Holy Week: Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Days In-Between预览

Sunday

Jesus predicted it. The scriptures foretold it. The Bible recounts it. Jesus taught his disciples about it. His mission led him towards it. But above all, he lived it. It’s called Holy Week. It’s what Jesus did for you.

Holy Week begins with Jesus entering Jerusalem to shouts of “Hosanna!” and people proclaiming him king. It moves through his bold confrontation with religious leaders who begin to plot his death, to his betrayal, the Last Supper, arrest, crucifixion, death, and burial. It’s the week that changed history. It’s the week God saved the world.

Over the next week, we’ll take you day-by-day through what happened – and why it matters. It leads us up to the day before Easter, preparing our hearts for the greatest hope and miracle to come.

Holy Week starts on a Sunday. Often called Palm Sunday, because the Bible says crowds beyond number filled the streets of Jerusalem, waving palm branches and proclaiming Jesus as their Messiah-King.

Imagine Jerusalem. The city is packed. Think New Orleans at Mardi Gras or Times Square on New Year’s Eve. Scholars think the city would swell from 50,000 to 500,000. Some say higher than a million. The energy was crazy. The city was lit! Imagine Jews from all over swelling in, some walking hundreds of miles to celebrate the Passover revolution.

God had commanded it: “Three times a year all your men must appear before the Lord your God at the place he will choose: at the Festival of Unleavened Bread, the Festival of Weeks and the Festival of Tabernacles. No one should appear before the Lord empty-handed” (Deut 16:16). That place was Jerusalem. And Jews streamed in on pilgrimage. It was a religious experience, a physical journey with a spiritual goal. A physical act of perseverance, struggle, and endurance that says we are pilgrims, traveling towards a future God has in store for us.

This was one of those festivals. Passover starts the Festival of Unleavened Bread. The Sunday before Passover, Palm Sunday, was lamb selection day (Exod 12:3-7). That’s the day when the lambs would be chosen that would be slaughtered later that week on Thursday for the Passover feast.

Passover was connected to the Exodus. Flashback to the first Passover when God commanded the Israelites to slaughter a lamb and paint its blood on their door posts so that the Angel of Death, who was coming to strike Egypt would pass over them. Under that lamb’s blood they would be saved. Here we find Jesus, coming in on lamb selection day.

Passover is about so much more than a meal. It’s about victory and deliverance. About freedom, salvation, and revolution. About enduring and hoping. A day to remember when God freed us from Egypt! A Jewish Independence Day.

Israel once had an Exodus. Now the people in Jerusalem were looking for a new Exodus, one bigger than they ever hoped. A people under foreign rule, just like they were in Egypt, crying out for God to bring them from oppression to salvation, from bondage to freedom, from slavery to a new identity as the covenant people of God. God delivered them from Egypt. Every year they gathered again on Passover hoping and waiting for God to give them a new Exodus. Because God is a God who saves.

Palm Sunday was laden with revolution. It was theologically, emotionally, and politically charged from beginning to end. Yearning people daring to hope that God would save them again. It was about powerlessness against an oppressive superpower. It was about the might of God over all other nations and all other gods. It was about God coming to rescue his people against all odds. Egypt had nothing on God. And if God saved us once, God could do it again. When Jesus entered Jerusalem, Rome was the occupying State and Israel’s new oppressor. But the Jews knew God had promised them a kingdom that would never end.

Into this comes Jesus. The Bible says that the great crowd that had come for Passover heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem (John 12:12). The crowd that was with him when he called Lazarus from the tomb and raised him from the dead was spreading the word (John 12:17). And it was spreading like wildfire. Jesus is coming! The one who brings the dead to life. The demon-slayer. The water-walker. The one who commands the wind and the waves. The one who heals at a touch, or even a simple command! This is the one who multiplies bread for thousands. One who teaches with authority. One who stands against the darkness, oppression, and powers of this world.

As Jesus entered, they met him as their king.

It says they took palm branches and went out to meet him. The palm became a national symbol for Israel in their time under Rome. They minted coins and stamped them with a palm the way the USA stamps coins today with an American eagle. Waving their palms is like people at a parade waving American flags.

They shouted, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the king of Israel!”

Hosanna is Hebrew for “save us!” It’s a line from Psalm 118:25, one of Israel’s revolution songs they would shout when coming to Jerusalem: “O Yahweh, save us! O Yahweh, grant us success!” It’s what they wanted from their messiah-king.

Imagine praying that way. Have you ever prayed that way? How many times are our prayers a whimper? Our lives, a whimper? Our approach to God, a whimper? Our helplessness and hopelessness against the powers afflicting our life, a whimper? It is okay to whimper in the presence of God.

Sometimes all we have strength for is a whimper. But God wants you to look at the hopelessness and helplessness of life, the powers that enslave and crush and kill. God wants you to look at it and shout with defiance in its face that Jesus saves. That Jesus who entered Jerusalem that Palm Sunday came to save in every imaginable way. And he will return. On that day, the powers will be made low and his victory will be ever-present.

That’s what Palm Sunday is: coming attractions. Jesus’ coming into Jerusalem, hailed as king. It's a taste of what’s to come on his return. When he does, it will be like that first Palm Sunday. We’ll go up to meet him as he returns, welcoming our king. It’s the final victory when the pilgrimage is complete, when the lamb who was slain brings the fullness of his kingdom, when death is defeated once and for all, and the celebration never ends.

Nothing, nothing can stand before us when we know that Christ is coming. The King is coming. And he will set all things right again. Are you getting the guts of Hosanna today? Shout that out into whatever it is that is seeking to defeat you, enslave you, or to drive you from the Lord today. Shout it out no matter what. Not because you're strong, but because Christ is, and he is coming again. Palm Sunday is a taste of what’s coming. It is an appetizer of the victory and hope that awaits. Hosanna! Hosanna!

You’ll find Jesus's entry into Jerusalem in Matthew 21:1-11; Mark 11:1-11; Luke 19:28-44; and John 12:12-19.