Lent Devotional | Palm Sunday

Hope in Fear: A New Kind of Winning

No one wants to be on a losing team. When I was in high school, I was asked to be the captain of the soccer team. I was not ready for the pressure that came with saying yes. People wanted to win.

On Palm Sunday we are invited to reflect on our expectations of God to help us win. On His last visit to Jerusalem, Jesus taught that His way of life would require revisiting some of our deepest assumptions about God.

The Bible draws us into peoples’ longing for God to help them win and to feel victorious. Winning meant freedom as they remembered it with Moses. For this reason, Palm Sunday is linked to Passover. We read: A large crowd of Passover visitors took palm branches and went down the road to meet him. They shouted, “Praise God!” (John 12:12,13)

While the crowd is excited, the closest followers of Jesus are confused. As John remarks: His disciples didn’t understand at the time that this was a fulfillment of prophecy (John 12:16)

Peter, one of Jesus’ closest disciples, helps us consider our struggles to embrace freedom in God’s way. Our views of what victory and winning mean must be surrendered. For Peter, if Jesus is going to set them free, he cannot take the Jewish leaders and the Romans lightly. Peter is serious about winning. He has a sword, and he is most vocal when Jesus mentions suffering as part of His mission for victory.

Even though Peter was fearful he needed to realize that his approach to winning was not God’s way. Jesus was about to reveal that we must set ourselves free from trying to make God who we want Him to be. This was difficult for Peter. We know that he would deny Jesus and weep at the idea that his friend, his rabbi, and the Messiah of Israel was not going to help him ‘win’ the way he expected.

This Palm Sunday may we consider how God might set us free of false expectations of who we want Him to be. May we have the courage to worship Him as we embrace the humble King and His new kind of winning rooted in surrender and worship.

Domenic Ruso

Lead Pastor
180 Church

Prayer

Lord Jesus, thank you that you are my Saviour. Help me to embrace your sovereign will in my life by recognizing your willingness to humbly die for me. Help me to see that winning is surrender to you and living is dying to self and looking to you completely.