A Parade Fit For A King
Mark 11:1 – 11
There is a story about a young boy who was sick, and this young boy stayed home from church with his mother. It was Palm Sunday and the children waved palm branches to open the service. When his father returned from church he was holding a palm branch and the young boy was curious and asked, “Why do we have palm branches on Palm Sunday and why do we call this day Palm Sunday?”
“You see,” his dad explained, “when Jesus came into town, everyone waved palm branches to honor him, so we got palm branches in worship service today.” The little boy was visibly upset and replied, “Aw, darn! The one Sunday I miss is the Sunday that Jesus shows up!” The moral to this story is never miss an opportunity to go to church, you never know who might show up!
Friends, as spiritual pilgrims on this Lenten journey which began on Ash Wednesday, I challenged you with “Remember you are from dust and to dust you shall return” and that we all stand in constant need of returning to a personal relationship with God. And over the last five weeks we have been devoting a great amount of time reconnecting with that moment in which you first felt the need to respond to Christ’s promise to change your life.
As Christians we should be repenting, coming together, and embracing the new thing that God is already doing within us and among us. It has been a season of turning our hearts to the One whose promises are bigger than the stars; a season of fasting from the things that harm, while feasting on the grace that He provides.
We have walked the pathway of discipleship with purposeful prayer and self-reflection, and we have discovered that the very landscape of our hearts has been changed. What was once a rocky desert is now beginning to blossom with new and beautiful spiritual blooms.
This season has hopefully reshaped aching and broken hearts. The entire journey up to this point has prepared us—and our hearts—to enter these final days of Lent, to walk with Jesus, to remember his final days on earth, to endure the heartache and horror of death.
But today, at least for a few hours, we can set aside our trepidation about what we know is coming in the next few of days and revel in the refreshment that this day offers. We emerge today, from our wilderness wanderings and find ourselves caught up in of all things a parade, a party, a celebration, a procession of palms!
Friends, it has been a long journey to arrive today at the gates of Jerusalem and we are to witness Jesus making his grand entry into the heart of the Jews and into the sights of political power and religious authority that seeks to eliminate him.
Someone once compared the reception that Jesus received that day to the old tickertape parades in New York City, which honored royalty, heroes, and celebrities alike. Some of our younger people might wonder what a tickertape parade is. For you who have never seen the stuff, tickertape was long, narrow strands of paper, with holes punched in them that was the byproduct, the waste of the stock price tickers that fueled Wall Street. During a tickertape parade it was thrown from the high rises as a form of confetti.
You see, it was the greatest honor that the city of New York could bestow upon an individual or a group of people. Since the first parade in 1886, more than 200 of these celebrations have taken place. Since then, thousands of tons of paper have descended on the heads of honorees. For example, in 1951, 3,240 tons of paper showered Gen. Douglas MacArthur as his motorcade went through Manhattan. Not to be outdone, 3,474 tons drifted down on John Glenn, the first astronaut to orbit the earth in 1962.
Most of you, many of you, can remember seeing images of ticker-tape parades. Maybe some of you have witnessed one in person. For a few moments, I want everyone to visualize the exhilaration of a ticker-tape parade, albeit on a much smaller scale, in Jerusalem in about 32 A.D.
Imagine the excitement that surrounds this occasion. Jesus has come to town. Some say he’s a great teacher. Others that day say he is the Messiah for which they have been waiting, come to lead the people of Judea against the awesome might of Rome. Still others know him to be a great healer.
In fact, many of those that have lined the road from Bethany that enters at the Golden Gate of Jerusalem are there because of the healing miracle performed in Bethany, just four days before. It was in Bethany that Jesus raised his dear friend Lazarus from the dead. While it is true that this miracle resulted in many people waving palms and throwing garments while following Jesus from Bethany that day, it is equally true that the repercussions of that event steeled the determination of the Pharisees to have Jesus killed, which fulfills prophecies just five days later!
But for now, close your eyes if you will and let’s visualize that scene in our mind’s eye. Thousands of excited people are crammed into Jerusalem. It was time for the Passover celebration. Passover is one of three feasts that all male Jews were required to attend in Jerusalem. Because of that requirement there have been an estimated two and a half million people crammed into a Jerusalem, a city that normally has population of no more than 50,000.
Visualize the wall-to-wall people standing shoulder to shoulder, four or five people deep in those narrow streets barely wide enough for a cart to pass through. Let your ears be filled with the beautiful sounds of “Hosanna to the Son of David.” “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Hosanna in the highest heaven!”
