Sermon for Passion/Palm Sunday
Sermon for Palm Sunday
You will notice, after the sermon, that our service will shift tone rather abruptly. Instead of the celebratory tone of Palm Sunday, we will enter into the somber and often melancholy tone of the Passion narrative. It’s the strangeness of this Sunday, where two very different narratives are at play. Triumph, to apparent defeat. That grey feeling will stay with us through Holy week until the miracle of the resurrection, where Joy will rise from the dead and we can again celebrate.
But something you will notice about the actual mechanics of this service is that the PowerPoint slides won’t change. The banner on the left-hand side will continue to read “Blessed is the King, Who Comes in the name of the Lord.” That relates to the Palm Sunday portion of our service, but not to what comes after, the Passion narrative, which is the bulk of our service.
I wanted to change the banner to something more fitting, that would have matched the change in tone. I was playing around with doing just that when I realized that, although the passage may come from the Palm Sunday Gospel, the statement itself relates more to what is coming, on Good Friday, as opposed to what is happening in our Palm Sunday Gospel.
Without a doubt, the people recognize Jesus in this moment, at least on some level. They celebrate his arrival and call out “Blessed is the King, Who Comes in the name of the Lord.” But I am not altogether sure what they though this King was coming to do. Did they think he was coming to foment some kind of rebellion, in an effort to send Rome packing and reclaiming Jerusalem for the people of Israel? Were they just caught up in the excitement, unaware of what they were yelling? Whatever the reason, I am not sure they were cheering for Jesus and what it was that he was truly coming to do.
We likely would have found ourselves in the crowd, shouting in acclaim of Jesus. Maybe we would have been a would-be revolutionary. Maybe we would have just been there, caught up in the moment. We might have come to believe that this person we were cheering for was some kind of political hero, or religious figure, who was going to change everything. We still look at people in public roles and expect them to change the world and bring back a time when things were more at peace and made sense. We want that stability that seems to have been missing in our lives for so long.
But what the people get is someone who doesn’t foment rebellion but challenges them and their religious leaders. And then the religious leaders get involved and inform that this is no hero, but a man to be silenced and eventually the man they were cheering for is up on trial for treason and is executed and the ones who were cheering for him a few days earlier are calling for his blood.
We are equally hard on our heroes. We even let that same mentality spill over in how we relate to God. If the one’s we have come to rely on don’t measure up to our expectations, then we want no part of them. We want them silenced. We want their proverbial heads. And when God doesn’t measure up to our standards, then we scream and rail against God and want nothing more to do with God.
We do this, as the ancient Israelites did this, because we have missed the point. We have called out “Blessed is the King, Who Comes in the name of the Lord.”, thinking that God has come to do our will. If we pray hard enough and are good enough, God will reward us and smite our enemies. And how does God react to this? By challenging the people, the religious authorities, and in the end, being tried as a criminal and crucified. This is why Jesus entered Jerusalem. Not for earthly glory. Not to be the instrument of the people’s power-hungry desires or even well funded hopes for justice. He has come to be hung on the cross. He has come to do what he must, and that is continuing to challenge and to show what the kingdom of God is all about and to die for it. He has come to bear for all people what they could not bear for themselves.
When we call out “Blessed is the King, Who Comes in the name of the Lord.”, we are not welcoming a conquering king. We are welcoming the Christ, who is going to the cross, who is going to bear the sins of the world, who is going to die for the sake of the one’s who once cheered him on, but wll jeer him from the crowd of people assembled to witness his trial.
So let us be clear what we are saying when we call out “Blessed is the King, Who Comes in the name of the Lord.” It is not for a conquering king, but for the crucified Saviour, the one who has come to set us free and give us our very lives back to us.
When you read those words on the side of the PowerPoint, even in the darkest moments of the passage we are about to read, remember, that it was for this that Christ came to Jerusalem. So even in our moments of sadness, let us cherish the fact the King has come and has given everything for the sake of the world.
Amen