Palm Sunday | Give Me A Natural Heart ~ Part 1 ~
“A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” Ezekiel 36:26
Today, we celebrate Palm Sunday. Aside from receiving a couple palm leaves at Mass and making a cross out of them in our pews during the priest’s homily, what’s actually going on here?
When Jesus entered Jerusalem, he knew that he was marching to his death. He knew that he was about to consummate the marriage between God and humanity on the cross. The crowds also knew that he was entering into his Messiahship. (They just didn’t know that Jesus was going to accomplish that through suffering.) They rightly suspected that He was about to do something cray cray.
And as Jesus rode into Israel’s capital on a donkey, fulfilling Old Testament prophecies (from the Books of Samuel and Zechariah), the crowds cried out with joy “Hosanna in the highest!” (Psalm 118). They laid down their cloaks and palm branches for Jesus to ride in on, fulfilling other Old Testament prophecies (from the Books of Kings and Maccabees).
It would have been an absolute spectacle. There would have been zero confusion that the crowds were declaring Jesus to be the hoped for Savior of Israel. You don’t go to such wild lengths for simply a solid teacher. You just don’t.
So when the Pharisees saw all of this unfolding, their blood boiled. They strutted up to Jesus and told him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” As evidenced by their very title for Jesus, they considered Jesus to simply be a powerful teacher. Teachers, no matter how good they are, don’t deserve Messianic praise. So why in the world was he allowing this?!
Jesus, just cruising on his donkey, looked at them and told them something super important. We can glaze over it if we don’t pause to soak it in. “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.” In other words, he responded to the Pharisees' lack of belief by telling them, “How hard do your hearts have to be that even rocks would praise me before you dare to?”
Woof.
The human heart has the ability to become one of the softest and most transformative powers in the universe. The human heart also has the capacity to become one of the hardest and most destructive powers in the universe. The deciding factor is that man on the donkey.
A heart that cries out for Jesus will mold into what it’s supposed to be. A heart that avoids the work of Christ is doomed to a slow petrification.
More on how to avoid that petrification in my next blog post.
~ Who do you relate to in this scene? ~
~ Do you notice any hardness in your heart? ~
~ Have you ever experienced Christ’s ability to chisel away at this hardness? ~