Except otherwise indicated, Bible references are this author’s paraphrases or translations.
Palm Sunday: exquisite dollops of excited spontaneity; dancing, prancing, screaming kids who didn’t know it was on until it was. But directions to a specific place to pick up a specific donkey waiting there (Matt. 21:1-3), mean that it was still a staged parade. And what a day of joy it was, flush with flailing flora from olive, myrtle, and palm trees; fortissimo voices, the cheering children, and at least one young donkey among the giddy kids on its guided ride! Palm Sunday was robed streets echoing thrilled chants to monarch David’s Scion, blessed and coming in the name of the Lord (Matt. 21:6-11). Jesus’s royalty was no classified secret.
For years before, and particularly during the week following that Sunday spree, everyone around knew, or got their chance, to choose and hail the King. Sources of help on His royal identification included a master of ascendant Rome’s imperial power, vulnerable to screams from a crooked crowd. ‘You want me to kill your king?’ was his ask of demons and crazies in the clamoring tumult (John 19:15)[1]. Yes, they did.
Glory: Alien to earth
Threatened into trashing Jesus for a job’s sake, Rome’s Governor Pilate posted his multilingual plaque that gave all and sundry their moment to scoff or confirm: “Jesus, Nazarene King of Jewry” (John 19:19), the plaque read, in Palestinian Aramaic, for Jews resisting cultural erasure; in Latin, for military Romans; and in koine Greek for random sophisticates or commoners passing through town (Matt. 27:37; Mark 15:26; Luke 23:38; John 19:19, 20). Pilate knew, because Jesus laid the truth out to him. Jesus advised that the issue of His royalty was why His accusers had handed Him over to the imperial authority, for justice to be meted out against the impostor.
But this prefect of the mightiest empire humanity had ever known, this governor who had brought Rome’s judicial power to bear over “all kinds of criminals,” had never tried “a man bearing marks of such goodness and nobility. . . .”[2] Looking at Jesus, once or forever, he could see that “kingdom,“ for this unmistakably different human, would have to stand for something utterly different; something more alien to all of Earth than Pilate himself was to Judea, the province and people Rome had assigned to govern.
And yet, with this Man standing before him, that different and dramatically unfamiliar kingdom was no less real simply because it was so alien to Pilate. Its strength, the charge of power and glory he felt in this strange King boggled the governor’s mind and threatened to destabilize him completely as he struggled to control his own authority. “Pilate was astonished at His bearing.”[3] This Man and His kingdom occupied a space somewhere, inaccessible to him, elevated and alone; somewhere beyond all of Rome’s intellectual capacity to conceive, and all its military power to control. This Man’s kingdom was out of all accord with Pilate’s imagination or his empire’s textbooks. Its self-denying notions of triumph, and images of glory, made no sense to him. He would not have understood it, if he had heard this King say, “I do not seek My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me” (John 5:30, NASB).[4] Or, “I do not seek My own glory” (John 8:50, NASB). Through the unfolding hours of his confrontation with this King and kingdom, he found its splendor difficult to fathom; profoundly and continuously dismaying.
This Man and His kingdom occupied a space somewhere, inaccessible to him, elevated and alone; somewhere beyond all of Rome’s intellectual capacity to conceive, and all its military power to control.
Learning that the unpretentious King was Galilean presented Pilate with a chance to escape further dealing with this personage of inscrutable countenance and impenetrable resolution. He would hand him over to Herod, an Idumean puppet king who served under him. Perhaps Herod could handle Him or handle His conviction.
But King Herod was no more able to manipulate King Jesus than Pilate had been. Herod, too, could look and instantly see that the clean, serene, meek, and untroubled person before him was as dignified and noble, anchored and heavenly, as he himself was morally filthy, seasoned in corruption and brutality. Herod lived with his brother’s wife; he punished truth-telling with imprisonment; he threw wild, vulgar parties (Matt. 14:3, 4). Neither he nor Pilate needed to defer to the other in terms of callous disregard for justice, mercy, or decency. Pilate would be remembered to Jewish posterity for the fate of worshipers he “killed while they were at worship, mixing their blood with the blood of the sacrifices on the altar (Luke 13:1, The Message).[5] Herod would be remembered for chopping off John the Baptizer’s head in answer to arousal while watching a young woman dance at one of his parties (Matt. 14:1-11). The two would conceive it impossible to find glory in Jesus.
