Matthew 21:1-11
The Passion Week readings are sometimes read all the way through in church on Palm Sunday. It’s a very long reading that takes us from the celebration of Palm Sunday all the way through Holy Thursday and the first Lord’s Table, to the agony of Good Friday and the darkness and loss of Holy Saturday.
We start out in such joy with the people of Jerusalem cheering Jesus as he rides into the city, praising him as “He who comes in the name of the Lord!” But the joy does not last long. Not long afterward, the disciples are gathered with Jesus to share the Seder meal recalling the story of how God set the Hebrew people free from slavery in Egypt. Later that evening soldiers from the Temple Guard come and arrest Jesus, based on his betrayal by Judas.
The next morning, Jesus is brought before Pilate for judgment and even though Pilate insists he finds no wrong in Jesus, finally he is taken by the Roman soldiers to Golgotha and put to death in a barbaric and agonizing manner, nailed on a cross, and, finally, laid in a borrowed tomb.
It’s a lifetime of experience crammed into a few short days. It’s such a roller-coaster ride of love and hatred, adoration and betrayal. It is exhausting and painful for us to read it. How much more so for Jesus, who lived it? We all know how the story ends, and we look forward to Easter morning, when joy comes again. But we are never allowed to skip over Holy Week — we must go through it in order to see Easter.
The Passion Week readings are sometimes read all the way through in church on Palm Sunday. It’s a very long reading that takes us from the celebration of Palm Sunday all the way through Holy Thursday and the first Lord’s Table, to the agony of Good Friday and the darkness and loss of Holy Saturday.
We start out in such joy with the people of Jerusalem cheering Jesus as he rides into the city, praising him as “He who comes in the name of the Lord!” But the joy does not last long. Not long afterward, the disciples are gathered with Jesus to share the Seder meal recalling the story of how God set the Hebrew people free from slavery in Egypt. Later that evening soldiers from the Temple Guard come and arrest Jesus, based on his betrayal by Judas.
The next morning, Jesus is brought before Pilate for judgment and even though Pilate insists he finds no wrong in Jesus, finally he is taken by the Roman soldiers to Golgotha and put to death in a barbaric and agonizing manner, nailed on a cross, and, finally, laid in a borrowed tomb.
It’s a lifetime of experience crammed into a few short days. It’s such a roller-coaster ride of love and hatred, adoration and betrayal. It is exhausting and painful for us to read it. How much more so for Jesus, who lived it? We all know how the story ends, and we look forward to Easter morning, when joy comes again. But we are never allowed to skip over Holy Week — we must go through it in order to see Easter.
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