Fr. Frank Majka, SJ – The Bridge

Expectations and Rejection (Palm Sunday)

On Palm Sunday, the people of Jerusalem greeted Jesus with enthusiasm. Five days later they demanded his execution.  How can we account for such a turnaround?

I think the explanation lies in the fact that on Sunday the people weren’t really welcoming Jesus but their idea and image of Jesus. They projected onto him their own desires for an earthly king who would expel the Romans and restore the power of Israel.  They were welcoming an idol of their own making, but it wasn’t Jesus as he truly was.

During the days that followed his entry into Jerusalem, Jesus showed that his identity and mission weren’t what they wanted and that even though his mission was for the people, it didn’t come from them and was not about an earthly kingdom. He refused to play the role that the Palm Sunday crowd wanted, so they turned against him, and the height of their hopes on Sunday was matched by the depth of their anger on Friday.

We aren’t strangers to acting the same way in our ordinary lives, for sometimes we impose on others our ideas of who they should be, and we become angry at them when they don’t play the part we’ve written for them. It can operate between friends and spouses, parents and children, even between voters and those they elect to office.

Holy Week reminds us we can treat God the same, loading our expectations onto him, then repudiating him when he doesn’t do what we want. That’s what happened all those centuries ago in Jerusalem. This Holy Week, let’s ask for the grace to permit God to be God without chaining him to our expectations and demands, letting him instead be the one who Scripture tells us acts in ways different from what we expect and thinks thoughts that don’t match ours, but who always acts out of love and never out of hatred for us.