Herod found it impossible to find anything in Jesus. He was unable to extract a single word from Him (Luke 23:9). At first, he had been “hoping to see some sign performed by Him” (verse 8, NASB). The captive King should put on a royal show. But it did not work. It wasn’t the way of His kingship or kingdom. Jesus would not waste a syllable for him. He knew enough about Herod, everything. And He “had no words for those who would but trample the truth under their unholy feet.”[6]
After Pilate and Herod, at the climactic hour of the kingdom’s triumph, things would seem very different. There would be visible power: a Roman seal ripped away, hell’s gates crashing down, and the Lord of glory bursting forth, victorious, from Joseph’s borrowed tomb, rising to life that is in Himself.[7] And because we choose the glory of His sacrifice for our sin, He chooses us to share His power and glory (Rom. 6:8; 2 Cor. 13:4; 1 Thess. 4:14), willing us to savor, even now, in textual memory and historical anticipation, a challenge at heaven’s gates that none but He, the Resurrection and the Life, can inspire: “Lift up your heads, O gates, . . . that the king of glory may come in!” The angelic chorus knows and knows their lines: “Who is the King of glory?” The antiphon reverberates against eternity’s doors; heaven’s gates lift up their heads to answer: “Jesus, the Conqueror, Lord of all our armies and Captain of our salvation, He is the king of glory!” (see Ps. 24:7-10). Such is the glorious end. But there must first be a beginning.
The kingdom’s initiation arrived hours before its confrontation with Pilate and Herod, or the Jewish rulers before them. Jesus, its Lord, performed the act of inauguration when He deprived Himself of His outer garments, bound His girth with a towel, and wielded a basin of water to wash and wipe His disciples’ feet (John 13:1-5). He acted thus at this moment because His hour had come, the hour of His pain and shame and suffering, the hour of His triumph, the hour of anguish and splendor inextricably bound together. He called out to His Father: “ ‘Now My soul has become troubled; and what shall I say, Father, save Me from this hour? But for this purpose I came to this hour. Father, glorify Your name.’ Then a voice came out of heaven: ‘I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again’” (John 12:27, 28, NASB).
Jesus had always followed His Father, and it had brought Him here; so He knew where He was, and why He was there (John 6:38, 40; 8:14, 16, 28, 29). He knew who He was (John 13:1-3). He was Lord of all (v. 3); He was the paschal / Passover Lamb (Matt. 26:26; Mark 14:22; Luke 22:14-20; 1 Cor. 11:23-26); He was the whole world’s Light (John 8:12), and the whole world’s Savior (John 3:16). He would brighten everything, and save everyone, by carrying the sin of all the ages on His back, alone (John 1:29, 36; 2 Cor. 5:21). He was the sacrifice for salvation food—those loved and doting followers in the room with Him would need to eat Him to live and never die (John 6:41, 48-51). Things were going to be lethal: people were about to kill Him, though those He loved and who doted on Him would be unable to stand it: they would disappear (Matt. 26:48-50, 56; Mark 13:44-46, 50), or, if seen, wish they could (Luke 22:54-62). It would be for Him a “baptism of suffering” (Matt 20:20-23; Mark 10:32-39).
Glory: Heavy and complicated
Glories do vary, Paul writes (1 Cor. 15:40, 41). There’s glory, and then there’s glory. And glory is weighted, heavy. One Hebrew root [k-b-d] helps describe Abraham’s prosperity, High Priest Eli’s death from a bad fall, and the God of Moses’s encounter at Sinai. Abraham was rich (k-b-d, Gen. 13:2); Eli was heavy (k-b-d, 1 Sam. 4:18); God was glorious (k-b-d, Ex. 33:18). Glory is heavy. Our little trials are nothing to compare with the “eternal weight of glory” that awaits the overcomer (2 Cor. 4:18). But glory can be a complicated matter, as Paul implies when he reassures his Ephesian believers that his tribulations are their glory (Eph. 3:13)!
Glory is heavy. Our little trials are nothing to compare with the “eternal weight of glory” that awaits the overcomer.
Glory: Its greatest display
No imaging of glory will ever present the breadth and contrasts of the passion of Jesus, the Christ. It sounds and resounds from His beginnings as human, when we learn that by giving up every prerogative of transcendent God, He displays the kingdom’s glory (John 1:14). In His descent to become a fetus, a baby, a ridiculed goody-two-shoes, we behold the brightness of eternal Light (verses 4-9), the fullness of His Father’s splendor (verse 14). Hounded, insulted and otherwise tormented by the hostile students who occupied His classroom’s front row, the Teacher of righteousness displayed the glory of the Father in His life and ministry as God’s Only Begotten Son, a life and witness brimming with grace and truth: a different, deferring kingdom, a different glory He encapsulates with, “I live by the Father, and you live by Me” (John 6:57).
And between His life and teaching, and His triumphant coronation upon return to His Father’s side, His kingly reign would shine in its witness, heard or inaudible, crying “Glory!” Glory at the beauty of forgiveness, pardon unsullied by the treachery and murder that inspire it; glory, as He prayed that the Father hold nothing against the very ones who were subjecting Him to torture: “Forgive them Father; they don’t know what they’re doing” (Luke 23:34).
