You Haven’t Seen Anything Yet

By all accounts, the number of people in Jerusalem for the annual Passover festival swelled the city enormously, about double its ordinary population.  Jews and God-believers from all over poured in for that most important observance, that ancient festival of liberation.  For many, it was surely a once in a lifetime experience.  A festival is for joy, a time of joy.  Excitement ran high; it was a sacred and joyfully solemn occasion—and a golden opportunity for all manner of antics, as the Jewish religious officials and the Roman government in Judea well understood.  The Romans gave the Jews great latitude, and there were limits.  There was a vested interest on all sides in keeping the excitement within bounds, managing the energy.  Worship, rejoice, but don’t take things too seriously; don’t take things too far.  Don’t think anything is really going to change.

Jesus had spent the last three years or so wandering over the region between Jerusalem in the south and regions mainly to the north, even north of his home territory of Galilee.  He had traversed Jewish territory, Samaritan territory, and gentile, pagan territory; it was all Roman territory.  The entire time, he had been teaching, far more often than he wanted to arguing, announcing the coming of a kingdom, God’s kingdom.  Some who heard that knew he meant Israel: Israel was God’s kingdom.  Israel was coming back.  It just needed a king.  Some thought the answer to their problems was a political answer, had to be: power was the answer, power in the right hands—their hands.  Maybe Jesus could be useful, though.

Jesus had traveled the region for three years, doing what people called miracles: giving sight to blind people, causing those who could not hear to hear; telling lame, crippled people to get up and walk . . . and they did.  Speaking peace in the midst of storms.  Restoring health to the sick, even those chronically ill longer than people remembered.  Raising the dead to life . . . in at least three recorded instances.  One prophet and another in the old times had done one or another of these works.  Jesus did all of these.  Many had seen.  Many believed.  Others doubted, laughed, of course.  The Jews had no dramatists as the Greeks and Romans had, but they were well aware that they were a theatrical people.

Jesus had gathered a following.  Not just a few people but hundreds, on some occasions thousands.  His name was familiar, even if comparatively few knew what he looked like.  He could have walked beside them, or right by them and they wouldn’t have known.

Now, as John tells us, today, “the great crowd that had come for the festival heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem” (12:12).  He’s near, on his way!  What did it mean?  Why was he coming?  Hurry, hurry—let’s go see.  Later, those in the crowd could tell others they were there.  Back in Jericho, Zacchaeus (wee Zacchaeus) had to clamber up a sycamore tree in order to get a look at Jesus, the crowd was so thick.  How much more, there along the way into Jerusalem.  People were pushing a bit, crowding, jostling, each trying to get the best view.

“They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting, ‘Hosanna!’ ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’  ‘Blessed is the king of Israel!’” (12:13).  Decades later, John could still hear them.  Picture the scene, maybe a mostly sunny sky, a mild day, mid 60s; it might have rained lightly the night before.  The palms around the route were all pretty much stripped, as the crowds, chanting, singing, dancing, waved the branches, in “celebration, deliverance, and jubilation.”[1]  There’s a Bible word: jubilation.  When’s the last time you used that word?  It comes from Latin and refers to joyful shouting, like when the Aggies score or the Astros win.  We were a little jubilant ourselves just a few moments ago, holding our own palm branches.  Presbyterians aren’t accustomed to jubilation.  We kind of prefer sitting, just a bit grimly.  We aren’t the only ones.

Something blessed this way comes.  That the revelers have deliverance in mind is clear from what they’re shouting and singing: hosanna, as I like to mention each Palm Sunday, is like our “Hurray,” but originally, it was a cry for rescue: “Save us, please!”  What sort of saving the crowd had in mind we can only speculate—surely it was mixed.  We all have different, even rather personal notions of what salvation means, what salvation looks like, and what we want to be saved from.  Some want to be saved from Trump and those MAGA people.  Some want to be saved from the TDS people.  The crowd had some sort of saving in mind, that day.  Only Jesus could show them.  They wondered what he would show them.

They raise glad thanks for the one “who comes in the name of the Lord.”  God’s viceroy, God’s ambassador, His special envoy, with a message from God.  Who there understood that God was coming, coming to Jerusalem, riding on a donkey?  “The king of Israel.”  It helped that Jesus was descended, distantly, from King David.  It had been a thousand years, of course, but a promise is a promise.  People remembered.  The king of Israel was the one who belonged on the throne.  Who belongs on the throne?  Someone is going to be stuck on it.  Who could bear up, on the throne?  Everything came to him, including all the complaints and criticisms.  All the blame would fall upon him.

