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Who is Your King?
Palm Sunday (John12:12-19,19:14-18)
Mari Ikeda
Today is Palm Sunday, the Sunday one week before Easter. The reason why it is called Palm Sunday can be found in today’s passage. Let’s read it. It is from the Gospel of John 12:12-19.
12 The next day the great crowd that had come for the festival heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. 13 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!” 14 Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, as it is written: 15 “Do not be afraid, Daughter Zion; see, your king is coming, seated on a donkey’s colt.” 16 At first his disciples did not understand all this. Only after Jesus was glorified did they realize that these things had been written about him and that these things had been done to him. 17 Now the crowd that was with him when he called Lazarus from the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to spread the word. 18 Many people, because they had heard that he had performed this sign, went out to meet him. 19 So the Pharisees said to one another, “See, this is getting us nowhere. Look how the whole world has gone after him!”
This is the scene where the people are welcoming Jesus into the city Jerusalem, expecting him to be their new king. It is said to have occurred one week before the event of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. As we read, the people are using palm leaves, so this event came to be remembered by the name “Palm Sunday.
Here, Jesus himself is also acting as a king, riding on a little donkey. This is the first time Jesus acts that way. Previously, when Jesus realized that people were trying to make him king, he quietly hid himself away. But the truth is that Jesus is the king of all people. It was to be so that Jesus came to this world. So, knowing that his death was near, Jesus acted as a true king at the end. However, there is no other king who rode on a little donkey, and the king Jesus was going to be was quite different from the king people expected him to be…
To you, is Jesus the King? Who is always sitting in the center of your heart? As Andy mentioned last week, we all live according to either God or the devil, regardless of whether we have faith or not. If we think that we cannot be living according to the devil because we have faith, we are in danger. Since we are weak, even though we believe in God and think we are living according to God, before we know it, we may be pleasing the devil by seeking our own prosperity. Neither do all people who do not have faith follow the devil.
In today’s passage, we have two groups of people: those who welcomed Jesus with enthusiasm and the disciples who later understood the truth of Jesus. I think we all move back and forth between the states of these two groups of people. I would like to consider them in turn.
A. If it is yourself (or your own profit)
1. Although you get temporarily enthusiastic about Jesus,
Those who enthusiastically welcomed Jesus expected him to be the political and military leader who would liberate their people from the Roman Empire. Those who had seen and heard of the various miracles that Jesus had performed also had high hopes for Jesus’ supernatural powers. In particular, those who had heard the story of Lazarus believed that Jesus had the mighty power to raise the dead. But they were, after all, only trying to use Jesus’ power for their own prosperity. For them, the fulfillment of their own wishes was more important than who Jesus was and what He wanted.
When we believe in Jesus, it is not for the sake of getting benefits from it. Jesus is not there to grant our wishes. But we somehow forget that and seek only to have our own wishes fulfilled. We believe that what we wish for is right, rather than what Jesus wants, and we try to use Jesus to make it happen. And while Jesus seems available, we praise Him enthusiastically.
This kind of self-centered faith will not last. In the first place, it is neither trust nor praise of Jesus, but overconfidence and conceit toward ourselves, which is not faith. If we don’t realize it, we feel anger toward Jesus for not living up to our expectations. And enthusiastic praise can quickly become angry and hateful refusal.
Let’s read the Gospel of John 19:14-18.
2. You crucify Him.
14 It was the day of Preparation of the Passover; it was about noon. “Here is your king,” Pilate said to the Jews. 15 But they shouted, “Take him away! Take him away! Crucify him!” “Shall I crucify your king?” Pilate asked. “We have no king but Caesar,” the chief priests answered. 16 Finally Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified. So the soldiers took charge of Jesus. 17 Carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic is called Golgotha). 18 There they crucified him, and with him two others —one on each side and Jesus in the middle.
The people who shouted for Jesus to be crucified here were the same people who had welcomed Him with palm leaves a few days earlier. When they realized that Jesus was not going to be the king they wanted, they decided that he was rather a dangerous man spreading incomprehensible teachings.
