Holy Week | Sunday
The Sunday of Holy Week was a day of honor for the King.
12 The next day the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. 13 So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!” 14 And Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, just as it is written, 15 “Fear not, daughter of Zion; behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt!” 16 His disciples did not understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him and had been done to him. 17 The crowd that had been with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to bear witness. 18 The reason why the crowd went to meet him was that they heard he had done this sign. 19 So the Pharisees said to one another, “You see that you are gaining nothing. Look, the world has gone after him.”
John 12: 12-19 (ESV)
The Sunday of Holy Week was the only happy day of that week long ago. It’s the day that Jesus received a welcome in Jerusalem worthy of a king.
Of course, Jesus was just one of many Jews who were returning to Jerusalem for the celebration of Passover. But for the disciples of Jesus, his ascent to Zion had tremendous significance. The promised Messiah, when he came, would have business to do in Jerusalem! It was natural to expect that, as the son of David and heir of David’s throne, he would eventually be acknowledged as king in the city of David: Jerusalem.
Sure enough, as the Lord approached Jerusalem among the swelling crowds of faithful Jews from all over the empire, word about him traveled and the realization dawned on the masses: the long-awaited king was here, and he was traveling to the royal city with them! John tells us that this was due especially to the testimony of many among them who had seen Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead just a few days earlier. And so the people shouted out their joyful reception of Jesus as their Savior King. Their words “Hosanna to the Son of David!” were the equivalent of saying both “We are saved!” (Hosanna) and “Hail to the King!”
We gather from all four gospel accounts that the crowd was immense. Passover feasts in that day are documented as drawing over one million people, and in John’s gospel we have testimony from the Pharisees themselves of the sheer scale of the celebration. They say with dismay, “Look, the world has gone after him.” And it’s clear that this great multitude is acknowledging that Jesus of Nazareth was indeed the promised Messiah. Their words, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord,” are taken from Psalm 118 and were well known among the Jews as a reference to the long-awaited Messiah.
So this was a moment of truth for Israel: they now know who the Messiah is, and they welcome his rule over them. The palm branches, a symbol of Jewish patriotism, were being used to salute a national leader. Someone has said they were giving to Jesus the equivalent of a ticker-tape parade.
And Jesus accepts this royal tribute! Indeed, our Lord actually took steps to ensure that when he entered Jerusalem, he acted the part of a king. Jesus had already been walking the many miles to Jerusalem, along with other pilgrims. It was not as if he could not walk the rest of the way into the city. But it was not his will to walk into the city, like everyone else. He would ride, like a king. This was to fulfill the words of Zechariah 9:
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.
By carrying out these words of the prophet, Jesus was making a statement of his own kingly authority. He was adding a touch of royalty to his entry. He was claiming to be the rightful king, the heir of David.
For Discussion and Meditation:
When you think of the Sunday of Holy Week, you should think of the honor that all men owe to Jesus Christ as the rightful King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
Of course, we will see how quickly this crowd changes its mind. Despite their shouts of acclamation that Sunday, in just a few days a similar crowd within the city will be shouting “Crucify him!” (John 19: 12ff). Though on Palm Sunday it seems that it could be said of Jesus “he came to his own, and his own people received him gladly,” we know from the way that John begins his gospel that just the opposite would be proven true (John 1:11).
Yet, here on the eve of the great rejection of the Messiah by his own people, God the Father places a faithful song on their fickle lips, in order to mark out the true nature of what was happening. The King was coming to Jerusalem to save his people.
Indeed, the song of Palm Sunday is the song of all the disciples of Christ. We have far greater understanding than the crowds that day did of how the son of David was going to Jerusalem to accomplish the salvation of his people. Jesus is to us the “the blessed one” - all the more so for our awareness of what it cost him to bring us salvation. And in the light of what he did only a few days later on the cross, we who have put our faith in him can shout with joy: “Hosanna!” “We are saved!
