“The Passion of the Christ:
The Passion of the Triumphal Entry”
Palm Sunday – April 9, 2006
(Mt. 21:1-17)
Dr. Peter Barnes
First Presbyterian Church

Introduction
      In 2004, Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion of the Christ took the world of film by storm. It was as stunning as it was controversial. The movie is a depiction of the last 12 hours in the life of Jesus on the day of his crucifixion in Jerusalem. The film opens in the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus has gone to pray after celebrating the Last Supper, and it concludes with a brief reference to the resurrection on Easter Sunday.  
      Gibson’s choice of the title is an interesting one – “The Passion of the Christ.” The word “passion” is not one we normally use in daily conversation to speak of the life, ministry, and death of Jesus. Typically, we use the word “passion” to describe the emotion between two lovers – “They are so passionate about one another.” Or we use it to express the love of an athlete for his or her sport – “They have a great passion for the game.” Yet, Mel Gibson used this word to characterize the last hours of Jesus’ life and death. Why in the world would he do that?
      Gibson’s choice of the word “passion” reflects the history of biblical scholarship which has traditionally referred to the last week of the life of Jesus as the Passion of the Christ. The word “passion” is a translation of the Greek word pathos which sometimes means “emotion” or “feeling.” However, the ancient Greek poets changed and deepened the meaning of the word to also refer to agony and suffering. This is how Luke uses the word in Acts 1:3 when he writes, “After His [Jesus’] suffering [pathos – passion], He showed Himself to these men [the disciples] and gave many convincing proofs that He was alive.” 
      Here we see that, very early on, the followers of Christ viewed Jesus’ death as a unique suffering in which He bore upon Himself the sins of the world. It is, therefore, not surprising that the writers of the New Testament and the early church fathers picked up on this use of the word pathos when writing about Christ’s death. From Luke on, and throughout the history of the church, the final days and hours of Jesus life on earth have been called His Passion, that special time of deep emotion and great agony in which He suffered and paid for your sins and mine.
      During Holy Week, I want to talk about the Passion of the Christ. This morning on Palm Sunday I will focus my comments on the Passion of the Triumphal Entry. On Maundy Thursday I will talk about the Passion of the Garden of Gethsemane. And on Easter Sunday I will talk about the Passion of the Cross. Today, as we celebrate Palm Sunday, there are three things I want you to notice about the Passion of the Triumphal Entry: 1) the plan of Jesus; 2) the reaction of the crowd; and 3) the cleansing of the Temple.

I.  The Plan of Jesus
      It was the time of Passover, and the whole city of Jerusalem was filled with people. They were pilgrims who had traveled from all over the world to celebrate one of the most sacred feasts in the Jewish year. Jesus could not have chosen a more dramatic moment to tell the world who He really was. He came into a city that was surging with people who were keyed up with religious expectations. 
      We are told that Jesus instructed two of His disciples to go to the village of Bethphage before them and that they would find a donkey tied there along with her colt. The disciples were to untie the animals and bring them to Jesus. If anyone said anything to them, the disciples were simply to reply, “The Lord needs them.” It would be a password of sorts to the owner of the donkey and her colt. The disciples did as they were told, and they found the animals just as Jesus had said. 
      Have you ever noticed how Jesus was always sending His disciples out in twos, never alone, whenever He sent them to do a task or for ministry? Christians are to double-up in their work, because God knows how much we need each other in the Body of Christ. We may think we can be effective on our own in the Christian life, but we are fooling ourselves. As Solomon writes in Ecclesiastes 4, “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work: If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up!” (4:9,10).  
      On the staff of our church we have an expression to describe the way in which we seek to partner with each other in ministry. We call it “team roping.” The members of the staff of this church have a good appreciation of the model of ministry Jesus established for His followers, and we seek to do the Lord’s work in the Lord’s way. If you are trying to go it alone in the Christian life, let me encourage you to seek out someone else to whom you can be accountable and with whom you can share the burdens of your life. It will make a great difference, I believe.
      It is obvious that the plan of Jesus was not a sudden decision made on the spur of the moment. He had made arrangements and preparations in advance for this day, and as the story unfolds before us we can see Christ orchestrating the events with resolve and a purpose. Matthew cites the Old Testament prophecy of Zechariah 9 which predicted that the Messiah would come to Israel riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. Jesus knew of this prophecy, and His actions indicate design and intent. 
      Jesus had a plan. Far from being a victim during the last days of his life, He was the one in charge. Christ sent His disciples on a task. He intentionally fulfilled Old Testament prophecy, and He set into motion a series of events that would culminate in His death, but not before His identity as the Messiah was clearly revealed. 
      Our Lord had a plan back then, and He has a plan for every single one of us today. He wants to bring healing to our broken lives. He wants to involve us in His plan of love for the world, and He wants us to find rest in the center of His will. Are you seeking to live your life according to God’s plan, or are you wandering off on your own making a mess of things? Turn to Jesus. He has a better plan.

