Palm Sunday Belated

Here is a story I had to write, and subsequently tell/embody for a class. I kind of like the shape of it. It's very short, but I thought I'd share it:



So Jesus and his disciples were on their way to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. They had lived together, traveled together, eaten meals, told jokes, exorcized spirits together. They had seen the best and worst in each other, and had grown into a tight knit group of friends. After three years they were family. And now they were to celebrate Passover together in Jerusalem as a family.

Given Jesus’ growing notoriety, or notoriousness, depending on your perspective, the larger Jerusalem grew on the horizon, the larger the crowds were that were traveling with them. Evidently word of Jesus’ teaching, healing, and love for the fatherless, the widow, the lepers, tax collectors and really anyone who crossed his path had reached the ears of many because they came out to meet him with an expectation that felt to his disciples like electricity in the air.

Jesus had told two of his disciples to go ahead into a village on the outskirts of Jerusalem to find a colt that had been tied up, which no one had ever ridden, to untie it and bring it to him. He said if anyone asks you why you’re doing this, simply tell them The Lord needs it and will send it back shortly. When they returned with the colt they spread their cloaks on it. Jesus sat on the colt and as they came upon the outskirts of Jerusalem the crowds which had continued growing larger and larger through the past several villages began laying palms on the ground in front of the Colt singing, HOSANNA, BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD, BLESSED IS THE COMING KINGDOM OF OUR FATHER DAVID, HOSANNA IN THE HIGHEST.

In this spontaneous upwelling of community adoration the disciples began to believe that these crowds were seeing the Jesus they had lived with, the one Peter had confessed as the Messiah. They had great expectations for the week ahead, and Jesus seemed to embrace their expectations rebuking a group Pharisees who were livid because of the crowd’s open declaration, reserved for Kings of Israel, telling them if the crowds kept silent the stones themselves would cry out. This was an amazing time to be one so close to Jesus.

What the disciples didn’t see was that they hadn’t embraced Jesus’ expectations. To their shock and horror they would find it would be Jesus' expectations, and his adoration and obedience to the Father that would shape the coming week and indeed each of their lives in ways they weren’t presently able to conceive of or imagine.