THE LAST MILE

Palm Sunday trembles with impending doom:“Behold your king, humble riding on an ass” (Zechariah 9.9).

John Calvin dramatizes its stark contradiction:“To claim royal honour Christ entered Jerusalem riding on an ass. Magnificent splendour indeed. Add that the ass was borrowed for the occasion and, lacking saddle and trappings, the disciples threw their clothes across it. All this a sign of terrible shame and poverty. A great crowd followed him. But who were they, the poor and despised masses. It seemed as if Christ exposed himself deliberately to mockery.”

Let us cast the twin lights of Easter upon that last fate-filled mile. For indeed the Cross and the Emptied Tomb were now only days away.

Jesus was travelling the last mile from the Mount of Olives, the place where tradition held the Lord God Almighty would stand to judge the nations.

But this was the last mile in Jesus’journey of life, all the way from Bethlehem.

Mary rode into Bethlehem on a donkey, and her son rode into Jerusalem on an ass. Bethlehem, the birth place for a king, but in a dirty stable,“Meekness and Majesty”, as the hymn laments.

Jesus was fulfilling Isaiah’s way of salvation:“And a way shall be there and it shall be called the Holiness Way. The ransomed of the Lord shall walk thereon, and shall return to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads”(Isaiah 35.8-10).

Christ’s birth, life and ministry had indeed burst open the royal Holy Way. Jesus was now travelling its last mile. But for Jesus the royal Way of Holiness was the path of service. God’s divine sovereign power had incessantly worked in Jesus, but unrecognised because hidden in the weakness and shabbiness of service.

But Palm Sunday’s last mile is longer still reaching from the very presence of God the Father.

He who was in the very presence and splendour of the Father, was travelling this last dusty mile away from the Father towards a horrible death.

“No-one has ever seen God, the only begotten, the Son in the bosom of the Father, would reveal the Father”(John 1.18).

But only through the Cross and the Emptied Tomb. It was the Father’s will to be found by the children of men in Jesus’ contradiction of shame yet glory, defeat yet victory, death yet life, brokenness yet wholeness.

Jesus rode on, not in majesty, but in shame and desolation.

He who was of the very nature of the Father God, rode on. He, whom the company of heaven worshipped, before whom the lights of heaven were dimmed, rode on. He, who was of the same thought and mind, will and purpose as the Father in the Spirit, rode on. He who had been at one with the Father in the Godblessed will and purpose of God for the salvation of the children of men, and who knew from all eternity this way of salvation, rode on.

He who knew that salvation and deliverance would only come through sacrifice and suffering, rode on.

This Palm Sunday journey was the last mile from eternity to eternity by way of Easter, the Cross and the Emptied Tomb.

This was the kingdom’s road to eternity where Jesus travelled alone.

Were the choruses of angel voices drowned by the broken shouts of this immediate crowd?

Was the radiant light of heaven dimmed by the glaring light of an unforgiving sun that would all too soon beat down upon his crucified frame? Did that oneness with the Father God seem elusively difficult to re-capture? “O Sabbath rest by Galilee, O calm of hills above, Where Jesus knelt to share with Thee the silence of eternity interpreted by love.” Was that Galilee calm a distant memory? Was love’s silence of eternity soon to become eternity’s deadly silence crushing the soul of the Son?

“Father, if it is possible let this cup pass from my lips but not my will but thine be done.”

Alone, so that Jesus could hear in the crowd’s strident cries:

“Hosanna, blessed is he coming in the name of the Lord” (Mark 11.10), another devilish cry “Crucify him, Crucify him”(Mark 15.14).

“The Son of man must suffer many things”(Mark 8.31).