Love Came In (Palm Sunday 2021)

Last week I confessed my love of wrestling — both high school and college. That began in fourth grade, when some friends swept me into it. Honestly, they were doing it to make fun of me: I was small and had a last name that rhymed with “nerd,” so they thought it would be hilarious to watch me try.

I ended up wrestling through my freshman year of college, then transferred to a school without a program, and my career ended. For the record, I wasn’t very good.

But as much as I loved the sport, I did not love practice.

Every Day Around Seventh Period

Every day during wrestling season, around seventh or eighth period, I would start getting genuinely nervous. Pressure building in my chest. My throat constricting. That nervous feeling you know exactly what I mean by.

So when the final bell rang announcing the end of school and the start of practice, I was not the fastest to my locker. I was not first into the locker room and into my gear.

Because I knew what awaited me.

I knew that for an hour and a half I would be expected to go at an unrelenting pace — running, wrestling, conditioning, whatever it was — until I was completely wrecked.

I’ve played other sports. Football. Baseball. Basketball in middle school, where I was the worst player on the entire team. (My father’s last name is Bird. You’d think I’d have some ability. I do not.) I went out for tennis.

Nothing was as hard as wrestling. So every day I got nervous. Every day I hesitated.

You Know That Feeling

Have you had a moment like that — where you knew something genuinely hard was coming, and you found yourself nervous and hesitant? Where you procrastinated, looked for an excuse, tried to find someone else to take your place?

Maybe it was a sport. For a lot of people it’s public speaking — the idea of standing in front of classmates for a presentation, and being terrorized for twenty-four hours beforehand, calculating whether you could plausibly be sick.

For some people it’s proposing marriage, or the wedding day itself — the sheer weight of exchanging vows and committing your life to someone.

For some it arrives when they realize they have to fight an addiction. Or that they’re entering a difficult medical journey. Or that they need to break out of a toxic relationship.

We hesitate. We stall. We look for the exit — because we know this is going to be hard.

Now imagine how you’d feel if you knew that what you were walking into would end in your death.

Jesus Knew Exactly

Today we watch Jesus head toward Jerusalem knowing precisely what waits for him there.

If you’ve been around church a while, or studied the Scriptures, you have some idea of what the cross involved. It explains why, on the night he was arrested, Luke tells us Jesus was sweating blood in the garden of Gethsemane.

He wasn’t literally bleeding — there’s a medical condition where extreme stress ruptures small blood vessels near the sweat glands, tinting the sweat red. It happens under unimaginable duress.

Why was he under that kind of stress? Because he knew what was coming.

And here’s what we’ll see today: when he walked into Jerusalem, he already knew. And he walked in willingly, with determination and resolve.

So when you finish today, I hope you’re in awe of Jesus — because whatever you’ve been dreading, whatever made you nervous enough to stall, is a spa day compared to what he walked toward.

But I want more than that. I don’t want you merely thinking, Jesus was really something. I want you in awe because you realize the reason he did it was love for you.

The Passage

We’re in Luke 19:28–40 — taking a short break from Mark to look at the events surrounding Easter.

Jesus goes on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. Near Bethphage and Bethany, at the Mount of Olives, he sends two disciples into the village, telling them they’ll find a colt tied there on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it. And if anyone asks why, say: the Lord has need of it.

They find it exactly as he described. The owners ask exactly what he predicted. They answer exactly as instructed, and bring the colt to Jesus.

They throw their cloaks on it and set Jesus on it, and as he rides, people spread their cloaks on the road. Coming down the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of disciples begins rejoicing and praising God loudly for all the mighty works they’d seen: Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!

Some Pharisees say, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.”

And Jesus answers: I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.

Today I do not want us to lose out to a bunch of stones. I want us to be the ones cheering the arrival of the King.

Why the Crowd Thought They Knew

This happens on the Mount of Olives, roughly a fifteen-minute walk outside Jerusalem, near the villages of Bethphage and Bethany.

Jesus had just been in Jericho — where he met Zacchaeus, the tax collector. Then something shifts, and they head toward Bethany.

And several details tell us the crowd believed Jesus was coming to Jerusalem to establish himself as a political king — to overthrow Rome that very day and restore Israel as a sovereign nation.

