Palm Sunday 2023: Hosanna!!!!

Father,
As we enter Holy Week this year and stop to look at your Son’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, be with us. Help us to join in the joy of the day. Help us to hear Him clearly in the text. Help us to feel and smell the dust from the road, the wind and the sweat from the throngs of people who greeted Him in defiance of Empire. Jesus, help us to feel your heart for Jerusalem, for Your people. Holy Spirit, help us to join in with what you desire for us in this moment. In Jesus’ name,
Amen.
It is a warm, breezy day as Jesus prepares to ride to Jerusalem from Bethany. He dispatches two of the twelve to borrow a young, unbroken donkey’s foal from a local person. He knows much of what will transpire in the next week, and the human side of Him relishes in the approbation that He knows He will receive that day, but then balances that against the reality of what will be coming later in the week, whether sooner, or later. I don’t think that He knew that He would be raised from the dead, but I think the Father let Him know that the cross was coming, that these who cheered so loudly for Him would so easily be turned against Him. Against that internal backdrop, the two who He sent out to find the donkey come back with the animal, with jubilation because all was as the Master had said it would be. They catch a glimpse of Jesus’ face as a cloud passes over it. Jesus shakes off the thoughts and feelings He was having, then tells them to get the others, because it is time to go to Jerusalem. Two of them lay their cloaks on the animal’s back, then mounts the young donkey, and they set out on the 2 mile trip from Mary & Martha’s place to the gates of Jerusalem.
Just a little way into the trip, a crowd begins to throng around the road, cutting and placing palm branches, waving cloaks, and crying out:
“Hosanna! Hosanna to the Son of David!!!!”
“Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord!”
Then, almost on cue, the pharisees get Jesus’ attention:
“Shut them down! Don’t you realize what this could look like to the Romans?”
I see Jesus laughing at them, but not at THEM, but the spirits behind them, then He grins from ear to ear, and shouts, over the crowd:
“If I silence them, the very ROCKS themselves will begin to cry out, and you will hear it.”
That shut the pharisees down, though I sense that they simply added it to their “list”, and got even more angry with Him because He didn’t bow the knee to their demands, so they went to plot about how they could take Him down. They hated that they could not control Him, their pressure meant nothing... It was almost as though He was challenging them to do something about Him and His message. It was a clash of Kingdoms. A war of the worlds, so to speak. Jesus knew that He had come to die, not that He wanted to suffer, but was committed to the Father’s rescue plan, as we have talked about in our recent memesplanations on theosis. I love that other interpretation of why Jesus came. It wasn’t because we were basically evil, though we have become bent in that direction over time. It was to restore relationship and communion with us, and to open the way to experience communion with God even here, if we will empty ourselves of ourselves, and learn to love one another in the way that we were originally designed to. It is that simple. Heaven is union with God. That is why Jesus came.
This is Holy Week, and this week, I will post short reflections on the events of that week, with an eye towards convincing you that perhaps the traditional account doesn’t make sense in terms of time. The meaning of the events is the same, but perhaps most of the action happened in the first 4 days of the week, from Sunday-Wednesday, rather than skipping about 2 days, and truncating the 3 days Jesus was supposed to be in the grave to 1-1.5 days. Never sat right with me... At any rate, tune in for those, here on the Spirituality & Tech channel on Rumble.