In the end—for there would be an end to the degradations of His farcical trial, unconscionable conviction, and callous crucifixion—He would resurrect; He would rise, once more, to the throne and glory He shared with the Father forever, before the world was (John 17:5). And there He would receive and revel once more in all He owns and deserves, of “glory and dominion forever and ever” (Rev. 5:13).
But first, He would display the virtues of a kingdom thoroughly distinguishable from the powers and glories of Pilate’s familiarity, a world incompatible with and fully despised by him and his kind. Jesus’s actions and reactions would show His irreconcilability with the brute force of those hailed through the centuries and millennia as earth’s mightiest. He would display such glory as neither Pilate nor Herod had ever seen; at least not seen as glory. And it would not be simply because of their blindness or inattention to angel cries of “Glory!” (Luke 2:14). Far from it! For how many people of earthly note—besides Egyptian future monarch, Moses, turned Sinai sheepherder—had even imagined that God could have a glory that was different? So different and so rare that amidst Earth’s exhibitionism and histrionics, one would need to ask to see it: ‘I want to see Your glory, please,’ Moses begged (see Ex. 33:18).
Glory: The difference marked
That glory would differ widely from the pomposity of Egypt’s “Bow the knee” (Exod. 33:18)! It would look nothing like Daniel’s Babylon, where even the most esteemed counselor was never more than one royal whim away from elimination—fed to the fumes and furious flames of a fiery furnace (Dan. 3:5, 6); or the Medo-Persian variation, hurled into the lap of hungry lions (Dan. 6:6-9); or beyond these, through the undifferentiated tyrannies of random, regnant empires now forgotten, still enthroned, or yet to come (Dan. 2:40; 7:5-7; Matt. 20:25; Rev. 13:7, 12, 15).
It would be modesty, deference, obedience, doing only, and always what the Father said was appropriate (John 8:29), disclosing and inspiring songs of “Glory to God!” instead of the arrogance of earthbound powers seeking their own glory, demanding and exerting dictatorial control over all subjects under threat of isolation and starvation (Rev. 13:5, 6, 16, 17). It would be transparent teaching and personal integrity (Matt. 26:55; Mark 14:49; Luke 22:53), whispering “Glory! Glory to God!” in place of the deception, unscrupulousness, and fraud that seek advantage by selling a human for avarice, betraying an innocent with a kiss (Luke 22:43-45); arresting, at midnight, one whom the sleeping rank and file adore, and for whose cause they would riot if they knew of threats to His person or life, or learned that He was being abused before being found guilty or even properly charged with any crime.[8]
It would be the glory of a kingdom of truth, where “the fruit of the Light consists in . . . truth” (Eph. 5:9), a systemic commitment to truth that would distinguish its ethos and citizenry from a regime whose prosperity would involve hurling truth to the ground (Dan. 8:12). The territory of Jesus’s domain—’I am the Truth’ (see John 14:6)—would raise its loudest shouts of “Glory to God!” at the quiet decency of the Man on trial who throws no tantrum, speaks no bitter denunciation, when His judge walks away from Truth to avoid conviction, preserve his pride, and play more politics: ‘Whom do you vote for—Jesus or Barabbas? Your King or your killer? This Man or that murderer? Let’s play!’ (John 18:38, 39).
The impossibility of such a kingdom, to Pilate, was heaven uttering its last cries to a man near probation’s end, showing Pilate a world beyond his ken, but real nevertheless, because it is not the glory of rebel creature, but the glory of God! In the presence of Jesus, wicked Pilate felt like doing good. He didn’t feel like rubberstamping another show trial. A man known for moral weakness in the manner of his wielding of power (e.g., Luke 13:1) would need more than fickle justifications for condemning this prisoner.[9] But Pilate never rose to the occasion. Only washed his hands in a failed attempt to cleanse his conscience from complicity in crime: the crime of commitment to the murder of God (Matt. 27:24).
Glory: The difference summarized
Pilate’s criminal venture failed. Christ Jesus lives today, and now we may be drenched in true glory, bathed in the blood that flows from Christ’s cross, the monument of God that towers over every statue and statute to human power, ambition, and whimsy. Here at its foot, we die to the world, the world dies to us (Gal. 2:20), and we are ready to sing eternal praise and glory to the Lamb:
The other gods were strong; but Thou wast weak;
They rode, but Thou didst stumble to a throne;
But to our wounds only God’s wounds can speak;
And not a god has wounds, but Thou alone.[10]
[1] Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1898), 733.
[2] Ibid., 724.
[3] Ibid., 726.
[4] Scripture quotations marked NASB are from the New American Standard Bible, copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.
[5] Texts credited to Message are from The Message. Copyright ã 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.
[6] Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1898), 734.
[7] Ibid., 785.
[8] Ibid., 699.
[9] Ibid., 724.
[10] Edward Shillito, Jesus of the Scars & Other Poems, Hodder and Stoughton, 1919; quoted in Norman Anderson, Christianity & World Religions (IVP Academic, 1984), 109.