We all
have our favorite passages in the Bible. But here’s something we don’t
often think about. What would you say is
the saddest passage in the Bible?
There are a lot of candidates.
Jesus’ crucifixion is an obvious one. The divine Son of God being
killed in an incredibly painful way, taking punishment he did not deserve.
Some of the stuff before that is pretty sad, too. Judas betraying Jesus. Peter three times denying that he even knew
who Jesus was. Lots of sad passages there.
And there are lots of others.
Sodom and Gomorrah being destroyed. The flood, which wiped out
nearly everything living thing on earth except what was saved in the ark.
Adam and Eve being kicked out of the Garden of Eden. We could go on and on and on. I mean, we think of the Bible as God’s gift
to us, and it is, but when you think about it there are a lot of very sad
passages in it.
And you may be wondering at this
point, what does this have to do with Palm Sunday? Palm Sunday is a happy
passage. It’s the story of Jesus riding
triumphantly into Jerusalem to the cheering of the crowd. People laying
down their coats and their palm branches in front of him, making a sort of red
carpet for Jesus to come in on. Others waving palm branches, shouting
“Hosanna!”. Jesus is being hailed as a
conquering hero, a king. What could be
sad about that?
What’s sad about it, of course, is
that ultimately none of it meant anything. A lot of these same people
would be in the crowd, less than a week later, that was shouting “Crucify
him!”. Think about that.
“Hosanna!” turned to “Crucify!” in less than a week. How did that happen?
One of the reasons it happened is
because a lot of the people who were shouting “Hosanna!” really did not mean
it. They had not accepted Jesus as the king. They were not really willing to follow him. They may have thought they did. They
may have thought they were with Jesus all the way. After all, that’s what Peter thought, until
he got into trouble for being Jesus’ friend. If even Peter could bail on
Jesus when the going got tough, I guess it’s not surprising that others--the
hangers on, the ones who had never been all that committed in the first
place--I guess it’s not surprising that they would turn on Jesus, too.
But that’s not what makes this
passage sad. It’s part of it, but it’s not all of it. What makes this passage really sad is that
Jesus knew all of this. Jesus knew none of these shouts and cheers meant
anything. Jesus knew that a lot of these
same people were going to turn on him. And he knew what the consequence
of that would be. In other words, as
Jesus was hearing all these praises from the crowd, he knew that in less than a
week some of this same crowd would be demanding that he be put to death.
That means he knew that these cheers he was hearing were completely and
totally meaningless. What should have
been Jesus’ triumphant moment was taken away from him. It had no meaning at all.
Have you ever had a time when
someone was giving you all kinds of praise and you knew they did not mean a
word of it? Maybe they were trying to butter you up because they wanted
something from you. Maybe they were just
trying to make themselves look good. I don’t know why people do this, but
you knew there are people who do.
They’ll give you all kinds of praise to your face, but you know they
don’t mean any of it. How’s that make you feel?
It might make us mad, knowing that
they were just trying to make themselves look good. It might make us
laugh, in a way, at the thought that they thought they were fooling you and
getting away with something when you knew perfectly well what they were up to.
But I think mostly, it just makes us feel empty. We know this is all meaningless, and yet we
cannot stand up and say that. So, we
listen to all these empty words and phrases, knowing there’s no substance there,
and we just feel--well, not much of anything, really. We feel like all
they’ve done is just waste our time.
Jesus had to feel that, don’t you
think? After all, Jesus was fully human as well as fully divine.
That means he had all the same feelings and emotions that you and I have
while we’re on earth. You would think that, as he rode into town, hearing
the cheers of the crowd, there had to be a great emptiness inside him.
You’d think there’d have been that sadness there.
But here’s the incredible thing.
When you read the story, as Jesus entered Jerusalem that day, his
thoughts do not seem to have been on himself at all. What he might have
felt did not matter. Jesus’ thoughts
were on God, and they were on humans.
They were on God because Jesus knew
that this praise he was getting really belonged to God. God deserved the
praise and the hosannas. Even if they
were insincere, God still deserved them. And so Jesus refused to do anything
to stop it. In fact, he encouraged the
crowd. He said that if this crowd did
not cheer like it was doing, the rocks themselves would cry out. God
deserved all this praise, and God’s creation was going to give it Him, one way
or another.
But the most remarkable thing is
that Jesus’ thoughts were on people. He felt sadness, yes. But not for himself. He was not sad that he’d been denied his day
in the sun. He was really not even sad about the fact that he was going
to be killed. He’d known for a long time
that this was going to happen. When he made the decision to go to
Jerusalem for the Passover, he knew he was going to his death. Not that he was happy about it, but this was
the way things were supposed to go. It was the way things had to go.
Jesus was not sad that he was going
to be crucified. He was sad for the people who were going to crucify him.
Jesus was sad because he had come to earth to offer salvation and eternal
life to the people of Jerusalem, and they were rejecting it. He wanted so
much to help them, to save them, and they refused. They simply would not accept the salvation
that he wanted to give them. That’s what made him sad. Jesus was not sad for himself. He was sad for all the people who were going
to reject him, and thereby reject their own salvation.
Have you ever been rejected?
Sure you have. Almost everyone
has, at one time or another. It hurts, right? It hurts a lot. There are few things in life that hurt more
than being rejected. And a lot of times, we react to that hurt in ways that
are not helpful to ourselves or anyone else.
Now think of how Jesus reacted to
being rejected. Think of the love for us that shows. To know what Jesus knew, to be hurt as much
as Jesus must have been hurt, and yet to react the way he did. He was not
angry with the people of Jerusalem. He
was sorry for them. Jesus was sorry that
they were going to miss out on what he had to offer them. Jesus loved
these people so much that, even though they were going to reject him and were
going to kill him, and even though their cheers now were completely empty, his
only sadness was that these people were going to miss out on salvation and
eternal life. He thought nothing about himself. His only thoughts were about others, even
others who did not care about him at all.
That’s an awesome thing. That’s
love.
And that’s the love the Lord has for
us, too. Because all of us are sinners, too, just as much as any of those
people in Jerusalem were. We may not do the same things they did, but God
does not weigh our sins on a scale and say this one is better than that one.
God looks at each one of us and sees the same thing: a sinner.
And when we sin, by definition, we reject God, just like the people of
Jerusalem did.
And yet, the Lord does not get upset
with us. The Lord is not angry with us.
The Lord continues to love us. His thoughts are only for us. And he is sorry when we reject what Jesus
offers--salvation and eternal life.
But we have an advantage the people
of Jerusalem did not have. The people of Jerusalem thought that when
Jesus was killed, the story was over. Finished. Done.
You and I know that’s not true. We know Jesus’ story does
not end with his death. In fact, Jesus’ death was just the
beginning. We know that Jesus was raised
from the dead, conquering death not just himself but for all of us. We
know, as Paul Harvey used to say, the rest of the story.
So let’s use that advantage.
Let’s not reject Jesus. Let’s not
refuse the salvation and eternal life he offers. Let’s make this sad
story have a happy ending. Let’s not
just shout “Hosanna!” Let’s live lives
that show we truly believe that Jesus is the Lord.
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