For many Christians around the world, and for us here at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Palm Sunday is a sacred holy day God gives us each year so we can raise our hands in remembrance, celebration, and praise to God who fulfilled His promise given to us in Genesis 3:15. This year as we celebrated this sacred holy day we were reminded of the powerful truth that in the last week of Jesus’ life there was nothing that happened that God the Father had not prepared for! There would be no surprises for God this week of Jesus’ life! God the Father already knew and prepared for the parade, for the showdowns at the Temple, for the last supper, and the walk to the Garden of Gethsemane. God the Father knew about and planned for His Savior’s arrest and for Jesus’ trial and torture for the scourging and the crucifixion!

God the Father was that deliberate in planning for all that would happen the last week of His Son’s life because He knew Jesus’ crucifixion was God’s method of payment for the sins of the world! God the Father was that deliberate in planning for all that would happen the last week of His Son’s life because Jesus’ crucifixion was the only thing that could reconcile all of the broken sinners to our holy and loving God! And if there were no surprises for God in the last week of His Son’s life, then we can rest assured that God will never be surprised by anything that will happen in our lives either.

We were also reminded Jesus was no ordinary King riding into Jerusalem. He was, is, and always will be Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God, the predicted Savior, Messiah, and Redeemer! He is Jesus who, through His life, death and resurrection, fulfilled more than 300 prophecies spoken about Him in the Old Testament. John’s gospel tells, “Having loved His own who were in the world, He now showed them the full extent of His love.” (John 10:1) This was certainly true the last week of Jesus’ life when all that happened to Him put God’s love on display for the whole world to not only witness, but to participate in as well.

Lastly, it was important this year for us to remember Jesus stood looking over the city of Jerusalem and He wept. Jesus wept for all the pain and suffering of His father’s children whose sin caused such a deep/wide divide that only Jesus could cross it as He came running after us. As He climbed on the donkey on that first Palm Sunday, some in the crowd knew Him, others did not. However, all who witnessed Jesus riding into town, and all of us who study the story centuries later, must answer the same question asked by the crowd: “Who is this?” What is your answer; who do you say Jesus is? Dear friends in Christ, this week as we travel closer and closer to Jesus dying on the cross, I pray each of us may invite the Holy Spirit to examine our hearts and reveal the things that separate us from the love of God so that we may answer Jesus as Peter did, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God!” (Matthew 16:13-17)