Palm Sunday | Holy Week | Sunday Reflection

Penultimate. That is a word you do not hear every day! It means “immediately prior to the finish” or “next to last.” The penultimate goal of a Major League Baseball team is to win their division pennant. But the ultimate goal is to win the World Series. The penultimate chapter of a book is the chapter just before the conclusion. The penultimate stage in a foot race is the section just before the final leg on the track. What reading of a novel would be satisfactory if the reader stopped at the penultimate chapter? What race would be won if the runner stopped during the penultimate lap around the track? Winners finish the entire season. Winners reach ultimate goals. They do not settle lightly for penultimate goals.

Here we are at Palm Sunday. Our journey of Lent these past forty days has brought us steadily toward this Holy Week. For those who follow Christ, whether in the first century or in this twenty-first century, this week presents a sense of culmination, the anticipation of the final showdown between good and evil. And the week begins with a parade. Palm fronds waving, crowds chanting and singing, children dancing, “hosannas” ringing – surely the disciples must have been relieved to experience Palm Sunday! As he drew closer to Jerusalem, Jesus had seemed so pensive to the disciples and so full of anguish. In the weeks prior to their arrival in the city, he spoke more and more to them of the death and suffering that would await him there. We have to wonder if his disciples dreaded their arrival in Jerusalem. If so, what a welcome surprise that parade on the original Palm Sunday must have been for them!

But Jesus knew the journey to Jerusalem did not culminate with Palm Sunday. This day of joy, which Jesus did not despise or reprove, was indeed a moment of reprieve to Jesus’ spirit. Whenever he heard the sounds of worship, the joy of God’s children, and the unfurled hope that was contained in this spontaneous demonstration by the crowd, Jesus was pleased. But he also knew that the crowd’s hope was a mixture of politics and national pride, a hope for the destruction of the Roman army. And their songs of worship were a blend of a religious hymn and national anthem. Even so, Jesus did not scold the crowd just because their insights and motives were not pure. This was a good day, a joyous day. And Jesus was no sour killjoy, not even during Holy Week.

But for all of its giddy happiness, Palm Sunday was not the goal of Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem. This parade was not the ultimate moment – it was a penultimate one. The final goal, the final obedience to God, would bring Jesus all the way through Holy Week to the cross. He had not come all this way to stop at Palm Sunday’s parade – however tempting that would be for most of us. We would rather have the goal of the Christian life stop at a party and avoid suffering and sacrifice. Give us palm branches and cheering crowds. We would rather have that than a cross and jeering crowds any day, right? But the way of Christ does not settle for penultimate ease. We who follow Christ must be willing to press toward the ultimate obedience, and take up his cross, bear his full cause, if we are truly to be his disciples.

Imagine if Jesus had failed in his redemptive work by settling for the penultimate party of Palm Sunday? There would be no salvation for us, no final victory over the curse of sin and death. Thanks be to God, Jesus avoided the failure of settling for a penultimate goal!

Jesus is remembered because he did not allow the euphoria of Palm Sunday to lure him into a premature sense of completion. He had come too far, and he was too focused on total obedience to His Father to fumble his ministry this close to the goal, even though the finishing lap of his course represented the most difficult stage of all – a cruel torturous death on a Roman cross. And on that cross, completing the entire course of his obedience to God, Jesus crossed the final line, the ultimate goal. Then, and only then, did he whisper the words, “It is finished.”