Posts Tagged ‘Palm Sunday’
Palm Sunday – Year B
John 12:12-16
The next day the great crowd that had come to the festival heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem.
12:13 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!”
12:14 Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it; as it is written:
Read MoreThe Way of The Donkey
Jesus’ life and death fell smack dab in the middle of the Pax Romana, the Peace of Rome. This was a 200-year period where the empire largely enjoyed “peace” — but it came at great cost.
Read MoreThe Donkey or the Horse?
This international tension would not have been foreign to Jesus and his contemporaries. In fact, the occasion that brought Jesus to Jerusalem — the Passover — was a highly charged annual event. It brought Jewish society together: the power brokers, the revolutionaries and the pious religious folk, to celebrate their liberation from imperial power.
Read MoreIshmael, Isaac, and Palm Sunday
Between 1979 and 1981, twenty-nine young black people fell victim to a serial murderer in Atlanta, Georgia. I don’t know any of their names. I do have the name of JonBenét Ramsey indelibly sketched in my mind. Unlike the black children in Atlanta, JonBenét was a white American child of promise; thus, obsession with the drama surrounding her murder swept the nation in 1996. As news ratings soared, and reporters gained new levels of fame, those of us in ghettos across the nation pointed frustratingly to the contrast in the coverage of these two tragedies.
Read MoreThe Gift of Shattered Expectations
Laying down cloaks was an act of homage for royalty. By riding into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, Jesus was making a public declaration that in fact he…
Read MoreGospel of Rejects
This gospel of rejects is the “way of salvation” hinted from the early pages of Scripture and revealed fully in Jesus. It’s at work in the world and in us. In our busy-ness building, are we paying attention?
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