If we change our attitude, whether about God or about people, depending on whether it benefits us or not, we are making Jesus suffer by crucifying Him every time we do so. We can cut off what does not benefit us and consider it none of our business if those people suffer. Even worse, at times, we will even justify ourselves by saying that those who do not follow us or join our group should be eliminated. This is precisely because we make ourselves kings. In doing so, we are crying out, “Crucify Jesus!”
Jesus had to go to the cross because we are unaware of our own selfishness and cruelty. Jesus had to take on the cross the suffering and pain that our sin of self-centeredness brings to others.
Now I would like to turn to why the disciples later understood the truth about Jesus, and I would like to read verse 16 again.
B. If it is the true king,
1. Because you know you are weak,
16 At first his disciples did not understand all this. Only after Jesus was glorified did they realize that these things had been written about him and that these things had been done to him.
When “Jesus was glorified” refers to the time of His resurrection from the dead. Or it could include the time when Jesus, after His resurrection, appeared among His disciples for 40 days and then ascended into heaven before them, as well as the time of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit fell on the disciples afterward. The whole sequence of events is the fulfillment of God’s plan that began with Jesus’ death on the cross and shows His glory.
Only after those events occurred did the disciples truly understand Jesus. Why is that? One reason is that through those events they became acutely aware of their own sin and weakness, and the other reason is that God’s power was working in them.
When Jesus was arrested, all the disciples abandoned Him and fled. No one could stop Jesus from being cruelly executed on the cross. They were all afraid that they would be caught too. They knew it was wrong, but they couldn’t do anything about it. And then Jesus died, and they must have felt they had made an irreversible mistake.
We can only truly understand Jesus when, like the disciples, we realize our own fundamental mistake. We cannot lead ourselves right. We take for granted that we are sitting on the throne of our own hearts. We learn through painful experiences that this is a big mistake. Often, those experiences are experiences of hurting someone or being hurt by someone. When we learn that we cannot place absolute trust in ourselves or others, we seek the true king who should really be at the center of our hearts.
2. You will keep pursuing Him.
Jesus appeared to his disciples after his resurrection and encouraged them. He encouraged them, “I have known your weaknesses and your sins from the beginning, and yet I love you and believe that you can take over my ministry.” The disciples Jesus wanted to keep close to Him were very weak people. But Jesus certainly chose them and loved them. The disciples knew that their sins were forgiven by the resurrected Jesus, that He knew their weaknesses and loved them, and they understood that Jesus was the true King.
We, too, have learned of our own weakness, have learned of Jesus’ love, and have learned that it is best to live according to Him. So we surrender the throne of our hearts to Jesus. Our nature is to want to sit there by ourselves, so many times we have to make the decision to give it up to Jesus. Nor does giving up the throne of our hearts to Jesus mean that we will immediately and automatically know what Jesus wants us to do. It will take us a lifetime to understand the magnitude of Jesus’ love and compassion. So we continue to seek Jesus throughout our lives. In awe of the gap between our own smallness and the greatness of Jesus, we continue to seek which direction Jesus is leading us in, while being corrected in our direction many times.
Let’s read verse 15 again.
15 “Do not be afraid, Daughter Zion; see, your king is coming, seated on a donkey’s colt.”
Jesus will not come marching in like a human king, wearing armor and riding on a warhorse with soldiers in tow. He comes slowly, in ordinary clothes, riding on a donkey. Let us welcome Jesus into the center of our hearts.
(Prayer) Lord Jesus, please pour out your Spirit on us and shine your light in our hearts. Do we make You the center of our hearts? What are we asking of You? Are we more concerned with the fulfillment of Your will than with our own desires? Do we trust that what you do is always good? Please do not let our hearts be ruled by anxiety. Teach us if we are being arrogant. Please do not let us waste what You suffered on the cross for us. May we spend each of our steps this week remembering your cross. Jesus, we pray in your name. Amen.
Summary
Who sits on the throne of our hearts? For all of us, it is where we want to sit ourselves. But are we wise and strong enough to always lead ourselves right? God has taught us that it is the place where He Himself sits, and that it is necessary for each of us to welcome Him there in order to live our lives surely. To teach us this, he gave his own life on the cross. Each of us accepting Jesus’ love and forgiveness is the key to bringing peace to our hearts and to this world.
For Discussion
- Who is your king?
- What does it mean that Jesus is the king of peace?