of cheering, the cheering of victory accomplished.  While the losing team fades into the throes of defeat, the cheers of the victors will rise to a pitch even beyond that of the expected victory.

Jesus’ Triumphal Entry, celebrated on this Palm Sunday, conflates these cheers.  He is riding up to Jerusalem on a donkey, anticipated as the New King.  People are singing out, paving the way with their cloaks, with palms, while waving the palms in exultation.  They are expecting victory from their Messiah, from the one who has gone head to head with the Jewish authorities for the last three years, from this one who is the Son of God, the Son of Man, and the Son of David.

But it is more then that.  Jesus has the full faith and backing of God!  Better guarantee than the US government…  God has done this before, rewind history to the Exodus, when God crushed the Egyptian Pharaoh and his army to free the Israelites from bondage and slavery.  Over the last three years, Jesus has been building and demonstrating his “brand” as the Holy One of God, the Good Shepherd, the Messiah. 

So these cheers are not just in expectation of victory, they are cheers of victory accomplished, because who can stand against God’s power?  And God is in Jesus!!

Yet Jesus has not come to lead a cosmic battle of victory between the forces of Good and Evil.  Rather, Jesus has come to walk a road into the heart of darkness, into the bowels of hell itself, into every evil, pain, and revulsion possible before he rises up once more, on the light of the divine, to new life, overcoming all of this for our sake.

And the people will be disappointed.  All these cheers, all these accolades, all these preparations to be part of what they assumed to be God’s plan, they will disappear as Jesus seems to be just another disappointment, ignominiously arrested and put to death like a common criminal.  Their cries of “Hosanna” will be drowned out by cries of “Crucify Him” before the week is out.

And Jesus will die alone, cut off even from our God who art in heaven.  But then He shall be restored to life, to limb, and to glory.  Thus, when each of us, or the least of us, or the lost of us are cut off and fearful-or maybe welcoming the possibility-that we shall die alone, there Jesus will be, the Light of heaven, to show us the way back.