Palm Sunday, which occurs a week before Easter, commemorates Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem only days before his life ended. According to gospel accounts, his followers spread their cloaks and palm branches in his path as he rode into town on a colt. It was the biblical equivalent of a ticker-tape parade. Yet within a week, the crowds had turned on him, and Jesus was taken away and crucified by the Roman authorities. There is a Latin phrase, once used in papal coronations, that applies in this situation: sic transit gloria mundi, meaning "thus passes the glory of the world."
They don’t have ticker-tape parades much anymore, at least not the kind where individual heroes or heads of state parade through lower Manhattan while office workers dump confetti and waste paper from windows high overhead. They don’t even have ticker tape as such any more, since computers have replaced stock tickers. Nowadays ticker-tape parades – minus the ticker tape – are mostly held for winning local sports teams. Gone are the parades for war heroes like Generals Pershing, Eisenhower and McArthur; pioneering aviators like Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart; and astronauts like John Glenn and Neal Armstrong. Instead of heroes, we now have celebrities, and they seem better suited to the cover of People Magazine than to parades down Broadway.
When it came to triumphal processions, no one outdid the Romans, who rewarded victorious generals with parades and related festivities that often lasted for days. At a time when emperors were regarded as divine, conquering heroes was decked out in laurel wreaths and purple, gilt-edged togas befitting their status as near-gods. They paraded though the streets in chariots drawn by four horses and followed by a miles-long retinue consisting of returning troops, captives and spoils of war. The Roman triumphus, or triumph, which began during the early Roman republic as a simple victory parade, eventually expanded into a days-long revel that included public games, feasting and assorted entertainments. The object of all this adulation was expected to maintain a suitably modest demeanor throughout. Accordingly, a slave was positioned behind him to whisper continually this reminder in his ear: “Respice post te. Hominem te esse memento. Memento mori!” (“Look behind. Remember thou art mortal. Remember you must die!”)
Contrast this with Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. There was no horse-drawn chariot, no retinue of soldiers, no captives or spoils of war. He rode into town on an ass. He wore no royal robes – at least not until Roman soldiers later dressed him up to mock him. The only crown he wore then was a crown of thorns. The crowds that had greeted him by laying down their cloaks and palm branches before him had hailed him as king of the Jews. Until then, Jesus had resisted such accolades, but now he relented. When some of the Pharisees in the crowd objected, he told them, “If these were silent, the stones would shout out." No doubt the Pharisees assumed all the adulation had gone to his head. But Jesus needed no slave whispering in his ear to remind him that he was mortal. Alone among the followers who greeted him upon his entry into Jerusalem that day, he knew that he had come to die.
Luke 19:40
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