In this micro-series, Clint Loveall and Michael Gewecke discuss the significance of Palm Sunday and the start of Holy Week. They delve into the complexities of the crowd’s expectations, the irony of Jesus as a peaceful Savior, and the challenges faced by Jesus and his disciples during this pivotal week. Throughout the conversation, they explore themes of celebration, humility, and the humanity of Jesus. Join them as they reflect on the profound journey from joyous entry to the impending crucifixion.
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00:00:00:50 – 00:00:28:46
Clint Loveall
Hello, everybody. Thanks for being with us. As we start Monday, just an update on plans we’re going to this week focus on the events of this week in the church. This is called the Holy Week. That is the week between Palm Sunday, yesterday and Easter. Next Sunday, we will kind of be moving around in the various Holy Week stories to try and cover some of the bases as we move toward Easter.
00:00:28:51 – 00:00:56:57
Clint Loveall
Then next week, I believe on Tuesday of next week will be off, Monday. On Tuesday of next week, we will be starting a series on Jonah. Fantastic little book. Fascinating story. Lots of interesting stuff in terms of content and then theology and questions and all kinds of stuff. So if you can join us for this week, great. If you can join us as we begin, Jonah, next week.
00:00:57:01 – 00:01:23:22
Clint Loveall
We’d love to have you today. Speaking of Palm Sunday, we thought that we would circle back to yesterday and unpack this event. Only John gives it a day in the Gospels. Only John gives it a date. But all of the Gospels record that there is this moment that Jesus rides a Colt or a donkey into Jerusalem. And there are several things that are significant about that.
00:01:23:27 – 00:01:59:44
Clint Loveall
The first is Jerusalem. Jerusalem has always been thought historically in Judaism to be the place where things are going to happen. And so the Messiah would be announced in Jerusalem will rain from Jerusalem. The temple was in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is the center of Jewish life in Jesus day. And so it is it is no surprise and there’s certainly no accident that Jesus makes that trip into Jerusalem on the the eve of his crucifixion.
00:01:59:49 – 00:02:28:41
Clint Loveall
Although, Michael, I would say a lot changes when we when we see Palm Sunday. It’s really kind of a highlight in the story. It is one of the few moments where there’s vocal celebration of Jesus. The crowds are behind him. The chant, we’ll talk about that in a moment. But it’s very seriously positive, very affirming. There is some squabble with the religious leaders, but that’s pretty much true in every Jesus story.
00:02:28:46 – 00:02:31:09
Clint Loveall
We start the week on a pretty high note.
00:02:31:13 – 00:03:07:27
Michael Gewecke
We do we we start that high note with the larger crowd for sure. I think we also start with a really high note for the disciples in many ways, because what we may forget is that the triumphal entry into Jerusalem is preceded by this very interesting prophetic story that that Jesus or prophetic message teaching that Jesus gives, where he calls the disciples to go forward and to find this cult that’s been waiting for him, this idea, Hey, if you go do this thing, then you bring this cult to me and then I’ll be able to ride it.
00:03:07:31 – 00:03:29:45
Michael Gewecke
And this is, of course, in the book of Matthew. That’s what I have up here in front of us in Matthew’s telling this story. This exists to fulfill the prophecy that comes before. Because if you know Matthew’s full of those distinctive of Jesus, how He fulfills the Old Testament prophets. But here in verse six, when the disciples do what Jesus directed them, then Jesus sits on the cult.
00:03:29:45 – 00:04:08:58
Michael Gewecke
There’s a moment here where the disciples were giving instruction. They listened, they were attentive, they were full of faith. They believed what Jesus had told them. And so ultimately, as Jesus comes into the city, he’s coming in a moment in which his disciples have been following. They’ve been believing that it’s a positive for them in that way. The crowd really in a unique story in the New Testament, is both seeing Jesus as the saving one, which is a very strong claim, and they’re rejoicing and celebrating his arrival.
