No Turning Back

One of my favourite spirituals says, “I have decided to follow Jesus/No turning back, no turning back.” In Luke’s Gospel, there is a point after the Transfiguration when it says, “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.” (Luke 9:51). As far away as he is from Jerusalem and the crucifixion, there is nothing that can change what’s about to happen. For Jesus, there was no turning back.

It is like when we see footage of some sort of disaster and people are running away, the first responders are running towards the danger, towards the source. Jesus is running towards the source of the problem, the only place where healing can start, and for him and his community that meant Jerusalem.

It was in Jerusalem where the corruption lived; it was there in that holy city where the greatest sense of separation and sin lived and flourished. Like the surgeons’ scalpel, Jesus was to approach the problem directly—no turning back.

His love for Jerusalem was so deep—his love for the whole world and all that God had made was so strong— that even death could be risked to bring the message of salvation.

People gathered in the streets, perhaps just to witness yet another self-proclaimed messiah enter the city. They could at least brag to their neighbours, “I was there that day.” They got caught up in the spectacle and shouted along with the crowd, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who come in the name of the Lord!” But somehow it was more than that; it was their hope. They were there that day because of their hope that maybe this one really was the Messiah, the one sent by God to bring salvation.

Jesus was not what they expected. Jesus was not what anyone expected. Sure, we have the luxury to sift through the Hebrew texts of the Bible and see, as plain as anything, the Suffering Servant, the deep love God has for God’s creation and the desire of God to love and care for everyone, even the stranger “within thy gates.”

Palm Sunday is in some way a celebration of a moment in history when the crowd got it right—they saw and believed, or at least hoped, that Jesus of Nazareth, that this teacher and healer, truly was the Messiah. Regardless, for Jesus there simply was no turning back; his face was set to heal our pain.