Palm Sunday 2025 - "Jesus and the three crowds" скачать в хорошем качестве

Palm Sunday 2025 - "Jesus and the three crowds"

“Come Holy Spirit. Fill the hearts and minds of your people gathered as your word is proclaimed and received, may the words and meditations of all our hearts be pleasing to you. Oh Lord, our rock and our Redeemer. Amen.” If this is your first Palm Sunday service in an Anglican Church, you probably have a sense of whiplash or vertigo. We start outside with “Hosannas” singing as we enter the sanctuary, and then move into the painful narrative of his crucifixion. Throughout Holy Week, we will share segments of this ‘Greatest Story Ever Told.” Today we’re going to focus on three crowds of people involved in the last week of Jesus’ physical life: 1) the crowd on Sunday welcoming Jesus into Jerusalem, 2) the crowd on Friday condemning Jesus to die, 3) the crowd in-between on Thursday gathered in the Upper Room. When I was a kid, there was always something that bothered me about Palm Sunday. I didn’t know much about the bible, but I knew enough to profess my faith in Jesus and was baptized on an Easter morning 60 years ago. There are a few things I remember about that experience. One was the water was freezing cold that morning, which consumed most of my attention, but the other was this nagging concern about the difference in the reactions of the people around Jesus between Palm Sunday, “Hosanna! Blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord” and Good Friday, screaming “Crucify him. Crucify him.” Somehow, as a child I got the erroneous impression that “The same people who cheered for Jesus entering Jerusalem turned on him just a few days later, and wanted him killed.” That simple misunderstanding, sow seeds of doubt that caused me to wonder, “How could people have loved Jesus one day, and a few days later turn on him and hate him? Did they ever really love him or are they just being hypocritical?” This really bothered me for several years. In fact, ironically over the years I coined a saying for my leadership consulting work related to this perception. It goes, “Never be too enamored by their cheers, nor too intimidated by their jeers, Palm Sunday and Good Friday are just five days apart.” There is no indication at all that this was the same crowd. There may have been a few of Jesus’ follower present at both, but they were the exception. Luke’s description of Jesus entering Jerusalem says: “And the disciples brought the colt to Jesus, and throwing their cloaks on it, they set Jesus on it. As he rode along, they spread their cloaks on the road. As he was drawing near the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen: “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” Some Pharisees in that crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” Jesus answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.” This can be interpreted, “Try to quiet this crowd’s excitement about the Messiah and they may let the rocks and stones they throw do their talking. The crowd with Jesus in his ‘triumphal entry’ into Jerusalem was stirred up about the possibility of change, of a revolution. Hosanna actually means in Hebrew “Save, we pray" or "Please save us". Most wanted a leader riding on a stallion, not a prophet riding on a donkey’s colt. But they had to start somewhere and they intuitive knew that it had something to do with this rabbi from Galilee named Jesus. Now on Friday, just a few days later was a completely different crowd as Jesus was dragged before the Roman governor of this region, Pontius Pilate for a rigged, illegal trial. Luke tells us “The chief priests and the scribes stood by, vehemently accusing Jesus. And Herod with his soldiers treated him with contempt and mocked him.” This was an angry crowd, stirred up by the pharisees and chief priests who brought this crowd of thugs with them. Chief priests, scribes, elders, puppet-king Herod, his soldiers, thugs including friends of Barabbas… this was a very different group of people than the other crowd. Almost complete opposites. What did these two crowds actually share in common? Both the Hosanna crowd and the Angry crowd were trying to use earthly means to further their own agendas, and they both did this in the name of God. One wanted a Messiah King who would free them from oppression, and the other wanted to kill the Messiah King to remove any threat to their hold on power. Please understand, I am in no way equating the beauty of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem with the brutal, horrible trial that led to our Lord’s death on the cross. There is a dramatic distinction there. I am talking about the dangers inherent when we ignore the leading of the Holy Spirit and are drawn into an impassioned crowd. The core similarity between these two groups is that they both sought power by using worldly means which often leads to violence. This is certainly a word of caution for us today.