Celebrate Jesus for Who He Is and What He Did
Palm Sunday mark’s Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem. It celebrates his arrival. It occurs only a few days before his arrest and execution, and it happens just one week before his resurrection from the dead, which we celebrate on Easter Sunday.
All four of the Bible’s biographies of Jesus—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—include the event of Palm Sunday in their narratives.
Palm Branches
Jesus heads into Jerusalem, riding on a colt. A great crowd comes out to meet him. They line the streets with palm branches to praise him and celebrate his arrival. They shout, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the king of Israel!” (John 12:12-16, NIV).
John doesn’t tell us what the people do with the palm branches. But it’s easy to imagine the throng waving them in the air in adulation, to welcome Jesus with much excitement. Because of their use of palm branches, we celebrate this day by calling it Palm Sunday.
What’s interesting is that in all four gospel accounts of this event, only John mentions palm branches.
Matthew and Mark simply say branches. And the crowd isn’t waving the branches in the air as we assumed might be the case from John’s account.
Instead, Matthew and Mark indicate the people lay the branches on the ground on the road before Jesus. They also place their cloaks on his path (Matthew 21:1-11 and Mark 11:1-11).
In Luke’s version of the story, he doesn’t even mention branches at all. But he does say the people spread their cloaks on the path before Jesus as they celebrate his arrival (Luke 19:28-38).
Given that only John mentions palm branches and the other three accounts mention cloaks, a better name for this historic day might be Cloak Sunday.
But I’m not suggesting we rename this day. I’m just pointing out that calling it Cloak Sunday has more biblical support than calling it Palm Sunday!
Celebrate Jesus
Regardless of the name of the day and the details that surrounded, the key element of Palm Sunday is that the masses rightly praise Jesus as king.
Yet they view him as a physical king and not a spiritual one. They hope—and they expect—that he will raise up an army to drive out their Roman occupiers.
But Jesus didn’t come to wage a physical battle to bring about the people’s freedom from Roman rule. Instead, Jesus came to fight a spiritual battle to bring about the people’s freedom from sin.
Yet this isn’t what the people want—even though it’s what they need. This may be why in just a few days they will come together to shout for Jesus’s execution.
Jesus wasn’t what they expected. Jesus wasn’t what they wanted.
Reacting to Jesus
The people’s response was to reject Jesus.
May we not make the same mistake today.
May we celebrate who Jesus is and what he did to sacrifice himself for all the mistakes we have made—to die for our sins and make us right with Father God.
May we proclaim, “Hosanna!”
Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront a status quo faith and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.
Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.
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