# 12-20
- Why a Palm Sunday reading in January? Well, because John’s gospel is not chronologically organized. John actually writes as Jesus declining in popularity up to his death, whereas the synoptic gospels tell the story in chronological order, where Jesus is rising in popularity right on up to his death.
- Why does John tell it this way? Well, possibly because John is writing much later than the other synoptic gospels, and therefore is dealing with a different situation, where following Jesus is becoming increasingly unpopular.
- In our modern case, we could also point out that Jesus is at his most popular around Christmas time. Little baby Jesus, tender and mild (not crunchy and spicy). But by the time we get to Good Friday and Easter, folks would prefer us to be quiet about Jesus’ real mission. Our culture likes God in a manger; less so God confronting evil headon.
- Any reading of John’s gospel and 1—3 John needs a sophisticated understanding of “the world,” which is used in a variety of ways. God so loved the world; do not love the world; Jesus did not come to condemn the world but to save it; any who hates their brother is not of God but of the world. Etc. Here, we see the Pharisees saying that the world has gone after Jesus. They mean it as an insult, but Jesus would have understood it as a compliment.