Triumphal Entry Hidden Characters

 I’m writing this late night on Palm Sunday as I have been reflecting throughout the day. If you are a Christ-follower, raised in church, you are not only familiar with the story of the Triumphal Entry but maybe so familiar that you unintentionally gloss over the narrative. That’s why I think it’s beneficial to connect the stories with the Church calendar in real time as if we were there ourselves.

We are familiar with the crowd, the disciples, the soldiers doing crowd control duty, and, of course, Jesus. But have we noticed the hidden characters that day? Let’s look at a few.

Imagine if you can, someone showing up in your driveway and starting to hotwire your Buick. Yikes! “What do you think you’re doing?” you yell at the perpetrators. They reply, “Jesus needs it,” to which you respond, “Oh, okay.”  Not likely to happen in our culture today but it did back then. We don’t know the name of this generous owner but we do know that it was a donkey, not a Buick.

Another hidden character was Lazarus. He’s mentioned in John’s account but he wasn’t there. In fact he was fresh out of the tomb. Just recently Jesus had raised him from the dead. The word spread and at least many of the crowd came out of curiosity or wanted to get on board with this potential “savior.” Remember, “Hosanna” means “save us.” Have you ever been drawn to a church or a “charismatic” type person who has a “healing ministry” or appears “successful”? Are we drawn to celebrity status as an indicator of God “moving?” Or maybe even a new “movement” is out there that just might save us from corrupt government? Maybe Jesus will establish a theocracy in the world. Maybe Jesus really didn’t mean it when He said His kingdom was not of this world. We don’t know the names of those in the crowd but, if we were there, would we have joined them?

Then there was Caesar. No, he wasn’t near the place, but his presence was. Jesus posed a threat to the Roman government. The soldiers who were there weren’t there to see a parade but to make sure things didn’t get out of hand. They were perplexed by the popularity of Jesus and had a job to do for Caeser. Had Caesar been parading into Jerusalem that day it would have been on a white stallion as a symbol of dominance and not on a donkey. They had to make sure Caesar’s reign was secure. I wonder if we have little “kingdoms” in our lives that are threatened by Jesus being Lord over us.

And while we are talking about the soldiers, there are some other hidden characters: the stones. Threatened by the exuberance of the crowd, the soldiers told Jesus to quiet the people. But Jesus said if the crowd got quiet the stones would take over. People are sometimes uncomfortable with our exuberant praise perhaps because they don’t understand it. Have we ever stifled our praise for fear of offending someone or being ridiculed? Perhaps. If we were there, what would our response had been?

There’s one more hidden character. It’s US! No, we weren’t even born yet, but this reiterates the benefit of reliving the Biblical narrative as if we were there. How would we react to someone borrowing our Buick or what is our motive for getting on the bandwagon of the of the persona of the Church? How are we dealing with our little kingdoms that we hang onto at any cost? Are we worshiping and relishing God’s presence, personally and privately rather than abdicating this to the stones?

Were you there? Were WE there? I think we were.