In preparation for my fifteenth Palm Sunday standing in a pulpit, I was reminded of a particularly lucid quote from an oft-used passion week commentary. On Palm Sunday Jesus enters Jerusalem as a king riding on a baby donkey, and is heralded by crowds with the very words of Psalm 118:25-26, which ask the Lord for his messianic salvation, rejoicing that he’ll provide in due time. For crowds to praise Jesus as the king from David’s line who fulfills these words would not have only been controversial. It would have been treasonous. Here they’re saying Jesus—not Caesar—is king. And Jesus, who often would deflect such treatment because it wasn’t yet time for him to be treated as king (cf. Jn.6:15), here receives the treatment as appropriate.
Reflecting upon this Andreas Köstenberger and Justin Taylor conclude:
The whole city is shaken by the events, and the crowd keeps spreading the word to any in Jerusalem who have not yet heard who Jesus is (Matt.21:10-11). Some Pharisees instruct Jesus to rebuke the crowds for their dangerous messianic exuberance, but he refuses to correct or curtail the excitement of the crowd over his entrance into the city (Matt.21:15-17; Luke 19:39-40). It would be hard to overestimate the political and religious volatility incited by Jesus’s actions—the Pharisees were taken by surprise and had no idea how to respond (John 12:19). Up to this point in Jesus’s ministry, he could still have managed to live a long, happy, peaceful life but his actions on Sunday set in motion a series of events that could result only in either his overthrow of the Romans and the current religious establishment—or his brutal death. He has crossed the point of no return; there would be no turning back. Caesar would allow no rival kings.*
Imagine what must have stirred in Jesus’s heart as he rode the colt, treated with praise by a crowd likely mixed with true believers and unbelievers who are just subject to that day’s zeitgeist. The latter would, in a few days, call for his crucifixion. Was Jesus smiling at people? Was he looking at them with a broken heart because he saw their fakeness? We know that he then weeps as he enters Jerusalem (Luke19:41-44). We also know that when the religious leaders told him to tell the people to stop praising him, he responded that if they stopped, the rocks would cry out (Luke 19:40). So he’s engaged in the moment, then gets emotional when approaching Jerusalem, understandably so.
But whatever was going on internally, this Sunday was no normal Sunday, and neither was it the typical bright, celebratory and somewhat chipper Sunday that precedes the darkness of Good Friday. No, this, as the quote above said, was the point of no return. To receive the label of promised King from David, and to do so with signs that reflect both Solomon (1 Kn. 1:33) and a newly anointed king of Israel (2 Kn. 9:13), was to challenge the (divinely-appoint) establishment and say, “This whole creation, from the Emperor of Rome down to the scum on the public bathroom floor, is mine, for the purpose of glorifying me.” Jesus knew what he was doing, and that his kingship would soon include with a painful crown of thorns, and a throne from which he’d hang until his breath gave out.
So I don’t know what he felt and thought as he rode. But I bet the heaviness was beginning.
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*Andreas Köstenberger, Justin Taylor, The Final Days of Jesus: The Most Important Week of the Most Important Person Who Ever Lived (Wheaton: Crossway, 2014), 32.
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