The Meaning of Palm Sunday

One of my major gripes is the way we, those of my generation, have politicized the message of Christ. In an effort to stem the tide of abortion and other evils, we sometimes confused a lost world, causing them to think that conforming society to a godly standard through political means is our objective. It’s not. If we were to conform our world to godliness apart from the regenerating presence of Christ, we’d have a world marked by a form of godliness without the power thereof.

This tendency to want to use the gospel to perform social miracles is used not just by misguided Christian leaders; you can be sure it was in place on the original Palm Sunday. Just as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright wants to use the gospel to throw off what he perceives as white bondage and as another might want to use it to end stem cell research, I don’t doubt that there were those present then who had great political hopes for this king riding on a donkey.

But the destination Jesus had in mind that Sunday was something those around him could not begin to grasp. Nobody knew his secret ambition.

Doesn’t that have a definitive 80’s feel to it?

It troubles me when Jesus’ objective is, in the mind of some, as clouded today as it was almost 2000 years ago.

There is no greater cause than the redemption of a human soul.