The love exposed by the triumphal entry
Palm Sunday | Matthew 21:1-11
Today is Palm Sunday. It is the beginning of Holy Week and the day we remember Jesus’s arrival in Jerusalem and then, at the end of the week, his passion and crucifixion. It is a complex day for people of faith. Always has been.
One of the enduring questions for Christians is raised today: as we acknowledge the genuine excitement of the crowds at the beginning of the week and the seeming eagerness to kill him by Friday. This, as many already know, is a distortion and confusion of the events, sliding it all together, and making us feel like humanity itself is the problem, that you and I are just as responsible for the death of Jesus as the Roman guards who took him into custody, the sham trial they put him through, and then executed him with a punishment reserved for terrorists and revolutionaries.
We get muddled today, is what I’m saying. And I’m sorry to say that our tradition doesn’t help much. But I think we’d be well served, as always, with a little context.
If we look back at the previous chapter, chapter 20 in Matthew, we can learn a lot about this moment. If you’ve got a Bible handy, you might want to follow along, just glancing at the sequence of events:
For a limited time, you may find the audio here.
