“Now as He drew near, He saw the city and wept over it, saying, “If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.” (Luke 19:41–42)
Amid the shouts of glad hosanna’s and the celebrations of those who had made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem to keep the Passover there rode into the city a Man on the foal of a donkey. The Man wore no crown and carried no scepter; He did not wave at the crowd as one might do in a parade; even so the people laid palm branches and robes (John 12:13; Luke 19:36) in the path of the animal upon which He rode to honor Him…
…this man was Jesus.
As he rode, the Bible tells us that the whole multitude of them who were following Him shouted “hosanna to the Son of David” and “blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!” The things they were saying and the praise they were lifting up were due to the things which they had seen this man do, for in their sight He had most recently raised the dead man Lazarus back to life with a word (John 11:43). In the weeks and months which had led up to that moment, they had seen Him heal the sick and cast out demons; they saw Him feed huge multitudes of people – thousands of men, women and children – with supplies that appeared to be not nearly enough at first. They heard Him teach, they saw Him live, they believed that He was the Son of God and they believed that He was to be their conquering king; the One who would set them free from the captivity of Rome; thus they celebrated the Man on the donkey making a Passover pilgrimage into a parade.
But the Man on the donkey did not celebrate; He did not ride with His hands clenched together over His head as if to say “look, I’m the champion, the winner, the King!” As Jesus rode into Jerusalem at the beginning of the celebration of the most important holy day in Israel – the Passover; He remembered the things which had made for the peoples peace as they struggled under the heavy hand of bondage in Egypt…He was there.
I wonder….did they remember?
Truly they couldn’t possibly have remembered, they were not there; and as is so often the case, with every subsequent generation more and more was lost of the significance of that Holy day until it became nothing more than a day of coming together and partying. Sure the rules of keeping the Passover were observed, no work on that day, the ritual slaying of a year old lamb and the consumption of that meat with bitter herbs and unleavened bread; there was the religious ritual but it was, I expect, not the holy convocation that God intended for it to be since the only one weeping that day was the Man on the donkey colt…
…the man Jesus Christ.
On that occasion, Jesus was coming to establish a different kind of Passover, one for which He was the sacrificial Lamb whose blood was to be shed for the forgiveness of sins not just of the Israelites, though it seems clear that if they had believed in Him at that moment none of us would ever have tasted of His grace (see Romans 11:25), but for you and I as well.
As we come to the week of His passion – the week when He suffered humiliation and death for our sake it would be good to reflect during the next several days over the purpose of His coming and the price He paid for our salvation and worship Him for His sacrifice.
Join me tomorrow for further reflection…
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