TODAY IS THE fifth Sunday of Lent; next week is Palm Sunday, the day on which we remember Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem for the Passover. That day represents the coming of the king. That’s what the pilgrims along the road were celebrating: the arrival, at last, of their long-awaited Messiah, the Son of David to the city of David. It’s what the people had prayed for, generation after generation.

For now, however, as we draw closer to Palm Sunday and Easter, I want to use a few stories from the gospel of Mark to help put us in the right frame of mind. In Mark’s gospel, the so-called “Triumphal Entry” into Jerusalem comes in chapter 11. But Mark gives us some strikingly similar stories in chapters 8 through 10 that should give us pause.

For the pilgrims in Jerusalem, for Jesus’ own disciples, the Triumphal Entry was the fulfillment of a dream, a deep longing the people had internalized since childhood. Finally, it seemed, God was giving them what they wanted.

But did they really want what God wanted? Consider these three vignettes of Jesus and the Twelve.

In Mark 8, as Jesus and his disciples are walking in the vicinity of Caesarea Philippi, he asks them about the rumor mill: “Who do people say I am?” (vs. 27). Some thought Jesus might be the return of John the Baptist, they replied, or Elijah, or one of the prophets. But Jesus then asks them point-blank: “What about you? What do you say?” Peter then makes a remarkable and unwavering profession of faith: “You are the Messiah” (vs. 29).

Score one for Peter. But then Jesus starts saying things that burst Peter’s bubble:

He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. (Mark 8:31-32, NIV)

We don’t know what Peter said, but the idea that the Messiah would have to suffer and die was clearly not the way he wanted the story to unfold. And surely, none of the other disciples would have wanted that either.
But because Peter was the one who spoke up, Jesus had to give him a stinging rebuke in return: “Get behind me, Satan! You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns” (vs. 33).

I imagine how crestfallen Peter must have been, and how after that harsh rebuke he continued to trudge along with the rest of the group in sullen silence. But Jesus knew what he was going to face in Jerusalem, and these men, his closest comrades, had to understand the mission.

In Mark 9, Jesus and the Twelve are somewhere in Galilee, and he tells them again how he will very soon have to suffer, die, and rise again:

He said to them, “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men. They will kill him, and after three days he will rise.” But they did not understand what he meant and were afraid to ask him about it. (Mark 9:31-32)

Mark doesn’t say why they were afraid. Perhaps they simply didn’t want to hear it. Or perhaps they remembered how, the last time, Peter said what they were all thinking and got shot down by Jesus in a painful fashion. So what did they talk about instead?

Mark tells us that when the group arrived in Capernaum, Jesus asked them what they had been arguing about with each other along the road. He already knew the answer: they had been debating which one of them was the greatest. Embarrassed to be caught out, they sheepishly kept their mouths shut. And again Jesus corrects them: “Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all” (Mark 9:35).

Then, in Mark 10, Jesus predicts his death yet a third time, going into gruesome detail:

“We are going up to Jerusalem,” he said, “and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles, who will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him. Three days later he will rise.” (Mark 10:33-34)

And what happens next? Mark tells us that James and John come to Jesus to ask for privileged positions in the coming kingdom, sitting on Jesus’ right and left. The other disciples were incensed that the sons of Zebedee had the gall to ask this. But it wasn’t because they understood better what the kingdom was about; one gets the sense that they wish they had thought of it first.

Again, Jesus has to call them together for a little teaching time:

You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. (Mark 10:42-45)

You know how the world does things, he seems to say. You know how people use power, how they love to lord that power over others. But that’s not how I want things to be with you. That’s not the kind of kingdom I’m bringing. You know that I’m the Messiah, and you want me to come in power. But for now, I’ve come to serve, and that service will cost me my life.

Did they get it? I doubt it. But they would eventually, after Palm Sunday and Good Friday, after Easter, after Pentecost. And they would remember what Jesus said.

And now, as Jesus’ disciples 2,000 years later, do we get it? We all have our “human concerns”; we all have things that we wish God would do for us. But God’s plan and what he wants is not always the same as our plan and what we want. The season of Lent is a time of repentance and preparation. Let Mark remind us of our tendency to put our own concerns ahead of God’s, so we can celebrate Palm Sunday and Easter rightly.