Matthew 21:1-11 (CEB) || Today, we step out of Palm Sunday as the first doorway into Holy Week. While the 2026 calendar names this as the last Sunday of Lent, our focus is on Palm Sunday in the story of Scripture, the beginning of that sacred and tender week. Jerusalem was full of pilgrims who had come for Passover. Roman soldiers were visible. Political tension was in the air. People longed for freedom, stability, and hope. Into that atmosphere, Jesus entered on a donkey. Palms were symbols of national hope and celebration. They were used to welcome leaders and to mark moments of victory. When the people waved them and cried out “Hosanna,” they were praying, “Save us now.” Their hope was real. Their longing was sincere. And there was tension. They were celebrating a king who came in humility. They were expecting power that looked familiar. They were cheering for liberation, yet they did not fully understand the path Jesus would take. Within days, the city’s emotional climate would change. Human hearts are capable of deep devotion and limited vision simultaneously. We can praise with full voices and still misunderstand what God is doing. Palm Sunday holds that tension for us–joy and fragility. At the end of that day, Jesus wept over Jerusalem. The celebration was real. The tears were real. He saw the beauty of their hope and the reality of what lay ahead. They were the depth of love. Love for a people yearning for peace. Love for a city caught between longing and fear. Love for disciples who were still learning. That same tension lives in us. We praise Christ. We also carry expectations. We want transformation in our lives and in our world. We pray for healing, justice, reconciliation, and renewal. We mean it. And we are still growing in our understanding of how God brings those things about. Palm Sunday invites humility. It invites us to recognize our own fallibility with gentleness. We are devoted followers, and we are still being formed. We see in part. Christ sees fully. And Christ loves us deeply in the midst of it all.

Prayer: A Practice for This Week What you are hoping Jesus will do right now in your life? Hold that hope in prayer. Whisper, “Hosanna. Save us.” Then add, “Shape my heart to recognize your way.” Later in the week, take a quiet walk. Notice something living and green even in this late winter season. Let it remind you that God’s life often unfolds in ways we do not immediately recognize. Pray for steadiness. Pray for trust. Pray for a heart that can hold both praise and compassion. Palm Sunday is celebration wrapped in humility. It is hope shaped by love. As followers of Christ, we learn to live in that holy tension, trusting that God is at work in ways deeper and wider than we can see. Hosanna in the highest. Amen.

Matthew 21:1-8a || Jesus made a deliberate, carefully planned entrance into Jerusalem. Riding a donkey echoed Israel’s history (cf. 1 Kings 1:32-39) and prophecy (Zechariah 9:9-10). Scholar William Barclay said, “Jesus had already arranged that the donkey and her foal should be waiting for him… and the phrase, ‘The Master needs them,’ was a password by which their owner would know that the hour which Jesus had arranged had come…. The horse was the mount of war; the donkey was the mount of peace.” Jesus did not sneak quietly into Jerusalem. Barclay noted, “It was the Passover time…. at that Passover time more than two and a half million people had crowded their way into Jerusalem…. Jews from every corner of the world made their way to the greatest of their national festivals. Jesus could not have chosen a more dramatic moment.” Jesus did not always seek attention. Why do you believe he chose this moment to step so visibly into the spotlight? Scholar N. T. Wright said Jesus’ followers “might have remembered that when one of Israel’s kings was proclaimed king in defiance of the existing one, his followers spread their cloaks under his feet as a sign of loyalty (2 Kings 9:13). They were determined to make a statement about what they thought was going on.” How did laying down their cloaks show his followers’ loyalty? Some Judeans wanted to openly fight Rome’s domination. Would you choose loyalty to a leader who chose the symbolism of peace rather than conflict?

Prayer: Loving Lord, when you were born, there wasn’t room for you. When you came to Jerusalem, they still didn’t have room for you. Lord, I open my heart—I want to make room for you in my life always. Amen.

Matthew 21:8-11 || We often think Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem was a happy parade, the “Triumphal Entry,” just a time for cute children to wave palm branches. N. T. Wright wrote, “Welcoming Jesus as ‘son of David’ was about as explicit as you could get; this was, after all, the city which King David had made his capital a thousand years before, and for nearly half that time the Jews had been waiting and praying for a king like David to arrive and save them from oppression. Surely, they thought, this was the moment!” Scholar William Barclay said “Hosanna” was different from “Hallelujah.” “Hosanna means ‘Save now!’ and it was the cry for help which a people in distress addressed to their king or their god. It is really a kind of quotation from Psalm 118:25: ‘Save us, we beseech Thee, O Lord’…. an oppressed people’s cry to their savior and their king.” From what did most Judeans in Jesus’ day want deliverance? What cry for help do you want to send to your God? Some who greeted Jesus probably waved palm branches because they believed he came to violently drive out the Romans and restore Israel’s power. A few decades before Jesus’ birth, the Hasmonean family drove out foreign rulers and briefly kept Israel free until Rome forcibly put Herod’s family on the throne. Coins of that time show palm branches as a Hasmonean symbol. Those people didn’t want a gentle, peaceful king who said to love your enemies. Do you?

