Disappointed? You Were Looking For The Wrong Messiah Series

Palm Sunday Procession Homily 2025

Take a moment to recall from your childhood a particularly memorable Christmas or Birthday celebration in your family. I bet you have one in which you had wished—and made your wish known—for a particular toy or cuddly and did not receive it. It could have been a puppy or a pony or a Red Rider BB gun ® but the day sticks in your mind because you were very disappointed. Now we can discuss the Palm Sunday event back in the fourth decade of first century Jerusalem.

The whispers probably started weeks ago: “Jesus is coming. Is Jesus the Messiah?” The Jewish people in the Holy Land had been expecting God’s liberator, called “the Anointed” or “Mashiah” for a very long time. It was at least five generations. Moreover, the liberation they were foreseeing was a material, political freedom from Gentile rule. They wanted to make present a revived kingdom of David, with borders to the domain out to the Mediterranean and down to Egypt and up into Syria. Freedom from Roman taxation and occupation and domination of the goyim living among them.

Moreover, they knew their history, both recent and ancient. They remembered their great grandparents telling the story of the persecution by the Greek king, Antiochus, and the revolution led by Judas Maccabeus and his brothers. A kingdom was restored (kind of) but eventually became corrupt and was lost to outsiders. Then in their parents’ days, there was a revolt by Theudas, which collapsed under Roman pressure, and a smaller one by Judas, another Galilean, which also failed. But those guys had not worked great wonders like Jesus. The rumor had been circulating that He healed a blind man down in the area around Jericho—completely healed—and allowed Himself to be called “Son of David.” That’s a Messianic title bigger than any other. And didn’t He just the other day raise a grown man from death when he had been in the tomb for three days and stank?

The story we just read, relating Jesus telling His disciples to procure an unbroken colt for His triumphant entry to Jerusalem, justifying that action by saying “the Lord has need of it” and then letting Himself be called “King” by the people, what does it tell us? Jesus was clearly fulfilling the prophecy of Zechariah 9:9, proclaiming Himself as a king of peace. But it is clear also that it set up a confrontation with the elite of Jerusalem, the Pharisees, who demanded He silence the disciples. “If these shut their mouths, the very stones of the pavement would shout!”

Seeing Jerusalem then prompted Jesus to break down in tears. “Would that even today you knew the things that make for shalom.” The people wanted a king that would expel the Romans and their tax collectors by force and blood. As in the past, such an action would not bring true peace, shalom, where people of all races and backgrounds would live in harmony, acting justly and worshiping rightly. No. Violence begets violence. Jesus would not be a Messiah doing violence.

Jesus saw from the popular response and rejection by the leaders that purification would have to come before anything else, including His bloody sacrifice on the cross. So first He had a symbolic cleansing by driving the money changers and pigeon sellers from the Temple, fulfilling the prophecy around “My house shall be a house of prayer.”

The Lord did not come down from His divine glory for any materialistic, political purpose. His dream as the God-man was to build a community of men and women who would live rightly, justly, and worship the One God rightly. They would seek God’s forgiveness and grace so that would characterize their commonwealth. They would pursue a path of theosis, becoming like Jesus, truly Godlike. That was a transcendent purpose, not a mere political revolution to give the same old power-hungry politicians another opportunity to talk big and live small. That’s the mere human way, and we know that even Jesus’s closest disciples fell into it. Remember, even after the events of the week culminating in Christ’s murder, burial and glorious Resurrection, even after forty days of being with the risen Christ and learning from Him how to spread His message after the gift of the Spirit, what did they do? Some of them were still asking Jesus if this was the time when He’d muster His troops and throw out the Roman occupiers!

So we move from Bethany into Jerusalem and beyond realizing that even after the greatest week in human history, to achieve the goal that Christ has set for us, we must all take up our personal and community crosses and follow Him. There’s no “cheap grace.” There’s no wide path to becoming like Christ. We have to follow the narrow way down the narrow streets of Jerusalem, all the way to Calvary in faith, with the sure hope we will be like Him through God’s gracious gift.