Loved ones, the celebration must resemble the joyous parade of saints as they enter through different gate, the Heavenly Gate, where they gather to sing praises to the Father. One day, I pray that we will all be part of a celebration like that.
For his Parade Fit for a King, Jesus doesn’t ride in a chariot, the limousine of the day or even on a large and imposing horse as the people of the day envision for their savior. Rather He rode a young donkey led by its mother, in order to fulfill the scripture of the Messiah of God’s choosing, riding into Jerusalem. The crowd sees this and becomes even more excited, the prophecies are coming true!
As Jesus enters the Holy City, we can see many people spreading their cloaks on the road while others spread branches they had cut in the fields. Victorious kings were honored in this fashion in biblical times. The crowd believes it is welcoming a king, this is a Parade Fit for A King!
While he rode through the city with the crowd was singing, “Hosanna in the highest.” For those in the crowd that day, it was a moment of complete adoration, a divine celebration that was unparalleled. The enthusiasm of the crowd was contagious.
The King is coming into the Holy City, this Parade is Fit for a King and as it goes on it just seems to grow louder and more intense! Hosanna, they cry out at the sight of Jesus. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the king of Israel! The energy and excitement of the crowd that day even impressed the Pharisees “look how the whole world has gone for him” they conceded. The triumphal arrival of Jesus on Palm Sunday was a celebration that they had never been seen before or since.
Friends let us revel in this lasting, the Messiah, the true King of the Jews, not a Warrior King but rather a Shepherd King who is embraced, celebrated, and loved for what he has done, who he has been and where he has gone. He is adored by the believers that have followed him into Jerusalem as well as the pilgrims that have come from a distance to celebrate Passover. All are caught up in the sense of power and authority found in Jesus in that moment! This is a Parade Fit for a King and this will be there King!
But unfortunately, dear ones, we know that we cannot stay in this moment, Jesus has somewhere to go, something to do for our benefit, He had to go, there were no other options. He cannot stay forever in the excitement and glory of Palm Sunday. And neither can we.
The image of the triumphant parade of the first Palm Sunday, with shouts of joy and excitement cause our hearts to rise and swell to the highest of highs when we read these scriptures. The excitement of the boisterous parade where Jesus is celebrated by the crowds unfortunately will fade, and our hearts will slip back to the depths of despair, and Jesus is rejected.
As we leave this place today, brothers and sisters we must concede and accept that Holy Week will force us into a space and time of lament, of struggle, of sorrow. Time slows as we consider the events ahead as we will walk through betrayal and the unanswered prayer into darkness and death.
We have done the work to prepare our hearts to walk from this parade to the table in the Upper Room where Jesus says good bye to his disciples, move from garden watching Jesus pray to His Father to remove this cup if it is your will, to the scourging and the crown of thorns, and we move from to the feet of cross to the stone-cold tomb in which Jesus will lay. If we truly love Jesus the man, we must feel his pain and his agony in the days ahead.
All of this will attempt to minimize the joy that we find in the celebration of this day. But for now, let us remain in those moments on that day. Let us bask in the glow of his triumphal entrance on that Palm Sunday.
Hear the Good News my Friends………..
Even though face difficult days ahead this Holy Week we should resolve to remain to stay true to the joy and hope that we as Christians a called to have. We are after all Easter people, a people that should always radiate joy and hope to the world around us. We, my friends you and I, are in the redemption business, taking things that are broken; people and situations and make them new again, revitalized, born a new.
A Parade Fit for a King is a part of the plan of God for fortifying the believers and followers for the challenges ahead. We need to shout with joy and let the shouts echo in our ears as well as in our hearts. Bring us hope, gracious Lord, where we have allowed fear and confusion to reside. As Easter People we find our source of joy and hope in the example of Jesus himself. His innermost soul carried an inexhaustible treasury of refined and heavenly joy.
Of all people that walked the Earth, there was never a man who had a deeper, purer, or more abiding peace than our Lord Jesus Christ. We should allow that peace and joy carry us through the days ahead. Today is a celebration, a Parade Fit for a King for the arrival of Jesus to Jerusalem to finish his mission of redemption for mankind.
Hold on to that and allow the excitement and joy of the day carry you through this week. But bear in mind that there is another and more eternal celebration coming in just seven days when Christ is risen from the grave. That seems, dear ones, like a great reason for another Parade Fit for A King! Amen.
