Breakfast Picnic

Palm Sunday is one of the Sundays I look forward to as a child. It’s not a time you receive presents but for me, Palm Sunday was the time we had our breakfast in the form of a picnic at the church premises.

At the church I was brought in, the tradition was the first boy to get to church on Palm Sunday morning was the person who would ride the donkey in the Palm Sunday parade. The parade involves this timely boy in front of the parade on a donkey, followed by the boys’ bridge beating their instruments and the rest of children, teenagers and our teachers singing and dancing.

As we march in the parade singing song of praises to God, it brings us to the first ever Palm Sunday procession if I can call it that. Jesus’ triumphant journey into Jerusalem.

The king on a donkey on a victorious ride. This event looks like a paradox.

When kings ride they do so in the stately mode of transportation of their time. Horses were the stately form of transport for a victorious king. Instead, Jesus asked his disciples to borrow a donkey for his majestic ride into Jerusalem, where in the next 5 days He would lay down His life for the salvation of the whole world.

Donkeys are not the magnificent of animals, they are used to carry burdens. When donkeys are being loaded, they stand still as one load after the other is strapped on to it.  They serve by carrying loads of the heavy things from one place to another.

Jesus Christ is the King of all kings, He is the King that serves. He is the King that carries the burdens of His subjects and transfers repentant sinners from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light.

Jesus served humbly as he rode on that donkey. That we might learn to humbly serve others, bearing each other’s burden and not thinking only about ourselves.

The unnamed person who borrowed Jesus (the maker of all things and to whom all things belong) his donkey, did so without hesitating or questioning of the duration the donkey would be needed for.  Jesus asked to use the donkey, He didn’t take the donkey without the owner releasing it to him for use.

What donkey is the Lord asking from us? Are we so are full of questions and hesitations to the Lord’s demand, or are we freely and unreservedly like the owner of the donkey available to Him? Our lives belong to Him anyway.

Then the procession to Jerusalem started

They brought the donkey and the colt and placed their cloaks on them for Jesus to sit on. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted,

“Hosanna to the Son of David!”

“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”

“Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

As He rode, praises were coming from the crowd. They laid their clothes and tree branches to welcome Jesus as the King who would save them. And that is rightly so even if it’s not in the way they had presumed. Hosanna which mean God saves. This was exactly what Jesus was going to do in Jerusalem. They may have shouted for the salvation of the Israel from the rule of Rome but Jesus was on a mission to save the whole world

They seem to know Jesus as the Son of David and that is rightly so. Jesus the Messiah the son of David (Matthew 1:1). They acknowledge Jesus is blessed and He had been sent. They were also right in this. (For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. John 1:17) They also and the rest of the whole world would be blessed as the beneficiaries of the gift of salvation that would come in less than a week.

And I pondered, how did the crowd know all these about Jesus? They must have heard Jesus teaching, seen the miracles He performed and believed He had come in the name of the Lord to be their salvation.

Jesus entered Jerusalem, unlike the crowd that sang his praises along the way, not everyone knew who Jesus was. Who is this? They asked.

The triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem gave us the gift of salvation to the whole world.

Let’s fast forward to today, there are those who know Jesus, the salvation He gives but there are also those who are yet to know Jesus. They are asking, who is Jesus?

What would be my answer? What is yours?