The Colt

John’s account notes this fulfills prophecy — specifically Zechariah 9:9, which calls the daughter of Zion to rejoice greatly and shout aloud, because her king is coming to her: righteous, having salvation, humble, and mounted on a donkey, on a colt.

Many Jewish people understood that verse as a messianic prophecy.

So here is Jesus, arriving near Bethphage, obtaining a young colt no one has ever ridden, and riding it toward Jerusalem. There’s the sign. Zechariah is being fulfilled. Jesus is the King — we knew it all along.

The Cloaks

Which explains the strange business with the cloaks. Some placed them on the donkey’s back for Jesus to sit on — reasonable enough.

But others threw their cloaks on the ground for the animal to walk over. That would be like taking off your jacket and letting a horse tromp across it.

It was tradition. This was how you rolled out the red carpet for a king. You find it in 2 Kings 9, when a man named Jehu is proclaimed king of Israel — the moment the people realize it, they take off their cloaks and lay them on the ground for him to walk across.

So the crowd is honoring a king.

The Palm Branches

Luke doesn’t mention them, but Matthew, Mark, and John do — and it’s where we get the name Palm Sunday. People cut palm branches, waved some, and laid others on the road.

Because the palm branch was a national symbol of Israel.

To us, coming out of winter, a palm branch suggests peace — a hammock by a warm ocean. To them it signified a different kind of peace: the peace that comes from overthrowing your oppressors.

So waving palm branches was quietly an act of rebellion against Rome.

Imagine a ridiculous scenario: a foreign power conquers America and raises its flag over the White House to declare the nation theirs. And Americans who refuse to accept it start putting eagle stickers on everything — because that’s our symbol, and it says we’re still here.

Nations have their symbols. Israel’s was the palm branch. So the waving was a declaration: we want peace, by way of Rome’s removal.

“Hosanna”

Which is why the people are shouting. Luke doesn’t use the word, but the other Gospels record hosanna — an Aramaic and Hebrew term meaning save us, O Lord, or save us, we pray.

They’re quoting Psalm 118, which cries out for the Lord to save and grant success, and declares blessed the one who comes in the name of the Lord.

What they’re saying is: God, we have been praying for rescue from our oppressors — and now he’s here. The Messiah has come. We see him on the donkey. So down go our cloaks, up go our palm branches. The day has arrived.

Political power has come.

Except That Isn’t Why He Came

Jesus is the Son of God, which means he stands outside of time. The incarnation was a miracle — God took on human flesh, so Jesus knew hunger and sorrow and exhaustion, a fully human experience. And he remained fully God.

And as fully God, he had seen all of history. He knew that kingdoms rise and fall.

Within Jewish history alone he had watched Egypt rise and fall. Assyria rise and fall. Babylon rise and fall. So he knew Rome would do exactly the same. Rome had risen, and one day would fade.

To God, an empire is a blink. Even one lasting thousands of years, spanning dozens or hundreds of generations, amounts to a couple of breaths.

So Jesus knows what they actually need isn’t Rome’s removal. They need a different freedom.

The Real Occupying Power

Because in Jesus’s view, sin had been ruling since Genesis 3.

When Adam and Eve sinned, sin entered God’s created order and attempted a coup — trying to overthrow the kingdom of God and install the kingdom of sin. And every human being since has been born under that occupation, a slave to that empire.

So for Jesus, the pressing need was never the removal of Rome, which would fade within a few centuries anyway. The need was the removal of sin, for eternity.

He isn’t walking into Jerusalem to establish a political throne. He’s walking in for an entirely different reason.

He’s walking in because of love.

The Detail Only Luke Gives Us

I chose Luke for one specific reason — a detail in verse 28. But to appreciate it, we need the setup from chapter 18.

Before Jesus meets Zacchaeus, he’s approaching Jericho, and a blind beggar is sitting by the road. Hearing the crowd, he asks what’s happening, and learns that Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.

This man had heard of Jesus — the miracle worker, the healings. And he was convinced this was the Messiah.

So he starts calling out, Son of David, have mercy on me! — over and over, relentlessly, like a persistent two-year-old.

By saying “Son of David” he’s declaring: I believe you are the King, the Messiah, and that you have the authority to heal me.

The crowd tries to silence him. He won’t stop. And Jesus heals him.

But notice a small phrase in verse 39 of that chapter: those who were in front rebuked him.

