Passion week begins; Who do you say Jesus is?
Palm Sunday begins the week known as Passion week. It’s a week filled with triumph, tragedy and the greatest victory known in history.
The Jews of Jesus’ day were looking for someone to save them from the oppressive rule of the Roman Empire. Many thought Jesus was that man after witnessing the miracles he performed, but Jesus had come to bring salvation of another kind, and they could not grasp the significance.
We’re not far removed from the Jews of Jesus’ day. We know Jesus is an actual historical figure, but many still do not grasp the significance of what he came to accomplish.
C.S. Lewis, in “Mere Christianity,” sums it up well,
I’m trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
Why did he weep after all the Hosanna's! the praise and the shouts? The crowds came in droves lining the road, craning their necks to see the king coming, riding on a donkey. Here comes our king! Have you heard what he can do? The lame can walk! The blind see! And even the dead live again! Come see this man Jesus! He will save us from our oppressors! Come see his miracles! But he wept for the hearts of the people, He knew how soon their fickle praise
would turn into jeers and mocking scorn. When they didn’t get what they expected, a king to save them from their momentary trouble, their idea of a saviour too small. They didn’t understand the significance of who He was, that by week’s end salvation’s work would be finished, once for all.
