Stroll through Scripture for Palm Sunday, 2025

Based on Luke 19:29-44

Holy Week is my favorite week of the entire church year.  Every service is unique and provides depth.  It’s the week that forces us to deal with uncomfortable things.  It’s distant, and yet so very relatable. 

For this week’s Stroll through Scripture, I’m only taking the first reading – the triumphant entry into Jerusalem and Jesus weeping over Jerusalem.  It’s a simple story, yet so very powerful.  

Jesus sends two disciples into the village to get a colt.  The imagery is clear – Jesus rides a donkey as the sign of a humble king who comes in peace, flanked by unarmed peasants.  Supposedly Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea was riding into Jerusalem from the opposite direction.  Only Pilate rode in a war horse, flanked by troops.  He came in representing the power and might of Rome.  Pilate represented the Pax Romana, the peace of Rome, which existed because Rome killed its enemies.  The contrast could not be starker.  

The crowd cheered on Jesus.  This would be the same crowd who would be shouting “Crucify Him!” later in the week.  Crowds can be fickle after all.  And their expectation was that Jesus would raise an army to overthrow Roman occupation, like Judas Maccabeus had done approximately 200 years prior against the Seleucid Empire. 

It is the second part of the story that deserves more focus though – where Jesus weeps over Jerusalem.  This is the second time Jesus is recorded to have wept.  The first being over the death of Lazarus.  Here Jesus is weeping over Jerusalem.  His statement is powerful.  He weeps over Jerusalem not recognizing peace.  He weeps over the blindness of the people.  He weeps over the coming slaughter of the people.  He weeps over the destruction of the Temple.  He weeps over the people’s not recognizing who he is and what his entry into Jerusalem means.  

I wonder if Jesus walked the earth today what he would weep over.  What blindness of the heart of the people would he weep over?  What rejection of peace by people would he weep over?

I have said many times that I think Jesus wept far more than the two times it is recorded in Scripture. 

Questions for further reflection:

• What would Jesus weep over today?