Even the rocks know the good news

This Sunday is Palm Sunday. Remember Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem on the Sunday before he would die?

Jesus entered Jerusalem riding on a donkey no one had ever ridden, a beast his disciples found just as he had said they would.

As he approached the city, people began to spread their cloaks on the road and wave palm branches hailing the coming king.

As he came down the road from the Mount of Olives, the crowd began to burst into praise.

“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”

“Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”

The Pharisees, soured by their toxic approach to religion, began to warn Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples. Shut them up!”

And Jesus replied, “I tell you, if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”

On this Palm Sunday, and on every Sunday, I’d rather be a rock on the road praising the Savior than a Pharisee all dressed up but blind to the One who is worthy of all our praise.

The cynical poet Swinburne once wrote, “Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean! / The world has grown grey with Thy breath.”

If Christ was the morose Son of a joyless God sent just to tell this world we are wrong and lost and that we’d better straighten up, but to do nothing to help us, if the cross was just an unfortunate accident, a tragic historical footnote with no meaning, instead of the event in which God himself accomplishes the work of salvation, I could well agree with the poet’s words.

Good news? What good news?

If God was just a stern heavenly killjoy, a thin-lipped, overly strict, bloodless, joyless Father griping that his kids are more trouble than they’re worth and who’d really rather not bother with them ...

If God had stopped with the tables of stone revealing his holy law and not gone on to send the Savior with the message, “God’s laws are real, and you often break them at great cost, but I have paid the price for your pardon and risen to heal and empower you to live lives under his mercy and filled with his joy ...”

If God had sent just the Law to be our Prosecutor and not the Son to be our Savior, Swinburne would be right.

But he’s not right. Not even close.

And it would be a shame to let the rocks do all the praising.

Curtis Shelburne is pastor of 16th & Ave. D. Church of Christ in Muleshoe. Contact him at

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