Jesus Led the Parade - Day 39

I used to love Palm Sunday as a kid. It may even have been my favorite day. I loved the pageantry. I enjoyed the parading around. I liked the palms that we folded up into crosses. I liked the chaos and mess and movement of it all. Compared to Palm Sunday, Easter seemed just like the regular services, just more music, more people, more flowers.
No, Palm Sunday was my day. But then, as an adult, I began to understand that Jesus was riding to his death. The day always starts with such joy and it always ends with such pain. We go from singing, “hosanna” to crying, “crucify.” The day is now the hardest day of the year for me. It is the stretch of emotions that always gets to me. It is the whiplash from extreme hope to dire pain, from celebration to execration, from trust to denial, from light to darkness that always completely exhausts and challenges me.
Jesus led the parade. He knows that he is parading not to victory but to defeat, not to glory but to shame, not to be clothed in royal robes but to be stripped naked, not to a crown of gold but one of thorns. He knows all this and he still rides on.
That is courage. That is faith. That is love.
He led the parade for us. For us and for the whole world for all time. It is the parade of glory and victory in the end.
He led the parade with a courage that is hard for us to imagine. But we can be grateful for it.
All Jesus wants us to do now is to join him in the parade of love and commitment and faith. He doesn’t want us to watch him pass by. He wants us to join him.
Once I understood that—that Jesus wants us in the parade with him—it helps me to get through Palm Sunday. It is still a painful day, though. It grieves me that Jesus had to die for us. I am, however, very grateful that he did.