On what we now celebrate as Palm Sunday, Jesus entered Jerusalem to great acclaim.  The crowds praised and honored him, laying their cloaks and palm branches on the road before him.  He was at the height of a successful ministry:  popular, fruitful, recognized as being a man of God.

Many people spread their cloaks on the road, while others spread branches they had cut in the fields.  Those who went ahead and those who followed shouted, “Hosanna!  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”  Mark 11:8-9

But he turned his back on that route and chose another.  Less than a week later, he walked not over cloaks but under the weight of a cross.  Where he had been praised by many, he was now rejected, mocked, and disowned.

Last weekend at a Good Friday service, reflecting on how Jesus turned away from every positive measure of success, acclaim, and impact, I was convicted.  I so often want to be on that first road, the one where my contribution to God’s Kingdom is measurable, recognized, and concrete.  I am aware of God gently unfolding my grasping fingers that clutch at that goal for my life.  It hurts me to let go, but it is also so clear that Jesus did, and how can I not follow him all the way?

Jesus, help me walk with you

from “success” to “failure”

acclaim to rejection

popularity to being abandoned.

Thank you that because of you,

I will never be forsaken by God.

…He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.  He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.  Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.  Isaiah 53:2-3