We live in an age when faith, long-term, constant, reliable faith is unfashionable. People think it’s a virtue to avoid commitment.... “Don’t count on me!” they say - “I may, but also.. I may not. But that’s all right, isn’t it?” And we all say, “Well ....yes, ok”, not wanting to appear to be heavy or demanding. We all surf around, we channel-hop, we swap where we shop, we mean to call again, but don’t get round to it, we click to join an internet wave of response to a You Tube video, but we don’t want to be counted on for more than that. The first Palm Sunday shows it’s not just us today in 2015 . Being unreliable, not committing ourselves is human nature. Follow the crowd. If it’s the trend, we want it. If it’s not, forget it , dump it.
Jesus was being “Liked” by stacks of people on that first Palm Sunday. If they’d had Facebook,
they would have given him the thumbs-up, they may even
have left a comment. But by Friday, they’d lost interest. Certainly some may have been frightened of the Romans. But for many, it was just that they were for Jesus one minute, and then... they didn’t feel very bothered about him. Jesus was exactly the same Palm Sunday, among the adoring crowd, as later that week, suffering alone on the Thursday night in the Garden of Gethsemane, and then hanging naked on a cross on the Friday afternoon, jeered at, mocked, crucified.
Maybe the crowd of onlookers couldn’t have challenged the Roman soldiers, but they could have wept. Actually, they joined in the shouts of the mob to “Crucify him!” It wasn’t Jesus who had changed - he was still the miracle-working, astonishing, wise, perplexing, ground-breaking, daring, compassionate Saviour, the God-man who had come to them, changing lives forever.
It was the people who changed, turned their backs, lost interest, changed adulation into cold-heartedness. All of our hearts have the tendency to grow cold, which is another reason why we need Jesus. We need our hearts to be permanently, deeply renewed by Him. When we let Jesus start to change us, we find we can be faithful, compassionate, wise and good even when things around us go wrong, whatever other people are saying, whatever they are doing. There’s a wonderful phrase in the Bible- “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
Today in church there are palm crosses. I encourage people to take one, but please don’t leave it here on the floor or on your chair – take one and put it in your window, or in your car, to say this, I’ve made a firm decision - as for me and my house, we’re with Jesus, and he’s changing us, permanently.