Which means Jesus was not in front. He was somewhere in the middle.

He Was Always in the Middle

That’s how we see Jesus do ministry constantly.

He hears about a synagogue leader’s dying daughter and sets out — and while he’s pressed in on all sides by a crowd reaching to touch him, a woman who had bled for twelve years touches the edge of his robe and is healed. He was right there in the middle.

He’s grieving the death of his cousin John the Baptist, and his disciples have just returned from their first missionary journeys, and they’re trying to get away alone — and he sees a crowd and stops and gets right into the middle of them, teaching, healing, and eventually feeding five thousand.

He’s traveling through Samaria and sends his disciples into town for food — and he isn’t leading the way. He’s sitting back at a well, where he ends up in that conversation in John 4.

Jesus always seems to be in the middle of the people. He is not the one out front.

Except in Luke 19:28.

And when he had said these things, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem.

He went on ahead.

And He Knew

I originally planned to use Mark’s version, since we’ve been studying that Gospel. I chose Luke for this one verse.

Because before Mark 11, Jesus has told his disciples three separate times exactly what is going to happen to him: he will be tortured, and he will be killed.

So Jesus knows. He is under no illusions. He is not thinking, this is my moment, everyone’s cheering, I’ll establish myself as political leader.

He knows that within days he will be falsely arrested. That he will be spit on and mocked. That he’ll be handed over to the Romans, who will order him scourged — thirty-nine lashes tearing his back apart. That a crown of thorns will be forced onto his head and a staff placed in his hand, and that they’ll strike him with it, driving the thorns deeper.

He knows a purple robe will be thrown over his shredded back and the blood will seep into the fabric — and that they’ll tear it off and reopen every wound.

He knows he will carry a beam, be thrown to the ground, and have nails driven through his wrists and feet. He knows he will be lifted up, and that he will die there.

And he went on ahead.

How?

I dragged my feet to wrestling practice. Jesus walked toward Calvary with determination.

How? What could possibly motivate that?

Love.

Last week I used the illustration of a child trapped in a burning house and a parent running in after them. What would drive someone to risk their life, their skin, everything, for that child?

Love.

So Jesus comes to Jerusalem. Love came in — not to establish itself as a political power, but to display true power. Love did not come in to satisfy the narrative the crowd expected of a messiah. Love came in to establish a new narrative that would change our lives.

It was love that drove Jesus to Jerusalem knowing the cross awaited him.

Not the Love We Sing About

And don’t mistake this. Our world sings about love constantly — but usually romantic love, which is notoriously fickle, up and down and up and down.

For some of us love means friendship — being there for each other. That matters enormously. But it isn’t what Jesus is displaying here.

And it certainly isn’t the kind of love we mean when we say we love ice cream or a movie or a song.

We’re talking about true love. Lavish, unrelenting, grace-filled love. The kind of love so passionate for you that it is willing to walk ahead into Jerusalem toward its own death.

And That Love Can Come In

Here’s the good news: just as that love came into Jerusalem, that love can come into your life.

If you’re not a follower of Jesus, I pray today is your spiritual birthday. Maybe you’ve heard this story your whole life. Maybe this is the first time.

This Friday we’ll remember Jesus going to the cross. Next Sunday we’ll celebrate his resurrection. And the reason he did any of it is love.

He loves you. You were on his mind and on his heart as he walked into Jerusalem knowing what waited.

And because he was willing to give everything for you, he now asks you to give your life to him — to surrender all of it, confess your sin, and say: I now follow you.

And If You Made That Decision Long Ago

Many of you decided this years ago. And if you’re honest with yourself, right now none of this is resonating.

When the love of God comes in, it should flood you with a peace that surpasses understanding. It should fill you with joy. It should motivate you to love the people around you. And it should be the thing that carries you through hard seasons — so you’re not hesitating, not stalling, not dragging your feet, but able to go do the hard thing because Jesus loves you.

But if you’re honest: you don’t feel that peace. You aren’t experiencing daily joy. Loving the people around you currently feels like a duty. And the hard thing in front of you — you keep hesitating, and you keep slipping back to whatever is easier.

Which means you’ve allowed the gospel to remain a mental thing. You know the story. It simply hasn’t traveled down into who you are.

So make this a moment of confession. Tell God plainly: your love has come in — and I now want it to change me.