As we move into Holy Week we celebrate the slightly schizophrenic Feast of Palm or Passion Sunday. The palms and celebration of Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem is short lived (Luke 19:28-40), quickly followed by a long reading of his passion and death (Luke 22:14-23:56).
Head snapping though this may be, and probably was for his followers at the time, it’s not really a contradiction or even a reversal. The apparent triumph is not really a triumph. It has more in common with the misunderstandings and conflicts between Jesus and the Pharisees that we’ve been hearing over the last few weeks. The people cheering him on the way into Jerusalem are also confused about who he is and what he stands for. Jesus allows them their moment of exuberance but they haven’t absorbed his message. In a few days their opinion will swing the other way and they’ll be shouting for his execution.
Jesus’ triumph doesn’t come with a parade and cheering crowds. It comes in a moment of agony alone on a cross. Except he isn’t alone. The power of God is inside him. A power that will break out of him and transform those closest to him and then the whole world.
That power isn’t found in supportive crowds, in voting majorities, in winning arguments or wars or court cases, in forcing people away, in taking control. That power is found in giving up all those things, in dying, utterly empty, alone. Jesus gave up everything and thereby gave us everything. But to receive it we also have to give up everything that we hold onto, everything we think we need, everything we think we deserve.
We need only one thing, that is the love of God. Then we have everything. That is what Jesus died to give us.