Palm/Passion Sunday
Today can feel like a bit of a trick. We come in, and it feels like a celebration. Jesus is arriving in Jerusalem. We are waving Palm branches. Jesus is being welcomed as the Messiah. … Suddenly, Jesus is betrayed, arrested, rejected by the crowds, and killed on a cross. … We came for a party, but suddenly it’s a funeral.
There was a time when Palm Sunday had its own Sunday. But then the Passion was added to it because people weren’t showing up for Holy week services. That means they would come for the celebration of Palm Sunday, then they would come the next Sunday for Easter Sunday, without liturgically recognizing the betrayal, arrest, crucifixion, and burial that happened in-between those two Sundays.
We have an understandable aversion to the sad and difficult, but this is a part of life. We have birthday parties, but we also have funerals. And there is something unhealthy about only attending the birthday parties and refusing to attend the funerals. Life includes both, and to really be attentive to life, it is important that we are attentive to both.
Today has these realities bound together. Palm/Passion Sunday is a condensed Holy Week. Today we are prepared for the drama of the journey towards the cross.
The drama of Holy week begins with Jesus entering into Jerusalem for the Passover. When Jesus entered Jerusalem, he received the welcome of a king.
The crowds welcome Jesus into the city as royalty. But this is even bigger. The Roman Empire was occupying their land. They were under the thumb of Pagan rulers- Just as their ancestors were under the thumbs of empires like Assyria and Babylon. …
Their king, King Herod, was a kind of puppet king put in power by Rome. There was a broad feeling that the Temple leadership had become corrupt. There were some who felt that they never really left the Babylonian Exile. They were still in a kind of exile.
The crowd is welcoming Jesus as the Messiah. In the minds of most people the messiah would be a king like King David who would remove the corrupt leadership, unify the country, and free them from Roman occupation. The Messiah would usher in a new Golden Age for their nation.
To welcome him, they laid their cloaks on the ground, which was a sign of loyalty and dedication. This was done in 2 Kings for King Jehu who destroyed the evil King Ahab. Ahab was corrupting the people to the worship of Ba’al, the god of his wife Jezebel (2 Kings 9:13). …
In the books of the Maccabees, we read about Jewish leaders who stood against invading Pagan Greek forces to regain their freedom and restore Jewish Temple worship. At one point, a statue of Zeus was actually placed in the Holy of Holies. In Maccabees, branches were carried by the crowds to celebrate a leader who had delivered them from oppression and re‑established faithful worship (1 Macc 13:51; 2 Macc 10:7; see also Lev 23:40).
The crowds shout “Hosanna” which means “save us” (Ps 118:25), which had become a kind of shout of joy and adoration. So, they welcome Jesus as a king, in the way that they welcomed other kings who freed them from evil forces. …
And he comes on a donkey. … Jesus is very purposely fulfilling a prophesy about the messiah, which we read about in Zechariah (Zech 9:9). … The Messiah is called the Son of David, and another son of David, Solomon, came to the city on a donkey when he was anointed king to succeed his father (1 Kings 1:32-40). So, by riding a donkey, Jesus is symbolically declaring that he is the Messiah that they have been waiting for. And this is happening during Passover, the celebration of release from slavery.
A helpful way to enter Holy week is to see ourselves in the drama of Jesus’ journey to the cross. The crowd joyfully welcomes Jesus. We too, joyfully welcome Jesus. … But, we see the crowd shift. … We are happy to welcome Jesus when he matches our expectations. But we might be less welcoming when we see that he isn’t exactly who we were expecting.
Maybe Jesus challenging us to change. Maybe he is asking something of us we don’t want to give. Maybe he’s pointing out something in our life that doesn’t match up with being his follower. … It’s easier to reject him than change. Like King David, we can be happy to cast judgement on that nasty rich man who stole the poor man’s lamb. But when the prophet Nathan points at us and says, “you are the man”, we are left with two options. Change or reject Nathan. When Jesus tells us something we don’t like, we might be tempted to reject Jesus.
Or maybe, we change our opinion because we just go along with the crowd. The news network we watch tells us that Jesus actually isn’t who we think he is. He has fallen out of favour with the people who tell us what to think. And we don’t question that conclusion. Whatever the people around us think, we just absorb like a sponge. … Perhaps we can see ourselves in the crowds.
The drama shifts as we turn to the Gospel reading.
Perhaps we have the honesty to see ourselves as Judas. Perhaps we have betrayed our Lord for wealth. Perhaps we have left behind the principles our Lord taught us in order to be a little more financially prosperous. … Though, maybe greed wasn’t our temptation. Maybe some other sin led us to betray the one we called “Lord”.
Maybe we feel more like Peter. We are bold in declaring our loyalty to Christ, but when it comes time to prove it, we back away. Maybe we had opportunities to share our faith, but we backed away.
Maybe we see ourselves in the disciples who fell asleep. In the time when Christ has asked us to be most diligent- most committed to him- most awake, … we find ourselves drifting away into our own pleasure. … We waste hours on entertainment. We prefer our own comforts. We prefer convenience. … We don’t take his words seriously. And when the Lord looks for mature disciples ready to stand beside him, he finds us asleep- spiritually unformed and immature in the faith.
Maybe we see ourselves as Pontius Pilate. We put ourselves in the role of judge over Jesus. Instead of being his student, assuming he knows better than us, we pick and choose which of his teaching align with our own attitudes and beliefs. We like this teaching, but judge that other teaching of his as ridiculous, and so we leave it behind. … Or perhaps you are being asked to make a decision that forces you to stand against he crowd. You know what is right, but going against the crowd is going to make your life so much more difficult.
Maybe we can see ourselves in the women who watched the crucifixion from a distance. Our love draws us to stay near the beloved. Maybe, like Mary Magdalene, we have experienced Jesus cast darkness out of us. And there is nothing that will get between us being present to the one we love. Even if there is nothing we can do to stop it, we refuse to allow Jesus to be alone in his suffering- even though it means being present to a horrifying act being done to the one we love. Maybe you are present for the moment his body is taken down from the cross and placed in the tomb. … Perhaps your deep love leads you to be in places of deep pain.
This Holy Week I encourage you to find yourself in the characters of this holy drama, among its sinners and saints. See yourself among the crowds. See yourself anointing Jesus with perfume. See yourself as the betrayer, and the denier. See yourself as the sleeping disciple, and as the disciple swinging a sword to stop his arrest. See yourself as Pilate trying to decide between what is right and what is easy. See Yourself as King Herod, treating Jesus as a curiosity rather than as Lord. See yourself as Simon of Cyrene, carrying crosses your didn’t expect and meeting Christ in the midst of it. See yourself as the Roman soldiers, desensitized to suffering. See yourself as Joseph of Arimathea as you risk exposing yourself to friends and colleagues as his follower. See yourself as Mary weeping outside his tomb. … Enter into this holy drama, and see where God leads you. AMEN
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