Secret moments and public moments

Pastor Juliet Lyons opens Palm Sunday with a prayer that Elan would see the real Jesus, then names a culture obsessed with the highlight reel. "The choices we make in secret moments determine the power of our public moments." She shares her own story: at fourteen she fasted and prayed for forty days, laying herself on the floor each morning to offer God everything, and she now sees her role as a pastor and worship leader as God's answer to that hidden prayer. Jesus modeled this, getting alone with the Father so His public ministry was backed by secret commitment, and Holy Week invites us to recalibrate who Jesus is to us daily.

The road from Bethany

Recapping the road to Resurrection Sunday, Pastor Juliet recalls the raising of Lazarus as the tipping point for the religious leaders, the Passover meal, and Mary anointing Jesus' feet in Bethany, a public moment powered by secret repentance. Using a map, she traces the path from Bethany past Bethphage and the Mount of Olives into Jerusalem, then reads Matthew 21:1–11 while the congregation waves palm branches. Palms were a Jewish sign of triumph, and the crowd's cry of Hosanna, meaning save us, quotes Psalm 118:26.

Prophecy fulfilled to the day

With pilgrims flooding into Jerusalem for Passover in AD 33, Pastor Juliet imagines a young Jesus reading the Torah and the prophets and realizing they were about Him. Zechariah 9:9 told Him He would come humble and mounted on a donkey, so the walker chose to ride. Daniel 9:24–26 laid out seventy sevens from the decree to rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One would be put to death. She walks through Nehemiah 2, the decree of King Artaxerxes around 444 BC in the month of Nisan, and the scholars who calculate 483 lunar years as 173,880 days, landing on the 10th of Nisan, AD 33. That was the very day Jewish families presented their unblemished lambs for slaughter. The Lamb presented Himself to Jerusalem on the day of presenting lambs, fulfilling every decree to the letter.

Three responses: the crowd

Matthew 21:10 shows the whole city stirred and asking who this is. The pilgrims knew the Torah and the prophets but not the God behind the religion. Desperate for relief from Rome, they boxed Jesus into their immediate need and missed that He came to save them from sin, death, guilt, and shame. How often do we do the same?

Three responses: the Pharisees

In Luke 19:39–40 the Pharisees tell Jesus to rebuke His disciples, and He answers that the very stones would cry out. Their problem was not misunderstanding but rejection. Jesus was too meager for the Messiah they expected, and anything that threatened the kingdom they were building, with authority God had only lent them, became an enemy. They were jealous of His influence and unaware of His identity, and Pastor Juliet warns that every one of us carries inches of that mindset.

Three responses: the donkey

The colt simply submitted. Kings rode donkeys as a sign of peace; when Jesus returns, it will not be on a donkey. The colt had never been ridden, and donkeys are stubborn, like us when we say, "I'll give you this, but not all of this." Pastor Juliet also notes that Jesus asked for the mother donkey too. He could have tamed the colt alone, but He let it follow its mother, a picture of how we all need a support system of people who show us the way.

The most important decision

The right response is simple but not easy: receive Jesus for who He truly is and submit completely to His lordship, every hour and every circumstance. Pastor Juliet calls Elan to childlike yes-Lord faith, to Holy Spirit community with trustworthy people who look like Jesus, and to pick up the cross and follow Him anywhere. She recounts her own string of yeses, from a worship team in Nigeria to marrying Max and landing in Illinois. Every yes brings you closer to who God is calling you to be. Today is the day of salvation, and Jesus is presenting Himself again: who is He to you, and how will you respond?