Why did the crowds go from “Hosanna” on Palm Sunday to “Crucify him” on Friday?
Read Luke 23:27 and journal your thoughts
Did you get it? Were you able to put the pieces together? The crowd who yelled “Hosanna” was not the same as the crowd yelling “Crucify him”. So many times there has been sermon after sermon around Easter time about how this crowd turns on Jesus, but that simply isn’t the case. Let’s go through our timeline and explain why the two crowds couldn’t have been the same.
We know from Matthew 26:3-5 that the religious leaders want to arrest Jesus in secret so because the people loved Jesus so much that they feared a riot. What better time to do something in secret than during all the business of the Passover?
So it begins with Judas betraying Jesus with a kiss in the Garden of Gethsemane which is located outside of town, in the middle of the night, while everyone is in bed exhausted from the night’s feast. If the events of the Sanhedrin happened in the middle of the night after such an exhausting evening, then who would be there; only those who planned on being there.
The same can be said for the crowd before Pilate, after such a late night what Jew is going to get up early to stand before the governor? Once again, it’s only those who either planned on being there or Romans who had to be there.
Yesterday we mentioned that Jesus was crucified at 9 am (Mark 15:25), why is this important? It is crucial to the plan, because that is when the first temple services were for the day. In order for the plan to work, the religious leaders knew that they had to finish their plan before everyone got up and around and into town for worship.
Looking at the timeline, we can see that the religious leaders didn’t just get fed up with Jesus and decided to get him one day, but they planned and schemed to come up with a way to get rid of Jesus in secret without anyone knowing. This is why the crowd changed; this is why in Luke 23:27 they were weeping. The religious leaders were more interested in keeping their own power rather than doing God’s will.
**NOTE: All the journals this week were inspired and heavily influenced by Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus: How the Jewishness of Jesus Can Transform Your Faith by Ann Spangler and Lois Tverberg. I cannot recommend this book enough!
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