Today is frequently referred to as Palm Sunday. the reference comes from event in the last week of Jesus’ earthly when he entered Jerusalem and the throngs placed palms before him.
One cannot help but to be reminded of similar arrival of David in Jerusalem some one thousand years earlier. In that case, he was bringing in the ark of the covenant. Jesus was the true ark, or presence of God. In the case of David, he danced before the Lord as the ark came in, and the people celebrated joyfully. In the case of Jesus, people rejoiced and celebrated that the ark of the New Covenant was arriving.
The Bible says specifically that it was the week of the Passover, he feast of Unleavened Bread. this is significant because Jesus’ life and ministry was ordered and revolved around the Jewish feasts.
In Judaism, in the days just before the Feast of Unleavened Bread begins, the house is scoured and cleaned of any leaven. Leaven, or yeast, is a type or symbol of sin or wickedness, as we read in 1 Cor 5:7.8:
“Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. 8 Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”
In verse 10, the “leaven” is identified not only with the sexual immoral (which Paul, in this context is calling the Corinthians out for). but also the “greedy and swindlers”. Jesus, in fulfillment of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, would likewise “clean house” of such leaven. We read in the Bible that when he entered Jerusalem in this “Triumphal Entry” that he went right to the Temple. There, he found the money changers, and merchants who were capitalizing on the pilgrims that had come to Jerusalem for the feast. Those merchants and money changers were greedy opportunists- frequently gouging the faithful that needed either their money changed, or in need of purchasing an animal for the sacrifice.
Jesus took care of the leaven in the house. (Matthew 21:12,13)
And Jesus entered the temple[b] and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. 13 He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.”
.It is one thing, as we see in modern Judaism, to physically remove the leavened items in preparation for the Feast. However, as Jesus demonstrated, that is merely a symbolic action of what God intended. God wants us to sanctify ourselves- purging the sin, malice, immorality, greed, and any other impurity- from our lives. And Christ can do it, just as he did 2,000 years ago.