I taught Sunday School to 4th – 6th grade this past Sunday. It was Palm Sunday and our lesson was about the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem (Mark 11:1-11). I read the lesson Saturday evening in preparation and I was nodding my head as I read. There was the whole part about the donkey being the transportation of a peace-time King and it was a prophesy from Zechariah 9:9 the crowd would have been familiar with. “Yes. totally.” The words Hosanna literally mean SAVE US. “Ooh that’s good.” And that Jesus prophesies his own death later in the chapter. “Interesting.” But then there was this as the culminating focus for the entire lesson:

It’s easy to unintentionally develop a ho-hum attitude
about faith. Yet in this passage, the crowds honored
Jesus with extravagant, public displays of worship.
What can you do to break free of complacency? How
will you extravagantly worship Jesus this week? Pray
about actions you can take or words you can say this
week to honor Jesus as the Messiah. You can write
your prayer here.

“Um. Excuse me. What?!” I think I heard a record skip. I came to a distinctly different conclusion. I felt guided through a back story about the significance of this moment and fulfilled prophecy about Jesus. Jesus was arriving as a King, but a “Prince of Peace” not the sword-toting or armor-wearing type. He was going to save the crowd, but in keeping with Jesus’ style, it was going to be radically different than they expected. Driving the point about complacent worship seemed from left field. The tone was chastising.

Emphasis was given to the crowd whose premise for worship was born out of distortion not a place infused with love for Jesus. They were enthralled with Jesus’ obvious power. They did not conceptually understand that the ‘oppressor being vanquished’ was an abstract internal conflict plaguing humans since the dawn of time.

In context, the oppressor was Rome and they wanted another Maccabean uprising. It was rooted in a deep craving for physical strength and a show of force. They wanted their great big, real God to knock down the bully. This is the same crowd who would, later in the week, scream “Crucify Him” to Pontius Pilate. Their exuberance was, in fact, a facet of their desire for tangible relief from deeply unpleasant circumstances.

Instead of focusing on extravagant public displays of worship or contemplating how to break free of complacency, I suggested to my Sunday School students that Jesus doesn’t make sense sometimes. Our circumstances don’t make sense. Things seems astoundingly backward and wholly not good. We can’t see how any of it will work out. I zoomed in on what we do when we are frustratingly baffled. Do we shout and sing louder to get what we want? Do we need to throw our cloaks on the ground in sacrifice to convince God to vanquish our physical enemies? Those things may leave us disappointed and disillusioned.

I don’t think the salient point in the triumphal entry is about singing louder or being more conspicuous in our worship, that is a by-product not an end in itself and pharisaical to boot. As you walk through Holy Week, remember there are times when Jesus doesn’t make sense to us. The act of having faith is not in how rapidly you wave your palm branch and shout Hosanna; it’s that you continue reaching toward Jesus even when he defies logic. A dead king rescuing his people, not from their physical circumstances, but the scourge of sin is outrageously inconceivable to the human mind. Add to that the resurrection and [insert your best explosion sound effect] mind blowing.