Thursday, April 2

The next day the great crowd that had come to the festival heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, shouting, "Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord, the king of Israel!" John 12: 12-13


It is an ironic triumph, this Palm Sunday story. Ancient monarchs were supposed to ride on a white, military horse. King Jesus comes on a donkey riding for peace. And what does he get? Coronation? No, he is betrayed, isolated, tortured and killed. Some triumph! The irony of Palm Sunday is that our Savior does not save us from death, pain, trouble, or failure. Instead he comes and dies exactly the death each of us will die. It is hard for us to understand that is only in the powerless dying of Christ that we are given power to understand our own deaths, pain, troubles, and failure. In Jesus we do not find a way out of the human condition, rather we find a way through. Strangely, God works out purpose in our lives not by parades, but by crosses.


Holy God, we all seek to control our own destiny. Give us the insight in the coming holy week to understand power made perfect in weakness. Amen

Roderic Frohman, Associate Pastor for Church in Society