For several reasons, Jesus rides into Jerusalem under that blue sky and all those green, waving palm branches on “a young donkey” (12:14).  Later, John and the others remembered the words of Zechariah, preserved in Jewish memory for five hundred years: “Do not be afraid, Daughter Zion; / see, your king is coming, / seated on a donkey’s colt” (12:15).  Even if no one thought about that prophet’s words there that day, some are already hailing him as the king, come, their king.  What obligation does a king have to his people?  And what obligation do the people have to their king?  It’s wonderful to have a king and all, until you have to begin to do what he commands.  Who made Him king, anyway?  And we think No Kings is a recent movement.

John, candidly, adds that, in the moment, the “disciples did not understand” that prophecy was being fulfilled (12:16): God following through on the promise He had made.  God hadn’t made a promise only to His people; in a certain sense, God had also made a promise to Himself, sworn a vow.  Along with so many in the crowd that day, the disciples are caught up in the excitement and curiosity, the eagerness.  The king is here; the kingdom is coming!  That thought, that eager hope, was already on their minds, in that glad parade.  It won’t be long now!

“Only after Jesus was glorified,” John adds, “did they realize that these things had been written about him and that these things had been done to him” (12:16).  Being fulfilled before their very eyes.  All that would be done to him.  Only after.  Sadder but wiser.  After Jesus was glorified.  In a long prayer he prays over his followers later that week, not very long before everything comes crashing down on them, Jesus prays that God would be glorified in Jesus, and Jesus glorified in God.  Throughout his recollection of the events of the life and ministry of Jesus, John points out revelations of glory, Christ’s glory—who he is and what he came to do.  The glory keeps shining through, a glimpse here, a glimpse there.  The promise of greater glory, yet to be seen.  Jesus came to glorify his Father in heaven.  It pleased the Father to glorify the Son, to make the majesty, authority, power, justice, and grace of God evident, through Jesus, in Jesus.  And God’s glory—majesty, authority, power, justice, and grace—all this, for John, is summed up in one word: love.  Love looks like something.

Only after.  From glory into glory.  They all thought they were following Jesus in a certain direction.  All along he had been leading them another way.  He had been trying to tell them all along.  Sometimes, they almost began to understand.

Among the crowd that day were those who had been there when Jesus “called Lazarus from the tomb and raised him from the dead” (12:17), and they “continued to spread the word” (12:17).  Here comes a man who has authority over death!  Nearly all of us, here, have been in the presence of death, seen death.  Sometimes, we even feel it, in us.  It sure looks as if death has the final say, the last laugh.  Death—we’d rather not.  Cemeteries are quiet, even green places, but nobody is there and we have other things we’d rather be doing.  The Pharisees believed, with great devotion, in a resurrection.  Many of their fellow Jews did not, believing instead (if they had any definite beliefs about it) that, after death, the shades of the dead went to Sheol, the Underworld, where they sort of bumped around in the dark aimlessly ever after, neither sad nor happy, and that was that.  End of story.  Not really anything to look forward to.  It is what it is.  The blessings of God, the life God gives—all for this life, this world.  Make the most of it: eat, drink, and be merry.  Gather those rose buds.

But Jesus—people were saying—he could restore the dead to life; he could bring them back, raise them up.  “Many people, because they had heard that he had performed this sign, went out to meet him” (12:18).  All going to him, to welcome him in.  Amen!  Bring the dead to life?  Is that right?  Is that so?  Hey, I just met a man who can bring the dead to life!  Maybe he’ll do it again?  They wanted to meet Jesus.  Maybe many had a request or two to make.  What does a man with the power, the authority, to raise one from the dead, what does such a man look like?  What does a king look like?  What does the one who comes to save look like?

The Pharisees, admirers and enemies of Jesus—they can’t figure him out: he drives them nuts and they can’t keep away from him—the Pharisees, looking around at how everyone was dancing, singing with excitement, almost like worship—they moan to each other, “Look how the whole world has gone after him!” (12:19).  Oh, just wait.  It won’t be long, now.  You haven’t seen anything, yet.

[1] Charles R. Swindoll.  Insights on Revelation.  Living Insights NT Commentary.  Carol Stream, Ill.: Tyndale, 2014.  124.