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When we celebrate Palm Sunday, what are we truly celebrating?
In part we are not celebrating anything. Palm Sunday represents the beginning of the end for Jesus’s earthly ministry. Less than a week later he will be crucified and buried. He enters Jerusalem with celebration and excitement. The people are declaring Jesus to be their king and Messiah, the one who will deliver them and bring peace to Jerusalem. The entire city wonders who this man is and what is happening at the gate. The Pharisees know and do not like it, so they concoct a plan and set it in motion and Jesus is arrested, tried, falsely convicted and killed. He enters the city in victory and leaves in what appears to be utter tragedy. But that is not the end.
He rose from the dead and is in heaven interceding with the Father for us. And we are celebrating a future “Palm Sunday.” We are celebrating a day that will come when Jesus will once again enter Jerusalem in victory. Only this time it will not end in tragedy; it will result in Jesus setting up His eternal Kingdom, in which we will live and reign with Him forever.
