It was time for a parade. And who doesn’t love a parade? The excitement, the thrills, seeing things which just aren’t your everyday sort of thing. Around here, you can go from parade to parade, weekend after weekend in the late summer as the various festivals take their turns.
What we have as the feature of our readings today is two parades. One, the parade we commemorated at the beginning of our worship this morning, with the palm procession and the singing of that triumphant hymn to our Lord Jesus–All Glory, Laud and Honour. For indeed Jesus is worthy of all glory, laud, and honour. But we don’t stop with that parade, tempting as that would be. No, as we have just spent the better part of fifteen minutes listening to, there is a second parade, the parade of Good Friday, a parade of equal note and greater worth than the first.
Palm Sunday’s parade is important, to be sure. It would be wrong to state that nothing really happened that day. A lot happened, a lot was worth noting. For Palm Sunday was the great fulfilment of so many prophecies. Jesus was the one who had come in the name of the LORD, for one thing–He was the Messiah. The expectation of the annual Passover pilgrims, that this year the Messiah would make His presence known to His people, was finally realized. The words of the pilgrims– Save now! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord–were quoting from Psalm 118. The fact that Jesus rode into town on a lowly donkey was a fulfilment of the words of the prophet Zechariah, written some 450 or 500 years earlier: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” (Zechariah 9:9 ESV)
Everything looked to be going so well. Jesus was acclaimed as king. It seemed as though the world was rejoicing and partying along with the gathered throng that Sunday as Jesus rode into Jerusalem. The people laid their palms before Him, put their clothing down on the road to pave the way for the Son of David, now entering His royal city.
It was a moment of glory, to be sure. A moment of great excitement, of bewildering joy. If you were one of Jesus’ twelve, it would have been a very gratifying day. You were on the winning team! Jesus really was who He claimed to be!
But then when Jesus actually got into Jerusalem, it was almost as though He didn’t want to be king, or at least not king in the way that people were expecting Him to. He didn’t start any insurrections. He didn’t do anything too revolutionary, other than toppling the tables of the moneychangers in the temple. That was revolutionary, though, in the eyes of those around, perhaps not too wise. Everyone knew that the temple changers were there in order to make sure that the chief priest and his kind got their fair share from the worship of the people. Attacking their little fiefdom was an attack on their special Roman-given privileges.
After all, Rome did have a hand in ensuring the right man was in charge. So long as there was a reasonable amount of peace and security in Judea, Rome could care less what the Jews did in their temple. They had no particular care other than that the flow of tax from the provinces continue to flow smoothly, in order to ensure that the soldiers got paid and the Pax Romana, the Roman-engineered peace and well-being, could continue.
But the religious elite did care. Caiaphas had, after all, noted that it would be a good thing for the continuing success of Jerusalem Temple Incorporated if Jesus were to take one for the team. He was dangerous to them because, if He were the Son of God, He would overthrow their power structures, and , if He were not, He was showing people a different way from their established ways and means. One way or the other, Jesus was just bad news for the Sadducees and the temple group.
They had seen enough of this Jesus. The Lazarus healing had been the last straw. No doubt seeing this parade on route was enough to really set their teeth on edge. How dare Jesus? How dare He claim to be King, how dare He allow His followers to bring this sort of tribute! There had been rumours that when some made an effort to silence the crowd, Jesus had said something about the stones singing His praises. Imagine that. The stones singing! Jesus was the problem.
Throughout the week, He went to the temple and there was tested and tried by various groups of the religious elite, each with their own words and deceitful ways. Tested and tried, to see if there was some law He would break, some rule He would contravene, some way in which He would give them an excuse to have Him put on trial and locked away, or, perhaps, even executed, just like his relative, that troublemaker John the Baptist, had been. Trick by trick they fell aside, unable to trap him, exposed for their own devious and self-centred ways.
But they found a way in. One of Jesus’ disciples, a man named Judas, was a little discontented with how things were going and decided he could turn Jesus over to them for the right price. The right price wasn’t a lot of money–30 pieces of silver, but it was enough for Judas to do what he did.
