Palm Sunday

I have always had a strange relationship with Palm Sunday.

As a child, I was forced to parade around the church having a palm frond for reasons I never fully understood (after all, the adults never had to). As you can guess, I wasn’t one of those extroverted energetic children who loved such things.

But even if I wanted to enjoy it in a more reserved manner, it seemed a bit like a party; it had great brass instrumentation joining the organ, a lot of energy, smiling faces, and a “light” feel to it. Even as a child I knew it was a big deal, and a wonderfully joyous occasion.

Now as an adult, I can’t help but hear the dissonance under the harmonious chorus of “Hosanna! Hosanna!” - the joy underlying the passionate cries of the people shouting “Save us, Lord!” seem to clash with the faint premonitions of their future screams; “crucify him! His blood be on us and our children!”

I know that my cries of “save me, Jesus” in throughout my life are inextricably linked with my propensity to reject God and His desires for me. And in that rejection, I am among those crying out for the death of Jesus just a few days from now. Indeed, the answer to my cry of “Hosanna (God save us)” is Jesus’s death and resurrection. It’s paradoxical in away.

Today, I was struck by something else in the story of that triumphant entry of Jesus, the first Palm Sunday: Jesus rides into town on a donkey. Not just any donkey, but a young one. A brand new one - a foal, or a colt (which is generally the term for a donkey or horse that hasn’t reached a year of age yet). I’ll even venture a guess and say it’s likely that this donkey had maybe never carried a burden before.

If you don’t know anything much about donkeys, this might strike you as weird, but only a bit. Instead of a horse (something a king, or governor, or warrior might ride - something with power), Jesus came to us on something more humble.

But have you ever seen a donkey in real life? They’re like, 3 feet tall at their withers (where the heck and back meet). Jesus was a grown man, riding on this small, short, beast of burden.

I must have looked absurd.

This young, fresh, donkey - maybe never having born a sack of grain or a pack for a voyage, struggling under the weight of a full grown human.

Picture it. Perhaps Jesus’s feet-occasionally dragged on the ground. Perhaps the donkey stumbled. This humble, beast of burden struggling to usher in God’s Kingdom through the entrance of Jesus into the holy city.

It strikes me as another dissonance. It’s a shadow, a small glimpse forward, into Jesus’s own journey to the cross on Friday.

Innocent, flawless, and stumbling under the burden of an entire humanity’s sin in order to usher in God’s Kingdom.

A Kingdom where all an reconciled.

All are made new.

Grace overflows.

Peace lasts.

I cry out in relief today. The king is here! Salvation is here!

I see him struggle with a burden that should have been mine. And yet he goes willingly. “Hosanna,” I shout. “God save me!”

And he did.