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CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – This will be Palm Sunday. It’s one of the few scenes in the Bible where we see Jesus as triumphant. He is entering Jerusalem and is being cheered by an adoring crowd. Men are placing their outer garments onto the street to guide his way in. Women and children are waving palm branches as he enters the city.
I wonder at what point Jesus realizes that his arrival is being misunderstood. Or, at best, misinterpreted.
He’s not the Messiah the crowd expected. Maybe that’s why public opinion was so easily manipulated by the Jewish leaders of the day. A week later the masses called for a common thief, Barabbas, to be set free, and yelled out for Jesus to be crucified.
The thinking before Palm Sunday was that the Messiah would be a sort of avenging angel for long-suffering Jews. He’d be the person to throw the Romans out of the Holy Land. He would reestablish a Jewish government in Palestine and would usher in a period of peace and prosperity.
Yet at some point during Palm Sunday, there must have been some in the crowd who wondered, “Where is his army? How is he going to throw the Romans out of our land.” Others might have thought, “How could he be a great political leader? He has no government or administrative experience. He arrived in town with only a small band of followers. “He is supposed to bring about a period of prosperity? Really?” He appeared to the crowd as a poor man, riding on a borrowed donkey. He wore no crown or silk robes.
How must the fully human Christ have felt as he realized the crowd expected other things. He would not be a George Patton, a Ronald Reagan, or a Warren Buffett. He would be about saving souls only – not about the material things of the day. That would have been something the cheering crowd would not have expected.
I think that’s important to remember about Jesus today. Jesus did not come to give us material things. If you pray, “Jesus give me money” or “Jesus give me prosperity” or “Jesus give me notoriety” remember, those things pass away at the end of our time on this earth. My prayer is this: “Jesus, surprise me. May the joys of following you be what I’m not expecting. Give me a soul that makes me acceptable to spend eternity with you.”
Chris Conley
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