Prayer: Lord Jesus, your climactic ride into Jerusalem on a donkey showed that your idea of kingship was gentle and humble. Be my king, not to smash my enemies but to teach me how to live in your grace. Amen.

Matthew 21:12-13 || The four gospels differ on the exact timing of this event, but all four describe it as important to understanding Jesus. Jesus, angered to see the Temple reduced to a device for exploitive commerce, acted in the spirit of the Old Testament prophets. Matthew said Jesus quoted a composite of words from Isaiah and Jeremiah. (John’s gospel said Jesus’ passion for the Temple’s proper use reminded his disciples of Psalm 69:9, a poem about passion for God’s house.) Jerusalem’s priestly elite took advantage of pilgrims, especially at Passover, through their power to reject sacrificial animals and by requiring them to change other currency into “Temple shekels.” But Jesus called the Temple itself “my Father’s house.” He didn’t confuse the idea of worshiping God with the corrupt failings of some of the Temple’s human servants. What helps you to truly encounter God at church, not just the fallible human servants who may claim to serve God? Jesus’ action showed a principle that is about more than any one building or set of practices. Scholar William Barclay said, “It shows us one of the fiercest manifestations of his anger directed against those who exploited their fellowmen, and especially against those who exploited them in the name of religion…. Jesus could not bear to see simple people exploited for profit. Too often the Church has been silent in such a situation.” How can you and your church speak up if people are exploited in God’s name?

Prayer: Father God, renew in me a passion, first to know, love, and serve you in ways that glorify your kingdom in our world, and then to make your church a vital part of my community. Amen.

Matthew 21:14-17 || Isaiah wrote of Israel’s hope that God would send a faithful heir of David’s royal line to rule forever (cf. 1 Kings 9:3-5, Isaiah 9:2-7). Why would the children’s praise of the “Son of David” anger the Temple authorities? “The aristocratic priests belonged to Jerusalem’s wealthy ruling class, which was responsible to keep peace for the Romans…. because those referred to here may belong to the ruling council (cf. Matthew 26:57), they probably also have political objections.” When King David took Jerusalem, he banned the blind and lame from worship because the city’s defenders had mocked him, saying even the blind and lame could defeat him (2 Samuel 5:6-10). Scholar N. T. Wright said, “Jesus did with the Temple’s traditions what he did with the money-changers’ tables: he turned them upside down…. the blind and lame came to Jesus in the Temple, and he healed them. People who had been kept out were now welcomed in.” How did that fit what Jesus had been doing all along—welcoming lepers, tax collectors, and women? Aramaic was the everyday language of most Judeans in Jesus’ day. Matthew said Jesus quoted the Greek translation of the Old Testament that said “praise” in Psalm 8:3, while the Hebrew original read “strength.” That likely made sense: “The primary language of the Sadducees was probably Greek (the dominant language of their tomb inscriptions).” What does it tell you about Jesus that, against his culture’s attitude, he highlighted and valued the “praise” of children?

Prayer: Lord Jesus, you were always about bringing in those that “proper” religious leaders thought should be left out. Grow in me a heart with that same passion for including all your children in your kingdom. Amen.

Luke 19:37-40 || Luke’s gospel gave insights, implicit in Matthew, into the Sunday when Jesus entered Jerusalem that deepen our understanding. Pastor John Killinger said, “Many [of Jesus’ followers] apparently thought the Kingdom was about to come in all its glory. Typically, the Pharisees did not see things the same way.” Jesus refused to let anyone’s narrow boundaries manage or muffle what God was doing through him to save the world. To human eyes, there were sound reasons to silence Jesus’ followers. The Romans, always out in force on Passover week, would quickly and brutally suppress any Judean effort to rebel against Caesar’s rule over their land. But the Passover hymn (Psalm 118:26) Jesus’ followers sang expressed God’s eternal purposes, which neither Rome nor Jerusalem could stop. When have you had a sense that you needed to follow God’s leading regardless of human resistance? N. T. Wright noted, “Jesus knows, and Luke knows, and we as his readers know, what awaits the Master when he gets to the city…. Had the crowds known this, they would have been puzzled and distressed, as indeed they soon will be.” The crowd expecting the instant glory of God’s kingdom hadn’t grasped the hard road Jesus would face. Wright asked, “Are we ready to sing a psalm of praise, but only as long as Jesus seems to be doing what we want?”

Prayer: Lord Jesus, neither praise nor criticism deflected you from your determined progress into Jerusalem, where you knew a cross awaited. Keep me steadily focused on God’s purposes rather than changeable human reactions. Amen.

Scripture: 2 Peter 3:1-10 || Download