In Jesus, all of our ideas about glory, royalty, exclusivity, and honor get up-ended. People project all kinds of notions onto him, and he just proceeds with his work healing and preaching his message.
One minute (in last week’s text) he’s talking about how it's time for him to be “glorified” - when what he means is not exactly our ideal glory: death. As opposed to, say, winning military battles or wearing fancy priest robes. And the next minute (in this week’s Palm Sunday text) he’s playing the people’s game, riding into the city on an unbroke donkey. I can imagine him sortof shrugging like, “guess we’re doing this now.”
See, based on his actions here I don’t get the idea that he feels like he needs to be worshipped. He’s trailed by a crowd due to the fact that he’s just raised Lazarus from the dead* but he’s not letting it go to his head or calling attention to himself. He chooses the most lowly of pack animals. He seems happy with paltry palm fronds for offerings. His ego doesn’t require trumpets. He’s the most willing to get down and dirty with lonely and sick people in the streets and byways. I hear his main message as “God’s community is right here for you to join up with” and not “worship me I’m the king of the world.”
And I wonder how often we are getting this wrong: thinking Jesus needs to be put on a pedestal and worshipped rather than learned from and followed. I wonder how often we are that crowd, projecting our need for a loud and rowdy to-do onto Jesus, rather than plugging into the new way of being that he’s embodying and trying to help us wake up to.
God, we witness Christ in the scriptures
Embodying healing love,
Preaching the nearness of God,
Walking along the Path of Peace….