This is Palm Sunday, 2003. This day of the Christian calendar seems to intrigue the artist, the lay person, even the sociologist who finds a significant illustration for the fickleness of mankind. Fickle crowds who shouted Hosanna on this day, may have shouted, Crucify him, less than a week later. Jesus, in a gesture unlike his usual humble approach to human society, not only permits a grand entrance, with significant civil celebration given celebrity of power, but he prepares for the event. He guides it along. It is the signature opening for Passion Week. No one can stop it, because he means for it to happen. In his early ministry he deliberately absented himself, when the people would have exalted him above the honors and proclamations of Palm Sunday.
The events become intriguingly arranged in that they occur on the day after the Sabbath, meaning that it was a commercial day. The Sabbath psychology was not present, so traffic of daily life was the order. Word was passed along that something special was in the air. This itinerant preacher was going to make a dramatic move. The people gathered in mass. The very gathering seemed to be a little miracle. There were several such miracles. That Jesus could, at the top of the hill on the threshold of Jerusalem, drop from the back of an older animal, mount an unbroken colt, and ride serenely on is a miracle. A few wags in the crowd may have seen this contradiction. They may have thrown down garments and made shouts, not to praise God but to arouse the colt to react to what all colts consider intrusive on their first mounts. The very presence of the animals was a little miracle. Jesus told disciples to go to a village, loose the animals (without inquiry with the natural owners), and escort the animals to him. When the owners found the disciples stealing the animals, they challenged the interlopers only to be told, The Master hath need of them. The owners permitted the event to play out without further protest. The story is dramatic, with several unknown details in it. (I would like to know if the animals were returned. If they were, who returned them? Further, I would like to know what percentage of the Palm Sunday revelers appeared in the crowd the following Thursday, the day of Jesus’ arrest. The common assumption that the two were the same seems a bit exaggerated. The crowds were mixed on both occasions.)
That Jesus rode to the Temple, looked around, and with a show of anger, drove the booth merchants from the Temple without himself being repulsed is a tiny miracle. Who else in the civilian population would have gotten away with such conduct? The merchants were not without protection, and Jesus was acting on his own counsel. His disciples, confused about the whole affair, did not seem to know what to do. It was not in the standard order of things as they knew the gentle Jesus and his ministry. It may have been decisive for Judas’ betrayal. There is something very human and very divine about Palm Sunday. Jesus removed his father’s house from politics.
The Lord rides into our lives in ordinary ways, and we may not perceive that he is at hand. He does just enough that is unusual that we can process matters in our own experience. The little miracles do not seem special, but they are. He sustains us during a difficult day when we would collapse. He sends a word of courage when we would have failed for lack of communication. He opens a door, not a trap door, when we feel trapped. In short, we have the providences of God in our lives – daily. I have found them, in my family, in my relationships, in my occupation, even in what appeared to be the ordinary. We sense in this our need to be convinced of spiritual truth, and then live by it. This is our Father’s world, and we discover it. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020