Palm Sunday 2023

Palm Sunday 2023

Scripture: Isaiah 7:14; Luke 1:26-27; Micah 5:2; Matthew 2:1-2

Today we celebrate Palm Sunday. Palm Sunday is always the Sunday before Easter and commemorates Jesus arriving into Jerusalem riding on a donkey. As He made His entrance into the city, some people laid down their outer garments in the street for the donkey to walk on while those who didn’t have outer garments available used palm branches. As we remember this day in this service, I want you to think about the “why” behind their actions. What did they know about Jesus that would cause them to react that way as He entered the city and what are the odds or probability that they were wrong in their thinking?

The Kansas City Chiefs won the Super Bowl this year. When they returned to the city, crowds greeted them at the airport as they deplaned and the city held a parade. The parade was attended by thousands of people who came out to celebrate “their” team, the team who had won the most important game of the entire season. This was their team and this was their victory. So when the parade route was revealed and all of the activities associated with it were known, people made plans to attend the festivities. They came out and lined the parade route and yelled and screamed as the team came by. Then they followed the team to the location where the rally was being held, all the while yelling and screaming as they celebrated their winning team. So what are the odds or probability that they were wrong? In this situation there were no odds that the fans could be wrong about their team winning the Super Bowl because it had already been played and decided. You see, odds or probability come into play only when predicting the chance of something happening before it happens, not “after.” So the fans celebrating the Chief’s win knew with certainty that they were celebrating the winning team. But what about the crowd who lined the street and celebrated Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem? Did they know for certain that they were celebrating “the” King Who was “the” Savior of the whole world? I do not believe that they knew with confidence, but I what I want to share with you this morning is that those who knew the Scriptures “should have known.”

So let’s talk for a minute about odds or probability. The term “odds” is a numerical expression, always consisting of a pair of numbers. It is used in both statistics and gambling. In statistics, the odds, or probability, for something reflect the likelihood that a particular event will take place while the odds against something reflect the likelihood that a particular event will not take place. For example, let’s consider a die (one of a pair of dice.) A die has six sides with numbered one to six. To express odds of rolling a six with a fair die would be 1 to 5. This is because if one rolls the die many times and keeps a tally of the results, we would expect one 6 event for every five times the die does not show a six. The results would be expressed as 1:5 chances. To express odds against, the order of the pair would be reversed - the odds would be 5:1. Let’s apply odds and/or probability to the postal service.

If you mailed me a letter and you had my correct name and address on the envelope what are the odds or probability that I would get it? Short of human error, the odds or probability would be very close to one to one, meaning that the letter you sent would arrive every single time (or 100%) regardless of the location you mailed it from. This seems like a very easy calculation until you factor in that there are approximately 7.9 billion people in the world as of 2021 who could possibly be eligible to get the letter. With that many people eligible to receive mail, why are the odds so high that I would get the letter and it would not end up in the hands of someone it was not intended for? It’s because of the five specific “qualifying” pieces of information you put on the envelope: my name, address, city, state, and zip code. So, with five qualifying pieces of information placed on the front of an envelope we can mail a letter to a person and the odds are approximately 1:1 (100%) favorable that they will receive it even though there are approximately 8 billion people on earth today. Five pieces of information removes almost eight billion people out of contention for getting a letter intended for someone else. This is in fact what the Old Testament prophecies did in identifying Jesus as the One and Only Savior of the World. They removed billions of people from the odds or probability of being the Messiah and two of those prophecies were fulfilled when He entered Jerusalem on this occasion.