Weekly Update// Pastor Chris

Dear Asbury Family,
It’s hard to believe that Palm Sunday is this weekend (March 28).
Palm Sunday marks the beginning of Holy Week, when we commemorate the last week of Jesus’ earthly life and the events that led up to Easter Sunday. During Palm Sunday, we wave palm branches to remember how the crowds waved palm branches as Jesus entered Jerusalem riding on a donkey. But have you wondered why the people waved palm branches in the first place? 

At the time of Jesus, God’s people, the Israelites, had suffered a long history of oppression at the hands of various empires – the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, and then the Romans. The only time the Jews ever engaged in a successful revolt against a foreign occupant was in 164BC when Judas Maccabaeus led a rebellion against Antiochus IV Epiphanies of the Seleucid Empire. Antiochus had killed thousands of Jews and desecrated the temple by sacrificing a pig on the altar, forcing the priests to eat its flesh. (The rededication of the temple came to be known as Hanukkah.) After the Jews regained control of the holy city, the people celebrated Judas’ victory by waving palm branches. Judas later stamped the image of the palm branch into coins to commemorate the victory. Put simply, palm branches signaled Jewish revolt against a foreign power. Many of the Jews were convinced Jesus had entered Jerusalem to lead a similar revolt – this time against the Romans. Obviously Jesus had something else in mind. 

 Jesus had indeed come to wage war, but not against the Romans. Instead, the war he had come to wage was against the greatest oppressor humanity has ever known – sin and evil and death and the grave. And this war was to be waged through his own body on the cross.

Join us for worship this Palm Sunday at 9:30am (contemporary) or 11am (traditional) as we worship God and enter into this most sacred of weeks.  
Blessings,
Chris