Late on Thursday night and early on Friday morning, the plans were laid for the second parade. This parade was not nearly as joyful as the first one. Not in the least. The first parade seemed a certain prelude to a coronation. It was only a matter of time. The first parade was surrounded by throngs of cheering and celebrating people, rejoicing that they would see the day of the King ascended onto His throne, rejoicing that they would once again have the Son of David rule over them and not some Herod or Roman prelate.
The second parade was set up by some sneaky underhanded dealings, by kangaroo courts, by the forces of the powers that be desiring to keep Jesus from becoming any sort of earthly power or authority. They did not understand what Jesus was here to do, because they hadn’t been listening. He had told people time and again about the kingdom of heaven, about the kingdom of God. He had demanded people change their hearts, not their political allegiances.
And now, the parade began its planning with the angry horde who came to arrest Jesus late that night in the Garden of Gethsemane, that horde which was so afraid to do anything with Jesus in broad daylight because they didn’t want to kick up a fuss. They had the parade route all planned–from the palace of Pilate, the Roman procurator, straight out the city gates to the nearby hill of Golgotha. This parade route would be lined by throngs, too–crying, weeping, horrified throngs wondering just how Jesus could have gone from the toast of the town on Sunday to Public Enemy # 1 on Friday.
An awful parade to watch, this one was. Watch as the Sanhedrin trumps up false charges to arraign Jesus on. Watch as they send Him to Pilate, to Herod, and back to Pilate. See as Jesus is brutally whipped and mocked and scorned by the jeering soldiers. Watch as the crowd outside Pilate’s court is manipulated into setting a murderer free and having the only innocent man who ever lived condemned. Watch as the Roman soldiers led the three criminals through the streets, carrying their crosses. Watch as the crowds jeered the men condemned to death. Watch as Jesus, who had done nothing wrong, let alone anything punishable, is treated on the same level as the scum of the earth, the lowest of the low.
Watch as the parade goes by, dear friends, and realize that Jesus goes this way for you. Is it uncomfortable for you to hear the story of Good Friday? Is it hard for you to face up to a Saviour who lived on this earth precisely so He could be tormented and put to death? It’s supposed to be hard. It’s supposed to be uncomfortable. It’s supposed to make us all a little uneasy.
And that uneasiness should come from knowing why Jesus had to die. At the end of it all, nobody has clean hands. Not Pilate, not the Jewish leaders, not you, not me. Our sin is why He walks in that parade. We much prefer the pomp and pageantry of the palms. Why wouldn’t we? Palms are nice. They have a pleasant appearance. There’s something joyful about a king coming to claim His throne.
But to know that Jesus, bleeding and dying on that Cross has in that very hour ascended His throne, to see in that terrible instrument of torture and death the triumph of God–that’s something which only faith can see. That’s the mystery of God which is at the heart of this week we now enter. The reason we have this dual focus to Palm Sunday is precisely so we don’t get caught up in the wrong focus. It is great to have Jesus as our King of Kings, the chosen Son of David. It is even greater again to have Him as the Saviour of sinners, stricken, smitten, and afflicted, so that even my sins, 2000 years later, are fully wiped off God’s record book forever.
The choice is always before us as those who belong to Christ–do we seek the first parade or the second parade as our way to see Jesus? The first parade is much more attractive. There’s no hint of dying or suffering there. Only joy and rejoicing. But the second parade offers us hope in times of sorrow, in times of trial, in the valleys and low places of life. The second parade shows us that Jesus loves us so much that He willingly took all the shame and scorn that your sins and mine so rightly deserve and put an end to them on the Cross.
The way of the Cross is not the easy way. It is not the way to be attractive in a world that seeks for instant gratification and emotional highs. It is, however, the only way to be saved from this broken and fallen world, the only way to receive the share of Christ’s eternal kingdom. Join in the parade to Calvary, brothers and sisters in Christ. Come with us to the Upper Room, to the Garden, and to the Cross this Passion Week. And then come join us at the empty tomb and see our risen Lord on Easter, too! In Jesus. Amen.
Last updated March 2008 by the webmaster.