00:04:08:58 – 00:04:44:33
Michael Gewecke
I mean, so in many ways this story does have a culminating kind of power to it. And there’s a way in which within the storytelling, at least of the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke John does something a little different the way that the story is told. You start this week with an unbelievable theological high, just this idea that the people, for a brief glimmer of a moment, it seems the most people might get what’s going on for a short period of time.
00:04:44:33 – 00:05:17:24
Michael Gewecke
And then as we know from that high place, the story’s going to quickly descend it. It accentuates the end of the week in a powerful kind of way, that it’s not that Jesus was on some sort of continuous slope that, you know, people God a long time ago. Then they slowly got angry with him. Now, the idea that in just a few short days, people go from celebrating Jesus’s arrival to calling for his crucifixion, that kind of whiplash is inherent in the way that this story has been told.
00:05:17:24 – 00:05:22:27
Michael Gewecke
And I think it’s notable how high of a moment this is coming into the city.
00:05:22:31 – 00:05:48:51
Clint Loveall
And I think there are some signs here that the people celebrate Jesus but don’t quite understand yet. There is a legend. I want to be a little careful with this. I can’t verify that this is 100% accurate, but there is an idea that when Roman conquerors would ride into a city, they would do so on a horse. But if they came in peace, they would ride on a donkey.
00:05:48:55 – 00:06:11:30
Clint Loveall
Now, now, that may or may not be accurate and it may or may not inform this story. It certainly does inform this story is the idea that the prophets had predicted. So let me read one of the things that people say. This is so as it is written. Do not be afraid. Daughter of Zion. Look, your king comes sitting on a donkey’s colt.
00:06:11:34 – 00:06:38:39
Clint Loveall
And so the idea of humility is certainly in play here, potentially also the idea of peace. And yet it is the song of the Messiah that the people sing. Blessed to see who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the Gospel of John. They even say the King of Israel. And and so the expectation at this point is still a military leader, a conqueror, and they don’t yet understand.
00:06:38:43 – 00:07:04:40
Clint Loveall
No one in this story at this point understands that Jesus comes not only in humility, but in in peace, in in submission. No one sees at this high point, this parade, this celebration, palm branches are again, are a sign of victory. Often enrollment parades, they would be waved as a sign of victory and success as people are doing.
00:07:04:40 – 00:07:34:58
Clint Loveall
That is the sum to whatever extent this caught on as it builds in during Jesus entry into the city, no one sees the cross five days down the road. No one understands that that’s where this path is headed and I think that makes this a challenge. I think from a devotional standpoint, the Palm Sunday story, it is a nice respite in Lent.
00:07:34:58 – 00:07:53:35
Clint Loveall
It is nice to get to Palm Sunday, get to do some major key music, get out the brass instruments and have kids wave palm branches. In a lot of churches, it is a nice moment where we get to let go of some of the heaviness that is behind us and certainly that is coming during the rest of the week.
00:07:53:40 – 00:08:30:02
Clint Loveall
But it is also, I think, a moment of challenge as we reflect on, as you mentioned, Michael, that the Gospels portray the crowd on Palm Sunday and the crowd on Good Friday as the same people. And I think the challenge in that is for us to examine our own praise, our own celebration, and to strive to be genuine, to to strive to be less fickle and less picky and less blown by the winds of change than we see in these stories.
00:08:30:07 – 00:08:53:52
Michael Gewecke
So I think I thing that we might not know or we shouldn’t take for granted, but we know is this word Hosanna has the meaning of save us be the one who saves. And I think it it’s really important to recognize that when this crowd cries out to Jesus here, I’m now in Mark and looking here at Mark 11, verse nine, you know, save us.
00:08:53:52 – 00:09:28:48
Michael Gewecke
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord, save us the coming kingdom of our ancestor, David. Remember, David is a monarch. He’s a king that the people are looking for someone who’s saving work is going to be to overthrow the rulers of Jerusalem, overthrow the earthly people who are subjugating the Kingdom of David. When the people are calling Jesus Savior to whatever extent they do or don’t get it, I think it’s fair to say they are expecting the savior to do a particular thing.
