Trial In The Garden

We are in week 4 of our series “The Road To Easter”, where we are looking at some of the most significant episodes of Jesus’s life that led to the cross and the resurrection. While the cross and the empty tomb of resurrection are the end of that road, Easter is the culmination of God’s eternity-spanning plan to rescue us, His people, from the clutches of sin and death and give us new life, a hope, and a future wrapped in His never-ending love. And as we take an extend look at the interactions and events that led into Easter, I believe there is so much we can learn from and grow through in our mission to live out the hope and resurrection of Jesus in our own lives and share that hope with the world around us!

This Sunday is traditionally referred to as “Palm Sunday”, the beginning of what the Church has often called “Holy Week”. This is the final week, the last week of Jesus’s Earthly ministry. It is the culmination of His journey to the cross, to redemption and hope, to the Resurrection and to Easter. Palm Sunday marks and celebrates Jesus’s triumphant entry to Jerusalem. Many of the same people who witnessed Jesus’s miraculous raising of Lazarus from the dead mere days prior were now waving palm branches and laying them at His feet. The palm branches represented the celebrating of a great victory, often in the context of a military triumph. And so the people were chanting and shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord” and “Blessed is the king of Israel!” The great long awaited Messiah had finally come to set the captives free, defeat the oppressors, usher in the kingdom of God, and restore Israel to its former glory. And so began the tradition of Palm Sunday and celebrating the arrival of Jesus into His kingdom.

But what I find so striking about this celebration of victory and kingdom and Messiah is that it was the wrong victory and kingdom and Messiah. The victory that Jesus was bringing was victory over sin and death. The kingdom that Jesus was ushering in was a kingdom for the broken-hearted, for the losers, for the lowly and meek, for the sinners and saints, and for the least of these. The Messiah that Jesus came to be was not a conquering Messiah but the Suffering Messiah. The people who sang of Him as He entered Jerusalem would be the same people who cursed and rejected Him just a few short days later. Jesus’s triumphant entry into His kingdom was not on palm branches while people adored Him. It was in garden while people betrayed Him and on a cross as God forsook Him.