My apology for letting you think this would be about basketball (Go Ducks!). The madness to which I refer happened a couple thousand years ago around this time. We have long called Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, at the beginning of his last week, the Triumphal Entry. It comes from the similarities between how returning victors were received in their cities, and the actions of the crowd when Jesus rode into Jerusalem. Those are insignificant, really, except for their attachment to what the crowd cried out. We might think of it as extravagant praise, but they understood it as a greeting to their Messiah. “Save us, Son of David!” Interestingly, Jesus did not try to avoid the tumult as he seems to have done until that day. The ruckus brought attention and criticism from the leaders, and the curiosity of visitors in Jerusalem for the Passover activities. Even children picked up the chant, which irked the chief priests and scribes who said to Jesus, “Do you hear what these are saying?”
The eternally significant events of the rest of the week occured in relative quiet. Until Pilate took Jesus before the people who were celebrating Passover in the streets, and the mob behavior came back. In what must be history’s starkest shift of opinions, the crowd cried for Pilate to crucify Jesus, whom they had hailed as Messiah just days before. What had infected the mood of the people so that they wanted him humiliated in death? We don’t know, but we know that Jesus went from blessed to cursed.
Equally stark is the comparison of all that took place through the rest of the week, and the result it brought. Jesus was cursed, but those who trusted his leading, were blessed. Which, of course, is still true after 2,000 years. So, March Gladness?
Doug Reed | Literature And Teaching Ministries | www.latm.info