00:09:29:00 – 00:09:51:18
Michael Gewecke
And you, you you said that Jesus comes in peace. I think Jesus represents an entirely different kingdom of peace. I mean, it’s not just that he comes and he wants to negotiate towards a new kingdom without warfare. Jesus is instituting a new thing that the crowd cannot even comprehend. So on one hand they get it. Yeah, Jesus is Savior.
00:09:51:28 – 00:09:58:06
Michael Gewecke
But it’s a kind of irony because it’s not the savior they’re looking for. They expect a different thing from their savior than what they’re going to get.
00:09:58:17 – 00:10:02:44
Clint Loveall
Yeah. And by the end of the week, they’re going to decide that they were wrong, right?
00:10:02:49 – 00:10:03:07
Michael Gewecke
Yeah.
00:10:03:21 – 00:10:29:19
Clint Loveall
And clearly that tension is written into the story in the Gospel of Luke, which we’ve recently gone through. If you’ve been with us, you might remember that in this scene, but only in Luke’s gospel. Some religious leaders tell Jesus that he has to silence the people that they can’t. They can’t chant these songs. They they run the risk of offending the Romans or of committing blasphemy, whichever sensitivity they have.
00:10:29:24 – 00:11:03:36
Clint Loveall
And Jesus tells them, Well, if they’re silent, the stones will cry out. In other words, this moment is so obvious and it is one of the few moments. Help me, Michael, if I may. Maybe I’m maybe my memory has some gaps in it, but it’s one of the few moments in Scripture that it seems so clear that Jesus sets up the maybe the same could be said about The Last Supper, but Jesus instructs them to go get the donkey or the colt in John.
00:11:03:36 – 00:11:31:54
Clint Loveall
The simplest telling he finds a young donkey. But there is something about this moment that Jesus orchestrates to to make and to make a scene or to make a statement. Rarely do we see Jesus involved in the kind of planning out of a story or of as a story unfolds. And this seems to me to be one of the significant exceptions of that.
00:11:31:58 – 00:12:05:34
Michael Gewecke
You know, so, Clint, we just went through Luke, as you said, and I would point out, I think Luke’s telling of this story is is really interesting for two reasons, actually. So one, I want to share with you here that the coming in to Jerusalem is a moment where we begin to see the end of Luke’s inclusion of the Pharisees, and then it begins and switches over to the Sadducees, the the scribal leaders that the sort of who’s who of the Jerusalem religious elite.
00:12:05:34 – 00:12:32:39
Michael Gewecke
And I think what’s interesting is, as it comes to the end of the telling of Jesus’s conflict with the Pharisees and by the way, his conflicts with them have only grown in intensity. We have this this amazing line, Jesus answers and says, I tell you, if these who are crying out were to be silent, the Stones would shout out the idea that they’re just merely giving voice to a thing, that the whole creation is longing for.
00:12:32:43 – 00:13:04:43
Michael Gewecke
I mean, that’s that’s a powerful retort. That’s a powerful response. And I think the fact that you can see opposition in Luke’s telling of the story, that that it’s not just that the crowds are celebrating, that they’re crying out hosanna, they’re welcoming this person that they think might stand to upset the the political order. It’s that it’s that they see their own order threatened by the arrival of Jesus.
00:13:04:48 – 00:13:26:54
Michael Gewecke
They need to silence the crowd because what is happening here is dangerous and specifically, if you know the themes throughout Luke that we just went through so often they are concerned that Luke’s telling the story with their own skin, with their own privilege, but their own power, with their own actual accumulation of money has come up numerous times.
00:13:26:54 – 00:13:49:49
Michael Gewecke
So the idea that Jerusalem and Jesus coming in there has something to say about this humility. It has something to say about the crowd, but with getting getting it and not getting it, that some people feel threatened by it, that Jesus is given a kind of privilege that we’re going to see us contrast to the great amount of suffering that’s about to happen.
00:13:50:00 – 00:14:00:09
Michael Gewecke
And it’s a small story. And yet in the midst of this story, I think it does open wide the gates to the week that we’re entering into.