II.  The Reaction of the People
      In our passage we read of the way in which the disciples placed their long, thin, quadrangle robes on the colt so as to provide a comfortable seat on the donkey for Jesus, and they mounted the Lord on the animal. By this time a large crowd accompanying Jesus from the villages Bethphage and Bethany, the towns just east of Jerusalem up over the Mount of Olives, began to carpet the road with their robes as well. A caravan of pilgrims had already arrived in Jerusalem, and perhaps having heard that Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead just a few days before and was now on His way to the city, these people came pouring out of the eastern gate to meet Him. It is estimated that the population in Jerusalem at the time of Passover swelled as many as 250,000 people. 
      They cut fronds from palm trees, and they went forth to welcome Jesus. In Scripture the palm tree was a symbol of righteousness and spiritual vigor (Ps. 92:1,2) because of its perpetual leaves and longevity. In addition, according to Leviticus 23:40 holding the palm branch in one’s hand, along with the branches of willow and myrtle trees, was a way of expressing joy.
      As the crowd descended the Mount of Olives toward the city, they were praising God with a loud voice and they shouted, “Hosanna to the son of David. Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!  Hosanna in the highest!” (21:9). This quotation is from Psalm 118, and all four Gospels include this line in their account of the Triumphal Entry. It is a quotation from one of the Hallel psalms sung during Passover, and it is also one of the psalms most often referred to in the New Testament. It is a distinctly Messianic psalm, which speaks about the stone which the builders rejected and which became the capstone of God’s work. 
      Our Lord showed His true colors that day. He played into the Messianic hopes of the people. However, Jesus would be a different kind of Messiah than the one they were hoping for. He came riding not on a white stallion as a conquering king, but on the foal of a donkey as the suffering servant. He came not to overthrow the Roman government, but to overthrow the power of sin, death, and self. He came not to take His seat on David’s throne, but to take His place on a Roman cross. He came to die as the penalty for your sins and mine. 
      No, Jesus was not the kind of Messiah the people were looking for. Our Lord would not be the conquering king at His first coming. He would be the modest king, One riding on a donkey. In the end He would disappoint them all, and the people would call for His death by the end of the week. Leading the way in this rejection of Jesus as the Messiah would be the Jewish chief priests and teachers of the Law. 
      In our passage today we read that the Jewish leaders were indignant from the start, and they confronted Jesus. They chastised Him for allowing the children to sing His praises, especially in the Temple area. They saw Christ as a threat, and rightly so, for He would not only upend the tables of the Temple, He would also turn the world, their world, upside down. Be careful not to think of Jesus simply as the Savior meek and mild. He was the Son of God who came to bring light to the darkness, justice to a world of wrong, and the cleansing fire of God’s judgment. This is also what the Passion of the Christ was all about.

Conclusion
      Some years ago, a book was written by Gene Smith, a noted American historian. The title was When The Cheering Stopped.[2] It is the story of President Woodrow Wilson and the events leading up to and following WWI. When that war was over, Wilson was an international hero. There was a great spirit of optimism abroad, and people actually believed that the last war had been fought and the world had been made safe for democracy.     
      On his first visit to Paris after the war Wilson was greeted by cheering mobs. He was actually more popular than their own national heroes. The same thing was true in England and Italy. In a Vienna hospital, a Red Cross worker had to tell the children that there would be no Christmas presents because of the war and the hard times. The children didn’t believe her. They said that President Wilson was coming, and they knew that everything would be all right.     
      The cheering lasted about a year, and then it gradually began to stop. It turned out that the political leaders in Europe were more concerned with their own agendas than they were in a lasting peace. At home, Woodrow Wilson ran into opposition in the United States Senate, and his League of Nations was not ratified. Under the strain of it all, the President’s health began to break, and in the next election his party was defeated. So it was that Woodrow Wilson, a man who barely a year or two earlier had been heralded as the new world Messiah, came to the end of his days a broken and defeated man. He died in 1924, just four years after leaving office.     
      It happened that way to Jesus, too. On Palm Sunday, leafy palm branches were spread before Him, and there were shouts of Hosanna, which means “Save us now!” Great crowds came to hear Jesus preach. A wave of religious expectation swept the country. But the cheering did not last for long. There came a point when the tide began to turn against him. Before it was all over, a tidal wave welled up that brought Jesus to his knees under the weight of a wooden cross.     
      Why did the masses so radically turn against Him? How did the shouts of Hosanna on Sunday transform into the shouts of “Crucify Him” on Friday? Why did the cheering stop? It was all tied to His Passion. Christ came to the earth to redeem the world. His death would pay the penalty for our sin, and in the end the purpose of His coming was to provide for our salvation through His suffering. Thanks be to God for the passion of the Christ. It is that passion which gives us hope this day and always. Amen.