00:14:00:14 – 00:14:33:34
Clint Loveall
Yeah. And if you’re not in a if you’re not in a tradition that is relatively hardcore about the church calendar, I think this is probably your experience. You know, if you’re if you’re Presbyterian or mainline Protestant, Lent and particularly Holy Week is one of the rare opportunities we have to have particular days. You know, they have an ash Wednesday, a Maundy Thursday with Good Friday some some traditions celebrate Holy Saturday.
00:14:33:39 – 00:15:02:53
Clint Loveall
So much of our worship life happens on Sunday to Sunday and that that seven day cycle but this this last seven days before Easter that we call holy week I think really gives us a fascinating opportunity to walk our way to a story. I’m trying to think of another time in the church calendar. We do that. Michael. I mean, we have Advent, but even then, you know, you’re primarily dealing with Sundays and then of course, Christmas Eve.
00:15:02:58 – 00:15:35:55
Clint Loveall
But we don’t know what day Christmas Eve is on that moves the idea that we have a Thursday, that we celebrate a particular thing and a Friday and a Saturday that lead us to Easter. I hope that there will be something in that that means something. I think it’s an Internet interesting tradition that Christians have developed. Not all of them follow a kind of Holy Week pattern, but I think for those of us who do, there’s some real opportunities to enhance our both our understanding and our celebration of Easter, which is ultimately the point.
00:15:36:00 – 00:16:00:09
Michael Gewecke
We’ll come back to this in future conversations. But I think one of the significant benefits of that movement you’re discussing is it acknowledges the full humanity of the Jesus who will go through this week. In other words, there are moments of great joy and celebration every human can relate to that expression in our lives. And there’s going to be moments of betrayal.
00:16:00:21 – 00:16:22:33
Michael Gewecke
There’s going to be moments of great grief. There’s be great moments of physical and emotional and mental suffering. And it’s not just going to be related to Jesus specifically. It’s going be related to his disciples and his mother and those who’ve been with him for all of these years, people he would call friends. So there’s a real humanity in the telling of this week.
00:16:22:33 – 00:16:45:52
Michael Gewecke
And I think when you take the week in that small step approach, what you’re going to discover is that there is a great wealth of human experience for us to learn from, because indeed Jesus is the Son of God, but He is fully human. And the week that he is now going to face, we have something to learn from in the midst of our own human experience.
00:16:45:52 – 00:17:21:52
Clint Loveall
Yeah, and you may not you may not realize it, but if you if you go through the Gospels and pay attention to where this story falls, most of the gospel writers devote about a third of their gospel. John’s call, sort of half of the last week of Jesus life. And so this Holy Week is proportionately incredibly important for those who first told the story of Jesus to the idea that, you know, say, in Luke, the 24 chapters in and something like 17 or 19 is where we see that procession.
00:17:21:52 – 00:17:29:55
Clint Loveall
So we there is a significant importance to these stories, even within the layout of our gospels.
00:17:30:00 – 00:18:02:04
Michael Gewecke
Yeah. And I think that one of the temptations, if you don’t have that kind of liturgical or very intentional practice in the week coming up to Easter is clean, it’s really easy to jump from essentially doing church as normal to doing church on Easter. It’s a tempting human reality to say, I want to start and end with celebration, but if you know your Bible, you know that’s the road between joy and resurrection.
00:18:02:04 – 00:18:22:39
Michael Gewecke
The road between the celebration of Jesus’s own entry into Jerusalem and Jesus’s ultimate return to Jerusalem, which is told at the very end of the Bible, it’s not even at the end of the gospels. That’s going to be a revelation text. But the idea of that whole cycle that is filled with twists and turns, that dark, dark, dark, dark valleys.
00:18:22:39 – 00:18:48:03
Michael Gewecke
And that’s the point. And so when we slow down to see it, we be it begins to teach us something about God’s ability to be with us in those difficult twisting journeys. And so I certainly hope you’ll tune in as we go through this over the next few days. That will each day be live streaming sort of the the thoughts for that day, Jesus’s position in the week on that day, and hope that as we go, there will be something of interest.
00:18:48:12 – 00:18:49:08
Clint Loveall
Thanks for joining us.